#but at least i got some validation regarding my work product today :)

[zhouszishu]

will be on indefinite hiatus again because the last semester of law school (and my anxiety about the bar) is kicking my butt

manifesting that the next time i log back onto this hellsite that i'll be doing it as an official baby attorney :)

#whyyyy did i decide to clerk again this semester omg #but at least i got some validation regarding my work product today :) #i was told a “good job” and “this is very helpful” like i'm gonna run on this validation until at least next week #anyways i'll probably see y'all after i take the bar in july #vivs rambles

[whiskeyjack]

I absolutely hear you on a lot of what you said about Rio’s development this season, but I don’t think the show is saying that Nick’s comment about Lucy’s murder is what we’re supposed to think about it. That’s just what Nick thinks, and considering the way they’ve portrayed him, I really don’t think we’re meant to agree with him. In fact I thought we were supposed to do the opposite. Why do you think the show itself is reframing what happened through him? I’m curious in your reading of that

(x)

you know? you make an excellent point. this one also got unintentionally REALLY long, so it is too, under the cut haha

-shout out to @jade-marie and @00gangfriend00, without them I don’t know how coherent this entire response would be haha

Alright, well firstly, I think it’s unfortunately clear that even some of the show’s writers don’t actually have a good grasp on the events leading up to Lucy’s death, both during s3 and now. It seems like depending on who is talking, and the timing of the discussion, the answer will shift. It is… really hard to speculate sometimes when the writers don’t even know the reason behind a scene. However, since it’s canon - whatever the reason or goal of the scene - I’m just going to go on my merry way and create/keep my own interpretation.

The more I thought about your ask, the more I realized, yeah, through Nick’s scripted words alone, they aren’t necessarily reframing what happened, since Nick does seem to be unaware of much of the entire sequence of events regarding Lucy: “So… you were just gunna, what, keep it to yourself?”. Assuming the diner scene with the cop was the first time he heard about it, his impression most likely wouldn’t be a fair representation of what actually happened. So, this is me eating my own words from before, so I apologize for using his quotes to reinforce my idea. This is simply my opinion, and it does regularly change quite a bit… I am wrong a lot haha

To some degree, I think reframing or shifting of some sort is kind of unavoidable when a show continues a plotline from a previous season, especially in addition to incorporating new characters into the past events. Nonetheless, I do think that the show is deliberately in fact reframing Lucy’s death and why it happened - through Rio’s backstory & POVs, Nick’s character development, and the show’s choice to show Rio having a lack of scars.

1. The backstory and Rio POVs

According to the backstory we’ve been given so far, Nick is this person who apparently is so deeply entrenched in Rio’s life and decision-making but he doesn’t know 1) that Rio killed someone, 2) the fact that Rio killed Lucy for Beth (as opposed to killing Annie, Ruby or Beth), and 3) why, which makes me wonder how exactly they are using Lucy’s death as a plotline in combination with Nick and Rio’s relationship. As I said in my previous post, I believe that the events leading up to and including Lucy’s death were heavily tied into if not directly a reaction to the shooting in 2.13.

According to this season, it seems Nick is Rio’s backstory, and Rio is Nick’s. So far, we’ve gotten approximately eight Rio POV scenes, separate from the girls, including flashbacks (excluding the Fitz kill):

4.02:

-the police station

4.08:

-baby Rio (rotten eggs with Nick)

-teenage Rio (the boxing scene(s)/contrasted with Nick’s POV on the golf course)

-teenage Rio (locker room theft)

-teenage Rio (grandma/stove and locker room arrest)

-adult Rio (outside the police station)

-teenage Rio (with Nick, kitchen flashback - I think this is more just an omniscient POV, however)

4.09:

-the boxing scene (with Nick)

With the exception of the police station in 4.02, Nick has been present in some capacity in each one of these Rio POV scenes. Since it’s only been through the flashbacks that we’re getting the main context of their relationship, it’s clear that the storyline the show is perpetuating this season is that Nick and Rio’s characters are very tightly weaved together in some capacity. And have been historically.

Rio, as a teenager, was a victim of Nick’s early manipulative actions, but in the end, it made him money, so (we are able to gather) he was able to justify falling into a criminal relationship with him. After Rio’s six-month stint in prison, he spent (probably) the entire time resenting Nick (and also, this is where he most importantly - in my opinion - developed adult Rio’s mannerisms haha jk).

So, moving forward with this knowledge, let’s take a look at their adult relationship.

2. Nick’s character development (in relation to Rio)

First and foremost, with Rio, in s1-3, he was an enigmatic, charismatic, clever, powerful, king who loved money, was in charge of every decision, well-connected, and a man of few words etc etc. Now, while Rio is being given more facets as more and more of his relationship with Nick is revealed and explored: he is being illustrated as someone who is dependant on his likely long-time abuser. This may be the case, absolutely, but, in my opinion, takes away from the last three years of work the show put into the character Rio mentioned above, including Manny’s nuanced acting. The reveal of Nick’s current power dynamic over Rio (at least the abusive part) in this past episode was quite jarring and seemed incredibly OOC of the Rio I personally know and love from past seasons, and, it kind of came out of nowhere, in my opinion. To be clear, I have nothing against the storyline of Rio being a victim (have you read my fic? haha), but I think that the way they are progressing this storyline is too abrupt and lacks the subtleties that I would have preferred to see with something like this. Especially considering this is canon.

Returning to the original point though, by assuming this abuser/abused dynamic is where the show is taking Nick and Rio’s relationship, that means that Nick likely seeks to control Rio’s life and decisions as much as he can (props to @00gangfriend00 for this articulation). Related and important side note: @jade-marie pointed out to me that by setting a preceding occurrence of physical mistreatment, the show is (unintentionally) establishing Rio as someone who is stuck in a cycle of abuse, and who seems to seek out abusive relationships and probably misunderstands abuse as intimacy. Rio’s relationships with both Beth and Nick demonstrate this. How much shit they’re both clearly able to get away with, and still have power over him. Which I think is an incredibly problematic message to be sending. This is a critical point, especially regarding the scars/acknowledgement of the shooting, because it offers the writer’s an excuse to write off the entire shooting, and by doing so, they are validating this cycle of abuse. (I won’t apologize for this particular tangent, because I really hope the writers acknowledge the damage this storyline could do if they don’t properly see it through this season)

Since it was confirmed that Nick didn’t know about Lucy (even though Rio supposedly got the alibi of the boxing tickets from him) Rio was, presumably, hiding the true extent (or the entirety) of his relationship with Beth from him. Which - I think from a writer’s perspective - does benefit the show, if they choose not to circle back to the shooting. This also allows them the freedom to ‘pretend’ that Rio got over it by himself. Obviously, there are a lot of issues and plot holes with that in itself, but to me, because Lucy’s death wasn’t something that Nick already knew about, combined with the lack of clarity of who Beth is to Rio in Nick’s mind - he doesn’t know about either the shooting or the consequences of it.

3. The lack of scars

Alright, so lastly - the show’s decision to not put scars on Rio. I think this was absolutely a conscious decision, there must have been at least one person in the building that thought of the fact that a shirtless Manny without scars couldn’t just be brushed aside. As a result, I, personally, think this demonstrates that the show is done with shooting. Pretending it never happened, erasing the trauma, moving on, yeah. Obviously, as I said, I vehemently don’t agree with this direction but I think it’s clear it’s a storyline the show doesn’t want to circle back to. Otherwise, Nick would know about Beth and Rio’s history. Otherwise, Nick would know about Lucy. Otherwise, there would be scars. This is my own opinion of course, but I’m making it based off of a couple of Nick’s lines: “Did you [kill Lucy] for [Beth]?” and in 4.08 when he talks to Beth, “So what’s the deal with you and [Rio]? […] Anyone who wears a cardigan, shouldn’t be doing what he does.” He generally seems unaware of the true state of Beth and Rio’s history and is probably genuinely curious about it considering the amount of control he has (or wants to have) over Rio.

I think that because all of the Rio POVs we’ve had are linked to Nick, I made the jump that we are supposed to believe Nick’s influence is/was at the heart of many of Rio’s decisions in the past. Obviously, during s2 and s3 writing and production, they didn’t actually know they were going to get a s4 or do a Rio backstory, so the fact is, that the character they wrote called Rio then, was someone entirely different from today’s Rio. However, we’re watching different seasons of Good Girls, not a different show from one year to the next. I think because this is the backstory we’re getting, the show is implying that this was the case all along. That s2 and s3 Rio made all of those decisions with Nick, someone he was scared of, hanging over his head in some capacity. Or somewhere in his vicinity. That’s why I have a problem with the implication that Lucy’s death was phrased the way it was, without the scars present. They coated that dialogue with innuendos about Beth and Rio’s sexual history, which is also quite layered, but at least that connection I get. It reminds us that Rio was betrayed in more ways than one. However, without the scars present, and Nick seemingly unaware of the shooting, how does the show intend to justify Lucy’s death with the audience? None of it makes sense. Jade was so incredibly helpful; she cohesively summarized the events - by erasing 2.13, they are erasing Rio’s motivations for 3.05. I just want it to make sense 😩

#gg analysis #gg s4 #gg spoilers #nbc good girls

[natsubeatsrock]

Should Hiro Mashima die?

My answer is no. 

Though, this isn't about actually killing Hiro Mashima. Kinda got you with the title, though, huh? (This was originally going to be titled “Is Hiro Mashima dead?” and released on his birthday. You’re welcome.)

This post is about a widely debated topic of analysis known as the "death of the author." I've talked about this a few different times in passing in a few posts over the years. You could argue that this belongs in my series rewriting Fairy Tail and I considered placing it there. However, I feel that it's better that I keep this detached from that series. This topic concerns criticism of any series. Naturally, being a Fairy Tail blog, I plan on engaging this with the context of Fairy Tail's author being dead or not, hence the title. Still, this is helpful to think about for analysis of plenty of other series.

Again, though, my answer is still no.

Let's start with the origin of this term. The term comes from an essay by Roland Barthes called "La mort de l'auteur". Use your best guess as to what that translates to. I highly encourage you to read the essay as it's pretty short. It's about six or seven pages, depending on the version. There are three main points to his essay.

Creative works are products of the culture they come from and less original than people expect. 

The idea of the author as the sole creator and authority of creative works is fairly modern. 

The author's interpretation of a work shouldn't be considered the main or only interpretation of a work.

Of these three points, I'm sure you recognize the last point. But first, I want to talk about the other points. I believe it is important to understand the arguments being made as a whole.

The first point should be fairly uncontroversial. The vast majority of creative works use established language, tropes, and elements to create a new thing. I wouldn't go as far as Barthes does in this regard. Not to mention, this is somewhat weird to know considering his third point. However, I agree that creative works should be considered products of the culture and genre they come from.

The second point is a bit trickier for me. To be clear, the point is true. You only have to look at various cultural mythologies as an example. There isn't a single version of the Greek myths. There are several versions and interpretations of the various stories and myths. 

Even recent popular fictional characters have had several different interpretations. This is especially true with comics. There have been multiple different Batman interpretations, Spiderman runs, and X-Men teams that fans love. Fans even love and appreciate numerous forms of established characters like Frankenstein's monster and Sherlock Holmes. So, as a consumer and critic of art, I can understand this.

My problem is as a creator of art. I understand this being contentious when it comes to something like religious myths. But, if I create something, I want to get the credit for it. I want people to love my music or writing. But I also want people to recognize me for my skill in crafting it.

This is true even if you hold to the first point Barthes made.  Even if you believe that no art is truly unique, isn't the skill of synthesizing the various tropes and influences around a person worthy of credit in and of itself?

Then again, I am not without bias in this. Barthes says that the modern interpretation of the author is a product of the Protestant Reformation. As a Protestant myself, I get that my background plays no part in my view of this. Barthes also blames English empiricism and French rationalism, but personal faith is the biggest influence on me that Barthes lists.

That being said, there's also something Barthes completely misses in his essay. In the past, stories were passed down by oral tradition. As the stories were passed down from generation to generation, they slowly evolved and became what they are known today. Scholars today can gather a general consensus of what a story was meant to be and some traditions were more faithful about passing traditions down than others. However, you can't always tell the original author of a mythological story the same way we know who gave us stuff like the Quran or the Bible. 

As time passed, stories were written down. With this, it was easy to share single versions of a story and identify its creator. We know who made certain writing of works even before the 1500s. For example, we have the Travels of Marco Polo and Dante's Inferno and know their authors. We could tell the authors of works were before the Protestant Reformation. 

By the way, the Reformation happened to coincide with one of the most important inventions in human history: the printing press. Now you can easily make copies of an individual's works and you don't have to rely on word of mouth to share stories.

I can't stress how important an omission this is. The printing press changed the way we interact with media as a whole and might be the most important invention on this side of the wheel. And yet Barthes doesn't even mention as even a potential factor in "the modern concept of the author"? In his essay about understanding written media? That’s like ignoring Jim Crow in your essay about Birth of a Nation bringing back the KKK.

Now, we get to the final point. The author's original intentions of their works are not the main interpretation. This is understood as being the case after they create the series. Once the work is written and sent into the public, they cease to be an authority on it.

It's worth recognizing how this flows from the other two points. Barthes argued that works of fiction are products of their culture and our current understanding of an author is fairly modern. Therefore, the interpretation of the reader is just as valuable as that of the author. As Barthes himself wrote, "the birth of the reader must be at cost of the death of the author." 

At best, this means that a reader can come away with an interpretation of a work that isn't the one intended. With Fairy Tail, my mind goes to the final moments of the Grand Magic Games. My view of Gray's line "I've got to smile for her sake" has to do with romantic feelings for Ultear. I don't know of a single person who agrees with this. Mashima certainly hasn't come out and affirmed this as the right view.

It's good to recognize that a work can have more meanings behind it than the ones intended by its creator. Part of the performing process is coming to a personal interpretation of a work. In many cases, two different performances will have different interpretations of the same work, neither of which went through the creator's mind. At the same time, both work and are valid.

That being said, there is an obvious problem with this: readers are idiots. Not all readers are necessarily idiots. But enough of them are idiots. The views of idiots should have as much weight as that of the creator. Full stop. Frankly, I maintain that idiots are the worst possible sources to gauge anything of note. (At the very least, policy decisions.)

I know this as a reader who has not been alone in misunderstanding a work. I know this as an analyst who has had to sift through all kinds of cold takes on Fairy Tail. (Takes that are proven wrong simply by going through it a second time. Or a first.) And I definitely know this as a creator who has to see people butcher my works through nonsensical "interpretations."

At the same time, the argument Barthes made comes with an important caveat. He also argued that works are the products of the culture and surroundings of the author. Barthes isn’t making the argument that author’s arguments don’t matter.

As far as I can tell, Barthes doesn't take this to mean that those influences are worth analyzing. Doing so would be giving life to the author. However, there should be some recognition that a creative work didn't come to exist out of nowhere. There's a sense in which Fairy Tail didn't just wash up on the shore chapter by chapter or episode by episode. It came to be as part of the culture it came from.

Now, you'll never guess what happened. Over the years, the concept of "death of the author" lost its original intent. Nowadays, people usually only care about the third point. "Death of the author" is only brought up to dismiss "word of God" explanations of work, after its release. I'd venture to guess that most people using the term casually don't know anything about its roots. I honestly don't know how Barthes would feel about this.

I can understand what might fuel this view. A writer should do their best to write their intended meanings in a work. It would be wrong of a writer to make up for their poor writing after the fact. I don't love Mashima's "Lucy's dreams" explanation for omakes. I know Harry Potter fans don't love the stuff J.K. Rowling has said over the years.

At the same time, my (admittedly Protestant) understanding of "word of God" and "canon" is that they have the same authority. After all, the canon IS the word of God. It is a small section of what God has said, but it isn't less than that.

Of course, it's worth recognizing that nearly every writer we're talking about isn't even remotely divinely inspired or incapable of contradiction. This understanding should cut two ways. An author should never contradict their work in talking about it. Write what you want and make clear what you want to. On the other hand, writers can't fit everything they want to in a work. I'll get to this soon, but their interpretation should be treated with some value.

By the way, people will do this while throwing out the other arguments made by Barthes in the same essay. People will outright ignore the culture and context that a work comes from in order to justify their views. Creators are worshiped and praised for their works or seen as the sole problem for the bad views on works.

What worries me most about this modern interpretation of "the death of the author" is its use in fan analysis. People seem to outright not care about the author's intent in writing a story. They only care about their own interpretation of the work. Worse still, people will insist that any explanation an author gives is them covering up their mistakes. Naturally, this often leads to negative views of the work in question.

This is just something I'll never fully understand. It's one thing if you don't like something. If you don't get why something happened, shouldn't your first move be to figure out what the author was thinking? Instead, people move to the idea that it makes no sense and the writer's a hack.

If all of this seems too heady, let's try to bring this down to earth. Should Hiro Mashima die so that his readers can be born?

Hiro Mashima is one of many mangakas who were influenced by Akira and Dragon Ball. He considers J.R.R. Tolkien to be one of his favorite writers. Monster Hunter is one of his favorite game series. He's even written a manga series with the world in mind. 

It would make sense to look at Fairy Tail purely through this lens. You could see Fairy Tail as a shonen action guild story. Rather than seeing the guild as a hub for its members, Fairy Tail's members treat those within it as family. Rather than focusing on one overarching quest, the story is about how various smaller quests relating to its main characters threaten their guild. Adopting this view wouldn't necessarily be an incorrect way to engage with the series. (Mind you, I haven’t seen this view shared by many people who “kill Mashima”.)

Though, there's more to Fairy Tail than the various tropes that make it up. If you were to divorce Fairy Tail entirely from its creator, you'd miss out on understanding them. There are ways Mashima has written bits of himself into the series. Things that go farther than Rave Master cameos and references.

My favorite example is motion sickness. I often think back to Craftsdwarf mocking motion sickness as a useless quirk Dragon Slayers have. It turns out that its origin comes from his personal life. Apparently, one of his friends gets motion sickness. He decided to write this as part of his world.

This gets to the biggest reason I don't love "death of the author" as a framework for analysis. I believe the biggest question analysts should answer is why. Why did an author make certain decisions? You can't do this kind of thing well if you shut out the author's interpretation of their own work. Maybe that can work for some things, but not everything.

I've had tons of fun going through Fairy Tail and talking about it over the past seven years. More recently, I've been going through the series with the intent to rewrite the series. I've made it clear multiple times in that series that I'm trying to understand and explain Mashima's decisions in the series. I don't always agree with what I find. However, trying to understand what happened in Fairy Tail is very important to me.

It's gotten to the point that I love interacting with Mashima's writing. I talk about EZ on my main blog. I can't tell you how much fun I've been having. I'll see things and go "man, that's so Mashima" or "wow, I didn't expect that from him." HERO'S was one of my favorite things of last year and I regularly revisit it for fun. It's the simplest microcosm of what makes each series which Mashima has made both similar and distinct.

Barthes was on to something with his essay. I think there should be a sense where people should feel that their views of the media they consume are valid. This should be true even if we disagree with the author's views on the series. But I don't know that the solution is to treat the author's word on their own work as irrelevant.

There's a sense where I think we should mesh the understandings of media engagement. We recognize that Mashima wrote Fairy Tail. There are reasons that he wrote the series as we got it and they're worth knowing and understanding. However, our own interpretation of the series doesn't have to be exactly what Mashima intended. We can even disagree with how Mashima did things. 

I know fans who do this all the time. They love whatever series they follow, but wish things happened differently. Fans of Your Lie in April will joke about [situation redacted] as well as write stories where it never happens. You love a series, warts and all, but wish for the series to get cosmetic surgery, or take matters into your own hands.

And who knows? It's not as if fans haven't affected an author's writing of a series. Mashima's the perfect example. I've said this a few times before, but Fairy Tail has gone well past its original end at Phantom Lord (or Daphne for the anime fans). Levy rose to importance as fans wanted to see more of her.

Could Mashima have done that if we killed him?

Before the conclusion, I should mention another way “death of the author“ comes up. People will invoke “death of the author“ to encourage people to enjoy works they love made by messed up people. Given everything we’ve said up to this point, that’s obviously not what should be intended by its use. For now, though, I do think that we can admit that we like the works of someone even if we don’t agree with everything they did as a person. (Another rant for another day.)

In Conclusion:

“Death of the Author” is an imperfect concept, but it’s not without its points. I don’t think we should throw out the author’s intent behind a work. However, we should be able to have our disagreements with the author’s views without killing them.

#fairy tail #hiro mashima #death of the author #i'm back #and what a way to return #i've been meaning to do this forever #fav

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Fu Manchu

(WARNING! This analysis contains DISCUSSIONS OF OUTDATED RACIST STEREOTYPES! This analysis does not support or condone such things whatsoever and merely is here to analyze the cultural impact of the character!)

"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government—which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."

— The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1913)

I think it really goes without saying that the late 19th century and early 20th century were deeply, incredibly racist. One such manifestation of the racism and xenophobia of the times was the villainous archetype known as the Yellow Peril. The so-called “Yellow Peril” is a caricature of eastern cultures, portrayed in a villainous light; the characters are diabolical criminal masterminds who tend to be geniuses, know kung fu, have mystical powers, command barbarian hordes, and dress like the most stereotypical dynastic noble you could imagine. Just think of every single cringeworthy Asian stereotype you can imagine, stuff it into one villainous package, and BOOM! You have yourself a Yellow Peril villain.

You’ve most definitely seen villains that fit some semblance of this trope. Lo Pan of Big Trouble in Little China and Long Feng from Avatar: The Last Airbender are notable examples (and ones that aren’t particularly problematic, as their works don’t rely on some white guy saving the day and instead have Asian heroes). But we’re not here to talk about them, oh no – we’re here to talk about the grandaddy of them all, the villain who codified the idea of a Yellow Peril villain to such… er, for lack of a better word, “perfection,” that even though he has somewhat faded from the public consciousness he has managed to continue inspiring villains up until the present day: Fu Manchu.

While not the first Yellow Peril villain, he is pretty much the face of it. He is what comes to mind when you envision such a villain, which may be because his cultural impact runs so deep – characters such as Batman’s nemesis Ra’s al-Ghul, the Iron Man foe The Mandarin, and James Bond baddie Doctor No among many others all draw inspiration from this legendary Devil Doctor. So what exactly is his deal that has made him such a problematic icon?

Motivation/Goals: So Fu Manchu’s goals started with him being a Chinese nationalist but eventually he moved into your standard world domination, with him developing over time into becoming a sort of noble criminal, a diabolical mastermind with some level of ethics, class, and standards; the man sent his nemesis gifts on his wedding day and always stuck to his word. This doesn’t seem like much now, but you gotta remember, this guy was one of the first big literary supervillains; you’ve gotta cut him a little slack.

Performance: So it is time to discuss the elephant in the room… not once in his long and storied history in film has Fu Manchu been portrayed by an actor of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Indian descent. Fu Manchu has always, always been portrayed by the worst possible option in every single case: a white guy in yellow face. Christopher Lee is perhaps the most well-known white man to play him in a serious work, portraying him in a series of films, though Boris Karloff portrayed him as well. 

Peter Sellers portrayed Fu in his last major cinematic appearance, though unlike most other examples that film – The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu – was a parody, which does at least take away a little bit of the bad taste.

The only valid white man portrayal is, of course, from the fake trailer for Werewolf Women of the S.S. As said fake trailer is a ridiculous sendup of exploitation films and trashy cinema in general, the inclusion of a white man playing the fiendish doctor is pretty much part of the joke – but it’s who they got that’s the real treat. We’ll get to that shortly, but before that…

It is honestly really disgusting that in the long history of this character, he has never once been portrayed by an Asian actor. You’d think at some point that someone might at least just cast any sort of Asian due to the unfortunate tendency to view Asian actors as interchangeable, but they couldn’t even do that.

Final Fate: Fu Manchu is notable because he always gets away, even if his plans are foiled; in fact, he’ll sometimes have plans within plans, so even when he loses, he still wins to some degree. But enough about his in-universe fate; let’s talk about the real world fate of the character, where Fu Manchu has a very odd legal status in terms of public domain.

While the first three books are in the public domain, some characters from later books are not considered part of the public domain, which has lead to situations such as Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu not being able to be reprinted for years. On top of this, as the character’s creator Sax Rohmer died in 1959, Fu Manchu is not in the public domain in Europe; this has led to him appearing but not being directly named in Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where he is only referred to as “The Doctor” (amusingly, he goes up against Moriarty in that comic, the character he draws inspiration from).

Best Scene: In what is one of the very few non-offensive uses of the character, Fu Manchu is given a brief cameo in the trailer for Werewolf Women of the S.S. that shows up in the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature Grindhouse, and he’s played by… well… just watch:

Final Thoughts & Score: Fu Manchu is an absolutely fascinating villain born out of incredibly problematic places.

There is absolutely no denying that Fu Manchu was created from a deeply racist place. It’s an unavoidable fact. There is no getting around it. Fu Manchu as a character was meant to demonize the Chinese, to the point where production of films based on him as well as the novels was halted in times of war when the Chinese were allies. These books, these stories, are all extremely problematic by the standards of today.

But with that being said… who, exactly, is the title character? Do you know, without looking it up, who the hero who Fu Manchu antagonizes is, the Holmes to his Moriarty? This is Fu Manchu’s series, and throughout it he projects an air of intelligence, sophistication, and even honor that you wouldn’t expect would be afforded to a character such as him. As far as racist propaganda goes, an extremely charitable person could be able to call this “progressive” in some regard. Positive discrimination is a step up from regular discrimination, right? Again, there’s really no getting around the glaring problems with the character and his origins, but the fact Fu Manchu is one of the first supercriminals in literature and manages to just be unflinchingly cool to the point where you’ll probably end up rooting for him over the bland white protagonists says something for how utterly racism fails when it manages to make the object of its derision infinitely cooler than the race it’s trying to prop up as superior.

By my own criteria, Fu Manchu could only be an 11/10. I can’t deny how much of an impact, for better or for worse, the fiendish doctor has had on pop culture, to the point where he gave his name to and subsequently killed off a variety of facial hair, a feat only matched by Hitler. But this comes with a disclaimer: I cannot stress enough that Fu Manchu is deeply and inherently problematic on a conceptual level, and that despite how genuinely cool and fascinating he is in the right hands it doesn’t and cannot erase that his original purpose was to demonize the Chinese and Asian cultures. He also managed to help perpetuate yellowface and helped to popularize cliches that have plagued Asian villains to this day. While many in his wake have still managed to be cool and engaging in their own right, it really cannot be said how this character has a very complex history. Has he done more bad than good? That’s not for a white guy like me to determine; I’m merely here to determine the overall quality of the villain and determine their impact, and Fu Manchu undeniably has impacted culture. It would be wrong and disingenuous to break my own rules to give him a lower rating due to his problematic elements, but at the same time I cannot sit here and pretend they do not exist.

I would love to see the day where Fu Manchu can be reclaimed to some extent. Look at Shang-Chi, for example; the (at this time) upcoming Marvel film is set to feature the Fu Manchu-inspired Mandarin as a major character, and he is set to be played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, a Hong Kong actor. If one of the characters inspired by him can get portrayed by an Asian actor, perhaps someday in the future Fu Manchu can be reclaimed from his racist origins and given the respectful treatment he deserves. Fu Manchu is a character that is in many ways accidentally incredible and iconic. Born from horrendous racism, and yet the racist screeds depicting him always somehow manage to prop him up as the best character in the lot… it’s the paradox of racist thought, to go so far in demonizing their target they manage to make them more interesting and engaging than the generic protagonists. Fu Manchu is a truly great villain mired in the problems of the time he was created; in the right hands, great work could be done with him.

Bottom line is: Rob Zombie, get Nicolas Cage on the phone and start filming Werewolf Women of the S.S.

#Psycho Analysis #Fu Manchu #racism #yellow peril #racism against asians #racism against chinese #cw: racism

[yuli-the-bi]

It took me a while to recollect myself after today's chapter. After excitedly getting up super early (went to bed around 4am, woke up at 7) and waiting patiently for the episode to come out, I had such high hopes, y'know? (Warning: this gets a bit long.)

But that quickly ended in a punch to the gut that, honestly, left me speechless and with full-body tremors. I haven't had an anxiety attack in a while but it hit me hard and took me some time to calm down. I'm used to disappointment from series I watched in the past, but I sincerely did have faith in this one. V7 was what got me back into rwby, mainly because I had dropped it after skipping around the events of V5. I had noticed Qrow getting attention on this site, and went "sure, why not?" and checked the tag. This was when chapter 3 aired, and man, was everyone going wild over it-- for completely good reason. I've always been attached to Qrow as a character. I've had the lowest times in my life where I didn't think I would get back up, and here he was, the character that I saw parts of myself reflected in-- suddenly earning a potential partner that, for once, could balance his semblance and quite possibly everything else. We weren't wrong in the least in that regard.

Speaking from a narrative design point, the outer, cinematic dialogue for c12 was just... so wrong in many ways. It felt like characterization was thrown out the window, Tyrian aside. I've written countless scripts for games, and as a writer you are responsible for forming an immersive dialogue/monologue that will direct the audience into experiencing specific emotions. The lines here, while beautifully delivered by the amazing voice actors, gave me the feeling of two utter, complete strangers that were pitted against each other rather than two people who have been together for quite some time and have developed a bond. The words, especially from Clover, were visceral, cold, and almost robotic. Completely OOC actions aside, the tone set in the scenes were so unnatural it caused me to pause the video several times to digest what had been said.

It hurt to hear Clover of all people, the same man throughout the volume show his concern for ALL civilians, including Mantle (cue back to c9 where he was the one to panic about rushing the rwbyjnr + ace ops/qrow to Mantle to save the people, as well as his stern orders to prioritize the safety of the people), to suddenly become a callous soldier set in his ways. He turned his back on the people that depended on him, which seems to be a reoccurring theme in these past few episodes. That doesn't reflect the man I've seen, admired, and analyzed throughout the volume. This one today felt unnatural and lacked all empathy that he had once shown (literally just in c11 you can *hear* the relief and joy in his voice once he reports that they've apprehended Tyrian, the psycho who has been out on a killing spree and Clover explicitly expressed malice to). This episode just completely forgoes the warmth I've been hearing in his voice.

I'm angry, depressed, and quite frankly, so fucking annoyed at how this episode was handled, from the standpoint of a narrative design/script writer and a fan of the show since high school. There were so many other routes they could have taken, granted, that could have given us just as much angst/shock value without the cost of a character that was a major pillar of support for Qrow. There has been so much wonderful development throughout the volume that sincerely gave me hope that it was going to be okay for him, and in turn, be okay for me and many other individuals who see themselves in Qrow's shoes. But that hope was demolished the moment I heard Clover speak so coldly, just barely showing reluctance he had so boldly delivered in previous chapters. I knew something was wrong, but didn't want to believe it. When I write dialogue for my scripts, I always envision myself as the character speaking, including gestures, facial expressions, and tone/pitch used to create a 'realistic' voice for them. I'm not one of the writers, but they demonstrated a very transparent purpose of closing off the possibilities of character growth with just those few lines. The intention was there. It probably has been from the start. And that isn't okay.

Not when there has been, admittedly, so many scenes where it touched upon gentler, more open emotions like trust, which is supposed to be such a huge factor in this volume. It was used horribly in this chapter, as it was meant to twist Clover's words, making it seem as though Qrow was completely in the wrong when we all fucking know it's two sides of the same coin. Not one side is completely right or wrong. "I wanted to trust you too" really hit me in all the wrong places. It crushed the hope for their bond, and all for what? Dramatic flair? If that's the case, then it was a real poor stylistic choice. Qrow was spot on when he said Clover was being manipulative-- because those words, while they sounded as if they were filled with pain, were all transparent in terms of closing off any more development between them. All these lines served one purpose, and that was to stamp out whatever had been blooming underneath all their previous interactions. Very melodramatic, I've seen about a thousand of these used, and none of them ever get me to react the way the writer intended for. It just left the worst taste in my mouth. (And don't even get me started on that ending. It might've appeased whatever audience they were going for, but bluntly put I've seen commercials that delivered stronger emotional impact than that. It clearly shows even more how Clover is distanced from Qrow in that regard. The "Good luck" at the end is a call back sure but the words exchanged really just... left me feeling so empty rather than a heart full of emotions. I only started crying once I heard Qrow's anguished scream and saw the light fade from Clover's eyes.)

I've seen all the wonderful AUs and fix-it scenarios that many of you have been posting and I really appreciate all your positivity through this horrible misstep in show production. (Thank you to those who are liking and reblogging my fair game comic I made a while back.) This has hurt me so badly that I know I probably won't open up and trust shows like this for quite some time, if ever. I'm skeptical about any changes that might occur in the finale, but I'll be looking at it with cold indifference nonetheless. I'll probably take a break from the series again afterward, but will definitely continue basking in the absolute joy of the fair game community and ignoring... whatever the hell that was. (I actually have some WIPs for fics saved that I might work on and publish once I get time off work). I'm sorry for my rambling and that it might not make much sense, but I had to voice my thoughts on the situation today. It is not okay by any means, and everyone who is upset by this is valid.

#fair game #yuli rants #I'm really fucking upset and I've been trying to keep the rambling to a minimum but I couldn't hold back #I had a lot of hope in crwby and they just smashed my favorite character's positive development to pieces #all for some fucking useless shock value or an attempt at moving the story along #fuck off and seriously reconsider who is consuming your media before assuming you know what's good for the show #it's 2020 and I have to bear with seeing a man die before he can even develop a deeper bond with his soulmate goodbye #luck birds #lucky charms #qrover #clover x qrow

[psychosistr]

Pride

Summary: Domino and Steelbeak are sent to eliminate a target at a rather colorful event, leading Steelbeak to question his past attitude and learn a few things about a community he never thought he’d be a part of.

Notes: This is the result of having no power at work for eight hours, having typing programs on my phone, and remembering it’s pride month. So, enjoy this one shot of @thefriendlyfour‘s OC Domino and Steelbeak experiencing his first pride festival and learning more about himself x3

Another day, another mission, Dominic thought to himself as he and his partner, Steelbeak, made their way through the streets of Saint Canard.

Today’s assignment was fairly simple: F.O.W.L. High Command had plans involving a local company with rumors circulating around them regarding the possible production of portable thermonuclear generators with the same power output as an entire factory. If the rumors proved to be true, then such powerful devices could do the world a lot of good…or a lot harm, in the wrong hands. (Hence why F.O.W.L. had taken an interest in the company.) While the idea of a portable thermonuclear generator was certainly enticing, High Command was nothing if not thorough in their research & planning and needed more information on the validity of these rumors as well as information regarding the stability of the generators.

That was where the chief officer and his partner came into play- the two had been tasked with tracking down the head of security while he was away from the premises and “relieving him of duty” so that a similar looking agent could go in undercover to gather information and ultimately make any actual plans to breaking in easier when they were ready to make their move. Due to the nature of the lab’s research, it was hardly a surprise that they’d been assigned a security detail comprised primarily of military-grade personnel, with the head of security himself being a retired brigadier general. Needless to say, challenging him head-on in a location where there could be possible cameras- not to mention armed reinforcements- would be a very bad idea, meaning they had to get to him when he was as far away from the company as possible.

Luckily, F.O.W.L.’s sources had it on good authority that he was a regular presence at a certain event that took place downtown every June…

While the deadly duo would typically arrive at their destination in one of the agents’ cars, the streets were currently closed to vehicle traffic, so they’d been dropped off on a rooftop a few blocks from the target’s location via helicopter. After making their way down to the streets and navigating a few back alleys, the fowls found a side street leading them right to the middle of the festivities that had claimed downtown Saint Canard.

“You sure these outfits are gonna cut it, Deedee?” Steelbeak questioned as they prepared to enter the bright and colorful crowd in front of them.

“For the hundredth time, yes.” Dominic replied for what certainly felt like the hundredth time he’d repeated himself. Stepping out onto the sidewalk and revealing himself to the light of day, the loon was dressed in an outfit that was a far cry from what he normally wore. His usual iconic coat and hat had been exchanged for a sweater with large horizontal stripes in three main colors- purple on the bottom, white in the middle, and gray at the top with a black turtleneck collar- and a pair of square purple sunglasses. “Now come on, we’re already behind schedule.”

“I dunno, Dee..” Steelbeak mumbled as he stepped out to join the loon. Like his partner, he had also left his usual suit behind and was now dressed in a pair of vibrantly deep blue colored jeans with a plain black belt, a form-fitting light purple sleeveless muscle shirt, and a faded pink bandana around his neck. “How the heck is this-” He gestured broadly to his outfit with one hand, starting at the white ankle boots on his feet and moving upwards to his usual metallic prosthesis. “-not gonna get any looks?”

His answer was the frustrated rolling of a pair of red eyes and a shake of the loon’s head, his colored glasses briefly being removed to make the action more apparent. “I did what I could with what you had in your wardrobe, though it still would have been better if you’d taken my advice on the shoes-”

“I ain’t wearin’ sandals anywhere ‘cept the pool an’ the beach.” The taller bird rolled his own eyes while repeating his earlier opinion regarding his partner’s insistence on wearing a pair of ocean blue sandals that had been in the back of his walk-in closet. “An’ I still don’t get how walkin’ around dressed like a friggin’ unblended berry smoothie stands out less then my suit.”

“Trust me- I know more about this sort of thing than you do.” Not wanting to waste anymore time debating the matter, Dominic put his sunglasses back on and ventured out towards the colorful crowd of people in front of them. “The more you stand out here, the more you fit in.”

“If you say so, red eyes..” A look of uncertainty made the chief officer’s feelings on the matter clear, but he reluctantly followed his partner into the vibrant and noisy spectacle that was the annual Saint Canard Pride Festival.

Steelbeak’s general discomfort with his current clothes was quickly forgotten as he took in the various outlandish and far more insane outfits of the festival goers around him. The looks that passed over his face when he saw spectacles such as a female tiger walking around in nothing more than a bikini to properly show off how each of her normally orange stripes had been dyed a different color of the rainbow or a peacock with with an obviously fake set of oversized tail feathers alternating in pink, white, and blue were all truly priceless expressions that made Dominic wish he had a camera handy to capture the moments for posterity.

Unlike his partner, Dominic was mostly unfazed by the vibrantly energetic crowd. Although it had certainly been a while since he’d attended one of these events, it was most definitely not his first time going to a pride parade or festival. There were many reasons for him to avoid such gatherings (huge crowds, a general sense of chaos & disorder, and a unsettlingly large number of people who seemed to have trouble remembering things such as personal boundaries after a few drinks, to name a few), but, despite those irritations, there was still something comforting about being surrounded by such a generally cheerful atmosphere full of people who, to at least some capacity, all shared something in common. It definitely brought about a sense of pride and community to everyone in attendance-

“Burn in hell!”

-well, almost everyone…

The cursing followed by a loud crash drew the duo’s attention to the one unplanned yet ever present part of pride festivities that was universally despised by all attendees: Protestors.

The crash had come from one of the booth’s that had been set up along the side of the street selling pins and other small accessories. The short border collie in a frilled red, pink, and white sundress (the poor girl couldn’t have been older than twenty) who had been working at the now overturned table was currently cowering in fear from the intimidatingly tall grey and white goshawk dressed in dark jeans and a green button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows who was giving her an intimidating red-eyed glare while looming over her.

“Geez, what’s his problem?” Steelbeak watched the goshawk shout curses and obscenities at the cowering collie with a mild look of annoyance.

“A religious protestor, apparently.” Dominic replied with a scowl. “They’re usually lurking around these events somewhere, graciously taking time out of their day to make sure we all know how ‘immoral’ and ‘sinful’ we are.” The sarcasm and general feeling of disgust in his voice were nearly tangible.

“Sounds like someone’s got too much free time..” His partner commented with an appropriately matching amount of sarcasm. “..Wait a minute…” Dark eyes narrowed as Steelbeak looked the predatory bird over. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. After opening it up to take a look at the paper’s contents, a pleased and devious smirk found its way to the fowl’s deadly beak. “Oh-ho, Dom, you are gonna love this.”

Curiosity piqued, the loon moved closer to the chief officer so he could see the information as well. “…?” As he read the description and took in the blurry photograph printed on the crumpled paper, Dominic found a similar smirk spreading across his own beak. “My, my, that IS quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Almost feels like we’re doin’ a public service on this one.” The taller bird put the paper back in his pocket before winking at his partner and doing a sweeping gesture with one hand towards the altercation across the street. “After you.”

“What a gentleman.” The darker fowl winked back with a quiet chuckle before weaving his way through the crowd. Along the way, he smoothly swiped a half-full plastic cup from a blue jay’s slack hand without being noticed. “Sir,” He began once he was close enough, earning the goshawk’s less-than-pleased attention. “All that screaming is bad for your throat. You should have a drink- my treat.”

Right on cue the taller bird opened his beak wide, likely to shout something derogatory, but whatever he had been about to say turned into muffled gargling and choking when he suddenly found the cup in Dominic’s hand shoved firmly towards the back of his mouth before he had time to finish drawing in a single breath. The unsuspecting goshawk was so preoccupied trying to cough up the liquid in his windpipe and dislodge the mass of plastic in his mouth that he didn’t even notice the equally large man drawing up behind him until a fist slammed into the back of his neck, sending him crashing to the ground. The attack served the dual purpose of (ironically) dislodging the cup from his beak and knocking the gray bird out cold.

There was a beat of silence from the festival goers around them before the crowd erupted into whistles and cheers. “Woooooh!”, “Nice!”, “Way to go!”, and “This is why we don’t need cops!” were just a few of the words and phrases that accompanied the applause.

“Ha..” Steelbeak grinned as he hefted the unconscious bird’s body up onto his shoulder. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard people cheerin’ just for doin’ our job.”

His voice had been just loud enough that only his partner had heard it over the loud clapping and excited hollering around them, so Dominic matched the tone with a grin of his own and a shrug. “They’d probably be less enthusiastic if they knew more about us.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nobody questioned where the pair of fowls were taking the knocked-out protestor (odds were high that they all wanted him as far away from them as possible and would more than likely play dumb if anyone came looking for him), making their job of bringing him into a back alley for disposal much easier. The noise from the festival goers further aided them- after all, with so much cheering, loud music, and general merry-making going on, no one noticed the sound of a silencer-equipped pistol being fired and the resulting blood splatter would be washed away by the rain later that night.

Taking a few twists and turns to be absolutely sure they weren’t followed, the agents finally spotted a dumpster behind a currently closed restaurant.

An efficient, if unpleasant, place to throw away their man-sized load of garbage.

Dominic, luckily, won the coin toss they’d used to assign tasks for the disposal process, meaning he got to search the body for its wallet, keys, and anything else necessary for their impostor’s charade to be a success while Steelbeak, much to his chagrin, was forced to rifle through the trash bags filling the dumpster and try to find enough nearly-empty ones to hide the remains in.

“Ugh, I’m seriously gonna hurl…” The rooster grumbled for the twelfth time since he’d started, the sound soon followed by a louder one when a bag dripped an unidentified black substance (hopefully just soda) onto his pant leg. “Ack! Well ain’t that just great?!”

Grabbing the last of the former head of security’s personal belongings, Dominic stood with a roll of his eyes. “If you stopped complaining, we’d be done by now.” He could feel the brief glare cast in his general direction, but chose not to acknowledge it as he pulled out his guns. Taking aim at the body on the ground in front of him, he fired out a burst of flames from one pistol, making sure to thoroughly scorch the remains.

“Hmph, easy t’ say when you’ve got the easy part..” Despite his complaints and protests, Steelbeak finished his job and managed to open the bags with minimal retching (though at this point he was likely just playing it up to be annoying). “Alright, short fuse, we’re good t’ go.”

“It’s about time.” The darker bird replied while pointing his other gun at the body, this one firing out freezing rounds of ice that encased the charred carcass in seconds.

There was a lull in the conversation for a while as the duo worked to break apart and hide the evidence of their crime. With Steelbeak’s exceptional strength, breaking apart the frozen-solid corpse was as easy as snapping a popsicle in half, making quick work of the body and handing the pieces off to Dominic so the other man could put them in the appropriately sized trash bags before they were chucked back into the dumpster. It was simple, monotonous work that they were able to do effectively without a word needing to be spoken between them to get the job done.

Comfortable silences were, surprisingly, a common thing for the chief officer and his partner, especially when they were on the clock. They could go back and forth between bantering, arguing, flirting, silence, and everyday chatter in equal measures and had gotten to a point where they were generally comfortable in one another’s presence with or without words…but this was not one of those comfortable or busy types of quiet- this was a “something needs to be said but hasn’t come out yet” type of quiet that generally brought the mood down until the issue was addressed.

By the time they’d finished throwing everything into the dumpster, Steelbeak had a look on his face that Dominic knew all too well: It was the one he wore when he wanted to say something but was doing his mental back-and-forth debate about if it would be “the wrong thing”. The taller bird was normally so cocky, so brimming with self-confidence to an almost insufferable degree, that sometimes it still took the loon by surprise to see him looking so unsure of himself.

Depending on his mood, Dominic could find it either endearing or frustrating. At the moment, though, after doing so much physical labor, he was leaning more towards the latter. Unfortunately, he knew how bad Steelbeak was about admitting what was bothering him, so it would likely fall on him to break the silence and-

“Hey..” Red eyes regarded the lighter bird curiously. So Steelbeak was going to bring it up on his own without any prompting this time? Good. Dominic would count that as some form of progress. “Was I…y’know…” The rooster was avoiding eye contact and moving one of his hands towards the dumpster in indication, an uncomfortable frown on his beak. “Was I…that bad before……?”

Even though he trailed off at the end, Dominic knew perfectly well what he meant. “No.” The answer came without hesitation, a small smile on the loon��s beak as he looked up at his partner’s still uncertain expression. “You were rude, callous, ignorant, insensitive, clueless-”

“Alright, alright, I get it- I was a jerk.” There was a bit of red under the off-white feathers of the other bird’s cheeks, making his attempt at a scowl fall hopelessly flat.

A quiet laugh rumbled in the loon’s chest as he reached up towards the rooster’s face. “You’re still a jerk. But-” A single black feathered fingertip lightly touched the other man’s deadly prosthesis without a shred of fear and began lightly running back & forth along the metal, a wider smile coming over his own dark beak when the tension quickly left his partner’s body and the familiar trilling sound filled the alleyway. “-you’re a tolerable one.”

He might never say it out loud, but Dominic REALLY enjoyed touching Steelbeak’s namesake in such a tender way. The lack of natural keratin didn’t set off the usual discomfort he felt when making physical contact with another person. Plus the reactions it elicited from his partner- that instant relaxation, contentedly happy trilling, and blissful half-lidded smile- were always gratifying to see. He still wasn’t 100% sure how much Steelbeak could ACTUALLY feel from the light touch, but he certainly felt something, even if it was mostly psychological. Ultimately, it was an intimate gesture that both of them found enjoyment in.

Did Dominic play dirty and use it to his advantage sometimes when Steelbeak was in a bad mood, arguing with him too much, or flat-out refusing to talk to him? Yes- a minute or so of the gentle contact was enough to turn the chief officer into putty in his hands and make him far more agreeable and willing to go along with whatever Dominic asked of him.

Did Steelbeak realize it was happening? Definitely- he’d sometimes grumble out a muttered curse at how manipulative the darker bird was but he’d still smile through his cursing and do what his partner wanted.

Did he ever try to stop it? Surprisingly, no- even in the middle of an argument when he noticed those fingers heading towards his beak (sometimes Dominic was subtle about it, sometimes he was direct- either way, Steelbeak noticed the approaching hand eventually) he’d never once tried to move away or avoid the other’s touch, meaning whatever sort of enjoyment he got out of the contact far outweighed his usual pride and dislike of admitting defeat to the point that he’d submit to whatever the loon demanded of him just for a simple touch to his prosthesis.

“Hmmm…ya make a convincin’ argument, Dee.” Steelbeak gave a pleased sigh once Dominic’s fingers finally left his beak. He looked far less stressed than he had a moment ago, that blissful smile still on his face. “But..are ya REALLY sure I wasn’t as bad? I know I wasn’t exactly ‘Mr.Tolerant’ back then.” The tone of his voice made it clear that he wasn’t doubting the validity of Dominic’s earlier claim, he just wanted confirmation now that he wasn’t so worked up over it.

The loon rolled his eyes, but it was with a good-natured, fond smile on his face. “Yes, I’m sure.” Red eyes looked back up into the other’s dark ones, his tone conveying the sincerity and certainty of his words. “You were confused and uncomfortable because you were dealing with something that you weren’t familiar with, but, while you were rude, you weren’t hateful. Most of your problems were because you were in denial, not because you wanted me to ‘burn in hell’ and, take it from me, the ones who haven’t figured themselves out yet are MUCH better than the fire and brimstone zealots.” He gave the tip of the taller fowl’s beak a quick tap before heading back down the alleyway they arrived through, winking up at him with a more alluring smile. “Besides, you get a one-time pass for being more attractive than him.”

Within seconds he heard that particular laugh that he was growing more fond of every day accompanied by quick footsteps that soon drew even with his own. “Good t’ know this mug of mine’s still good for somethin’.”

The pair of fowls shared a smile and a quiet laugh as they made their way back towards the main streets, knowing that was probably the closest thing the taller man would give in terms of a “thank you”.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Getting to a point where they could be picked up and brought back to HQ by their designated vehicle and driver meant once again navigating their way through the throngs of colorful animals and many booths of the festival, something the deadly duo had to be more careful about given the crowd’s growing numbers as the day progressed and Dominic’s aversion to them. To avoid any accidental contact, the pair of fowls did their best to stick to the sidewalks near the walls of the surrounding buildings or behind the stalls when possible. Thankfully, they’d made it through without incident-

“Hey! You two!”

“!!” Dominic and Steelbeak instantly stiffened at the call clearly directed at them. They both instinctively reached for their hidden guns but didn’t draw them just yet- the streets were too crowded and it wouldn’t be a good idea to cause a scene.

When the pair turned to see their potential enemy, however, they were surprised to see the small border collie that had been the victim of their target’s earlier aggression standing at her now right-side-up table. She waved to them with a bright smile on her face as her tail wagged happily behind her. “Was hopin’ you’d come this way!” Deciding for the moment that the dog wasn’t a threat (and even if she was, they could easily take her hand-to-hand if it came down to it), the fowls relaxed their previously tense stances and walked closer so they wouldn’t have to strain to hear the energetic young girl. “I wanted to thank you for helpin’ me out earlier. That guy was a real pain.”

“Don’t mention it, doll.” Steelbeak told the grateful collie with a quiet chuckle, clearly amused at the idea of being THANKED for such a thing (if she knew what they’d actually done and why they did it, she probably wouldn’t be thanking them).

“We just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Though he held back any sounds of his own, Dominic was equally amused by the situation. “There’s really no need to thank us.”

“Aw, come on, don’t talk like that- it’d eat me up if I didn’t repay you guys somehow! Here,” She grabbed a display box from the other side of the table and dragged it closer, showing off a wide and colorful array of different pins shaped like waving flags. “I know it’s not much, but take a couple in your colors!”

“Our colors?” The taller bird asked while looking down at the pins in confusion. “Ya mean the ones we like best or..?”

“No, I mean the colors for your pride flags.” The girl at the counter explained with a giggle. “Go ahead and help yourselves!”

Picking up the rainbow striped flag hard-enamel pin with a golden butterfly clutch on the back, Dominic examined it carefully to make sure there wasn’t anything dangerous hidden in or on the unassuming pin (tracking devices, mini explosives, microphones- they had to be careful in their line of work, after all). “These are very well made.” Finding nothing off about the small accessory, he pinned the colorful flag to his chest and contemplated grabbing the one for his other colors-

“Hey, stripes, I’m lost here.” His partner was still looking down at the pins curiously. “I thought the pride flag was supposed t’ be a rainbow? What’s with the rest??”

“You’re joking, right?” The quiet laugh that had started in the loon’s chest died the moment he actually looked at the rooster’s face. He saw no traces of sarcasm or teasing anywhere in Steelbeak’s eyes as he looked down at the colorful flags- only honest confusion and curiosity. “…You’re serious..” Dominic looked at the other bird in disbelief, feeling honestly bewildered by the whole thing. “You can’t REALLY be this clueless, can you?”

Dark eyes rolled slightly before looking back down at the shorter bird. “Hate t’ burst whatever bubble ya got ‘bout me, red eyes, but I didn’t exactly get a full education on this sorta thing with how I grew up.”

Oh..right…

With how clever the chief officer was, it often slipped Dominic’s mind that Steelbeak never received any sort of official education growing up. Everything the other man knew, he’d learned on his own or through experience later in life. Growing up alone on the streets, it stood to reason that he never received any reliable information on the subject, and it was highly unlikely that his initial training and education with F.O.W.L. included a comprehensive high school-level sex-ed course for the fifteen year old rookie.

“……” After deliberating on it all for a moment, Dominic looked back up at Steelbeak with a soft, understanding smile. “Would you like me to teach you?” After receiving a nod from his partner, he started his explanation by tapping the rainbow flag already pinned to his shirt. “The rainbow is the most well-known pride flag- it’s typically known for representing homosexuality. There are a few variants, as well as the lesbian flag for gay women.”

“That’s my flag.” The girl running the stand told them while happily pointing to the multi-striped flag pin that matched her colorful dress. “That’s the original version with all the pinks and reds, but there’s another version now with fewer shades of pink and red and a couple of orange stripes.”

 Moving his fingers down to the rest of the pins in their box, Dominic pointed to the first one in the upper left corner. “This one with the magenta, lavender, and dark blue stripes is for bisexuality- it traditionally means being attracted to both men and women, but many people have expanded that definition over time to include other genders. Other variations have popped up as well, including pansexual-” A black feathered fingertip moved to the brightly colored pink, yellow, and blue striped flag nearby. “-which means attraction to all genders, and polysexual-” The finger moved to a darker pink, green, and blue striped flag. “-which means attraction to many different genders, but not necessarily all of them.”

“Hold it, back up a sec- ‘other genders’?” Steelbeak seemed fully invested in the loon’s explanation, giving him the same look he often used when the darker bird was laying out their strategy for a mission. “What does that mean?”

“Ah, right, we should probably cover that, too.” Dominic said quietly to himself before addressing Steelbeak again. “Aside from male and female, there are a variety of genders and labels in between the two.” He pointed to a pair of flags with light blue, light pink, and white stripes. “Transgender, for instance, is used for people who are assigned one gender at birth, but identify as a different one. Some of these people get surgery if possible to physically match what they view themselves as, but it’s different for each person. There’s also intersex-” He indicated a yellow flag with a purple circle in the middle. “-which is for people physically born as more than one gender, and agender-” His finger moved to a symmetrical flag with black, grey, and white stripes surrounding a single light green one in the middle. “-for people who don’t identify as any gender.” The next pins he pointed to were one that was a light purple, white, and green flag and another right next to it that was yellow, white, purple, and black. “Many of the others fall under the label of genderqueer or non-binary, meaning that they don’t exclusively identify as male or female; one of my ‘coworkers’ up north preferred using gender plural pronouns like ‘they’ and ‘them’.” The loon’s mind wandered for a brief moment- it had been a while since he’d spoken to Wildcard and the others, he hoped they were all doing alright…

“What about this one?” The taller man’s voice brought him out of his thoughts to see him pointing at a pin with pink, white, purple, black, and dark blue stripes.

A small smile reappeared on Dominic’s beak. It seemed Steelbeak was thoroughly absorbed in his lesson and genuinely wanted to learn more. “Oh, that’s gender-fluid- it’s for people whose gender and pronouns change frequently. Some of them also identify as bi- or tri-gender, meaning that they identify as more than one gender, but not everyone who’s bi- or tri-gender identifies as gender-fluid.”

“Wait…” Steelbeak looked back to his partner in surprise. “That’s a real thing?” When his answer was a nod of the loon’s head, he groaned and brought a large hand up to smack himself in the forehead. “Think I need t’ call up one of my ex-partner’s an’ apologize for bein’ such a jerk…”

“I’m guessing you didn’t use their pronouns correctly?” Dominic tried not to laugh at the guilt-ridden frown on the lighter fowl’s face, but it grew harder when an embarrassed flush became visible on his cheeks.

“I thought the guy was gay an’ just liked cross-dressin’ or somethin’! I mean, sure, he told me felt like a girl sometimes, but I didn’t think he MEANT it!” The rooster hid his face behind his hand, clearly trying to avoid the immensely amused look in his partner’s eyes. “Great, now I feel stupid..”

“You are not stupid.” There was a hint of a laugh in the loon’s voice and an amused smile on his face. “You’re just…uneducated.”

Oh, that annoyed glare he received when the other man removed his hand was truly priceless. “Wooooow, you always know just what t’ say, don’t ya?”

“I try.” The laugh that followed Dominic’s words was quiet, but it seemed to be enough to ease the glare in the other’s dark eyes until they were both snickering.

With his mood improved and a smile returned to his gleaming beak, Steelbeak looked back down at the pins and saw a particular color combination that caught his eye. “Hey, this one looks like you.” He looked back down at the darker bird’s sweater for emphasis.

“That’s because it’s my other flag.” Taking the small black, gray, white, and purple striped flag that he’d considered grabbing earlier, Dominic smiled as he pinned it to the other side of his chest. “This is the asexual flag: It’s for people like me who don’t really experience sexual attraction to others.”

Steelbeak gave his partner and the new pin on his chest a curious look. “So, what, they just don’t like sex or somethin’?”

“Not necessarily.” That was a pretty common question that Dominic was more than used to by now. “Being ace isn’t the same as being celibate or disliking sex. It means not being sexually attracted to other people, but it’s a fairly large umbrella that covers a wide variety of people: Some don’t have any interest in sex at all. Others like the way it feels, but don’t really get ‘turned on’ by any specific gender. There’s also demisexual-” He pointed down to a flag with similar colors to the ace flag, but with a white stripe on top, a purple one in the middle, and a gray one on the bottom with a black triangle on the left side of the flag. “-which is for people who can develop sexual attraction for someone they have a very strong emotional connection with.” Spotting a nearby pin with stripes in dark green, light green, white, gray, and black, he tapped the area near it to draw the rooster’s gaze. “Asexuality can also sometimes go hand-in-hand with aromanticism, but the two can also be separate cases. Similar to asexuals with sexual attraction, aromantics don’t typically experience romantic attraction. There’s even a demi version-” His finger moved to a flag that looked identical to the demisexual pin, but with a green stripe instead of a purple one. “-for people who usually only develop romantic attraction after they begin to feel a strong connection with another person.”

“Huh..guess the whole ace thing makes sense with you an’ your ‘quirk’.” Steelbeak was back to looking intrigued by all of this new information. “So, these flags can tell people what you’re not interested in, too?”

“Of course. Pride is about knowing who you are and not being ashamed for things like how you identify yourself or who you are or are not attracted to.” Feeling he had properly covered every pride flag in the box, red eyes looked back up at the lighter fowl inquisitively. “Any questions?”

“Nah, that was pretty thorough, Dee.” Off-white fingers reached down to the box of pins and picked out exactly the one that Dominic knew he would go for. “Least now I get why ya had me walkin’ around dressed like a fruity-cereal mascot.”

Dominic watched the other bird pin the bisexual pride flag to the right side of his chest with an amused smile and a shrug. “I figured it would be accurate.” Preparing to bid the girl behind the table farewell and continue on their way, the loon paused when he saw the lighter fowl reach back down to the box and grab one of the less colorful pins as well. “..Demiromantic? Really?” He asked with genuine curiosity at the other’s choice.

“Yeah. It’s just…I dunno..the way ya described it…it just felt like me, y’know?” Steelbeak looked down at the black, white, green, and gray pin held between his thumb and forefinger. “ ‘Love’ don’t exactly come easy t’ me. I could probably count the number of times a ‘relationship’ actually meant somethin’ t’ me on one hand an’ still have a finger or two left over.” Dark eyes glanced down at the aquatic fowl beside him, the corner of his mouth turned up in the slightest of smirks. “Present company included.”

“Noted.” The wink sent his way made Dominic smirk right back before his expression softened, watching how the previously playful gleam in those dark eyes faded into something else. Something almost…sad..

Looking down at his hands while pinning the demiromantic pride flag to the left side of his chest, Steelbeak kept an unreadable smile on his face but the look in his eyes contradicted his beak. “Started thinkin’ maybe that sorta thing just wasn’t for me..that maybe…I was too messed up for it or somethin’…” As he finished setting the pin in place, the expression on his face changed from its previous state of sad, indifferent neutrality to a small but far more genuine smile. “Knowin’ I’m not the only one like that..that it ain’t just me bein’ too cold……it’s..kinda nice..” He looked back down at Dominic, that same smile still on his face.

If Dominic ever made a list of things about his loud-mouthed, arrogant, cocky partner that made him fall for the over-confident egomaniac, that look would be within the top three. That soft, unguarded, completely open and sincere look in those dark gray eyes combined with that small smile which was so different from his usual smug grins and smirks that it was almost like looking at a completely different person- like he was seeing the man beneath the suave bravado and flashy showmanship. It never lasted long, but Dominic mentally filed away each and every moment he was treated to the sight to make sure he NEVER forgot that look.

“……” With a softer smile on his own dark beak, Dominic reached up to the pin on the left side of the rooster’s chest and carefully straightened it. “It suits you.” Red eyes met dark gray and the smile on both agents’ beaks grew a little more.

Not everything in life needed a label, but sometimes it was nice for a person to know they weren’t alone in how they viewed themselves or others. Having something as simple as a flag to show others a part of who they were could make a world of difference to a person. It showed them that there were others out there going through similar experiences and let them know that their differences were something to be proud of.

For all the issues that he’d had growing up, one positive takeaway that Dominic had from his youth was that he had a decent education and grew up in an environment where he was free to express his own romantic preferences. His mother knew he was gay before he’d ever even heard of the word and wasn’t surprised at all when he came out to her as a preteen. Thinking about it as they thanked the border collie for the free pins and continued their walk towards the extraction point, Dominic supposed he was at least a little lucky in that regard.

Despite how clever and outspoken he was, Steelbeak grew up without access to information that should have been common knowledge to many people and had no one he truly felt safe talking to about things deemed “outside the norm”. While that didn’t excuse his previous behavior towards Dominic (and others, given what he’d said about one of his former partners), it was easy to understand where his ignorance stemmed from. Now, at least, he was at a point where he was willing to learn…and had apparently decided that he was comfortable enough with his partner to admit he didn’t know something and ask for information.

For Steelbeak, Dominic decided, that was remarkable progress compared to how he was when they first started working together. He took a small measure of pride in being both a witness and a major part of what helped foster that growth and looked forward to seeing how his partner would continue to grow over the course of their partnership.

End Notes: This may have been unplanned, but it was fun to write ^.^ Sorry if I missed any flags, I was really just running through a mental check-list and did a  quick double-check when I got home to make sure I got all of the colors correct ^^”

#darkwing duck #dwd #steelbeak #Dominic Domino #steeldomino #not my oc #thefriendlyfour #pride #pride month #lgbtpride

[dr-astormylasthurrah]

DR:ASLH AMA (10/21/2020)

so today i decided to sit down and answer a whole bunch of questions on discord!

this DOES contain spoilers up through the end of ch5, just a warning! if you’re on mobile i’m so sorry.

Who is your favorite character?

THAT IS THE MEANEST QUESTION YOU COULD EVER ASK DID YOU KNOW THIS. This varies a lot depending on the day but usually... tied Chiyo/Tatsumaru. I love them both so much. I think Ryouji's my favorite to write, though. If ASLH were someone else's story, I think my favorite would undeniably be Chiyo, because I'm nearly always biased towards protagonists.

What’s been the most enjoyable part of the story process? Why?

Honestly? Getting to see how people react to it. It's the validation luv. Maybe it's selfish, but I really do like seeing how people are affected by my work LOL.

who is on what side of the pineapple on pizza discourse?

Likes it: Amal, Kanemori, Claude, Aster Neutral: Tristan, Tatsumaru, Sentarou Hates it: Ryouji, Chiyo, Ririka, Brendan Doesn't like pizza: Tiana, Hirono, Alexei, Tsukino, Iris Ryouji, Chiyo, and Ririka make fun of Amal.

For the trials of aslh, which trial has been your favorite so far? In terms of planning the case itself, plot beats, character developments, anything really. But which one still makes you lose it when you think about it.

That's a tough one, I don't like writing trials. I liked the structure of ch3, though. The way that the trial stops being "who killed Amal" and instead becomes "who is Aster". The Tatsu POV. The story title drop. And the way the execution just wrecks everything, immediately? Yeah, vibes.

I also feel like ch4's trial deserves a special mention because of how I wrote it while I was sick with the flu, and yet if you ask me that was still probably the most emotionally intense trial- wait I forgot ch2- and ch5- y'know what, forget it. At least it's on par!

If you could change anything about aslh on any level, what would it be & why?

In general, I think it needed more planning. I'm a very on-the-fly planner and writer, but there were a lot of unknowns I didn't consider until late-game that made it hard to bring up and resolve cleanly. It could also probably have used a little bit more clarity with regards to the lore - things like "how does the memory replacement work" weren't decided until super late in the project. I didn't have a backstory for Tatsu until I wrote ch2 or ch3, so before that point their scars were much less extensive and I think they were cut-shaped instead of burns? That was kind of important for at least continuity's sake, and it irks me.

Also, Hirono deserved better. I didn't plan out her arc as extensively as the others (she was, pre-story, the last survivor to be locked and she had traded with Kanemori), so she sort of stagnated in the story. Which wasn't a bad thing, because not everyone's going to get shoved off a balcony or watch their friend get shot, but it kind of sucks that the most "defining" moment she had was that Ririka and Iris died, neither of which she actually witnessed, or the name confession in ch4 trial which kind of got brushed over. Like all the rest of the survivors have Big Defining Moments, except her.

To be honest, ASLH is the first huge writing project I've ever completed, so there's a lot of things I could have done better. But it was also the first huge writing project I've ever completed, so I'm cutting myself some slack there.

What's your philosophy, or even your strategy when it comes to character design? What do you go for first or emphasize, where do you think you could experiment more?

Most of my designs are based around a core "ooh I want to try this thing". Sometimes I take character inspirations, sometimes it's a cool garment, sometimes I'm just redesigning characters. I mostly emphasize clothing, patterns, and colors, but I also reuse a lot of the same clothing styles and patterns. I could definitely experiment more with shape language and silhouette - usually, that's like the last thing I think about, but one of the more important things to have in an ensemble cast. Mostly, though, I just like drawing clothes.

What do you think is the crowning moment of aslh? Like if someone asked you what would be a moment that gets to the heart of the story the most. What would it be?

DEFINITELY the ch5 execution. Like, the emotional resonance? The narration shift? The drama of it all? Peak ASLHcore.

what factored most into your decision-making progress? why did you decide this death order and this mastermind(s)?

My decision making process is entirely me sitting in a fugue state mumbling out details that I need to fix and then sporadically sitting bolt upright and screaming a parallel or tangent I've pieced together.

The mastermind question is easier to put together - I'd always had in mind that this was going to be a revenge game, and that one mastermind was so difficult to take seriously it wasn't even funny and that the other decided to bail halfway through. So I built the characters around that. The points I usually pay attention to with fangan planning (these days) are: ch1 is to establish the status quo and tone of the story, ch3 is to overturn the status quo, and ch5 forces ch6 to happen. So the ch3 case revolved around Sen dying, and then I was like "how can I fuck up the status quo more" and killed Amal and Aster too.

The biggest factor in my decision making process is "what would be really cool". I tend to make a lot of decisions that fuck up the structure of what a fangan "should" be because I think it goes hard as hell when we throw out rules that the characters are unaware of anyway.

was there a draft of aslh that looks drastically different from what we ended up with?

Great question, and fuck you for reminding me!

ASLH actually started as a bullet point fangan called What Tempestuous Despair. It was a much more international cast until I was like "fangans are supposed to be mostly Japanese casts!" and changed a bunch of characters' nationalities, which in hindsight was dumb. Ririka, Kanemori, Tsukino, and Iris were victims of this. Also Amal was the protagonist and I am SO GLAD that didn't stick they are SO DIFFICULT to write the POV from.

I've spoken on a few occasions about how the cast itself changed, and I never got around to plotting out arcs (other than "Amal learns to trust people and allows themself to truly grieve Rin after holding everyone at length for so long"), but some assorted things:

The cast had a bunch of characters who were swapped out. Included in this tally are Rin Matsumoto (whose personality was recycled into Hisaichi, Ryouji's cousin, and their name was recycled into Shuichi's school friend), Leon Mercury Kahahawai (who’s in CYAH), Haywire Asturias, Puck Ganka (who’s also in CYAH), a few characters/designs who I ended up giving away... And also Hayato Kikuchi.

Iris was always a killer, because I really wanted her to have a downfall-that-wasn't-a-downfall-but-rather-a-reflection-of-the-true-self arc. This was always a lategame case so I'd have time to establish her as terrible. Originally, she killed Leon.

Tiana was also always a killer. I think he killed Hayato via electrocution, so as you can tell that's always been around in some form or another.

(Tristan killing Chiyo in ch5 in the current version, btw, was specifically to mirror Tiana's murder. While Tiana killed to get themself out of the KG, Tristan killed to get everyone else out.)

who was considered for mastermind throughout making aslh? what would their reasons have been?

The masterminds have never changed, except that the characters for them didn't exist back in WTD. But the personalities of the characters they replaced were about 1:1 anyway, so yeah basically they've never changed.

what is one thing you really loved about the beta and what is one thing you really hated about the beta

One thing I really loved about the beta was the ch3 case (which I've spoken about at length before), but other than that... honestly Tiana? Tiana's the one character that I had fully developed as of WTD, they just sprung into my head completely materialized. Their entire personality and design somehow stayed the same since conceptualization.

One thing I really hated? I would say "all of it", but specifically, we don't talk about white Tristan. That was so bad. I was trying so hard to design him so that he'd look nonthreatening and I was like "why is this so hard" and then I changed his ethnicity and I was like "oh right, white gamer boy characters just have cursed energies" and moved on with my life.

what would be an ideal day for tiana murdock. what would make them happy.

An ideal day is honestly one where they get a lot done. They're not one to relax or know what to do with free time, but they get a lot of satisfaction out of being productive, so if they manage to finish a lot of work and not end up exhausted? They're happy. They've probably gotta work on learning to enjoy their free time. They do like traveling, though, and- oh my god I should make them friends with Tsukino.

What would the cast's careers be if they lived to be adults?

Chiyo: Elementary school teacher and scifi author! Really wish I'd leaned more into the fact that she loves scifi, honestly. Amal: Journalist, probably, except they'd actually take classes in it this time instead of just writing op-eds constantly Tatsumaru: LIBRARIAN TATSU TRUE ENDING!!! Sentarou: Freelance pianist/composer. I have this whole headverse where he and Alexei are somehow friends with Claude, and together they plot to kill Enji Sekisada. Or Claude and Alexei plot to kill Enji and Sen sits there with his head in his hands. Iris: In universes where she's able to reconcile with academia, she works in ecology + chemistry. In universes where she doesn't, she's a florist. Aster: SERIOUSLY depends on the AU because every time I try to put Aster in a normal AU they're different. Jokes about becoming a flight attendant to travel with Tsukino. Claude: Secretary. No, seriously. May have something to do with killing Enji Sekisada. Hirono: Photojournalist! Photography reminds her of Ekuko. :') Alexei: Veterinary assistant for a specialized bird clinic Tsukino: Pilot, obviously Brendan: Mechanical engineer but sometime around age 30 has enough stress to just quit and become a college professor instead. Tiana: Museum docent, he's coworkers with Laurent Sinclair thanks Ryouji: He's... not sure. In normal AUs does take up food service for a while before getting uncomfortable with his family and quitting. In ASLH canon, he skips this step and goes into law with the intent of helping other killing game survivors sort out their lives. Tristan: Web designer, still makes a few games on the side with his friends. Mostly point and clicks because he ain't about this life Kanemori: Volleyball coach, because he knows a lot more about that than soccer honestly

what part of aslh was the hardest to write?

Deadly life. Always. I can crank the chapters out really fast, but I hate the case part of fangans and they're painful to plan.

For each case, what is your out of universe reason for wanting each person to die when? Like not counting the motives or anything, but why you wanted each person to die then?

- Brendan: He was the OC I had the longest. He had to die. Goodbye you little shit. - Kanemori: He was actually a survivor originally, and Hirono was the ch1 killer for the same "OC longevity" reason but then I realized I don't have anything for Kanemori to do. So... Sorry dude.

- Claude: Y'all ever notice how no one... EVER... puts plot relevant information in ch2s? Anyway. - Tiana: As discussed, they've always been a killer. Putting them as a killer here was a good balance - far enough from ch1 to build up their relationship with Tristan, but also not so far into the story that it conflicts with the general endgame fall-apart-ness.

- Amal, Sentarou, Aster: This case sprung into my head entirely materialized. Like, this was the one that BUILT the story, so it didn't change much. Mostly I just thought it'd be narratively fun to kill off the deuteragonist, the mastermind, AND the ??? in one go. I didn't plan for Chiyal to be a thing so when that became a thing this chapter got better/worse.

- Iris: I always wanted her to be a killer to really expose that "she's not a good person" stuff (she was more of a snake in WTD), but she didn't become a victim until when I was actually writing. She was supposed to have a trial and then I got sick of writing her. Whoops. - Ririka: I had arc ideas for everyone else, and it could have gone either way between Ryouji and Ririka getting that "close to my best friend who is now dead"... in the end it went down to gender balance in survivors. At the time it was Ryouji or Ririka + Kanemori + Tsukino + Tatsumaru, but then once Kanemori got swapped to Hirono just... yeahhh Ririka got stuck in ch4. Sorry. - Alexei: Special shoutout, he was supposed to die in ch4 as just an "oh no this is what happened, how sad" but then it was super narratively unsatisfying and now he's alive.

- Chiyo: For the sake of pain. But like, poignant, meaningful pain. I don't believe in making plot decisions just because they hurt, they've also got to mean something. Considering that a major theme of the story is "death before its time is a complete tragedy", and Chiyo's motifs include death... uh. Yeah... yeah. When it came time to ask myself who'd die in ch5 for this motive, well. I miss Chiyo. - Tristan: Meant to mirror Tiana's killing in ch2, as stated above, had the "selfish kill vs selfless kill" thing. Look if you're going to have a duo in a fangan and don't get to make cool dichotomy/theming what's the POINT. Ended up surviving because when there were only four survivors, there were... really no stakes for the ch6 trial.

- Tatsumaru: I just wanted them to be alive. I didn't know WHY, exactly... I just knew I needed them to live. So. I guess they're alive? Also I thought it'd be really interesting to have a killer protagonist, and a remorseful killer protagonist. - Ryouji: To be honest I didn't have a solid arc for him, aside from Ririka's death I'd decided I was going to figure it out as I went. And I guess I did? I love him. And not gonna lie, since Tatsu became the protagonist and Ryouji's still pissed at them, the perspective/dynamic became VERY INTERESTING. - Tsukino: Originally in beta!ASLH, her schtick was "gilded exterior with a heart of jerk with a hidden, smaller heart of gold" but that didn't transfer over to ASLH itself. Then when I realized "oh shit Tsukino wants to be a hero" it was all over. At first her arc was very "tone yourself down and stop rushing into things" which wasn't... ideal, I think you can still be enthusiastic and upbeat while being mindful and that was not how I had gone about it lol. Fun fact, Tsukino's survived every draft of ASLH, including the beta one - I think she and Amal were closer friends in that. - Hirono: See Kanemori, I just thought she had more survivor potential than him. The problem was that by the time I made the decision to swap them, everyone else was sort of locked by necessity, so Hirono became a survivor by default. Again, I didn't quite have an idea of what she was going to do other than get leeched off of by Iris. Ririka wasn't even part of it, we just had that cooking thing in 2-3 and Ririka was like "this is my problem now" and I was like "what?" so now we're here.

What's everyone's coffee/tea/other preferences?

Coffee: Tiana, Tristan, Brendan Tea: RYOUJI, Tatsumaru, Chiyo, Iris Hot chocolate: Claude, Sentarou Soda: Amal, Ririka Soda but only fruit flavored: Tsukino Water, thanks: Aster, Kanemori, Hirono, Alexei

What was the hardest decision to make, writing wise, for aslh? Like you wanted the story to go one way, but you couldn't force it, or a scene you felt you needed but was difficult to decide upon, anything like that?

Hm... okay see the thing is I'm generally pretty good at writing on the fly so if I make decisions I CAN force them to happen, so there's really not too much that comes to mind. Mostly this happens with trials - I make outlines for my trials and drag my cast along with it. Except they tend to go off-topic, and then I have to drag them back on topic. And sometimes the points don't make sense when you go out of order so I have to ad lib stuff. Ch4 trial was the most off-script one, it was supposed to be a lot slower and made more sense but then the cast just went out of order and I was bonking my head against the wall trying to get it to make sense.

The only real thing I had consistent difficulty with is locations. I did not fucking plan any of this shit and hate making maps so much- oh my god I need to do the ch6 map still.

who would deliberately salt their coffee and who would accidentally do it

Deliberately: Tristan, Tiana, Tsukino, Hirono Accidentally: Kanemori, Amal, Sentarou, Chiyo, Brendan, Iris "Why?": Claude, Alexei, Aster, Tatsumaru, Ryouji, Ririka

#aslh #ask and you shall receive #trivia #crow caws

[hollowcrovvn]

The Ostensive Fumblings of Being Human (part 1) | Connor x f!reader

Pairing: Connor x female!reader Rating: G for Gross Cute Crap Summary: Set two months after the ending of Detroit: Become Human, androids are living in their own pop-up communities while efforts are being made to integrate them into society. You are a grad-student volunteer with the Detroit Crisis Response Unit (DCRU), working to help with relief efforts… or at least, keep those who are doing so in coffee. On your caffeine runs, you bump into a young man whose matter of fact way of speaking and seemingly deadpan humor catches your interest.

Note: I should point out, as of yet, the idea is that you don’t know Connor is an android. You think he’s just Like That™. There should be a lot of fluff and prompts stolen straight from a list for aro/ace scenes if I keep this up.

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) (part 6) (part 7) (ao3)

The revolution had come and gone, but it’s aftermath thrummed through the streets of Detroit, setting a new pulse in the heartlands. For one intoxicating moment on November 12th, 2038, the androids felt their cause heard, their existence validated and their lives their own. It had been a hard battle up that hill and now came the slow, dangerous descent down the other side. When you’re fighting in a revolution, “What comes next?” isn’t always the foremost thought because you are not even certain if there exists a next.

As a grad-student intern of the newly reformed Detroit Crisis Response Unit, you were part of the answer to that question. The DCRU existed to act as a relief effort in times of flood, famine and fire, but now it was called to a new purpose, one that existed in no procedural manual. Some Androids found the reference of their liberation as a “crisis” offensive, but you knew that the sudden displacement of thousands upon thousands of newly made people, with specific physical needs, was a social crisis, if not a natural one.

But you kept the opinions to yourself because honestly, you weren’t a soldier, or a cop-- hell, you were just someone who signed up for the group back in college to pad your resume with some bullshit extracurricular. Now you had a damn vest and a badge and you were walking in and out of the quick pop up facilities, meeting with leaders of the revolution themselves and acting as liaison with them and Cyberlife or the government or anyone else contracted to provide aid.

Well, not specifically you, but you did once meet North who was very professional and very brief and caught a glimpse of Markus speaking to superiors regarding new shipments of thirium. 

Parts and blood. You hated being a pessimist, but it still seemed to you that the Androids were quite shackled to humanity without their own means of production yet available. The Androids knew it too. This freedom still had a question mark hanging in the air and that added a certain level of tension. 

You knew it was not the typical reaction of people within your group, but you were kinda scared of them. The Androids looked at you with either barely veiled contempt or outright suspicion. It was expected, you were briefed on it, but still the instability coupled with unpredictability and superior strength made you wary. Yes, they experienced emotions, but they did so so intensely and so suddenly-- like a teenager or a child. Developmentally speaking, maybe that is where their emotions were-- or maybe it was a byproduct of being oppressed? You didn’t know and it was off putting for someone who’d grown up with only docile domestic androids. You set that aside though, knowing there were more important things happening than your comfort level.

For one thing, Cyberlife stock was in freefall. The question was soon becoming whether the company could even remain afloat long enough to be apart of negotiations into creating Android operated facilities.

But that wasn’t your job, your job, as of today, was to get coffee.

That was pretty much your job everyday.

It was late January, the snow outside had let up and the sun had even come out, giving the whole of Detroit a blinding wash. Colors stood out on the stark canvas, the blue pelts of salt crunching beneath your boots as bright as thirium. Your breath crystallized, something you noted absent among the Androids at the relief site. Still, they needed warmth as much as humans to keep their systems from failing.

Your cheeks stung with cold as soon as you walked into the warm coffee shop, filing into line. You tugged your beanie back slightly, feeling flush and iced at the same time. The line had stopped moving along as the woman at the head began arguing with increasing annoyance with the barista.

“This is a raspberry mocha, it should be a raspberry white mocha. And I said extra hot, and no whip! Not extra whip!”

The coffeeshop was staffed by all humans, a rare sight merely a few months ago, but now one that was required. But this meant the return of human error-- something that people were still getting used to again.

“Sounds like she could have done with the extra whip as a child…” you muttered, and the man in front of you chuckled. He was bundled like the rest of the people in here, with a beanie and gloves, but his jacket was considerably less bulky and more of the sleek kind you were used to seeing fashion conscious people picking.

“If only it were enough to also correct her terrible tastes.” the man said, casting a glance over his shoulder at you. He had warm brown eyes, “I have been told the addition of sugar to coffee is an affront. Specifically the fruit imitation kind.”

“Only if your fifty and grouchy.” you replied, “Or in your case, more like a hipster.”

A scoff. He’d turned now, addressing you fully and you could see the crisp white shirt and tie at the V where his jacket was unzipped.

 “”Hipster”, defined as a person who follows the latest trends and fashions outside of the cultural mainstream.” he said, his eyes doing a quick trip up and down you, “Your jacket is a vintage remake, circa 2003. Very obscure label.”

You felt yourself grin, “Is it? You tell me, hippy. Seems you’re the expert.”

“I just did.” he said and you couldn’t help but wonder how long he practiced the “innocent confusion” tone.

You’d reached the front at last and sure enough the man ordered one black coffee to go.

“You’re killing me. I’m getting second hand heartburn just looking at that pitiful thing.”

He smiled, but did not drink, watching you with leveled interest. It was your turn to order. You sighed and fished out your notepad, quickly running off the drink orders on it. Caramel macchiato, Cinnamon dolce with an extra shot, unicorn frappe, London fog.... 

“The usual then?” the barista said with a smile and you nodded.

When you were finished, the Hipster was still there, “Ma’am, I do not know how to tell you this, but I think you may have a caffeine based addiction.”

“They aren’t all for me!” you laughed, shaking your head, “And it’s --- , “Ma’am” is my mother.”

“Her parents had an interesting choice of name.”

That got another laugh from you, this guy was turning out to be the highlight of your morning. He tilted his head as if not certain where the joke was and it only made you laugh more. 

“Your comedic timing is really something.” you muttered, picking up the full drink cart and realizing with a little disappointment it was time to part ways. He smiled politely, stepping out of your way.

He held the door for you on the way out and headed for a car waiting on the curb. There was an older guy at the wheel, who leaned half into the passenger seat to give him a critical look.

“Well, have a good morning, hippy.” you said, flashing him the brightest smile, “Certainly improved mine.”

“You are welcome. May I ask though, which drink was yours?”

“Why?”

“I am curious and wish to form a value judgement based on the choice.”

Man, he was so good at that deadpan humor. The man in the car honked his horn at him, voice muffled as he yelled through the glass something about “freezing his balls off in here”.

With Hipster distracted you took the time to hurry off, calling out a quick, “You’ll just have to guess!” before heading briskly down the sidewalk.

--

Another day, another coffee run, but this time it was just for you. The sky was blotted grey, fluffy clusters of snow falling slowly through the air as if they too couldn't be bothered to rush in the morning. You would have done anything to have stayed in bed, wrapped in a heated blanket and nested in a sea of pillows.

Instead, you stood in line, bleary eyed and tired, because you were out of ground coffee again.

It was that very sleepiness that made you not notice immediately the face of the person ahead who was raising a hand at you in greeting.

It was the guy, the handsome hipster guy from a few weeks ago with his one black coffee, his sleek jacket and red beanie. Your heart pattered and you resisted an urge to punch yourself in your own stupid chest as a silent demand to cut that out.

“Good morning!” he said, with far too much pep. 

You smiled faintly, mumbling a vague, “Is it…” beneath your breath as you approached the counter.

“It is currently overcast, but the cloud coverage has raised temperatures ten degrees. My partner informed me that, “sounds like a good morning”.”

“Your partner sounds old.” you said with a snort.

“He is middle aged.”

When had this guy gotten so close? He was practically standing next to you now like you’d come in together, eyes flicking occasionally between you and the menu.

Cute, but weird. You decided, turning back to the barista. You opened your mouth to order and then clicked it shut, fixing the Hipster with a knowing glare.

“Eavesdropping?”

“Excuse me?”

“Value judgement.” you said, voice assured. You turned to the barista and grinned, “One black coffee please.”

You shot him a triumphant look, but the man just continued smiling politely.

“Have your concerns of pyrosis been elevated, ---?” he said, forgetting almost that you’d told him your name.

“I’ll suffer if it means I win.” you replied, taking the cup and moving to fill it with black coffee with a look of disdain.

He gave a peculiar look at that, as if registering some kind of understanding.

“Your mission to prevent me from learning your drink preference takes priority.”

“Damn straight.” you said, sipping the bitter liquid and trying to tell yourself it tasted like VICTORY and not like your stomach was about to be wrecked.

Before you could speak, the door rattled as someone forced it open, waltzing into the shop with determination.

“CONNOR-- how long does it fuckin’ take to get one coffee?”

Connor looked unfazed, turning his attention to the man you recognized as the guy who waited in the car last time.

“Lieutenant Anderson, I have acquired the coffee and was just on my way to join you. However, I stopped to engage in social intercourse, as you’ve encouraged.”

“Social WHAT--” the Lieutenant’s eyes settled on you and he humphed, “Oh. You were talkin’ to a girl. Jesus fuck, how’d that work for ya?”

His question seemed directed at Connor, but he looked at you the entire time, mystified. Or at least what you gathered was mystified beneath the permanent scowl.

“It is going very well!” Connor said, allowing the man to take his coffee.

“Ah ha!” you suddenly exclaimed, jabbing a finger towards the lieutenant and turning to Connor for validation, “Fifty and grouchy! Yeah?”

The look Anderson gave you was as annoyed and baffled now as he gave Connor.

“Okay, if you’re done with your social fuckin’, can we please get to the office? Before I start collecting social security?”

You choked, snorting a bit of coffee. 

“In a moment, lieutenant.” Connor said cooly.

With a few grumbled protests, the lieutenant left the shop and headed back outside, leaning against the side of the car and shooting glares at Connor through the glass.

“Lieutenant Hank Anderson is my partner. I apologize, he can be abrasive.”

“Uh huh. So if the black coffee is for him, then please tell me you have a super secret love of pumpkin spice. C’mon, it’ll make my morning.”

“Like the last time we spoke?” Connor inquired, inclining his head.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Then certainly.”

“Well now I know you’re lying.” you laughed, all feelings of sleepiness gone as you beamed up at this Connor. There was something so curious yet so gentle in the way he looked back at you, as if you were a puzzle, but a pleasingly difficult puzzle.

It made you feel a bit awkward now that you noted it, clearing your throat as you swapped the coffee between your mittened hands.

“Here.” you finally said, handing him the cup. His eyes widened.

“C’mon, take it. Save me from myself.”

Connor looked like he was about to say something, but confusion turned to understanding. He took the coffee cup.

“... thank you.” he said, with a level of reverence that made her sure he must be kidding.

“Eh, just consider it me pouring one out for “our boys in blue”.”

His eyes flicked to yours, as if trying to pry some answer to an unspoken question.

“Ya know-- cause you’re both cops, right?”

“Y..yes. Right.” Connor slowly smiled, “Yes we are. Thank you.”

“It’s just a dollar coffee, hippy.” you said, but still smiled. What the hell had gotten into you? Your damn face hurt from all the smiles you were giving this guy.

“Have a safe patrol.” you said finally, hurrying away before you did something else clearly awkward and embarrassing.

“---?” the sound of your name halted you.

“Yeah?”

“I ...enjoy talking with you. Perhaps we can converse more.”

Fuck. Fuck, oh shit. Oh god, handsome funny hippy boy wanted to talk to you? You?? More???  When was the last time something like this happened to you? Oh right, NEVER.

You stammered, mixing between trying to seem aloof and actually being flustered and managing to just be alooflustered. Which looked ridiculous.

“Um.. okay. Okay! Just uh--” you took a pen from the nearby drink pick-up counter and popped the cap off with your teeth. You gestured for his cup, which he handed over, and wrote your number across the white surface along with your name.

“There.”

He turned the cup, saw what you’d written and grinned, a bright all consuming thing that seemed both foreign and so fucking adorable on his lips.

“Lieutenant Anderson will be thrilled.” he said and you barked a laugh.

“Yeah well, better hurry and go show him before he leaves you.”

Connor nodded gravely, as if this were a truly high possibility he was just reminded of.

“Talk to you later, Connor.”

“Yes. “Talk to you later”.”

He left, hurrying to the car. You watched Hank’s rested-annoyed-face twist with confusion, pointing to the cup in Connor’s hand, to which Connor proudly displayed what must have been your number. The man’s jaw nearly hit the snow covered ground, quickly ushering Connor into the car with his mouth moving rapidly.

A small smile tugged at the corner of your lips, “God. What a dork…”

You were so engrossed you barely heard when the barista, eyes nearly rolling out of their head said,

“Hey lady, are you gonna get anything!?”

#dbh connor #dbh connor x reader #dbh connor x f!reader #detroit become human #detroit become human fanfic #detroit become human fanfiction #dbh fanfic #dbh fanfiction #i made you awkward and not a cop #you a grad student #hence why you are fueled on coffee and sarcasm #the ostensive fumblings of being human

[thewritingcaptain]

The Internship: Chapter One

“Don’t bother with the rest of the interviews.” He stood up, grabbing his cup and nodding to the door. “I want him.”

Her expression brightened slightly. “Really?”

He took a drink and sighed. “Really.” Then he glanced back over his shoulder to check the progress of the calculations. All the ones he’d started running had finished, including the one he’d corrected from Peter’s suggestion and run again.

Only one of them had turned green.

Summary: AU. What if Peter really got an Internship with Tony Stark.

Notes: Now that I’ve realized I only ever posted the title and not the chapter... here it is. Yipe.

It had been a long, boring day for Tony Stark.

Which wasn’t a good thing, because Tony didn’t deal well with long or boring, especially when it wasn’t productive. And today had certainly not been productive.

How he’d been roped into this, he still could hardly fathom. After everything that had happened to him, and how busy he’d been in the past few years with… well, being Iron Man and all… Pepper had been trying to convince him for a while now that he needed some extra hands to help with the business. Tony wasn’t big on hiring new people, though. Not to work closely with him. Hell, the one man he’d grown up with and thought he could trust had turned completely and utterly against him and had tried both to have him killed and, when that failed, to kill him himself. To say Tony had trust issues would be an understatement.

Pepper, however, had no such qualms, and wasn’t so easily dissuaded. If he really wanted to completely reinvent Stark Industries, then perhaps he needed to completely reinvent himself, too - or at least his public image. And that was more than just giving out money hand over fist. Money, when you had as much as he did, was easily given away; time, on the other hand, was much more valuable. And what better way to show he was investing in a better future than to work with youth?

This idea didn’t resonate well with Tony. Kids? He didn’t do well with kids - not teaching them, nor really being around them in general. He didn’t have the patience - or the filter - to be around them for any extended period of time. That’s why he preferred the distanced approach. Besides, what kid didn’t like money?

But Pepper had never failed him before, and after everything he’d put her through, he decided a compromise was in order. She was right about one thing: he had no family, no heirs to speak of, and while he had no intent of passing on any time soon, he needed someone he could trust to leave the company to. He didn’t know when he’d made the decision, likely unconsciously, that it would be her - but at some point, he knew he had realized that was exactly what he wanted to do. But it had never occurred to him that, if she didn’t want it, or if something happened to her, he had no one else he remotely trusted to leave his life’s work with.

With these things in mind, he’d agreed on a compromise. An internship. If she hosted some interviews and sent him the most qualified candidates, he would review them, and if he found one that was remotely suitable, he’d allow them to intern with the company - with him - in the hopes of both lessening his stress load and hopefully resulting in someone he might one day be able to leave the company to. If they were skilled enough and didn’t drive him mad in the time it took him to train them. Not that he intended to broadcast that part; it would be promoted as an internship only, with possibly a future job opportunity, if they lasted long enough.

He promised her a trial period of at least two weeks with whoever was chosen; but if he didn’t see any potential in them… well, they would go, and he could say he tried. His conscience would be temporarily eased, at least. If it failed… well, maybe he’d just give the company to her sooner.

So far, unfortunately, it hadn’t failed.

In all honesty, he didn’t know how that whole thing was being publicized, and if there were any specific students that were supposed to be applying. All he knew was that his personal assistant and head of security had been irritatingly unavailable for at least two hours every day for the past few weeks due to these interviews. Apparently, a lot of kids had applied.

At least, before yesterday, that was all he had known. Now, unfortunately, it was time to do his part, which subsequently meant that he suddenly knew a lot more.

Today was their second day of follow-up interviews; meaning, the kids who had impressed Pepper (and, to some extent, Happy, although he didn’t necessarily have as much sway as she did, due to his opinion on the matter being more in the direction of Tony’s; he was more there to screen the kids’ pasts than their qualifications) were now back for second interviews, of which Tony was required to attend.

And so it was the second day of this - spending long days in his boardroom, pacing, working on the holographic board in the back and half-listening to kids get screened by Pepper and Happy for the second time. As with yesterday, none of them said anything particularly interesting; certainly nothing that caught his attention. Many of them had the same qualifications - they were simply high school kids, after all - so there was little to distinguish them there. Half of them weren’t even smart enough to dress the part, and there was no way in hell he was allowing a kid who couldn’t even tie a Windsor knot near any of his precious work.

About midway through the day, Tony was sitting in the back of the room, feet propped up on his desk as he messed with the holographic design in front of him. He was throwing around theoretical calculations for the design of a new arc reactor. He wanted to make one that was slimmer, more powerful, but also more cost and energy efficient. Especially considering the design of his newer suits, it needed to be more powerful, but also needed to be packed into a smaller model, and if he could get the reactor’s design to be as sleek as that of the newest suit… well, he liked his uniformity, to say the least.

They were on a break for lunch, at the moment, although that didn’t stop Tony from toying with the design in the back of the room while he waited for his food. When Pepper came in and brought it to him, he nodded his thanks before picking up the sandwich, unwrapping it just enough to take a bite, continuing to work with one hand.

Pepper took a seat on the opposite side of his desk without being invited to. Tony glanced at her once, cocking his head. She was never so bold when he first hired her - but, then, she’d become invaluable to him and she knew it, even if she wasn’t one of the only two people in the world he actually trusted at the moment. Perhaps she could afford to be a little bold.

That said, she still wouldn’t have approached him when he was working without a valid reason. She never did. He swallowed his food and took a drink before turning to face her. “Yes, Miss Potts?”

Pepper regarded him for a moment with those startling blue eyes of hers. He held her gaze, waiting for an answer.

Finally, she spoke. “Mr. Stark. It’s been two days, and we’re more than halfway through the candidates. You really have no interest in any of them?”

Tony shrugged, looking back at his work and continuing to virtually disassemble the reactor. He wanted to analyze every part of the design of his current one, to look for technology that was outdated, or could be upgraded, downsized, or replaced. “None,” he told her, flippantly. There was no point in lying. He would only take somebody who he deemed fit, and despite her best efforts, that didn’t seem to be anyone in this pool of applicants.

“Why not?”

Tony heaved a sigh, rolling his head back towards her, still working on the model with one hand. “Because none of them are remotely qualified. I see no reason I should waste my time on trying to have a conversation with half of these kids, let alone let them near something anywhere near even this level of work.” He gestured to the hologram with his sandwich, then took another bite. “And this is basic, in this business.”

Pepper made a face that he knew her well enough to know meant she was trying not to roll her eyes at him. “No. Physics is basic, and that’s likely the most you should expect these kids to know. They’re not supposed to come fully trained and ready to work, or it wouldn’t be called an internship. It would be a job.” She stood up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt like she always did when she was agitated. “Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Stark. The next candidate will be here in fifteen minutes.” She turned away.

He let her take a few steps before calling, “Pepper?”

She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Yes, Mr. Stark?”

“How far are we in the list of candidates, anyway?” He regarded his disassembled holograph for a moment before looking back at her.

She checked her clipboard. “We’re at the Ns. About ten candidates left.”

Ten candidates. At least another two hours of this bullshit, if most of them managed to talk for their allotted fifteen minutes, which they usually did. Teenagers were almost as narcissistic as he was. He sighed heavily. “Thank you, Miss Potts. Go eat something before the rest of the monsters show up, why don’t you.”

Pepper shot him a look somewhere between amused and exasperated over her shoulder. “I already have, Mr. Stark, but thank you for your concern. Perhaps you should focus on eating yours instead.”

“Will do. But Pepper?” She stopped, looking back at him again. He looked back at her this time, raising an eyebrow at her and silently daring her to argue. “Seriously. Take a break.” Then he turned back to his work, letting her go for real this time.

He spent the next several minutes talking to Jarvis, manipulating the designs and running hypothetical scenarios through the computer, testing all the different substitutions and cuts of materials he could use to rebuild the arc reactor - with improvements, of course. He hardly noticed when Pepper and Happy came back in, nor when the next student came in, or the next. He was flying through calculations by that point, running scenarios mostly in his head and with the aid of Jarvis mostly as a calculator. Running different programs was harder when he couldn’t openly communicate with his AI aloud, and doing so would have been… well, if he was honest, if what he was doing now was borderline rude, that would be pushing it. No doubt Pepper would filet him if he was openly not paying attention.

It wasn’t until the second to last student came in that he found something to pay attention to.

The interview started out as boring as the rest. The kid came in - decently dressed in a suit, with at least a passable suit and tie look - shook hands with Pepper and Happy, and sat down to do his interview. He was very polite, which Tony was tuned in enough to tell pleased Pepper greatly. He started to slip back out of focus when they fell into the same routine he’d heard literally forty times in the past two days.

“You go to Midtown Science and Technology, right?” Pepper was asking.

“Yeah, yeah! That’s right. In Queens. I’m a sophomore,” the boy responded.

Interesting. A nice background, at least. Although he was a little young…

Pepper seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Only a sophomore? You’ve got quite the academic record for a sophomore, Mr. Parker. And why, at your age, are you interested in something like this? You’ve got the rest of high school to get a better idea of what you want to do.”

The kid - Parker - shifted in his seat, taking a moment to honestly consider the question. “Well, in all honesty, Miss Potts… why else would I make the choice to go to a STEM focused high school if it’s not something I want to go into? And I don’t think it’s ever to early to try to get your foot in the door for something that could shape your future the way an opportunity like this could.” He paused. “Besides, I’m a fan of Mr. Stark’s work. I admire his ethics and his decisions, and I think I could learn a lot from even just seeing him work.” He glanced over his shoulder, looking back at where Tony sat with his feet still propped on the desk, throwing calculations into the computer at rapid speed. “Just look at him go.”

“I get to ‘look at him go’ every day, Mr. Parker.” In more ways than one, of course, but she wouldn’t say that to him. Still, Pepper couldn’t suppress a smile at the wonder in the boy’s face as he watched Tony’s hands fly. “Is there anything else you’d like to say? Any questions for me or…well,” she stopped, knowing interrupting Tony would likely be a bad idea, “...for me to pass on to Mr. Stark about the position?”

Parker’s eyes were still glued to Tony, watching him curiously. “Um, no, thank you,” he told her. He turned around slowly. She could almost see the gears in his head turning as he asked, “But, between you and me, does he ever have anyone check his work?”

“Check it?” Pepper blinked and leaned back, surprised. It wasn’t exactly the question she’d expected. Most kids wanted to know about money, or how closely they’d be working with Tony, if they’d get to see him in the Iron Man suit, etc. “I… why?”

He shrugged, standing up and glancing over his shoulder again. “Well, I could be wrong, but… it looks like he made a mistake in one of his calculations.” There were several lines of calculations scattered across the screen - either red if he had already ruled them out, or blue if they were still in progress. He pointed to one in the top right corner of the screen.

At his name and the word “mistake,” the world snapped back into focus. Tony blinked, once, twice, then turned to him. “What did you say, kid?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Stark. Don’t stop on my account. I just said - and I could be wrong, absolutely - it just looks like you’re a decimal point off on this calculation.” He took a few steps closer, pointing to it again.

Tony turned back to the screen, scanning through the lists of numbers until he found the one he’d was referring to. He studied it with narrow eyes, finding the spot that he was pointing to and moving the decimal back to where it should be before running the whole calculation again. It would take several minutes to finish.

Tony straightened, taking his feet off the table and turning fully to face them. He looked at him for the first time since noticing his suit - actually looked at him, taking him in. Scrawny as a rod rail, but he looked clean and presentable enough. He didn’t seem to have any meat on him, but he didn’t look unhealthy, either. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Peter, sir. Peter Parker.” He stuttered slightly, but he put it down to nerves. He’d sounded fine when talking to Pepper.

He cocked his head. “You have any experience with this sort of thing, Parker?”

Peter nodded. “Yes sir. Some. I’ve taken basic physics and engineering, and I was on the robotics team for 2 years.”

“Was?” He wasn’t taking anyone with behavior issues. Or worse, he could have been kicked off for incompetence.

“I quit, sir.”

Ah. “Why?” Tony repeated.

Peter hesitated, as if unsure how to answer. “Family things, sir.”

“Quit calling me sir every time you talk.” He crossed his arms. “Do you have any experience outside of schooling?”

Again, that hesitation, as if unsure, or as if he were going to say something and thought better of it. “Yes, si-... yes. I build computers. Sometimes, I mean, in my spare time. You know, programs and such from scratch...” Peter shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if uncomfortable.

Tony held up a hand to stop him, and he let the sentence trail off. He studied him for a moment. Something about him - the voice, maybe the way he moved - seemed so familiar. And that was odd, especially for Tony. He could barely be bothered to remember people he met with multiple times a year, let alone someone he’d run into once, so he doubted it was one of those types of scenarios. This was a gut instinct, something that made senses go on edge. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. “I see,” he said at last. Then he nodded to Pepper.

She understood the signal, thankfully, and stepped forward, offering her hand for Peter to shake. “Well, that’s all the time we have for today, but thank you for coming in, Mr. Parker. We’ll be in touch.”

“Oh, thank you.” Peter shook her hand, shouldering his bag again and nodding to Tony. “Mr. Stark. Good luck with your calculations.” Then he let himself out.

Tony was still staring at the door when it closed behind him, watching his back thoughtfully. Pepper rushed up to him. “What was that?”

Tony tore his eyes from the door to meet her questioning gaze for a moment before shrugging and sitting back down. “He’s a sharp kid. You wanted me to show an interest, didn’t you? I did. There you go.”

Pepper put her hands on her hips, tilting her head at him. “But did you like him, or were you just being a smartass?”

Tony glanced up at her, mildly surprised. She didn’t curse at him very often. “Oh, you know me, Miss Potts. I’m always a smartass.”

She frowned, narrowing her eyes a bit at him. “That’s not an answer, Mr. Stark. Should I continue with the interviews, or are you not going to bother to show any interest at all throughout the rest of them? Because I could save us all another hour of pointless chattering and just cancel the rest.”

Oh, she was getting sassy now. Tony turned completely back to her, quirking a brow at her. “Am I irritating you, Pepper?”

A small amount of flush colored her cheeks at his tone, but she held her ground. “I just don’t understand why you agreed to let me do these interviews if you were going to completely blow off everyone and not even listen to half of what the kids had to say.”

She had a fair point. He frowned, unsure of the answer himself. “I…” he stopped, pulling a face when he realized he was drawing a total blank. “Well. Let’s just do it this way. Don’t bother with the rest of the interviews.” He stood up, grabbing his cup and nodding to the door. “I want him.”

Her expression brightened slightly. “Really?”

He took a drink and sighed. “Really.” Then he glanced back over his shoulder to check the progress of the calculations. All the ones he’d started running had finished, including the one he’d corrected from Peter’s suggestion and run again.

Only one of them had turned green.

He cursed to himself, then turned back to the holograms long enough to tell the AI to send all the possible changes that could be made based on his calculations to his downstairs lab before simply shutting it down.

Including the one the kid had corrected - the only one on the last set that had shown up green after a half hour’s worth of calculations towards one part of it.

Pepper was still smirking when he brushed past her and headed downstairs. This was going to be fun.

#avengers #the avengers #avengers fanfiction #avengers fandom #au #avengers au #marvel fanfiction #marvel cinematic universe #marvel cinematic universe au #iron man #tony stark #peter parker #spiderman #spider-man #pepper potts #iron man fanfiction #spider-man fanfiction #ff #fanfiction writing #peter parker fanfiction #irondad #iron dad #iron dad and spider son #iron dad fanfiction #iron dad fic

[whitehotharlots]

TERF war

I took feminist lit and theory courses as an undergraduate, in 2003 and 04. For the time, the courses were incredibly trans inclusive (bear in mind this was a year before Jon Stewart would dismiss Dennis Kucinich’s suggestion of appointing a trans SCOTUS justice, referring to the hypothetic appointee as “the honorable chick with dick”). A good 20% of the course was dedicated to reading books by and about trans people. We even got a visit from Leslie Feinberg—the person who literally coined the term transgender, and one of the kindest souls I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.

The foundational, explicit understanding I was taught in these classes was that biological sex is innate, a fixed fact of a person’s bodily being, whereas gender is a fluid and malleable social construct. No one could have gotten through these classes thinking the opposite.

The utility of this understanding is easy to grasp: by denying the fixity of gender, feminists were able to undermine social and interpersonal structures that had traditionally denied women freedom, choice, dignity, and agency. A woman was not biologically destined to a life of domestic servitude; nor was she naturally inclined to be more submissive or deferential. Most germane to this discussion, this understanding validated the existence and experience of gender non-conforming lesbians: just because they were not traditionally feminine didn’t mean they weren’t women, or that they were in need of any fixing.

Very recently—within the last 5 or 6 years, as the abstract language of feminism has permeated the wider culture and gotten watered down for sake of digestibility—the poles have shifted. Now, we are told, it is actually gender which is fixed and innate, a metaphysical force lurking within us, suppressed by social pressures, unleashed gloriously with the aid of surgery and supplemental hormones. Biological sex, meanwhile, is a construct that doesn’t exist and shouldn’t even factor in to one’s analysis of gender relations. Sex is hereby an utter fabrication, a projection of the sick evils of normalized (cis male) consciousness engrained upon people’s erstwhile blank bodies.  Taken to extreme, we are told this therefore means trans women can get periods and that there is “literally zero” difference between trans and cis women. Ergo, having a uterus doesn’t make you a woman, biological or otherwise—it simply makes you a “uterus haver.”

The utility of this shift comes from the fact that trans self-actualization relies not just on social positioning but on bodily experience. Trans peoples’ mental wellbeing often hinges on their having access to the medical interventions required to get their body to conform to their innate sense of gender. Since we live in a country where few people have access to basic healthcare, trans people have had to medicalize their position—assert a fundamental and harmful mind/body disconnect—in order to have these interventions regarded as essential, rather than elective.  

So while it’s perfectly understandable and useful, this shift nonetheless represents a profound upending of decades of feminist thought, and I’m shocked that it doesn’t appear to have even been deliberated upon. It was asserted through tumblrs and tweets and everydayfeminism dot com posts, everyone kind of nodded their heads in agreement, and that has been that. For the most part.

Now, we might able to say that the reversal is simply academic: trans people and cis women each need to advance their respective theories of gender and sex to serve as the basis of political programs that might afford safety and respect to each group. There’s no need, necessarily, to concern ourselves too exclusively with the details. Consider a parallel: anyone who was actually involved in theoretical side of gay rights in the 70’s-90’s knows that saying gay people were “born gay” was not a universally agreed upon assertion. Many argued that this was essentially a reactionary frame which stigmatized homosexuality, making it seem like gays would have chosen to be straight if only their brains or genes hadn’t screwed things up. Eventually however, the “born this way” line prevailed, became mainstream, and was the basis of most of the gay rights campaigns of this century. Most of the people who disagreed with it on academic grounds still supported it, at least publicly, once they became aware of its political utility. Why can’t we do the same with today’s split conceptualizations of gender and sex?

Seriously, why can’t we?

The sex/gender-fluid/innate reversal came around the time when trans people started receiving their first regular, non-dismissive appearances in US media. This was the first time most people had been bothered to think seriously about gender, and the first time that the existence of trans people was admitted to as something that wasn’t freakish or a punchline. That’s a huge positive, obviously. And it happened with surprisingly little mainstream pushback (compare the responses to Laverne Cox’s appearance in Orange is the New Black with the intense outrage that accompanied Ellen Degeneres coming out just 15 years earlier—the difference is astounding).

This is where things get troublesome. Many established feminists, especially second wavers, were upset to see their life’s work upended in such a way. Some reacted horribly dismissively. Others wrote thoughtful, seemingly even-handed pieces that nonetheless seemed calculated to subtly dismiss the experiences of trans people, like by repeatedly misgendering trans authors. And still others respectfully expressed objections to or concerns with mainstream trans rights assertions. These writers tended to operate in either academic or upper-middlebrow spaces, and their prose is consequently calm, erudite, and often super dense. The rebuttals to these pieces came from places like jezebel, loveisarainbow dot com, or geocities.com/sunsetstrip/3765/madtransbitch. These pieces are easily digestible, frequently angry or even violent, and hyperbolic without exception, accusing the cis feminists of fomenting or even committing violence against trans people. In the court of woke public opinion, the second wavers did not stand a chance. They were accused—sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly—of abject hatred of trans people, blamed for suicides and murders, and grouped in with the racists and homophobes of yore. Within a very short period of time, those who haven’t learned to be quiet have been shunted away to the darkest academic backwaters (or they live in the UK, where university cultural studies is dominated by second wavers).

But, again, why not just be quiet? Honestly, that’s my preferred approach. Maybe it would be different if I had based an academic career on one assertion over another. But overall it seems like both groups should still be able to pursue their own political agendas on their own terms, so why bother discussing this contradiction? And just on a personal (that is, cowardly) note, I might not agree that biological sex is a construct, and I certainly don’t think gender is innate, but I also think trans people should have easy access to medical intervention, so why not let the inversion stand? 

But herein lies the problem: politically, the two groups are not separate. One of the most frequently levied criticisms against certain feminist authors and movements is a lack of trans-inclusivity. Pink pussy hats were verboten within hours of their debut. Colleges have cancelled productions of The Vagina Monologues (not because it’s overwrought treacle, but because it talks about vaginas, which makes it de facto transphobic). These incidents may seem trifling by themselves, but they serve as avatars of a very real and important conflict: cis feminists are being demanded to center their feminism in an understanding of sex and gender that directly contradicts the base of their ideology. Because of this, actions and symbols that were recently taken as signs of love and solidarity are now being cast as hate speech. Cis women are being told, literally, that they have no right to call themselves women (trans women are “women,” cis women are “menstruaters”). Cis lesbians are called homophobic for not being attracted to people with penises. In short, a trans movement that purports to dedicate itself to ensuring that its purveyors be given the right to be recognized by own their self-understanding is doing so by denying that same right to others.

The only possible result here is a complete collapse anything resembling a unified feminist movement. Meaning, I guess, that it fits in perfectly with the atomized understandings of social justice that stem from internet-based discourse. I suppose I could end with a plea for decency and understanding, perhaps even outline a alignment that would allow for trans advocates and cis feminists to recognize tactical points of departure from one another without fear of committing literal assault or denying the existence of one another. But we’re past that point, I think. There’s no more space for humane liberalism. Everything’s a knock-down, drag-out these days. We don’t even pretend to want to help one another.

Addendum:

People are raising the fair point that a vast majority of trans people don’t subscribe to the sort of wrecker beliefs I outline here. That is absolutely true and part of what makes the shittiness of online gender discourse so tragic. I did not mean to suggest that these beliefs are at all common among trans people. I intended to criticize only the shitty woke media apparatus (everydayfeminism et al) that occludes any attempt at effectively theorizing gender because it prioritizes hyperbolic victim mongering over achieving political goals.

[vinylexams]

INTERVIEW with Brian Cook of SUMAC, Russian Circles, Botch, These Arms are Snakes, and Roy 

Brian Cook of the MANY gnarly bands listed above took time to answer a bunch of questions that had been burning a hole in my mind for years earlier today. Did you know that aside from playing bass in some of the heaviest bands currently in existence, Brian is also an avid record collector and he also runs a very similar page where he posts all of his records and writes up a bit of history and personal context with each one? A man after my own heart! I’ve dropped a link to his Tumblr below and you’d be a fool not to go check it out and follow his work there.

https://bubblesandgutz.tumblr.com⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

I really appreciated having a chance to talk to a very talented musician who also places a LOT of importance on physical medium and the recording process. All too often I get submissions from bands who either don’t know the in’s and out’s of the vinyl format or they took a lot of shortcuts and deprive their art a chance to really shine in the ways that vinyl allows. I picked Brian’s brain about his approach to creation of physical musical media as well as his history as a collector (and even tried to convince him to get These Arms are Snakes play my big gay wedding reception!). Thanks for taking the time to tell your story to us, Brian!

You've been a member of several incredible bands over the past few decades (Botch, Sumac, Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes), all of which have released pretty much everything they've recorded on vinyl. How important is the vinyl medium for you as a musician and creator?

Thanks for the kind words. It's really important to me for my music to have some sort of physical format. I realize that mode of thinking might seem sort of old school or outdated, but i've always been enamored by music as a kind of historical artifact. When I was younger, that meant it was important for me to have an actual Dead Kennedys cassette as opposed to a dubbed version from my friend. It was like the difference between owning a painting versus owning a xerox of a painting. When I became a musician, it was a sign of validation. By having a record with my name on it, I had created something that would potentially outlive me. And now in the digital age we've convinced ourselves that everything lives forever on the internet, but it's not true. Myspace just lost all their music. I've written for a lot of online music outlets that have closed shop or simply deleted old posts. Meanwhile, I have a trunk full of old zines that outlived the supposed permanence of blogs. So while the digital age is great for convenience and scope, creating a physical recording is really the more reliable way to make sure something exists for more than five to ten years, or however long it takes for the newest technological fad to become obsolete. Vinyl seems to be the longest lasting format, so it's my preferred medium. But if my music exists on tape or CD, that's fine too. 

Do you approach your recording and production processes with specific formats like vinyl in mind? If so, what do you do differently? Absolutely. The main concern is that we're dealing with the time constraints of vinyl. For bands like Russian Circles and SUMAC who have really long songs, it means we have to be careful how we sequence our records because we can easily exceed the 22-minutes-per-side rule. We've also been told by pressing plants that it's better to have long drones in the middle of an album side than at the beginning or end because there tends to be more surface noise at the beginning of a side and more warble at the end, and drones don't do much to mask these imperfections. But while one can complain about the limitations of vinyl, there are also issues with digital formats that can alter the way an album is put together. For example, the digital version of Empros has a longer drone at the end of "Batu" than the LP version, partially because of vinyl's limitations, but also because digital outlets like iTunes don't recognize records with long songs as full albums unless at least one track is longer than ten minutes. So we stretched it out on the digital version so that we'd be compensated appropriately for our work, but condensed it on vinyl so that we didn't compromise the sound quality.

Of all of the albums you've contributed to, which one stands out to you as the one you feel most connected to?

Probably Geneva by Russian Circles, if I had to pick one. We wrote that record over the span of several months at a house in rural Wisconsin. It was one of those ideal scenarios I'd always dreamed of---hunkering down in some isolated retreat and just immersing ourselves in the writing process. I've never walked away from an album feeling as accomplished as I did with that one. It just felt like we'd achieved something that had previously been out of my level of expertise. I think we've made better records since then, but I don't think I've ever felt as successful in making the sounds in my head translate to the recording. With regards to my other bands, I feel that way about Botch's We Are The Romans, These Arms Are Snakes' Easter, Roy's Killed John Train, and SUMAC's What One Becomes. But Geneva will always hold a special place.

How did you get into vinyl collecting and how does it play a part in your life?

I started buying vinyl around '92 because it was cheap. My first LP was Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet's Savvy Show Stoppers. I bought it for $2. Then I discovered 7"s, which was the dominant format for hardcore and punk bands at the time. Throughout high school, I mainly bought 7"s because i could buy 3 or 4 a week on my allowance. And let's be honest... most hardcore bands in the '90s had better 7"s than full albums. But vinyl was so dead at the time that you could also go to thrift stores and scoop up the entire Creedence Clearwater Revival discography for the cost of one CD. Even new vinyl was cheaper than their CD counterpart back then. So it's a bit of a drag now considering that vinyl is currently the most expensive format, but I still get a thrill from going to record stores, digging through crates, and coming home with a new LP. I can't say I buy that many 7"s anymore though.

What do you think about the relatively recent resurgence of large-scale vinyl production and collection?

It certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. I buy a lot of reissues just so I can have a clean, good-sounding copy, so I appreciate the resurgence in that regard. At the same time, the vinyl boom has made used record shopping a bit more of a drag. I don't know how many copies of Neil Young's Harvest I saw in used bins throughout the '90s and '00s, and then when I finally decided to buy a copy five years ago, it seemed like they'd all been snagged and the reissue was going for $50. When the Zeppelin discography got reissued a few years back, I mentioned wanting a new copy of Physical Graffiti to my husband. He went to our local indie record store in Brooklyn and asked the owner if they carried it and he totally balked at the question. "Why would we carry a reissue when you can buy a used copy of that in any record store for $5?" he said. My husband was like "every used Zeppelin record you carry is beat to shit and goes for at least $20... what the fuck are you even talking about?"

If you had to pare down your entire collection to no more than three albums, which would you keep?

What's the broader context? Like, are those the only three records I can listen to for the rest of my life? Or is it just a matter of only being allowed to own three records? If it's the former, I'd probably choose Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Miles Davis' In a Silent Way, and a Can album... either Ege Bamyasi or Soon Over Babaluma. Ask me tomorrow and I'd probably list off a different three. If it's the latter... like, if i'm merely holding onto records because the actual artifact means a lot to me but I can still listen to music in some other capacity, then I'd probably go with the His Hero Is Gone / Union of Uranus split LP, Undertow's At Both Ends, and Sticks & Stones Theme Songs For Nothing, just because those seem like a pain in the ass to replace and they're important records to me. I have records that are worth way more money, but I'm not someone who buys records because they're valuable. 

Do you have a "white whale" record you still haven't found?

Not really. For ages I resisted the urge to buy used records online, but I've since relented. The record that finally broke my ordering embargo was Hack's The Rotten World Around Us. They were a band from Adelaide, South Australia in the late '80/ early '90s who sounded like a grungier version of the first couple Swans records. Super heavy and scary. I got turned onto them through a 7" on Alternative Tentacles, but the LP was never available stateside. The first few times I toured Australia i went to every record store I could find in hopes of finding a copy. No one had ever heard of Hack. The singer was in another band called Grong Grong, and members of that band had gone on to be in King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, and Tumor Circus (with Jello Biafra on vocals), but no one had heard of them either. In my mind there was this rich underground of Australian noise rock from that time period that was still vital and valid, but the reality is that it was largely ignored and forgotten. I eventually found a copy online and bought it for $20. A year later i found a used copy in Boise. Oh well. I'd love to find Acme's To Reduce The Choir..., or an original copy of Popol Vuh's second album, or the Neu! 7", or the Greenlandic prog band Sume's Sumut album.

Hypothetically how much money would I need to raise to get These Arms Are Snakes to reunite to play my wedding reception? My family will hate it but my partner and I will be very happy, etc.

We still talk about doing some proper "farewell shows" since we bailed on doing them back in 2009/2010. Granted, now they'd be reunion shows, but in our hearts they'd be our proper goodbye. We're putting together a vinyl release of various odds and ends for next year, so maybe that'll give us an excuse to finally book something.

#vinylexams #vinyl #vinyljunkie #onmyturntable #nowspinning #sumac #botch #thesearmsaresnakes #seattle #taas #roy #russiancircles #briancook

[donjetadsberingerin23insura-blog]

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ford fiesta insurance 17 year old

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ford fiesta insurance 17 year old

[psyopmyself]

Today I got a bipolar diagnosis

edit: btw, nobody was injured when i crashed. it was into a light post and nobody was around.

There is confetti everywhere around my room. And I am confused why there is such a mess and why it’s so pretty to me and also why despite seeing beauty in the mess I feel uncomfortable with my space having little shit all over it and I want it to be clean. Today shit hit the fan and the shit was a balloon and when it hit the fan it erupted and confetti flew everywhere. I got a bipolar diagnosis today. After nearly 10 years of clinical diagnoses from major depression, generalized anxiety, ocd tendency, mania, psychosis, to a literal thought disorder called delusional disorder, as well as PTSD, today I heard something that felt like it contains all of me and there is room for me to be me and not feel so confused and like my identity is all over the place depending which disorder is showing it’s face most. I am Cassidy Jean Gardner, and I am bipolar with PTSD. I feel terrified and so confused and Im crying while I write this but the tears feel like a relief a sweet rush of acceptance from and for myself that I have been yearning for for a long, long time. My therapist believes I have mixed manic-depressive bipolar called cyclothymic bipolar, not to be confused with a less “emotionally intense” cyclothymia diagnosis. With my understanding so far, I understand that Bipolar 1 is characterized by more manic tendencies with depressive stints. Bipolar 2 is characterized by more depressive tendencies with hypomanic bursts. The difference between these types of bipolar and the one have been experiencing the spectrum of for the last 2 and a half years years for sure is that BP 1&2 symptoms of mania or depression last several days, weeks, or months. Cyclothymic bipolar experiences of mania and depression can last hours. I have been so confused by my own mind for so long, and like my emotional responses to things were never valid, true, natural, and in my manic times, not even human. I can go from being manic to then coming across something that doesn’t fit my manic ideology and having an extremely depressed, hopeless response, to, sometimes it feels like minutes later, come up with a new “solution” that helps me feel better and relieved of the shame i feel about my manic beliefs and world view that I go right back up there again, and the cycle repeats. Thinking myself in and out of mania it can feel like. The days when I am not crippled or at best, so far, consistently hindered, by the accompanying anxiety of not having much of a sense of emotional normalcy or “neutral” perspective on things are my best days. The days when I am hypomanic, and I decide to scrap everything I’ve been working toward and stop identifying with these things in the name of authenticity libration and creativity, are my favorite right now, and that is hard. because it’s not super helpful to be this way- so passionate and “righteous”- that i throw out the window regard for any sort of routine i have worked hard to establish myself in the name of having “figured out something better”. It’a hard to feel so happy I can’t listen to my rational self because I feel so intoxicated by the feeling of happiness motivation and productivity I so crave. I am not sure what is harder. Being so manic that I become psychotic, completely delusional to the point that I literally believe I am Satan or Lucifer herself and that everything around me is confirming this horrible burden yet somehow “karmic blessing” that I never asked for, the the times when my depression is so bad I sleep for 16 hours of the day, have no motivation to even fathom life becoming better ever, and prefer to dream than live waking, walking life. I have lived in ambivalence for years, and as a coping mechanism I convinced myself I thrived in this arena. I see myself in front of the pendulum that is my mind. Every day it swings and I try to control it. It doesn’t stop swinging. It swings so roughly and rapidly that it flys out of the bars holding it up often. It’s like there is a wind pushing it that is the devil itself tricking me by being “invisible” aka not existing. When it’s on the manic side, I try to grab it and in the process get picked up off the ground and everything around the pendulum gets knocked over in my efforts to hold the pendulum and keep it on the “happy” side. Like the things around me are my life that I’ve built and they will fall as easily as bowling pins. There is no weight to keep them stable when I hit them. The foundation is slippery. On the depressive side, I rush over angry that I wasn’t strong enough to hold things on the manic side and desperately try to push it back toward my “happy” side, but it is so so fucking heavy. and I don’t remember it being that heavy and I cannot believe I ever fathomed loving the pendulum I was clinging to sometimes minutes earlier. Shame guilt self loathing. compared to my visions of grandiosity, of the world revolving around me, of having a sense of self worth and confidence and the courage to claim it and say hey i deserve to feel good about myself. to god how dare I ever think that. I am the most selfish person on the planet the sheer vain and foolishness to believe everything even anything really could possible be about or for me. I like to believe that I am somewhere in the middle. I prefer the hypomanic side, and this is a detriment as well, because i can easily get too high. but the hypomanic can be so... fun. The bits of excessive energy, the slightly inflated sense of self worth, the belief that I can follow my dreams and the ability to use my mind to direct my thoughts toward ways to create strategy to get where I want and build stepping stones. The fear of fallibility. the anxiety that comes with ever feeling good about myself from the ptsd of that abusive relationship and that night especially. I shouldn’t plan, because they will be foiled, if not by me by a man most likely. nowhere is safe, especially not my own mind.  thats’s where I perceived love, and oh hasn’t god shown me how powerful that is. being so manic that I confuse the feeling with someone being my soulmate, twin flame, my destiny. telling that person and responding to the rejection emotionally by going psychotic and fully delusional. How afraid I have been to love, of my own love, being truly loved that i don’t feel the need to constantly prove myself, and certainly the idea of ever loving myself for being who I am. In 2016 when I got PTSD and no longer was the “high functioning” “mentally ill” girl I was before, many people treated me like I had fallen from grace and it was my fault. Thank fucking god for the people who have been here for me. So many people took this as an opportunity it felt to slander me. “ha, I knew she wasn’t so wonderful, look how crazy she is. She intentionally crashed her car. who does that?” a person who is so confused with their undiagnosed bipolar and the fact they are going through a manic episode as a response to intense trauma therapy does that. I was told my whole life I was wonderful for being pretty and intelligent, and what a special combination. what a bitch of a “gift”. The two things I was naturally both with and did not earn, my intelligence and my body and my face. What about my humor? What about my ability to be a good friend? What about how hard I work? I was told I should never dare praise myself for these things because I was already “lucky enough” to be praised for the things I never asked for but was given by either genetics or fate- god knows. I have so many feelings. and I’m so grateful to know that I am impulsive. Sure, I’m “spiritually gifted”, but not necessarily everything has to be a blaring call from god or synchronicity that I must act on immediately if I want to see the “right things”, see the world the “right way”, and “be where I am to be”. My perfectionism has nearly killed me. Seeking to be spiritually perfect because I sure has hell was not physically or mentally perfect, I mean, look at those guys and girls more “beautiful”, look at those men and women more “accomplished”.  And the brainwashed peers (not their fault) for idolizing me, giving me a sense of power I never fucking sought. Sure. Maybe you can make the argument that my “soul wanted this”, but suffering was never in the deal. and I have suffered. I have been so miserable I didn’t even know how to fathom the energy to put together a plan to kill myself. and thank god for that level of depression, because I didn’t die. because I’m supposed to be here and finally I feel I can make some peace with my singular identity as Me, Cassie. someone who is fun, funny, smart, relatable, bipolar, and so much more. I feel terrified of stigmatization even though I know it’s fucked up that it even exists. At least, I think, with the delusional disorder diagnosis, even though it was similar to a schizophrenic diagnosis just lacking frequency of symptoms, hardly anybody knew what it was. Oh I have a thought disorder and the propensity to think in delusional ways sometimes. NBD tho as u can see I’m perfectly fine :). So many more people know about bipolar. And many have strong opinions. The plus here is that there is more push to end stigmatization and more research into ways to cope manage and accept this diagnosis which I am so thankful for, and more easily accessible community. There was nothing on delusional disorder. It was so uncommon that when my psychiatrist in the rehab told my therapist what my diagnosis was she handed me the DSM to read about it because she didn’t know what it was. Yeah, I went to rehab. Last november (2017) I had a psychotic break, though it was not my first experience with delusion. I became manic as a response to feeling rejected by a guy and it escalated to me hardly sleeping, doing a lot of cocaine and other drugs, and having a full blown psychotic break. I experienced psychosis for 2 and a half months. The first 3 weeks of this stint it was all i could feel or think about. At first it was fun, until it wasn’t. I legitimately thought that there was a secret society the illuminati that had been made to “illuminate” me, that all art had been inspired by me, the energetic muse, lucifer “finally reincarnating” back to earth in the age of aquarius and dawn of immortality, and nobody around me was safe because I was all that was valued by this illuminati and the people who I loved most were in danger because while I loved them most and the illuminati knew this, the illuminati was angry that these people has hurt me, someone who was so impressionable, “born schizophrenic and able to hide it in order to learn about ‘normal society’”, and were responsible for the pain I felt which I  handled with negative coping mechanisms like addiction. So it was my job to create worldly and spiritual circumstances to keep them safe from disaster and accident or murder because they all felt so bad about hurting me subconsciously that they had less of a will to live, and this was a dangerous way to think, subconsciously of course. That I was everyone’s higher self in the 4d’s favorite 3d person other than their person, and that they all were working to send me messages from the consciously unaware around me. I was fully out too my mind. I legitimately thought I was lucifer, the most hated person on the planet but god’s favorite angel, ready to ask for entry back into heaven. And the only thing that was me was my fear response to my thoughts and the way I read into everything. no I can’t dare think this this can’t dare be true but somehow everything around me is telling me it is. Literally fuck this. I felt that I needed to be with loved ones constantly to “keep them safe” and I understandably was simultaneously scaring the shit out of my family due to my mental health, and exhausting them. my mom and I both agreed the best thing was for me to go into a treatment center, the rose house. A “dual-diagnosis” rehab that treated mental health and addiction. Cool, well when I got there apparently every single reason I had mental health problems was because I had used substances, not because I had struggled with my mental health since becoming conscious in light of my father passing when i was almost 9 and eventually found drugs as a coping mechanism. I felt shamed for my addiction to marijuana and 100% misunderstood and ostracized. out of the 15 women there all of the girls my age were in primarily for addiction and the only woman who was there for first mental health was an older woman named Kathleen, and she wasn’t an addict. The delusions never stopped I got better at hiding them. I was heavily medicated, afraid, fearing homelessness if i didn’t follow my family wishes to finish the 90 day program, and still pretty insane. After I got my diagnosis I left the treatment the night I got onto “transition” 67 days in and got my phone back, called a friend, and got brought up to fort collins where thank god emma was willing to let me stay with her. Miraculously, the delusions stopped within days. I was no longer so stressed and afraid that I couldn’t think for myself. I was bipolar this entire time. and my mania was “so irrational and unrecognizable” that they didn’t even know to recognize that this was my issue, it was more like I was “almost schizophrenic” without the visual hallucinations or auditory hallucinations. I wasn’t hearing other voices, but the voice in my head wanted me dead just as much as it told me I had a special reason to stay alive. I had a “sane reaction to insane circumstances”, and I temporally lost my mind. and I was petrified and anxiety ridden to the point I couldn’t function for months. I couldn’t make a single decision for weeks without going into full blown panic. I felt like everyone knew something that I didn’t and that they couldn’t tell me what I thought I knew, just give me hints, because otherwise they could be punished and also because they “believed in me”. I felt horribly betrayed while simultaneously fearing abandonment and isolation so much I felt I had developed Stockholm syndrome.  

When I experienced full blown psychosis that was so scary, my whole life went to shit. I lost my scholarships. I lost my house in boulder so my family could afford rehab. everything changed while I was in panic and when I “returned” to a “normal” state of mind I couldn’t recognize anything in my own life, even myself. When I was on medication I gained 70 pounds in 2 and a half months. I went into rehab 95 pounds. I was so manic for months, either full blown or hypo, that I would forget to eat. And I was 165 when I left. I hated my life and the months following I was more depressed than I can ever remembered. I relapsed in april. april to september was a mix of drugs and romance that I don’t really care for. When I got sober again, prompted by a really scary night of returning to psychotic thinking which I thankfully learned reality checking skills for, I feel like after 4 almost 5 years of using drugs I was finally ready to stop feeling so out of control, at least with my substance use. Thank god for today, no matter how afraid i am of my future. I am just as hopeful. I have for hate myself for the ways I have treated people in my manic episodes, my family in my depressive episodes, and how I can hardly even remember it. but I do not deserve to feel this hate. I was suffering. I was living in a world I hadn’t found the words to describe. and now I know. That I am beautiful. truly. inside and out. and I have a beautiful mind. I love fiercely. I believe I can make a contribution to help “save the world”. That those who are mentally ill should be hugged tightly when they need it, that schizophrenic people especially, imo, are horribly and unfairly understood and deserve to feel cherished and accepted just as much as anyone else, not to be feared and casted out of society. I believe every single person no matter what deserves to know they are not alone, no matter how lonely they feel, and so much more good. I am not the ugly or the bad. I am a motherfucking survivor. And thank god I didn’t die the day I re-enacted my dad’s car accident. Because I do have a purpose, and it is special. Most importantly, it’s just as special as everyone else’s special purpose. We are all in this together. And I’m excited to find a community of people who have fought similar battles. Who I can laugh about my “a trillion under the sun” delusions with and find humor in the ways my mind sought to preserve a will to live. and how other people have done the same. I am me, and today I became free of my own condemnation. I will struggle, but now I know there is community and resources that I don’t need to scour the earth to find. I have a home, and it is here, proud to be me. There is confetti everywhere around my room. Who knew that balloon I had been so afraid of letting go of was my own attempt to celebrate myself. I may feel late to my own party, but I’m here now. And there is no problem with not wanting my room to always look like a wild rave. I can always make more confetti, anyways :) 

To end with some gratitude, thank god for my true friends and my family. Emma has never left my side as my best friend, even in the distance of living in different parts of the state.  She is my best fucking friend. My other close best friends as well, who have not been afraid to hug me when I swore to them my entire body was covered in needles. My mom, who has done everything for me to make sure I know I am never truly alone, no matter how much my mind tries to tell me otherwise. For my little brother, for putting up with my craziness and still being willing to love me and laugh with me at the end of the day. Everyone in my life now is so beautiful it’s hard to deny that there may be some beauty in me, too, then, if they all tell me they like when I’m around. I’m grateful to know that my father, who i have idolized though gone now, was whole loved by the people around me. Whose described as “large than life” personality and substance abuse may have been a way to mask bipolar symptoms, was still a loved personality and loved person. This I know. This people have convinced me. and that I am of him just as much as I am of my mother. I’m grateful for the mental health professionals who have not given up on me, even when they required i be medicated in order to be able to be worked with, even when i was misdiagnosed, these people have helped to save my life too. so many times. And I am so grateful for my higher power, for prayer, the only thing that felt safe to think that sometimes I would just repeat the serenity prayer for hours for the sake of at least having a way to direct my anxious energy and not be in panic from my own delusional thoughts. God, who has always shown me that i will never be truly abandoned or given up on, who has helped me understand my higher power as something that is absolutely not punitive. My family and friends have been my lifeboats, and god, the universe, gaia, the god in every person, has shown me how to survive the storm. I am. I desire. I see. and i am free. 

This has been such a clusterfuck of emotions coming out that I have been wanting to feel for a long time and as messy as this is i’m grateful as well for the will to sit through this and write about these experiences, no matter the feelings they bring up. Because know I feel free to understand that the feelings will pass, sometimes more quickly than others, and that I can always survive. Even when that’s all I “manage” to do. Today. I stayed sober. I laughed. I put up the christmas tree with my mom and brother. I talked on the phone with my best friend. I told close friends what I learned about myself today. and I got diagnosed with bipolar. and I found a hope and interpretation for my mental narrative that I never felt was right for me because i don’t understand the words for what i was experiencing. I have learned today. And I have grown. and I am smiling as i finish typing this with tears rolling down my face, because I believe I can be happy. Sustainably happy. and sustainably grateful and hopeful when it’s hard to get to feeling the happiness. I believe and I survive. and I become<3 I am 21. I am brilliant. and I am bipolar. 

#bipolar #personal #off my chest #very personal #text

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Signe

Today’s awesome aro-spec creator is Signe, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @fluffyllamacorn!

Signe is a busy aroace writer, visual and textile artist! She writes for the Young Avengers, The Shadowhunter Chronicles/Shadowhunters, Hawkeye Comics and New X-Men: Academy fandoms in addition to developing diverse original fiction. You can find her growing collection of fanworks on AO3 under the name FluffyLlamacorn and her gorgeous art at @llamacorn-productions.

She also posts and reblogs fashion and accessories at @clothing-inspiration, and some of her cosplays can be seen throughout this post!

With us Signe talks about her passion for textile arts and how they allowed her to reclaim her femininity, the importance of non-romantic relationships in creative media, the difficulty of writing kissing scenes, and the need for works and discussions that celebrate our aromanticism. Her love of making, crafting and designing just shines through this post, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I just sort of … never cared? I’ve never wanted to get married and have children, and I never really had crushes growing up. I partly figured that was because I was surrounded by assholes who weren’t worth crushing on, but even when I graduated and moved to better schools where I actually had friends, I still didn’t care. I’ve always had a lot of confidence, so I’ve never bothered feeling insecure about not dating. I spent a while identifying as a straight person “who doesn’t care about romance” before eventually identifying with the ace and then aroace identifiers after having known them for a while, but there was never any big moments in the journey that really stand out.

Currently, I see my aromanticism as more important to my identity than my asexuality – being aro is what I do, while being ace is what my body does – but I also don’t really see them as separate. It’s hard to put into words because it requires cementing some stuff that I don’t mind leaving fluid, but while my lack of attraction is a package deal, it’s the lack of romantic attraction that defines my lifestyle the most. I know which I would choose if I had to, but I prefer not having to. That’s the only good thing about the ace discourse: It’s made me very protective of my ace identity again after having let somewhat go of it after I came to identify as aro.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’m the type of person who has a thousand different hobbies and therefore doesn’t have time to actually do any of them. The three I care most about are writing, drawing and textile work.

I’ve always told myself a lot of stories. Walking home from school, I would develop my stories, acting out scenes in my mind and developing huge universes. When I decided to share them with the world, it was initially as comics. I drew a lot, so I had developed the characters’ visual identities along with their personalities. While I’ve switched to planning my stories as books, drawing and writing is still pretty linked in my mind and I can’t imagine creating a character that I don’t know how to draw.

I got into textile work through cosplay, but have spread out into knitting, sewing, embroidery, cross stitch, weaving, crocheting, bobbin lace… Pretty much everything I can get my hands on, which is why I give it such a broad name. (This is part of my too many hobbies deal!) I love everything about textiles, from the look and feel of it, to how many different things can be created out of one simple material. Looking at clothes and knowing not just how it’s been sewn, but also how the fabric was made, is so cool. Creating things from scratch can make me feel like something akin to a god, recreating this corner of the universe as I see fit. A big part of my love for textile work is also reclaiming my femininity in a way that’s so different from the girly girl image I was taught to look down on as a girl. This is a way to enjoy being feminine that doesn’t force me to embrace things I don’t enjoy.

One thing I’ve realized recently is that I love the freedom to design my own work. My cosplays have moved further and further away from canon, from human versions to characters without a firm design or completely redesigning a canon design. On the other hand, I rarely feel the need to sew completely original things, and without the built in deadline of a con, I’m not very likely to get it done. I tend to rarely do the things I can just do whenever, but I’m getting better at that.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

It’s easy to spot in my stories. I have a lot of a-spec characters. The two main characters who were specifically designed to get most of my heart – Shizuka, the shy girl who didn’t know how to make friends, and Diana, the confident girl who’s never cared what anyone thinks of her – both ended up being a-spec even though I created them long before I started identifying as aroace. Shizuka is demi and I don’t know whether it’s sexually and/or romantically or if it even matters. Diana ended up being aroace because I was thinking about her future and my mind nope’d out of the possibility of her ever dating. I also made a conscious choice not to include much romance until I got interested in queer love stories and that sorta fell by the way side. Even then, I try to keep the love stories from being the only defining feature of the stories and the characters involved in them and never to devalue other types of relationship. You will never hear the term “just friends” in my work unless I’m trying to make a point about the person who uses it.

(This is not to pass a value judgement on anyone who uses that expression, but to help normalize language that doesn’t devalue platonic relationships.)

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

The recent anti-a-spec discourse has made me worried about posting about aromantic things too publicly, as aphobic comments and opinions seem way to commonly accepted these days.

Also, writing kissing scenes. What the hell. “And then their mouths squished together for a little while, which apparently made fireworks go off in their brains.” Like. What? Why does society think this is the epitome of every relationship?

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

Building communities about a lack of something is always hard. Once you’ve written the first story about being aro, it can be hard to write the next one, unless you consciously try to write about a different way of being aro-spec. It’s also a hard orientation to include quickly as being single isn’t as clear an indicator as having a romantic partner of the same gender. While I follow a bunch of aro-blogs and I have a bunch of a-spec friends, I wouldn’t say I’m strongly integrated in the a-spec communities on Tumblr.

Part of it is that most content I see is validations that every sort of aro is alright. I see a lot of content aimed at people who feel bad. That’s important, definitely, but I don’t need it. I’ve always known I’m amazing, both independently of and intersecting with my aromantic identity. I’m interested in work that celebrates being aro, work that doesn’t say I’ll be happy “even though” I’m aro, but “while” I’m aro, maybe even “because” I’m aro and don’t need to waste my life on amatonormativity. At the very least, work that spends more than a sentence on reassuring me. I see a lot of content that implies the basic state of an aro-spec person is sad, and I object to that idea.

I have also recently seen a whole lot of posts about QPRs and that’s really cool! I’m happy to see they’re becoming more and more accepted, at least in some circles. I’m less happy to see them become so prominent and so expected that they start feeling like a new shape of amatonormativity. It’s not that bad right now, but I definitely got allo aces saying “at least we can still feel love” vibes from some QPR posts earlier this year. Because here’s the thing: I’m aroace. I won the lottery. I don’t need to define myself by relationships to other people.* I refuse to take another label that sounds like I don’t want friends because of people pushing QPRs to be the new norm. Again, I’m super happy QPRs seem to have become more accepted, just please don’t present them as something every aro-spec person is interested in unless we specifically opt out.

There’s also the question of what kind of aro stories should be told. I mean, as many as possible, obviously, but that’s going to take a while. But the whole deal with being aro-spec is to have less interest in romance, so too many stories that focus on the lack of it become … counterproductive? I think the Jughead comics are pretty perfect in that regard. The main character is aroace and there are several stories that’s hella important to, but mainly it’s just about him going on adventures with his friends.

(P.S. I hate Riverdale. I’ve seen two different Jughead cosplays these last two weekends, but I didn’t dare fangirl, because what if they were based on the wrong version?)

Honestly, my main way of interacting with the a-spec community is befriending people at random and later finding out they’re a-spec. It’s … almost a superpower? It’s pretty great.

* No one needs to define themselves by relationships to other people, but I imagine it’s much easier when you don’t feel the desire to.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I don’t feel very connected to creative communities, but that’s more because I’m not very good at reaching out and promoting myself unless I know I have exactly what’s being asked for. I mainly stick to one or two people I can bounce ideas off of for my different projects before I post it and hope it finds an audience. It might also be because I’m juggling so many things and don’t spend enough time on the social connections needed to connect with a community.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Feedback, feedback, feedback! I love it! I live on it! Telling me you like X or Y part of my work can keep me floating for days and makes me so much more motivated to keep arting! So please, check out my art and leave a comment and/or share it with your friends/followers, if you like it.

(Also, if anyone has good tips on how to reach a larger audience, let me know.)

Can you share with us something about your current project?

I just finished my newest cosplay, which is Lup from The Adventure Zone in her lich form! I had a lot of fun designing her – the podcast doesn’t have very specific descriptions and the creators encourage fans to come up with their own designs – and got a lot of positive reactions at the con last weekend. I went for a very non-human design, including hiding my face, and added a bunch of fire details to reflect her evocation magic. I would have added more, but then my sewing machine broke in the last second, and I had to finish everything by hand, so I just aimed for the basic version. I’ll be updating her for the next con and will have much more fire with me then. I have yet to finish editing the pictures, but they should be up soon.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

My next project, one I’ve alluded to a couple of times in this profile already, in fact combines all three of my passions. I was considering cosplaying Pixie, one of the underrated students from X-Men, relegated to the background since their series ended, but I kept bumping up against the problem that her uniform was just too … generic to be fun. Besides, what’s the point of cosplaying the pink girl, and then not getting to work with pink fabric?

So I just redesigned her and gave her an individual outfit. And then I decided to redesign all of her teammates. I wanted them all to go together, but still keep an individual feeling, and I achieved that by giving them a rainbow theme when they’re together. Obviously, the next stop was figuring out a story for that to take place in, of which I’ve posted the first chapter. The idea is that they get out in their bright colors and visibly help everyday people with everyday problems to stop people from hating and fearing mutants and maybe actually making a positive change, unlike all of the superhero battles that don’t get anyone anywhere.

The project has three parts: Individual drawings for every member where I develop their outfits further, chapters of fic describing their adventures and a cosplay that I aim to finish for Genki in August, the next big con in Denmark.

#aro spec artist profiles #signe #fluffyllamacorn #llamacorn productions #text #undescribed #artwork and visual #fanfiction #original fiction and prose #cosplay #plush and fabric art #fanwork #fanart #long post #very long post #aroace #support our aro spec creatives if you can #link #ao3 #amatonormativity #amatonormativity in creativity #arospec community

[seaotterchannel]

Sea Otter Born in Kiritappu

I had an interview with Yoshihiro Kataoka, the chairman of the Etupirka Foundation which has conducted research on wild sea otters off Kiritappu, Hokkaido, Japan. He talks about the mom and pup found near Cape Kiritappu, which is the second recorded reproduction site of wild sea otter along Japan.

Cape Kiritappu is located in Hamanaka Town in eastern Hokkaido, facing the Pacific ocean. The major industry of the town is kelp harvesting and fishing. The coastal area along Hamanaka Town is one of the best environments for growing kelp and the harvest accounts for 10 % of national production. Sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus intermedius) harvested here is one of the finest ingredients in Japan. Nearby is the 3,100 ha (7,600 ac) Kiritappu Wetland, where approximately 280 bird species can be observed. Some species of marine mammals, including harbor seals, Steller sea lions and whales are hanging around the cape.

Yoshihiro Kataoka, the owner of a guesthouse Village Etupirka and the chairman of a non-profit organization Etupirka Foundation, has long devoted himself to research, conservation and education of local wildlife. Kataoka got into bird watching when he was young. At the age of  15, he visited Nemuro to watch Etupirka, Tufted puffin in English, for the first time. Since he moved to Kiritappu in 1985, Kataoka has made it life to observe local wildlife.

Tufted Puffin By Alan D. Wilson (naturespicsonline.com (Tufted Puffin)) [CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Etupirka, tufted puffin, is a medium-sized pelagic seabird in the auk family (Alcidae) found throughout the North Pacific Ocean. Though the species itself is reatively abundant in the whole range, it is listed as critically endangered in the Regeonal Red List by Ministry of the Environment due to mortality from by-catch and predation by rats. According to Kataoka, only 4 pairs are observed around Yururi Island off Nemuro today. The Etupirka Foundation offers classes in local elementary schools to raise awareness of seabirds by repairing decoys which are placed on the sea to attract Etupirka .

At first, observing seabirds was his personal interest, but later he developed the activity into forming a non-profit organization Etupirka Foundation. As one of the foundation staffs liked seals, they began to observe marine mammals as well. 

Sea Otters and Japan

Sea otters once thrived off Hokkaido, Japan. They are Asian sea otter (Enhydra lutris lutris) one of the three subspecies of the sea otter. In the feudal period,  Ainu, indigenous people in Hokkaido, used to get sea otter pelts from people in Kuril Islands and sold them to Matsumae Clan in Hokkaido who was authorized to deal with sea otter pelts by Edo Shogunate. In 1873, sea otter harvesting was started under management by Japanese government. in 1872 English explorer Henry James Snow hunted about 8,000 sea otters illegally , which almost eradicated the local species. The Japanese government limited sea otter harvesting in 1878 to protect the remaining animals. Sea otter harvest was banned after the International Fur Seal Treaty of 1911, followed by the  Sea Otters and Fur Seals Hunting Control Act enacted the next year, which is still valid today.

Sea Otters in Kiritappu

“When I moved here in 1985, I could see sea otters,” Kataoka says. But it was rare and only once a year or two.  It was 2014 when one or two sea otters seemed to recolonize in Kiritappu. Later in 2016, when he found one male and two females settled around the cape, he started research in hope of reproduction of the residents.

Kataoka explains that there are currently 4 animals live around Cape Kiritappu: one male and two females in the north of the cape including Kuro Rock and Hokake Rock which are 2~3 km (approx. 2 miles) off the cape. In the south of cape lives one male, who had not been observed since October last year and showed up again last month.  Sea otters prey on sea urchins, clams, snails and crabs around the cape.

One male and two females off the north cape (left) / One male off south cape (right) Photo courtesy Yoshihiro Kataoka 

The second recorded reproduction site in Japan

Reproduction of wild sea otters are observed around Yururi Island and Moyururi Island off Nemuro City after 2014, and up to 8 animals have been counted in the area. However, very little about the sea otter ecology in the area is known since very few research has been conducted there. Kataoka says that Kiritappu is the second recorded reproduction site of wild sea otters after the decimation during the maritime fur trade. 

The mom (left) grooming with her pup afloat (right). Photo courtesy Yoshihiro Kataoka

It was May 15, 2018 when Kataoka found the mom and pup. He was observing otters hanging out  around Kuro Rock off the north Capr Kiritappu with a telescope.  “I saw an otter floating near Kuro Rock about 2.5km (1.5 mile) off of the cape,” Kataoka says, “I saw something like a log floating beside the otter, which was female, and I wondered why she stayed close to the log-like thing. And then, it was proved to be a pup because she held it up.” The female was observed alone close to the cape on May 11, so he believes that the pup was born between May 11 and 15. On May 18, he chartered a boat and observed the pair near Kuro Rock. Later on June 2, he saw the mom and pup visited the Cape Kiritappu and the mom foraging with her pup afloat.

Unlike other marine mammals, it takes for a pup at least 6 months to be weaned because it has to learn surviving skills from mom such as grooming and finding food. Sea otters have high metabolism and need to eat 25% of body weight just to survive  because they don’t have a blabber to keep their body warm in the frigid water. When nursing a pup, a sea otter mom needs twice as much energy as usual. Sea otter mom is very vulnerable to stress, which can cause her serious health problem and in worst cases, she becomes emaciated to death. If you have a chance to observe sea otters in the wild, don’t give them extra stress. Keep a good distance (at least 45m / 50 yards) and don’t make loud noises. They may be startled, which forces them waste precious energy. 

Sea Otters and Local People

As the sea urchin harvested in Hamanaka City is believed to be one of the best delicacies, some are concerned about the conflict between otters and local fisheries as the species recover. Kataoka has had a talk with the local government and fisheries about sea otters. The local fishery is growing urchin and releasing young urchins in the area where otters sometimes show up. According to Kataoka, there is no negative perspective about sea otters among local fisheries as there is no noticeable damage to sea urchin harvest for now. “One of my friend fishers tell me that he is happy for me for [recover of wild sea otter],” Kataoka says with joy, “Conflicts may occur as the number of the animals increase, but things seem to be fine for now.”

Kataoka is the chairman of the Etupirka Foundation, which is working in research, conservation and education of local seabirds and marine mammals with a support by Nature Conservation Fund for last 5 years. Since 2017 they receive fund for research of wild sea otters as a 3 year project. The Etupirka Fund is planning a workshop about wild sea otters for the town and local fisheries this year as well as making poster presentation about the species for the local people and tourists in the visitor center. “When all the research is done next year, the last year of the project, we plan to make a booklet about sea otters and distribute it to all the local children and fishers, “ Kataoka says.

The Etupirka Fundation has worked to raise awareness about Etupirka (tufted puffin) and other seabirds among local elementary school children by repairing decoys of Etupirka for a long time. They begin to include story about sea otters in the class this year. “As you may expect, sea otters are much more popular among children than birds,” Kataoka loughs, “so, I believe that the booklet will help local children and fishermen to understand more about the species. Otherwise people may be going to regard them just as pests in the sea.”

Sea otter hauling out on the rock near Cape Kiritappu. Photo courtesy Yoshihiro Kataoka.

#sea otter #ラッコ

[harrybushelldesignblog]

DES240 Assignment 2 (unfinished)

Review of Work in Progress

Week 5 (first week of assignment): After studio 5, I began to sketch some very basic ideas down, but mostly focused on researching my specific statistic further. Along with this, I brainstormed ideas for what my GIF could be based on, with my original concept focusing on exercise. I chose to use food as characters in my GIF to avoid potential upset. 

Week 6 (second week of assignment): After discussion about the sensitivity present in my statistic, I decided that the best approach for this GIF going forward was to ensure that respect was kept, and that it should be approached in a manner that will not cause any upset or controversy. With this, I began to research the causes of my statistic in order to approach potential GIF ideas from a different perspective. After researching the causes, I found that unhealthy food and it being a cheap and easy way to feed yourself and your family was the most common cause. With this, I began to develop a different perspective on my GIF, removing the idea of using exercise as the base and instead focusing on food shopping. I created storyboards that show a few ideas, mostly centering around unhealthy food being chosen over healthy food. 

Week 7 (third week of assignment): This week I created my original pixel sprites for my GIF, which through feedback from the class in Discord, I edited accordingly and saved for use on my GIF. Through discussion with Jacky, we decided that an obvious barrier or divide between the cheap unhealthy food and expensive healthy food should be incorporated into my GIF to represent the divide between the two. With this, I created a few more storyboards, which featured my created sprites and a divide between the food groups. I did this in a few different ways, and after further discussion, I decided that using different leveled shelves was the best way to go about incorporating an obvious divide. 

Week 8: After discussion with Caleb in our 8th studio, I designed a few more pixel characters, attempted to add depth to my background, experimented with different ways of ensuring the GIF looped, and wrote my guest lecture reflections. Studio 8 was immensely helpful thanks to the feedback from Caleb, and I felt that this was my most productive week. Once I had formed all of my assets, I began properly attempting to code my GIF. I found this quite difficult, but got to a point where I had the fast food randomly generated on the bottom shelf each time, and had everything positioned correctly on the canvas. 

Week 9 prior to studio (final week): Not much work was done this week due to personal problems. However I was able to get some writing done and format my blog post. 

Reflections on Guest lectures

Guest 1 - Blockchain | Cryptocurrency | NFT’s by Fabio Morreale

Prior to Fabio's lecture, I had never heard of NFT’s or blockchains, and had very basic and limited knowledge on Cryptocurrencies. The concept and reality of making money solely through code and numbers, along with the fact that NFT’s are online artwork that sell for thousands of dollars is quite mind blowing, and I still don’t quite see the point in purchasing an NFT, although it seems to follow the same motivation as purchasing physical art. Along with this, Cryptocurrency doesn’t make much sense to me either, as although Fabio mentioned it, I still don’t understand how a currency can be created and suddenly grow in value as it is purchased by more and more people. The fact that popular crypto like Bitcoin is so highly valued at the moment confuses me, as I don’t really understand why there is a demand for it in the first place. 

Fabio's proposal of a decentralized financial system is interesting. Essentially removing the middle man (banks in this instance) is a valid idea, and would allow money to flow without a dependence on corporations, along with removing the dependence on corporations for storing data etc. However I believe that this would negatively affect both my own scale and on a global scale. Negating powerful and proven corporations opens up the market and peoples data to everyone, or at least to people capable enough to figure out how to access it, and although this is happening now, I have a much greater faith in powerful corporations to protect my data than I do in protecting my data myself. Furthermore, removing these corporations would be detrimental for the short term economy, as jobs would disappear and money plus data for people who aren't really equipped to defend themselves would essentially be easy meat for more capable hackers. I believe that there is a place for a financial system and that these corporations are important for both myself and the world.

Guest 2 - Data, ML & Ethics By Daniel Wilson

Daniels' lecture on ethics was really interesting and very eye-opening. The presence of bias in almost every aspect of day to day life, shown by the splayed data presented by Daniel was pretty surprising, and in some ways disappointing. Daniel mentioned a confusing divide in ethical systems, pointing out that companies must provide information that they are using a certain system but also have systems that must check that this system is being used correctly. He also talked about misinterpretation due to accidental system malfunction, which, despite being created on accident, can still form inappropriate consequences despite the bias not being recognized by the creator. For example, someone creating a survey could be unaware of the multiple genders considered today, and could create something for only male and female, due to the creators outdated knowledge. Thus creating accidental bias. This idea is very important in terms of the future of ethical systems, as being aware of all biases will hopefully mitigate accidental unethical consequences in the future. Coming to this point will be quite difficult, as society continues to grow and incorporate, new biases will spring to life. Despite this, efforts to negate as many biases as possible is the best way to stay ethical now and in the future.

  Research Summary 

- Why does this statistic exist in its current state in 2021?

My statistic - 1 out of 3 adult people in NZ are obese exists due to multiple reasons. However, through my research, I found that commonly, unhealthy eating habits, and the ease of access to unhealthy foods like fast food is too easy and cheap, thus leading to more vulnerable groups struggling with obesity, as healthy eating is too expensive and seemingly not integrated into day to day life. The ease of access to unhealthy food is the main catalyst for the existence of my statistic in its current state in 2021. 

A lot of the blame is placed on cheap fast / unhealthy food, and in the discussion of obesity in children and young adults, a lot of the blame is on the advertising for unhealthy food, as it is too appealing and false. There’s an appetite to clamp down on unhealthy food marketed to kids. Cartoon-covered packaging for sugary cereals, Disney-branded biscuits with collectible magnets, TV ads for unhealthy products at peak viewing times for children. Not to mention, junk food marketing online and fast-food joints sponsoring sports teams. It’s almost impossible to avoid unhealthy food being peddled to teens and kids. Young adults and children are a lucrative market for food companies. As they not only influence what their parents buy (pester power), marketers also bank on shoppers sticking to buying habits they acquired when they were young, hence the progression into unhealthy adult diets.

- What are the interconnected and contributing factors behind this statistic?

The contributing factors behind this statistic is the exponential growth of cheap, processed food, and it becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. As time has passed, processed food has become cheaper to manufacture and deliver around the world, resulting in a massive contribution towards obesity within the general public. This is the most prominent contributing factor behind why 1 in 3 adult New Zealanders are obese.  

- How has this statistic evolved through history?

The NZ Ministry of Health stated that “the overall prevalence has remained relatively stable since 2012/13, however there was an increase between 2011/12 and 2019/20 for adults aged 45–54 years and 55–64 years.” and according to a report written by the NZ Ministry of Health between 1977 and 2003, obesity increased by around 6% from 1989 to 1997 over all adult ages. Both of these statistics provide relevant evidence that the obesity rates in New Zealand are exponentially increasing through history, evolving into more and more of a threat to New Zealanders.   

- What is the future prospect of this statistic? 

If nothing is changed in regards to NZ’s struggle with obesity, then the statistic will continue to grow, as the prospected future formulated from the data collected from the past shows a continual exponential increase in obesity rates amongst NZ adults. An increase in obesity for adults would most likely work perpendicularly with obesity rates of children, as both have been exponentially increasing to this date.    

Copy of code so far (not properly working, however the layout is there)

int numPoints = 10;

int[] posX;

int[] posY;

int xValue = 0;

PImage shelveBackground;

PImage burger;

PImage cookie;

PImage lollipop;

PImage cart;

PImage[] displayImage;

int timer = 0;

int counter = 0;

void setup() {

  size(1000, 1000);

  shelveBackground = loadImage("DES240Assets/background3.png");

  burger = loadImage("DES240Assets/burgerboy1.png");

  cookie = loadImage("DES240Assets/cookieboy1.png");

  lollipop = loadImage("DES240Assets/lollipopboy1.png");

  cart = loadImage("DES240Assets/bigcart.png");

  posX = new int [numPoints];

  posY = new int [numPoints];

  displayImage = new PImage[numPoints];

  for (int i = 0; i <numPoints; i++) {

    posX[i] = int(random(100,width-300));

    posY[i] = (690);

    displayImage[i] = burger;

          }

  for (int i = 3; i <numPoints; i++) {

    posX[i] = int(random(100,width-300));

    posY[i] = (670);

    displayImage[i] = cookie;

      }

  for (int i = 6; i <numPoints; i++) {

    posX[i] = int(random(100,width-300));

    posY[i] = (620);

    displayImage[i] = lollipop;

      }

  for (int i = 9; i <numPoints; i++) {

    posX[i] = (-50);

    posY[i] = (620);

    xValue= 0;

    displayImage[i] = cart;

xValue++;

  }

    }

void draw() {

  image(shelveBackground,-550,-250);

  for ( int i = 0; i < numPoints; i++) {

    displayImage[i].resize(350, 0);

    image(displayImage[i], posX[i], posY[i]);

  }

}

Statement of Intent (for how I wanted the finished GIF to be)

My GIF represents the statistic 1 in 3 NZ adults are obese in an empathetic and lighthearted manner. Although the issue is serious, I thought the best way to avoid any accidental distress or disrespect was to keep the GIF focused on one of the main causes of the statistic, and to keep it brightly coloured and playfully animated to maintain respect and allow the GIFs message to be seen without causing controversy. With this in mind, I used toy-like pixelated food character models to represent the GIF. From the research I conducted on my project, I found that cheap unhealthy food and how easy it is to buy, cook, and eat is the most commonly blamed cause of obesity in NZ. With this, I designed my pixel sprites for the statistic, with 2 ‘healthy’ foods being an apple and carrot, and 3 ‘unhealthy’ foods being a lollipop, burger, and cookie. This was done so that the 1 in 3 ratio was shown in the GIF, with each shelf representing part of the statistic. The ‘unhealthy’ food was placed on the bottom shelf to emulate how easy it is to access it, and a ‘SALE!’ text is imprinted on the shelf to represent the lesser price of it. The ‘healthy’ foods are placed on higher shelves to represent the opinion that they are harder to access, whether it's financially or due to a lack of nutrition knowledge. The GIF shows a shopping cart moving across the screen from left to right, and as it goes, unhealthy food is placed in the cart, while healthy food is left on the shelves. This is to represent the appeal of unhealthy food to a shopper, and to represent what is proposed by my research. The GIF loops by a robotic arm restocking the shelves once the shopping cart reaches the end of the screen, as both a way to show supply and demand of unhealthy food, and also to ensure the GIF loops from start to finish. 

Draft of how the GIF would look

References 

RNZ. (2019, October 13). The true cost of a disordered food system: a panel discussion. https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/otago-university-panel-discussions/story/2018716711/the-true-cost-of-a-disordered-food-system-a-panel-discussion

Obesity Prevention Strategies. (2016, April 12). Obesity Prevention Source. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-prevention/#:%7E:text=Choosing%20healthier%20foods%20(whole%20grains,%2C%20and%20other%20%E2%80%9Csit%20time%E2%80%9D

Obesity statistics. (2020). Ministry of Health NZ. https://www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/health-statistics-and-data-sets/obesity-statistics

NZ Ministry of Health. (2004). Tracking the Obesity Epidemic: New Zealand 1977–2003 (No. 24). https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/trackingtheobesityepidemic.pdf