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sirfrogsworth · 19 hours

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Peter McKinnon did a video with a photographer named Garrett King. And he just went on a very long rant about lazy photographers who use Photoshop and "fixing it in post."

He continues... "You can't do that in film. You can't just make a bad decision and say "Oh, I'll fix it in post." (Not true. There was plenty of editing in dark rooms in the past. And now you can scan a film photo and literally manipulate it like a digital photo.) Fix it in post drives me nuts. That statement is so played out. It drives me nuts that people say that. Cuz dude, I don't work that way."

He also says that choosing film is the "hard path" and keeps talking about how lazy photographers who photoshop are.

I love film photography. I have an old Minolta that my mom gave me that I hope to restore and use someday.

But film photographers drive *me* nuts sometimes.

IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!

BOTH THINGS ARE COOL!

This idea that their way of making art is more valid or authentic than my way of making art is just a continuation of an old school mentality that really needs to die. There are still some photographers who will bully people because they use autofocus or aperture priority mode.

I actually think learning to be really good at Photoshop is much more challenging than learning to be good at photography. Sure, there are fields like photographic microscopy and product photography that require years to master, but I've been learning Photoshop for 20 years and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of what is possible.

I have seen people with near 0 experience take an amazing picture.

I have seen people who barely know how their camera works take consistently good photos. It's the "using only power chords" version of photography.

But I have never seen someone with 0 experience photoshop something artistically impressive.

When people say "that looks Photoshopped" as if that is an insult, it really breaks my heart. Photoshop was a huge reason for my success. My ability to lay in bed and make funny things was essential to building my blog.

My post on Karl Taylor's Clinque photoshoot had so many comments saying his work "looked photoshopped" and it was a little frustrating.

Firstly because he actually sculpts with light and isn't actually very good at Photoshop. When he takes a picture, it pretty much looks like that from the start. The rest is just minor compositing work and blemish removal.

And secondly, because that kind of product photography predates Photoshop. Karl was doing this when Photoshop was just a baby.

In fact, still life photography was inspired by Dutch paintings of fruit and shit.

They were all, "I cannot stand sitting with another yappy model for days on end. I'm sick of people. I'm just going to paint *stuff* but with really amazing lighting."

But it is also frustrating because there is this mentality that digital tools are lesser. As if digital artists just press a few buttons and cheat-code their way into good images.

It's the same mentality people have about CGI. CG artists are the modern day sculpturists. They do the same thing as Michaelangelo or Rodin, just with different tools and in a different medium. Oh, but they also animate their sculptures in thousands of frames in multiple dynamic lighting environments all while maintaining photorealism.

To me, Thanos is just as artistically impressive as the statue of David or The Thinker.

Blair Bunting is a very talented photographer who mixes incredible photographic technique and lighting with his amazing photo manipulation skills.

And while these photos may not be as "authentic" as that film photographer's picture of a dude sitting on a truck...

I can assure you no laziness was involved in Blair's process.

Also, I really didn't want to bring up disability. But it is really difficult for me to do the physical process of photography. Sometimes I do not have the energy to get the perfect "in camera" exposure. Sometimes I won't even check my settings and I will snap a picture knowing that I can make it cool with editing. I just look at the histogram, make sure the data I need is there, and do the rest on my computer.

During my adventure to photograph a bridge in Alton, I was only able to take 6 photos. Usually I will take hundreds in a session. My fatigue got the better of me and I nearly had to go to the hospital after walking up a hill. (I was having a bad day. I'm better now.) I didn't get the photos I wanted to get. And on the way down that hill, as I was out of breath, I pulled out my phone and tried to snap a pic of something cool I saw in front of me. The phone had been set 2 stops underexposed from a previous shot and so the picture was pretty much all in shadow. And because I was walking super slow, I had just missed the sun over the horizon.

But it's a RAW file. And I knew I could probably do something with it. I could "fix it in post." Not because I was being lazy. Mostly because I was trying not to hyperventilate. Apparently, my body can't handle slight inclines any longer.

And this is what I came up with.

I'm not saying this is an amazing photo. And it would have been really cool if I hadn't missed the sun. But this is what my eyes saw as I came down the hill and I was able to recreate that with digital tools.

I think that is pretty cool.

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ranilla-bean · 8 months

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snapshot meme

@faux-fires has just tagged me and i am moving at the speed of lecturer with mail app on their phone. YOU'RE STILL NOT GETTING AWAY WITH NOT READING GOLDEN STAGE [insert barrage of eyes emojis]

favourite colour: subject to change and tbf i enjoy all colours. my "favourites" tend to be what i enjoy wearing atm, which in this case is like a walnutty brown

last song: joji's wanted u (from a playlist). we're seeing him live in november i'm so hyped!!!

currently reading: ummmmmmmm the bhagavad gita. for zukki fic research purposes (but also like, sanskrit literature and concepts are kinda fascinating me atm? the au is set in a world that's very much like an indianising southeast asia and i want to represent those cultures meaningfully...)

last movie: barbie movie! i really enjoyed it and found it unexpectedly thoughtful though i resonate with some of the critique that it should've been more about the gals than like. patriarchy

sweet/spicy/savoury: spicy/savoury. i put chulola in my mushroom pasta

currently working on: aforementioned zukki fic, which is in need of an irreverent working title. was sitting on a "zuko gets dped" idea for a while but couldn't figure out how to make it work in a way that was interesting to me in canon-verse. toyed around with the idea of wuxia, then "oh wuxia is historical right, how do i historicise atla world" and then landed on the khmer empire as the inspo. so yeah

tagging: @nopantsbroccoli @catilinas @summerstormsandnoodles @chiptrillino @adriancatrin @lizardlicks @owlask

#also tbh i enjoy getting out of the roman history rut?#my mphil awakened this interest in ancient histories outside the west #the philosophies at the foundation of hinduism and buddhism are so influential to SO many cultures in east southeast and south asia #but i've barely even scratched the surface in all my MANY years of schooling #it just seems remiss to not delve into them #and there's a great beauty to learning about these concepts. philosophies of how people have approached & dealt with life over 1000s of yrs

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in-sufficientdata · 8 months

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At the source, the thread continues: This does not mean all your medical care is then covered by insurance. Nope, not even close. Most doctors visits have a co-pay, meaning you pay this to even be seen. It's anywhere from $20 to $200 depending on emergencies. Insurance also requires you to pay a deductible before they kick in. So let's say your deductible is $1000. That means for each visit, you owe $1000 before they start covering. But they "negotiate" with hospitals, so an MRI out of pocket might cost $5000, but through insurance only costs $400, so you pay $400.

After awhile, there is a "max out of pocket" which means you pay $20,000 out of pocket for all these little visits and then insurance will cover anything further 100% for the year.

Oh, but insurance doesn't cover everything. They agree to certain exclusions... like maybe they don't cover an ambulance ride or only partially cover major dental. Oh and they typically don't cover regular dental or eye care at all (that's a different insurance you buy).

And the insurance only negotiates with certain doctors and clinics... so if you don't use them they only cover your care 50% instead of 80% and the deductibles are higher.

But, if you get hospitalized, the insurance might cover the facility and nurses, but the doctors can be out of network, so you have to pay more without any say in the matter. And medical facilties, even ERs, can just choose not to take any insurance. It isn't a requirement they take it.

Now for prescriptions and treatments. So, let's say you do everything right. You use all in-network doctors and facilities, pay your money, so you should be good?

Nope.

Insurance companies can step in and dictate your care.

So let's say you bang up your knee and need an MRI plus surgery. The doctor agrees and you agree, but the insurance company says "No, you need physical therapy first." So in order to have the MRI plus surgery covered, you now need to go through months of physical therapy before it will be approved. You could always just pay outside of insurance, but now you are paying $12k of your money instead of $3k and months of pain.

There are plenty of other caveats too that I didn't even cover.

So basically, you can have medical insurance, get into a major accident, and still go bankrupt because I don't know many people with $40k just lying around.

But politicians and insurance lobbyists keep telling us we should be grateful to only have to pay that $40k instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars!

And remember, even if you are perfectly healthy and need just a checkup, you are paying $10,400 every year anyway.

Medical insurance in the US is a billion dollar profit industry. It is also complete and utter garbage.

Oh and keep in mind.... NONE of this is taught in schools or anywhere. This is knowledge I've gained completely on my own. And this barely scratches the surface of how complicated this system is.

You think the majority of Americans understand how insurance works?

I like how there isn't any arguing in this giant thread. Just people coming together with angry and sad resignations that the US health insurance system is a giant trash fire.

Lots of people have asked why people living in the US just accept this system. It's pretty easy: classism, racism, ableism, and sexism.

You see, everyone pays the same for insurance at a company. You think the CEO making billions is going to experience that $400 per pay period the same as the junior employee making $30k per year?

On top of that, the Black and other minority communities are more likely to have claims denied or receive lesser care because insurance companies won't pay as much for their care. If they can even get insurance coverage to begin with (a whole other issue).

Disabled folk also receive lesser care. If you are disabled after an injury, insurance companies can even dictate what type of prosthetic you receive or at home care that's available (hint, practically nothing).

Women are also affected by insurance claim discrimination, but not as much as disabled or minority folk. If you are Trans, more and more states are blocking to even cover the care you need. This is all justified because of the risk you will need future care. If it is highly likely you are in a risk category to either 1) not be able to pay the adjusted bills or 2) need further/lifelong care, then you get treated as such with higher bills, different care, and/or denied claims.

So the current system benefits rich white men the most. And we all know how much most of them like to admit their privilege and work to change these systematic issues against a billion dollar industry.

#Infosec_Taylor@twitter #twitter #american medical system #murica #america #health care #insurance #us politics #long post

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ultimatefartwizard · 1 month

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Agonies of a Late Homestuck Reader Pt.1

(Note: Alot of these entries coming up will be posted later than the initial reading and writing, but the writing and replies to any comments are live) -If anyone knows Hussie's current pronouns lmk I hear they are clowngender I think? Just wanting to be sure so I'm not using the wrong set) Okay so first part, only got to where John is starting sBurb before I put the thing down for other activities Starting from the top!

Very beginning, was a little perplexed yet amused with the strange inclusion of a lot of computer programming and data structure lingo, and that the kids somehow have personal hammer-space like data slots for their personal belongings in the real world. I'm just barely learning coding languages myself so it's both as lost on me as John and I also simultaneously understand what nonsense they are blabbing about with the sylladex.

There's quite a good amount of unexpected flowery language and vocabulary, I'm assuming its part of Hussie's strange weird perplexities to vomit out a ton of vocabulary words a mere 10 year old won't know (at least at first), shit I didn't even know half the words and I'm a grown ass man, so I guess this will ALSO be a learning experience for fancy word vomit too lmao

AND HUSSIE DROPPED THIS BOMB?

excuse me how is it legal for this utter freak-clown of a person to be this good at writing some insane poetry drop like this? No wonder why people around me during my middle school years were frothing over this work this fool is shockingly insane with the effort and lack there-of in this webcomic, if its really even labeled as such? This whole thing even has its own music score and animations and it's baffling especially for 2009, my experiences with back then was a huge lack of that unless it was like youtube comic readings with royalty free music. Then again I was a weird kid and only stuck to a very small amount of media back then so my worldview is rather small, beyond the little info I got about Homestuck from fanworks during its golden era.

Of course, a work written by the Huss themself is not without its flaws already, and I already knew about the issues surrounding them so I wasn't necessarily surprised to find the weird two race related comments (what the hell man?) early on and casual throw of the r slur (which, with it being 2009, the R slur hadn't net fully been recognized as a slur so had to remind myself when seeing it, not an excuse at all for Hussie adding it but not surprised).

Genuinely what the hell does anything in the second image mean???? Maybe i'm not uber galaxy brained enough to understand the nonsense lipflapping Hussie is going on about with the McConaughey Wall, I don't even know who the FUCK this guy is.

Still holding out since this is really early on and not even SCRATCHING the surface of this insane piece of media that's got more words than the damn Bible, though with high doubts due to things I've heard and the mere existence of... eugh... Homestuck 2. But I'll still try to read Homestuck in its entirety and hoping at least Hussie will pipe down and not make as many weird ass things like this as the comic progresses.

Anyways I got to where Johnny is blabbing to TT and they are destroying the bathroom, seems this game SBurb affects reality? Interesting yet strange.

Till next time folks, Wizard will blab again about stupid media he missed out on during their golden years!

#ultimatefartwizard #wizardyaps #homestuck #agonies of a late homestuck reader #john egbert #homestuck related

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mariaurore · 3 months

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(OOC) Because I still have interests in making Mari her restaurant, I've been looking into what goes into it a bit.

When I took Hitsu, Mari & Takashi to Chez Llama a couple nights ago, I took several screenshots for later as well as taking some mental notes.

Here's the first and second floor inside. I have it set to walls are half up- so when I show screenshots later in this post with walls fully up, it's going to look quite different.

Here- it looks rather okay and normal. The second floor is nothing more than a bathroom and a hallway/railing overseeing the first floor. And then it leads out to this:

This is also very simple, but there's nothing here.

I suppose you can add to it, if you wish. But as I placed my Chez Llama on a snowy plot- that remains snowy throughout the year, that would not be ideal.

Here are two more shots with the walls completely up. See how it looks so much more different? How it looks almost claustrophobic?

But after reading a thread on Reddit I'm noticing many things;

There's only tables for 12 people. There's 1 chef station. There's 2 ovens. There's 1 check-in station. There's 3 bars- 1 large, 2 small. There's a lot of seating area and I have no idea what all of that is for. I guess that's something I need to look into.

The bathroom upstairs, is designated male/female and is two stalls each.

The reason I feel it's claustrophobic is probably to reduce serving time. The closer the chef station is to the tables, the faster the dishes arrive to the table.

These are just some of the things I wanted to point out, that for myself I feel are more important and should get priority when building a restaurant in the Sims 4.

For example- in that thread, having tables for 50 customers and only having 1 or 2 chef's stations would cause a long waiting period to receive food to your table. Or having the chef stations be way in the back, behind clutter and obstacles. Or both.

I'm not sure yet how you set up hiring staff, how many of ___ staff you can hire, what hours and days of operation, putting together a menu, etc. That's more research I need to do 😅

I'll get there eventually. This is a work in progress and I want to do it right.

Edit: After doing a bit more research I learned you can have up to 30 options in each menu section; Drinks, Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert.

You can also pick what outfits the staff wears, as well as the dress code to your restaurant.

You start out only able to hire 1 of each staff: Host, Waiter, Chef. But that will increase to 2 Chefs and 3 Waiters. I believe that increases even further with Perk Points, to an additional +1 Chef, and +2 Waiters.

Speaking of Perk Points, apparently these things can purchase a lot benefits, so you need to be involved with your restaurant a lot to earn them.

For me, I feel this is where my "Hours of Operation" come in. I could "go to work" when Hitsu is at work and Takashi is at school, and "close up" when Takashi gets home from school.

Things such as "Welcome" customers in to your restaurant will earn you Perk Points. There's a whole wheel for it when you click on a table. Setting a "Recommended Dish" is also one.

There's no real "Set Hours" option, just an Open/Close button.

This is barely scratching the surface, there's so much more and if you're interested like I am it's probably a good idea to go hunt down a Youtube video or something like I did. But I wanted to put some of it here in this post, lol.

I think the rest I'll try to figure out on my own as I go. (Don't be surprised if you see some in future posts! 😄🙃)

#Chez Llama

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leefi · 2 years

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14 and 15 for ask game?

14.

if i'm talking to lesbians whose only lesbian media consumption in the past six months has been genshin impact fic: look! mayakuro! *slaps them with the dip screencap*

jokes aside i do earnestly try to recommend this media to everyone, even the cishet men in my life. reasons I will touch on below (particularly the part about hope, and happy endings)

15.

It's a story about hope. I got into RS in my second to last semester of uni during a global pandemic while my country was on fire (sometimes literally). So by all means, to have a story that ended happily was a much needed recourse.

It's the best narrative I've consumed about romantic love between women to date. More importantly I love that it touches on the multifaceted aspect that often comes with that love - the awe and envy and anger that comes from pursuing somebody you can never be, that feeling of almost wanting to swallow her whole - but to consume her would mean that you'd lose her.

(There's the behemoth that is the cultural context behind Takarazuka as well, but I don't know enough about it to speak to it faithfully. Learning about it through revstar has been really cool).

What I love about Revue Starlight is that it is a love letter to the stories that captivate us. It allows us to embrace them in a way that is selfish and greedy and sometimes incredibly, incredibly self destructive. It was the shared love of a story that kept those two girls bound together for ten years and it was the love for that same story that allowed them to finally let it depart when the time came. It's a love letter to love. It's a romance with a happy (and then bittersweet - but ultimately hopeful) ending (more of a bookend?). It's dramatic and ridiculous and so rife with teen theatre kid bullshit but at the end of the day that's all just passion. I keep coming back to this, but it's a story with a happy ending, and even when it isn't totally happy, it reaches out its hand to you and says "it's okay". My favorite books as a child were those that had happy and selfish endings and as I grew and got to the assigned reading we got in our classes at school I found myself quickly falling out of love with stories, because so many of them - and so much of the media I consumed, was so dark, dark, dark, all the time (and to be clear because nobody ever assumes nuance on the internet - dark stories with bad or inconclusive endings are not bad. in fact they are necessary, and sometimes even great. i'm speaking more to an overexposure to them as a child and teenager. i'm not equating this to, say, 'fix it fics' where everyone lives and is happy!!1). I would get so attached to what I consumed that it would affect my mood as well. To make a long story short when I see Karen selfishly demand that she and the people she loves get their happy ending, it makes me very happy in turn.

This barely scratches the surface of what I like about it (because obviously, I like it a lot), but it's what came to mind at the moment.

Thank you for asking!

#ask game #obvious disclaimer that this was written at 1 am without proofreading so apologies if it's <3

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endreal · 3 years

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And let's not pretend like I'm the hero of my own story either! Like, high school (especially the end of high school) and the rest of my teens and into the first years of my 20s I was was dealing with so much shit from accelerating academic pressure to SA survival that I couldn't talk about to multiple crises of faith as well as personal identity, hallucinations, closets within closest that I didn't even know were closets, disordered eating and all sorts of other unpleasant stuff, but in so many ways I was a completely different person back then to who I am today. A lot of the more damning stuff I'm sure you'd have to look to others for evidence of because most of that span of years is a murky blue to me, punctuated by occasional visuals of oak trees and brick buildings. But one thing I do, unfortunately, remember is that I was insufferable.

Required to be in control of my own life for the first time without any clue of how to really do it, I took it badly and became a reactive control freak. I was caught up in too much with too little support and with unfettered access to the internet for the first time in my life (it wouldn't be for 2-3 more years that my mom finally gave up her dial-up modem in favor of a broadband connection. My dad never did.), and let me tell you, for some of those years I walked the absolute razor's edge between closeted queer kid barely figuring things out and bitter redpilled demon. 19 was the worst year of my life, and I almost didn't survive it. 24 could have been just as bad but sometime in the intervening years I found something that I didn't have before

Without hesitation I absolutely attribute the fact that I'm here to shitpost before you today to the simple reality that I, without any intent, stumbled into communities of people who gave a shit. About life in general, and for whatever reasons about me. The little connections that kept me from blowing away like dust even when I was breaking down (and eventually rebuilding) came from so many places, many of which I never would have thought to seek on purpose. The one friend who wrote me every week while I was away 6 weeks in the mountains as a counselor at a Christian summer camp where none of the staff liked me and I didn't understand why yet. The almost-fling compassionate enough to help me realize that "no" actually is allowed. The math professor friend who once tried to wingman for me at a Spirit Halloween Store in the most dad way possible. The couple that I initially met up with fully skeptical they were unicorn hunting but actually no they really did just want local friends to invite over every week for vegetarian dinner nights. The friend I was lowkey in love with for a decade (even when I didn't want to be but couldn't turn it off) and was always so gentle with me about it. The guy I'd get together with a couple weekends a month and have therapeutic bitch sessions with over shitty pizza and wings. The only girl I worked up the guts to ask out in college, who let me down oh so gently that I still remember her with gratitude to this day. The zombie fairy princess I met at a halloween dance and went to an Indigo Girls concert with. My dad, who didn't know most of this shit but always made a point to make time for me when I needed him anyway. And that barely scratches the surface.

I don't know why I've been transcribing my memoirs on tumblr all morning, but I think this might be the end of it for now. I guess the only thing left to say is a deep, sincere thanks to all the people who touched my life back then but will never see these words. And an equally heartfelt thanks to those of you who are doing so even today.

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hey-there-juliet · 3 years

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Random Drabble Day (2/23)

Summary: First off, let me just say that this is more like a one-shot than a drabble because I'm a wordy bitch and I cannot control myself 😅

That said, I always had a hard time imagining Julie writing some of the Perfect Harmony's lyrics about herself, so I thought why not make this just another song that Luke and Julie wrote together? This is set somewhere between Finally Free and Edge of Great, in that week when Ray was stress-eating. This is supposed to fit back into the show at the end, so it might seem like a cliffhanger, but it's not.

Quick shout out to @jamestkirkish for betaing this for me! I love you and you are amazing! Any remaining mistakes are my own. And to the fabulous Sloan, for helping me out with Luke's handwriting! Enjoy 🧡

Fandom: Julie and the Phantoms

Relationship: Juke 💜

in the great scheme of life and ghosts

No matter how many times Luke insisted that she had been snooping through his things, Julie knew for a fact that she had done no such thing. In reality, she had simply been cleaning the studio when she came across it.

For three ghosts who didn't eat and could barely even touch anything most of the time, the boys sure knew how to make a mess. Every morning Julie would walk into the studio to find the chairs or coffee table rearranged, at least one of the rugs was always askew, and the clothes... the clothes were everywhere, and the worst part was: they reeked.

And so every morning before leaving for school Julie would shoot them a stern look and tell them to pick up after themselves. Which they did - when she got back home, things were mostly in their rightful place. Still, every weekend Julie would make sure to take a moment away from homework and rehearsal to tidy the place up to perfection, just like her mom liked it. She'd dust off the furniture, water the plants, sweep the floor, and even vacuum the whole place. One Saturday when she was home alone (her dad photographing a wedding, and Carlos at a friend's house), she even went through the trouble of washing all of the guys' old clothes.

Somehow, and she didn't even want to think about how that worked, the clothes didn't stink when they were actually wearing them, but at any other moment when they made no contact with their skin? Yeah... not good. So she washed them all (three times, using every trick and product she had). She washed them a fourth time for good measure and, by the time she was finished, any traces of twenty-five year old mold was gone, and so was the smell.

So no, she was not snooping - no matter what Luke said - when she came across the crumpled paper ball between the couch and the low cabinet, just behind a big vase her mom had gotten from tía Victoria.

Julie sighed, making a mental note to tell Luke to put his discarded ideas in the bin (again) if he didn't want them anymore, when one scribbled and wrinkled word caught her attention: Perfect Ha-

She bit her lip, staring down at the teasing word. Perfect what? Was it lyrics? Maybe half formed ideas? Doodles? Julie knew Luke liked to doodle in the margins of his notebook whenever he got stuck trying to come up with the next best piece of lyric or melody. She also knew she should probably just leave it alone, put it with his stuff to ask him later if he wanted to keep it, or put it in the garbage. Except the more she glanced down at that damn word, the stronger she felt it pull her towards uncovering whatever else the crumpled paper ball was hiding.

In the end, the pull was too strong. She'd just take a quick look, make sure it wasn't anything important before she threw it away. And, she reasoned with herself, trying to squish the guilt that was making itself known in the pit of her stomach: Luke had gotten rid of it, so he clearly didn't care much for whatever was in there.

Not able to resist any longer, Julie carefully unfolded the paper, slowly making her way towards the piano and using its surface as a table to help smooth the page over.

Luke's (horrendous) handwriting covered it with the bare bones of a song, random lines were scribbled in the margins with a couple of doodles for company, and even a little note from their bassist - ‘Reggie was here ;)’.

It took her a minute before the chicken scratches became words, and then Julie's breath left her in a rush, as the guilty feeling in her stomach turned into butterflies and flew away with her imagination.

It was a song, parts of one, anyway, and - more importantly - it was a love song.

Unprompted, her own words came back to her, "Wow, Luke! I didn't know you were such a romantic." Quickly followed by Alex's short reply, "He's not."

She knew now who Unsaid Emily was really about, but these new words were clearly about a different kind of love. The romantic kind, and Julie couldn't help letting herself believe - just for a moment - that the song might be about her.

Before she could let herself be carried away in a daydream, there was a - now familiar - shift in the air, a sound almost like static, the only thing letting her know of a ghost's appearance. Without a thought, she crumpled the page again and shoved the paper ball in her pocket for later inspection.

"Hey, Julie!" Reggie's cheerful greeting sounded across the studio from where he had poofed in, and soon - with his "help," bless him - Julie was finished with her weekend clean up.

As if summoned by the end of her chores, Luke poofed in, ready to rehearse. Alex soon followed; and by the time Julie retired for the night, the song had been almost forgotten where it hid inside her pocket.

Almost.

***

After getting ready for the night, Julie settled on her bed with the wrinkled page and her dreambox. She read over the words again and again, imagining they were about her.

Step into my world,

Bittersweet love story about a girl

Shook me to the core

Voice like an angel,

I've never heard before,

You and me together, it's more than chemistry

Love me as I am

I hold your music

Here inside my hands

You are my brightest burning star

We create Perfect Harmony.

And unless Luke had been singing with another girl, there didn't seem to be many options on who it could be about, right?

From the beginning, Julie had felt something connecting her to him; to all of them, in different ways. But Luke had been the one to give her a little piece of his soul right after meeting her when he let her use Bright to earn back her spot in the music program. Seeing his passion reflecting back on her, the way he treated music like she used to, made her miss it more than anything for the first time in almost a year. It made her miss the way it felt to use music to connect with her mom.

After they spent a whole weekend finishing each other's songs and working on new ones, getting to know each other's inner workings - the part of them that bled out feelings into paper to create beautiful melodies, Julie knew she was a goner. Finding out he'd been the one to write the words that shaped her taste in rock certainly didn't help. Like he'd been helping her find her way to music long before they even met.

Her crush on him had been inevitable from the start, and while falling for him was probably one of the worst things she could’ve done, it was too late to stop it. She'd been free falling for a while, and hopefully she'd land in his arms soon enough. Reading over his words again gave Julie a warm fluttering in her stomach that made her think he was more than ready to catch her once she reached the ground.

Carefully folding the piece of paper, she put it inside her dreambox, then placed the box back on the shelf.

***

The following week went by without any hiccups. Every once in a while, Julie would remember Luke's song and a familiar warmth would fill her up, leaving a soft smile on her lips and glazed eyes staring off at nothing. Just as often, Flynn would have to shake her out of her daydreams.

She didn't think much would come of it until her dad decided to throw the band a party so he could film them and post their video on YouTube. Which was fine. Amazing, even. It was most certainly great! Until Luke came to the school, staring at her with his stupid, beautiful, awed eyes, and with his soft, perfect smile, saying things that made her combust and melt, all at the same time.

"I think you make me a better writer."

"I think we make each other better."

Calling Nick 'Luke' was bad enough, but slipping into a complete musical sequence as she danced with him? "Goner" didn't even begin to describe her.

Like the other times they'd written together, the lyrics flowed through her, finishing the song he'd started with the same ease as one would take a breath.

Julie knew that whatever was going on between her and Luke couldn't happen or, if it did, it couldn't last. In fact, in the great scheme of life and ghosts, she didn't know much, but what she did know was that - be it in life or in death - love was constant.

He didn't need to have a heartbeat or to be able to touch her for her to love him. He was just as real to her as the next person, and whether it would hurt in the long run or not, it didn't matter.

She knew Flynn was only looking out for her, but that ship had sailed, and Julie was already so lost in his ocean eyes that avoiding eye contact wasn't going to bring it back. She would entertain her though, even knowing it wouldn't work. Just like the tide, eventually he'd pull her right back in.

She could love him just as he was, for however long they had together, and especially after that.

End notes: I hope you guys enjoyed it! And, if you'll notice, at the beginning it kind of gives off the impression that Luke eventually finds out about the song and Julie tells him how she found it. Which may or may not lead you to believe that they're in a relationship. I guess it all depends on interpretation though ;)

Oh, also! Shout out to the chaos squad folks that guessed right! You guys are no fun :( /j lmao

#RDD #23 by 23 challenge #fanfic #mine #jatp #jatp fic #julie and the phantoms #julie molina #luke patterson #juke #jukebox #julie x luke #fic recs

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fitzefitcher · 3 years

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honestly i've been seeing bastion as like a Buddhist-ish place with ancient greek aesthetics, bc letting go of your earthly attachments to be enlightened is pretty Buddhist. 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha. If you meet your father, kill your father.', that kind of thing. i haven't thought of it as a Light place at all, though i can see why others do.

so there's. a lot of things I would like to cover in answering this, and I'm honestly dreading it a little lmao buuuuut I will do the best I can. I have a lot of thoughts about Bastion, and about the Light, so I'm going to take this as an opportunity to explore that. so: content warning for discussion of religion and religious trauma, esp in regards to identity erasure.

full disclosure: I'm an american queer that was raised roman catholic (specifically, roman catholic within the confines of a heavily irish-italian community) and currently identify more as like. an agnostic apostate, would be the closest thing to describe it, I think. generally, while I'm not really crazy about organized religion as a massive institution capable of doing absolutely wretched things to the people it alleges to helping (and by no means am suffering under the delusion that it hasn't and won't continue to do these things so long as oppressive systems of power are in place, just like it would be in any other area, not just religion), I also acknowledge that there's a lot of good in it, too, and it's the cornerstone of many people's community, culture, and identity. ultimately, my opinion is that religion is a tool, and whoever's holding that tool decides its purpose and intention. it's. a complicated matter lmao.

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on buddhism, here. obviously this was not the religion (or any of the many cultures its beliefs are centered in) I was raised as, and honestly even the research I've done for this feels like it's barely scratching the surface. so, rather than try and argue or explain something that is really out of the realm of what I'm familiar with or have experience with (esp. something that's not really mine to claim), I will try and explain things from my own experience as a queer AFAB person raised as roman catholic. and speaking from that perspective, it is very incredibly obvious to me how much of bastion was lifted from christian theology. not just the aesthetics of it, all of the weird identity conformity shit, too. the way that kyrian ideology is being used here, is as a tool to enforce this conformity.

same with how the Light as a concept has been developed in recent years- there are no longer any significant differences between the way individual factions use and interact with the light, even though as cultures their views on it should be radically different, or at least different enough that they don't feel like homogenized versions of each other. like, there's no real difference between how the humans view the Light, and how dwarves view the light, and how gnomes view the Light, and it doesn't really feel like there ever was. Nelves' view on it used to be characterized pretty strongly and differently, as did trolls and draenei, but the longer the years go on, the more that they sort of blend together. to get back to your statement, "I haven't thought of it as a Light place at all," I find that very difficult to parse as a statement, as Bastion as a whole has been developed from base concepts of the Light. Like, Kyrians were designed from spirit healers, spirit healers are now confirmed to be Kyrians (for some reason), and all of the aesthetics of their magic, their clothing, their environment are all heavily priest, paladin, and light-inspired. everything is golds and marbles and sky blues, when they become "corrupted," they suddenly become shadow-themed, like all greys and blacks and purples, their wings turn black, etc. but the similarities, and all their short-comings, go much farther than that.

so the general story thread of each area of the shadowlands in this expansion is that things aren't as they seem, right? that their individual systems are beginning to fall to internal corruption and are crumbling under their own weight. and we see this in each of the trailers- the houses of maldraxxus are starting to eat each other, ardenweald is slowly starving to death, revendreth's citizens are being choked with heavy demands from the aristocracy, and bastion is struggling to adjust in the face of new, unprecedented problems, unwilling to change their ways, even when it's explicitly obvious how badly they need to change. like, I've talked about this a little bit before- the trailer and the way it's structured led me to believe that we, the players, are meant to be hanging out with Devos and Uther, trying to help them convince Devos' boss that very obvious bad thing that's happening, is happening. And this is about how it goes for the other trailers- we learn about the betrayal of Draka's house in maldraxxus, and the maldraxxus storyline is centered on helping her figure out what happened and pick up the pieces. We learn about Ardenweald's rapidly shrinking resources and dying environment, and the ardenweald storyline is centered on figuring out what the cause of this famine is. We learn about Revendreth's aristocracy and how they're demanding more and more of the common people, and the revendreth storyline is centered on overthrowing the increasingly tyrannical cruelty of their current leaders and helping the common people, with the help of a leader favored by the common people. And I feel like, given the state of things, and how the IRL world as a whole has been going the past couple years, helping Devos and Uther get to the bottom of this, maybe even helping Bastion adjust and change in the face of these new challenges, would have been a very good, insightful storyline, and very appropriate for the times we're in.

This, clearly, is not what happened lmao. Whether or not they'll decide to develop bastion further, at least in terms of addressing its failings with its own people, is up for debate, but based on WoW's previous history of similar stories, I'm not very confident lmao.

so I will touch on that statement of bastion being a "buddhist-like place" for a moment, I did look into buddhism a bit, and while I very quickly realized that there wasn't really a way that I could discuss this at length in a way that's fair (esp. with how many variations and cultures there are centered around it, again, I am not an expert, I am doing the best I can with the information I have), the very very bare bones basics of buddhism that I can find more or less boil down to, yes, letting go of earthly attachments to attain enlightenment. but this is not really a nuanced assessment of buddhism, and tbh, isn't really the goal of the kyrians' purification rituals. sure, at first glance, it seems to line up- shedding the burdens of their mortal lives in order to achieve ascension- but ascension here, is not enlightenment. buddhist enlightenment, from what I can find, seems to be the act of breaking free from the cycle of death and rebirth and from mortal suffering. kyrian ascension is the act of, not breaking free of that cycle, but tying yourself to it for an eternity of service. and living your life (even an eternal one- especially an eternal one) in the service of others is a really strongly christian concept. and the kyrian's concept of virtues only strengthens this. the fact that kyrians have virtues at all is heavily christian-coded, and on top of that, the virtues they have feel like they've been lifted directly from christian beliefs. also like. they're literal fucking angels, trying to earn their wings. like. there's not much else I can think of that's that heavy-handed lmao.

let's talk more about those virtues, though.

the kyrian virtues are as follows: purity, humility, courage, wisdom, and loyalty. There are a number of variations on christian virtues, but here are two of the main sets: one set lines up as the ideological opposite to the seven capital sins (or seven deadly sins if you're an FMA fan lmao), and the other is more-or-less what is accepted in contemporary belief. This is what I was taught in sunday school/CCD, so this is what I'm a little more familiar with.

so set 1, the heavenly virtues, are: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility, and set 2, the contemporary virtues, are split further into 2 groups: the cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and the theological virtues, charity, hope, and faith.

So humility, courage, and wisdom, are pretty straight-forward in terms of what they represent, and line up pretty neatly with humility (lol) from the heavenly virtues, and fortitude and prudence from the contemporary virtues. To touch on those briefly, humility is exactly what it says on the tin, and acts as an ideological opposite to the capital sin of pride, fortitude is bravery and endurance as well as patience, and prudence is reason and self-discipline, esp in terms of handling yourself and how you interact with others. And these are perfectly fine as principles. the ones that set off alarm bells for me, though, are loyalty and purity.

as kyrian virtues, they don't really line up to any christian virtues from either set. but tbh, this is beside the point- the fact that purity and loyalty are considered virtues, at all, especially in combination with each other, at best feel very suspicious, and at worst openly hostile. and the way this is covered in game only enforces this. purity is only obtained by sloughing off pieces of yourself that the kyrians consider obstructive to your ascension and how you can serve the Purpose, and questioning this or any other aspect of their ascension ritual gets you sent to the temple of loyalty to, ostensibly, stay there until you Get Your Priorities Straightened Out lmao. Like, there's no exploration of why these purity rituals are being questioned to begin with, there's no examination of why the rituals are necessary to begin with, and seemingly, prospective kyrians are punished for even asking. like, for a faction that seemingly prides itself on helping their members becoming their best selves, it feels strange that the reaction to their unsure members is punitive instead of therapeutic.

at this point, the link between the kyrians' beliefs and christianity should be readily apparent. it's no secret that over the centuries, christianity has used as a tool for oppressive systems to dominate marginalized groups, both within its ingroup and without. "purity" in christianity is less a virtue and more a heavily enforced, wildly contradictory idea, hiding itself in mealy-mouthed platitudes about being a Good Person or Becoming Your Best Self while simultaneously, stringently punishing its own members for daring to step a toe out of an extremely arbitrary line. like, I remember going to church growing up, and in the same breath that the head priest said to pray for various members of the community (thoughts and prayers, lmao), pray for [insert local sports team here] to win for their upcoming game, he also said that yes, democrats are corrupting the country. yes, homosexuals are going to hell. mass was an exercise in enduring misery most of the time, and a big reason I stayed closeted from my family for the majority of my life is because of this, and I still am, in many ways. I still have to divvy myself up in bits and pieces to become Socially Acceptable enough to appease my extended family, and there are certain family members that I will go to my grave never having come out to them, because I know they will never accept me for who I am, truly. so to have purity be a kyrian virtue with no further examination, no trace of irony, and to have loyalty as a virtue to back it up, feels, at best, extremely tone-deaf.

when you quest alongside kleia and pelagos, you see these purity rituals, and you see how large a toll they take on them. you see pelagos struggle, and you as the player help him overcome the difficulties he faces- difficulties he could not overcome himself. you see kleia, over time, becoming more and more disgruntled with bastion's governing body as a whole, and finding more and more cracks in the kyrians' concept of purity. but no lessons are learned, from either of these. nothing is examined further, and I have doubts that it ever will.

you, the player, see other kyrians, who previously were orcs, tauren, trolls, draenei, all these non-humans, being stripped of their identity, ostensibly for the reason that it will make them more just and fair a judge, a concept that rapidly falls apart the longer you look at it. the idea of all these sentient creatures from all these walks of life, particularly the ones heavily coded as BIPOC, are to be stripped of their cultural identity and made into Homogenous Standard (white-coded) Blue Human is so intrinsically malicious that it is genuinely baffling that it was even seriously considered as an idea, let alone greenlit and put into the game. prospective mortals are scouted to be kyrians theoretically for the lives they lived in service of others, in justice and kindness and wisdom, and then they are made to give up more and more pieces of those lives, rendering whatever they've learned, whatever experiences they've gained, that made them this person that the kyrians sought out in the first place, an utterly pointless and redundant endeavor. things like kindness, wisdom, courage, are not inherent qualities. They are things that have to be learned. They are things in which the context of them is paramount to how they will be measured. So to say that it is Necessary to do this, to make them Fairer, to make them More Just, feels both stunningly nonsensical and just pointlessly, nihilistically mean.

so what does this have to do with the Light?

well, in recent years, it seems to be steering more and more towards the idea that only correct religion within WoW is the Light, and there's only One Way to be Light. Early on in WoW's development, it was established that yeah, shadow has a bit of a reputation and can certainly be misused, but nobody's arguing that the Light can be misused, too, and that neither shadow nor light are inherently good nor inherently evil- they just Are, and each serve their own purpose in this world and its way of things. I had written a post about this like. several years ago, and a lot of it hasn't aged very well (I will not link to it bc woof, it was Pretty Rough to look at again after seven years lmao), but the gist of it was that Light and Shadow, are less like good and evil, and more like the Force from star wars. Well, a more nuanced force- again, Light is not Strictly Good, Shadow is not Strictly Evil. They are merely opposite sides of the same spectrum, but they are not inherently antithetical to each other. It was less a religion/belief system with an established deity, and more just reverence for the universe and its workings as a whole. Yes, it has the markers and drapings of christianity, particularly in its aesthetics, but the actual belief system didn't really lift anything from any particular christian belief system, and didn't really match up to any one of them, besides, again, the aesthetic of it. The Light now, however- now it does have a lot in common with christian beliefs. or at least, it and the church of the light have a lot in common with the mentality of those with strong christian beliefs. Which is to say, again, there is only one Correct Religion, and it's Light, and there's only One Correct Way to be Light. other religions within wow are either condemned, painted as savage, violent, heretical, or watered down so much that they either don't matter or function as mere Extensions to the light.

last summer, when I was reading the "before the storm" novel as research for my sylvanas essay, one of the many, many things that made it a difficult read was how like. unintentionally, thoughtlessly intolerant Golden had written it. Anduin, one of the main characters in it, despite having a history of kindness, compassion, curiosity, and understanding, is kind of shunted into being a 1-dimensional Good Christian Boy(tm). Like, he struggles with interacting with the forsaken, despite them having been in existence for over a decade at this point, and more than half his lifetime, and despite having dealt with them before, and orcs, and tauren, and a great number of other non-human creatures, while still treating them with grace and dignity, and respecting their perspectives, experiences, and beliefs. like, he's painted as thinking that the netherlight temple would be an alliance-only, church of the holy light only affair, and is really surprised, even stunned, at the thought of having to interact with non-alliance, non-light priests. and something that really really stuck with me while reading this, was that Anduin, this compassionate, intelligent, understanding person, could only learn to interact with priests of other factions and species, despite having already done this before, many, many times in his life, on the basis that They, Too, Are Servants Of The Light. and there's just. no examination in this. no irony. Light is Right, Others are Not. No lessons were learned.

#warcraft #ask tag #god I guess I should tag this as #essay tag #Anonymous

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