#catharsis is something you can experience while you have some semblance of a will to live. not when you are staring into space blankly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pen-observing · 1 year

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window.

synopsis: You keep spacing out and looking towards the window and it doesn't go unnoticed by Dottore.

word count: 1.1k warnings: i was sad and wrote it as catharsis, it is hurt to comfort but Dottore would never do that in a regular fluffy way so it is still not ooc.

There is not much here that hides beneath the surface although other nations would disagree with you. Your homeland has always been hidden behind a veil of snow (that some call sin itself). People say truth is universal in the way that a different person always lives it with their unique reflections. But this is one of the battles you would still win – there is not much, if anything, that hides beneath the surface. And lately, that has become a problem to your inner world – a truth you didn’t want to accept but felt so strongly.

The walls never lose their dark shadows. The shadows of the people move around but you still think they have more love and humanity left than the actual people around you that wear masks.

This shade of blue is just that. This shade. The one you see all the time, every day. The white of the snow always remains the same thing. Even if you were to throw yourself into it, try to drown amidst the snowstorms and angel halos shaped by the children– it remains the same thing.

And if the whites and the blues form your grey melancholy – how could you ever change walking amongst the same trees? The same halls, the same rooms? Just to stack a few more papers here and there and on shelves that if personified – would rather laugh at you and rip apart the very information they are carrying.

If nothing around you changes; you can only change for the worse, right?

Working for the harbingers now makes you feel nothing. You are something resembling a scribe; something used to organise and keep together the new experiments and the new contracts. This was just another change for the worse.

And as you organize the research in the Doctor’s office – you start to think that maybe you have reached a stage beyond that; maybe as your hands try to gently hold papers carrying patient’s pains and agonies; you have become the worst thing one can be. At least – the worst thing a regular human such as you can be.

Dottore reminds you of it all the time; and he also reminds you of the places you missed or lines you did not blur or the fact that some people are just meant to witness someone like him. Yes, he is absolutely atrocious. Yes, he has not a semblance of humanity left in him. But he is a genius; something you could keep trying to become while walking over a thin strand. Until, eventually, you remain stuck. Higher and higher up in the air, because you are unsure if your next step should be forward or backwards.

Or maybe someone would cut the string? And you would fall down into the net that would protect you. But what good is it when that protection is just a reminder of your own inadequacy?

You don’t even notice that your hands have stopped moving until Dottore comes up behind you, reaches for his stamp and hits it on the bottom right corner himself. Another blue in your life, this time a circle that makes you wonder about human limits. The sound seems to echo around the room; and since this is another proof of your own inadequacy – it echoes louder than anything else amongst these, once again, blue walls.

“I invited you in here to help me with all this boring paperwork.” He signs his name on the stamp to solidify his importance. You suddenly think how your lack of such a thing.

“I thought you would be able to hit the stamp without any issues. It is purely a robotic task – why do you keep spacing out and staring through the window?”

Have you been doing that? Truly? The window in Dottore’s office is small – and instead of bringing in more light, you would say its main purpose is to elongate the shadows on the floor. What did you want to gain out of this?

“Doctor, I..” You begin, but it feels like you are on that thin strand in this very moment. Where do you end? Just what do you say? And why does this all feel so unfamiliar? Were you always this careless and numb?

“Go on. There is even less use of you as a scholar if you are unable to voice your opinions.”

You really cannot bring yourself to care for what purpose Dottore is listening – what matters is that he is. Perhaps, he is the only one to do so in such a long time.

“I am just sad. I have been sad for a while now.. Actually. At least, I think.”

He sorts the papers to the appropriate pile – one of the five that is.

“Oh? At least you think? What a garbage way of expressing your sadness. And here I was thinking you were finally going to use the poetic language all scribes command to state something more than the obvious.”

The Doctor is right. You should believe in the power of the words but... your hands sort words all the time. And you know that behind them are experiences of people. If not human, you know the bullets or the medicine or the gauze goes to something human. Are your own hands as filthy as this nation you call home with sin because of that?

“Do you wish to be happy?” “Doesn’t everyone?” “I fail to think so. But, follow me.”

And you do follow him. Through one door after another, through halls of the same shades of blue and dancing shadows - all the way to the outside.

His footsteps fill the snow; yours try to fill his, until you circle back and stand in front of the same window just on the crisp air.

“Here we are.” “But, Doctor, we haven’t gone anywhere.”

An then Dottore hands you... a spoon?

“Dig into the ground.” “Excuse me?” “Dig.”

You stand still.

“Doctor, with all due respect, what are you trying to achieve?” “I wish to confirm a hypothesis set by my latest patient. You see; she told me she loves digging into the ground that is beneath the snow. She said that ‘the earth hides happiness only folklore tales speak of’ and you are the perfect person to use for validity and clarity.”

You would still call the man in front of you a genius; but this time you raise an eyebrow.

“Ah, so you too question that hypothesis. Good. You aren’t completely removed from the reality of what it means to be a scholar.”

It seems like he is always switching from one topic to another.

“If nothing else – at least I feel better from this joke.” “It was not a joke. It was just proof of how temporary your emotions actually are. No matter how long they have lasted that is.”

Maybe, just maybe – he is right.

“Some people would desperately dig into the ground for hours on end. The frozen ground you and I are standing on, if it meant something to them. Your happiness isn’t far away from you.”

He does have many ways of speaking and you are unsure of what you would call this particular one. And, as bad as it sounds, through fog, you can grasp that this is his way of helping you.

“Thank you, Doctor.” He was still the one who listened; the one who reacted. “Apologize to me by never putting Regrator’s stamp on one of my documents ever again. Now let us go inside. There are still papers that need signing.”

Something tells you this – helping you in his own way - is him connecting to the humanity that somewhere, deep down, tries to live.

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #dottore x reader #genshin dottore #il dottore #il dottore x reader #genshin imagines #not rook's bow #not om

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quantumjumper · 1 year

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𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍

— 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

(𝐏𝐄𝐍)𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄: koji 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒: he/him, though they/them is more than acceptable 𝐙𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐂: cancer 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 / 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍: single af

— 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒

𝐢. i love gummy candies, and can probs be bribed to do a lot of things if given Haribo Happy Cherries (my absolute favorite) as payment.

𝐢𝐢. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these kind of memes so one of my favorite facts to throw out without context is that I once shouted “Lesbians!” into the night with Chris Sabat.

𝐢𝐢𝐢. I once met Sylvia of Sylvia’s Restaurant fame and was at said restaurant. Criminally, I didn’t get to eat anything as I was just passing through with my dad who happened to be friend with her son. We were in NY on the way to somewhere else and he just sorta went ‘Wanna meet Sylvia?’ so that happened and then we continued on our way while I was left starstruck and hungry lol.

— 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

I started writing waaay back in 2004 in Yahoo! Instant Messenger user created chatrooms. Eventually took it to dms for 1 on 1 stuff, then bounced around all over the internet; MySpace, various forums, Gaia, etc. Eventually stumbled onto the tumblr rpc in 2012 and I’ve been trapped here ever since.

— 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

I wouldn’t say it’s a conscious preference, but I do end up making a particular kind of character with considerable frequency: men with tortured pasts who have done things they carry a great deal of guilt for and have difficulty connecting to people while struggling to hold onto/recover some semblance of their humanity. I’ve got my outliers, but there are quite a few who fit that bill.

— 𝐒𝐔𝐁-𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐑𝐄𝐒

𝐅𝐋𝐔𝐅𝐅: Often times, my ships are two damaged people learning how to feel whole with each other, so I get a great deal of satisfaction from fluff, but it’s gotta be earned stuff. Empty happiness doesn’t do much for me, but people stealing a moments respite from the jaws of chaos and having the opportunity to sit in those moments while cherishing their rarity, love that shit. It’s also, for me, nice to sorta escape into those sweet moments for a while when I could use a lighter headspace.

𝐒𝐌𝐔𝐓: I haven’t written smut in many a year. I’m not really against it, but I find it the most difficult topic to feel like I’ve written anything engaging. The times I’ve done it, I feel my phrases tend to get particularly repetitive and boring, and it just turns into throwing out some kind of reply until we get to the other side of it. On rare occasions, I’ve been able to use a smut scene to dig into a real, character driven expression of intimacy and vulnerability that furthers their conjoined story, but mostly it just feels like going through the paces. Writing smut in and of itself doesn’t do anything for me, so it’s not a typically enjoyable experience. That said, if someone else wrote smut involving our characters, I’d read tf out of it.

𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓: “this. this and action adventure are my bread and butter. “ (thank you hackett gonna just copy that bit) but seriously, they’re what I engage in most often. I love exploring the pain and guilt and the rage of my characters, to get to the heart of what drives them. I also adore the catharsis that comes from them managing to have moments that see them work through all those negative emotions. The rawness of it is really engaging to write, and even the muses of mine with the most sunny dispositions have some sort of pain underneath that I relish opportunities to focus on and work through.

— 𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐒 𝐯𝐬. 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐒

So I am big on plotting, but I recognize not everyone is. I typically like to at least sort out why our muses are in the same place at the same time, but how heavy the plotting gets is on a case by case basis. If we’re totally new to each other and I’ve read through your info and have ideas for something really involved, I’ll likely toss those out but have no expectations of getting the green light. It just makes me feel better if I have at least some idea of what I’m doing/where things are going.

— 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐃: nobody; reposting from an old blog — 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆: You reading this

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transformers-fan-continuities · 3 years

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Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf created by @artsy-hobbitses!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place.

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society.

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower‘s OC Missit!) is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

#long post #gore #ties that bind #spotlight #transformers #HUMANFORMERS #transformers au #tf original continuity #transformers fan continuity #transformers redesign #maccadam #i said id post this on sunday but i realize thats a holiday for lots of folks on this site :/

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florbelles · 3 years

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3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30 + lyra 💕

thank you airika!! sorry this is so late xx | xi answered here

iii. did they have a good childhood? what are fond memories they have of it? what’s a bad memory?

she doesn’t feel especially entitled to consider it a bad childhood, since she was enormously privileged in terms of wealth and position ( or, rather, her parents were, which meant she got the best education that could be afforded and materially wanted for nothing, including extensive opportunities for travel ), but she was miserable. she loathed her status, she loathed her father for the way he exploited both it and her, she loathed the company he kept, she loathed being complicit in it; she wanted to loathe her mother for her complete apathy towards her, but she pitied her; she was constantly running away or getting expelled. she was consumed with feelings of powerlessness, and that turned to bitterness, and that turned to fury.

she does have some fond memories; despite her resentment at being shipped off and unwanted, she enjoyed her time abroad, particularly in france; she enjoyed summers on the island, when she would befriend the summer people and spend her time with them, on the periphery of some semblance of normalcy, friends, or family, no matter how temporary her glimpse into domesticity was; her numerous runaway attempts were exhilarating, and she developed a fondness for being on the road that would carry into her adult life, which she spent almost entirely on the road ( or on the run from herself or lingering ties that could connect her to her work ) prior to hope county. she liked the days she spent on the beach by the ocean; she liked the evenings she spent in the forest or stables. she liked the time lawrence took her out for ice cream without ulterior motives or one of his mistresses about ( she’d cancelled, but lyra didn’t care about that at the time ). it wasn’t all bad. never all bad.

ix. do animals like them? do they get on well with animals?

lyra adores animals, and they love her back. they were often her primary companions as a girl, and that fondness and familiarity never left her. they’re innocent. they’re simple. she understands them. if she ever weeps for the old world, it’s for them.

xii. what is their favourite food?

she loves fresh baked bread, pastries, raspberries, and pomegranetes. her favorite is sushi, though; it’s the one thing she misses about her past life. yes, she has contemplated hope county gas station sushi in desperation. no, she did not ultimately resort to that. that’s how you know she hasn’t hit rock bottom just yet.

xv. are they good at cooking? do they enjoy it? what do others think of their cooking?

she’s a passable chef, but she doesn’t have much need or opportunity to cook for herself with the exception of the occasional evening she spent on her own in her home of the moment ( her loft in san francisco was her longest place of semi-permanent residence, so most of the cooking she did for herself were nights at her loft ). she doesn’t have any interest in letting on that she can cook once she joins the project; given shaggy’s questionable track record, she doesn’t want to get stuck with that responsibility. she wouldn’t have the time, even if the desire was there.

xviii. what’s their favourite genre of books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else?

she primarily reads classical or literary novels; she enjoys romantic elements, secretly being a romantic herself, but she’s mostly interested in expressions of emotion and the human condition, the more visceral the better ( her favorite story as a child was hans christian andersen’s the little mermaid, her favorite as an adult was leo tolstoy’s anna karenina ). musically she favors the 60s or older; her favorite album is fleetwood mac’s rumors, preferably the vinyl, and her second most listened to artist is billie holliday. she loves jazz, classical compositions and opera, but she prefers all of those live; she insists that recordings simply aren’t the same, they’re not raw enough, it doesn’t gut you the same way. yes, she knows it sounds pretentious, yes, she knows she deserves it, no, it does not change her opinion. she has little time for television or films later in life, but her favorites as a girl were always film noir or old hollywood; that’s something she picked up from isabela, though she doesn’t remember that part. she similarly doesn’t have time or much interest in video games, but she’s absolutely abysmal at arcade games. it’s one of the few petty things that enrages her. she doesn’t understand it.

xxi. do they have a temper? are they patient? what are they like when they do lose their temper?

yes. yes, she does. lyra carries almost all of her pain as rage, both emotional and physical; she’s constantly trying to outrun it before it consumes her, finding ways to redirect her energy, to use it. the project helps with that, it gives her an outlet for catharsis. it gives her passion a purpose, a direction. she was spiraling, before. she can usually manage to suppress temper flare-ups, but she dislikes doing it; it will come out another way later on, and it will come out worse. she’s an extremely impatient person, but she’s also fairly specific with what will set her off; she’s unconcerned about most irritants, so while her temper is fast and explosive and dangerous, it’s also not likely to be provoked over petty grievances or upsets.

in other words, it’s always there, but it takes something extreme and severe for her to actually take it out someone. she’s not going to throw a tantrum because someone cut her off or her drink order was wrong.

xxiv. what is their sleeping pattern like? do they snore? what do they like to sleep on? a soft or hard mattress?

pattern-wise, nonexistent; she sleeps when she can, which after the reaping sometimes means in the middle of the day face down on a spare mattress in black horse silo for fifteen minutes. she doesn’t snore unless she’s sick, in which case no one else in the house is sleeping, either; fortunately this is a rare occurrence. she’s actually not particular at all, she can sleep anywhere on anything, even if she does initially tell john she’s moving in because he has the only decent goddamn thread count in the county.

he’s her only sleeping condition, tragically; joseph’s prophecies have her paranoid and she can’t sleep without him. very inconvenient as the holy war approaches. catch her passed out in his lap while he’s trying to do some goddamn paperwork.

xxvii. what makes them sad? do they cry regularly? do they cry openly or hide it? what are they like they are sad?

sadness cripples her; she experiences all emotions in an extremely heightened state, she feels very deeply, and with the exception of anger, which she can externalize and use to fuel her, the affects of negative emotions can literally physically incapacitate her. fortunately — perhaps in part because of this — sadness isn’t something she feels often; when she does, it’s profound and soul-crushing, but she can generally either fix and remove herself from the situation ( running away when she was fifteen when she was crippled by her misery ) or repurpose it and experience it as bitter rage ( which is why she mentally snaps and burns the world down in a fury when she’s grieving ). if there’s no way to redirect it, and it’s something she’s left with, she’s gone. she’s done. she couldn’t function or move for months after the collapse. ( after that she doesn’t cry anymore; the worst has happened, she has no tears left ).

she doesn’t only cry when she’s sad, it also can be when she’s overwhelmed, including by positive emotions; her reaction to being told she was loved was to go cry in the shower for an hour. she generally won’t cry in front of others if she can help it, not because she considers it a sign of weakness so much as she doesn’t want to make it their problem or make them feel obligated towards her.

xxx. do they exercise? regularly? or only when forced? what do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?

not exactly for the sake of it prior to to joining the project, when she began training with jacob; she’s always been in good athletic form, she’s had to be with who and what she is — even before the project there was always the chance of needing to make a getaway, needing to defend herself, needing to attack, so she always kept up her physical strength and endurance, but she never had a gym membership or hit a treadmill three times a week. she’s always had an active lifestyle that’s kept her on her toes. she over-exerts, always, and because of the fact that she doesn’t have that disciplined routine, she easily burns herself out; she’s great in the moment, she’s a force of nature for short bursts of time, but she’s going to crash hard.

#answered #chuckhansen #oc: lyra fairbanks #asks: lyra #lore bible: lyra

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akisazame · 4 years

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spending this shelter-in-place saturday thinking about my tendency to give writers of media second third fourth fifth eightieth chances and thereby the rope to thoroughly and irrevocably hang themselves. at first i thought maybe it was just an ideological reluctance to engage in Media Criticism because i’ve had too many experiences where Media Criticism surgically removed all semblance of enjoyment i or others could’ve theoretically derived but i’m certainly willing to point out all the reasons a narrative choice objectively sucked ass after the fact. so i think instead it’s some kind of misplaced sense of goodwill towards writers as a writer, where i want to believe that every element is purposefully chosen and can potentially have some kind of payoff or emotional catharsis in the conclusion.

there’s a lot of reasons i’m foolish to think this way, not the least of which being that writing, especially collaborative writing, especially television writing, does not work like that. there are too many other factors at play beyond just This Is A Satisfying Story. television more than any other medium can be closest, narratively, to real life, which Doesn’t Make Narrative Sense (thank you adam schlesinger rest in peace). and maybe that knowledge kind of feeds back into my tendency to let writers of media (as stated i’m thinking mainly about television but it really applies to anything episodic) get away with capital-b-bad choices, because i truly don’t know the circumstances that led them there. the biggest example of this is all the times female characters on tv have had babies because like, i don’t know, what else are they supposed to do, greenscreen her head onto archival footage? or when a character is written off clumsily, are they supposed to beg the actor to stay? or when a show gets cancelled, are they supposed to personally fund a new series finale that ties off the dangling ends with tidy bows? sometimes shit sucks.

but also. but ALSO. i want to be told a good story, with characters that feel true. i want to watch them grow and change and try new things (even if sometimes those things are as repugnant to me as “hook up with someone they are not suited for” or “have a baby” or “die”) but i want to understand why they’re doing it and feel like it’s organic for the character to make the choice they’re making. and even when the choice is really truly objectively terrible (see above “die”) i want the repercussions of that to be felt. i want to know that it was a hard choice for the character to make, and the only way to feel that is if it was a hard choice for the writer to make. and if it wasn’t hard for the writer. well. i can tell, is what i’m saying.

but my problem is, while it’s ongoing, i want to forgive that. i want to forgive the bad choices because maybe i’m missing some future narrative context. maybe it’ll pay off. and then when it inevitably doesn’t, every single time, i’m just like, well, okay, there i go doing That Thing again, That Thing where i assume professional writers know better than me when the fact is sometimes they just don’t.

and then i think about all of this, all the things i’ve just articulated here, and wonder: why the hell am i so scared to write? if i can sit here and identify the flaws of writers who get paid to do it, why don’t i just open the goddamn document and do it better? what’s my moral objection to tearing down the parts of canon that i think are stupid and building something that makes better sense to me? am i so terrified of being That Writer to some stranger on the internet, of being laughed at by some rando who thinks my choices and interpretations are poorly considered? i already know i’m going to do it better. i know this. i am smart and articulate and i don’t take any choice lightly. but for some reason i save all of this rope for "professionals” who really truly haven’t earned it and have refused to save any for myself.

#sylphtxt #well that's certainly 700+ words of self-flagellation #this is mostly about the magicians #a fandom i don't even write in for god's sake #but it's also a little about cxgf #and a tiny bit about brooklyn 99 #(which i HAVE stopped watching thanks)#can you believe that when i started thinking about this topic i thought it'd be twitter thread-sized #anyway hi i hope everyone else is handling quarantine better than me

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sserpicko · 5 years

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Berlin, I Love You: Stars don’t align for uneven / Film Review

Part of the same “Cities in Love” itinerary that previously included stops in Paris, New York and Rio, the wildly uneven anthology “Berlin, I Love You” exhibits telltale signs of jet lag.

The format, like the others in the series, groups together intersecting stories directed by international filmmakers — here including England’s Peter Chelsom, Switzerland’s Dani Levy, Iran’s Massy Tajedin and Germany’s Til Schweiger — whose vignettes theoretically capture the flavor of the destination in question.

Given Berlin’s fractured past and Germany’s immigration challenges in the Angela Merkel present, the locale certainly lends itself to themes of identity and tolerance, but the majority of the episodes prove to be anonymously dispensable.

For every poignant keeper (Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley play a mother and daughter who take a young Arab refugee under their wing in Tajedin’s “Under Your Feet”) there’s a clunker (Mickey Rourke attempts to bed younger woman Toni Garrn who, spoiler alert, turns out to be his long-lost daughter in the Schweiger-directed, Neil LaBute-penned “Love Is in the Air.”).

Then there’s the decision to have German characters speak in English rather than allowing them to converse in their native tongue, which creates additional authenticity issues.

Landing after 2016’s disappointing Rio installment, the film’s end-credits announcement of Los Angeles as its next stop somehow makes one hope for a fly-over.

————-

‘Berlin, I Love You’ Rated: R, for language, some sexual content and brief nudity

Running time: 2 hours

Playing: Arena Cinelounge, Hollywood; also on VOD

Source: latimes

By MICHAEL RECHTSHAFFEN

Film Review: ‘Berlin, I Love You’

By PETER DEBRUGE

Source: variety

If you truly love Berlin, and belong to the film industry, chances are you’re there right now attending the Berlinale, where roughly 400 movies unspool over 11 days. The Berlin Film Festival takes place annually in early February, one of the least pleasant times of year to experience a city where, in the half dozen times I’ve been, someone always apologizes for the weather — with its rain, sleet, and iced-over streets — and helpfully suggests, “You really should come back in summer.”

And so, this year, I have no regrets sitting out the festival, choosing instead to visit the city vicariously via “Berlin, I Love You,” the latest in the “Cities of Love” series that gave us “Paris, je t’aime” and similar stopovers in New York and Rio. If you’ve seen any of those movies, you know the drill: The producers pick a glamorous international metropolis and invite a handful of directors to imagine stories that reflect different aspects of the place, weaving them all together into a diverse omnibus view of the city in question.

In the Paris film, each short was set in a different arrondissement, resulting in a hit-and-miss collection of tales from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven, and the Coen brothers — heavy hitters who had in turn enlisted major stars to participate in their individual vignettes. In “Berlin, I Love You,” there are just 11 directors, and the average moviegoer won’t have heard of any of them. The biggest, Til Schweiger, is one of Germany’s most popular stars, and here he directs a screwy little episode from the mind of Neil LaBute (more on that shortly), but by and large, the film feels aimless and uninspired.

It opens with what must be an homage to one of the most famous images ever captured on film in Berlin — a winged angel — only here, instead of eavesdropping on humans’ thoughts from high above the city, as in Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” the angel is mortal, a face-painted performance artist (Robert Stadlober) standing frozen on a segment of the Berlin Wall, hoping for tips. Instead, a pretty young busker (Rafaëlle Cohen) sets up next to him and proceeds to chase away any passersby with her warbling voice.

These two, so hostile to one another at first, will gradually come to develop feelings over the course of the film, for theirs is the slow-brewing romance that serves as a framing device for the entire operation. Parceling it out across the feature allows helmer Josef Rusnak to catch up with them in various moods and locations, from the delirious thrill of standing at the center of Mauerpark’s outdoor amphitheater to what feels like a strobe-lit colonoscopy through the bowels of Berghain, where the party rages all night. There’s nothing elegant about the way the other stories are integrated, but at least these two characters offer a semblance of continuity, against which the shorts serve as variably amusing digressions.

That leaves roughly eight to 12 minutes apiece for the other filmmakers to present their stories, a format that works best when there’s some kind of twist, as opposed to a near-instant resolution to a problem that’s only just been introduced. For example, in Massy Tadjedin’s segment, Keira Knightley plays a woman who takes in a refugee for the night while his brother dies of pneumonia in the hospital. Knightley’s character can’t heal the world in that time, but she can at least convince her mother (Helen Mirren) — and maybe the audience — that Berlin is about more than nightclubs and sex parties: “This is reality; this is Berlin; this is what life is right now.”

Cut to a hotel bar where a pretty blonde (Toni Garrn) turns the head of what remains of Mickey Rourke in a silver pixie wig. She’s young enough to be his daughter, role-playing accordingly, although the episode is too short and shallow to be anything more than embarrassing for all involved, especially as Rourke pantomimes the morning-after catharsis that follows his discovery of the message she left scrawled in lipstick across his bathroom mirror. This short was LaBute’s contribution to the whole and doesn’t feel in any way related to the city of Berlin, much less life on planet Earth as we know it.

The same could be said for Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke’s contribution, in which a 16-year-old (Michelangelo Fortuzzi) strikes up a conversation with a bedraggled drag queen (Diego Luna). Granted, one witnesses some fairly outrageous personalities in Berlin, and there’s a certain stunt-like appeal to seeing Luna decked out like this, in faux fur and sequins, sharing a beer beneath the Oberbaum Bridge. Still, there’s something entirely too cutesy about the encounter, in which the curious teen coyly asks for a kiss — a Disney-fied, 21st-century spin on “Cabaret” perhaps. On the other end of the spectrum, Dani Levy’s chapter takes place in a neon-lit brothel that looks like something out of a Gaspar Noë movie.

The most effective sequence may be “Glee” actress Dianna Agron’s offering, in which Luke Wilson shows up as a Hollywood director suffering post-apocalypse-movie burnout who finds fresh inspiration after flirting with a lovely — and far less jaded — children’s puppeteer (played by Agron). Two of the other segments involve crossing Berlin by car: one about a magic, matchmaking BMW and the other involving a taxi driver pulled into a Jason Bourne-style intrigue. Each is silly in its own way, although at least it can be said that these two sequences serve to showcase the city, which is sort of the point in a series that’s starting to feel like they could be filmed anywhere.

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amwritingmeta · 6 years

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13x16: Sometimes It’s About the Journey...

…not the destination. So says Dean Winchester. In an episode that sees him more or less move into the peak of his arc in a spectacular way. I cannot believe how gorgeous it is. Or I can. I really fucking can believe it. And I’m not saying he’s reached the peak, climbed across it and is looking out on the view that is his future and balance and happiness, but hot damn if he’s not almost there.

((Enter: Michael. Dun-dun-DUN))

I wanted to outline how I’ve followed Dean’s journey of self-actualisation since that pivotal moment in 12x22 and the firing of the grenade launcher = self-liberation, to this episode and all the remarkable lack of walls he’s showing.

Throughout this season, Dean’s come face to face with the lesson he’s needed to learn the most: time to drop the mask.

Time to face himself and admit that this toxic masculinity spiel isn’t who he is and it isn’t who he wants to be. If he hadn’t been wearing a mask, he would’ve told the man he loves how he feels a long time ago.

The mask isn’t armour to keep him safe, it’s armour to hide behind.

And it’s bullshit armour that is linked to personality traits he’s never actually believed in or stood behind, he’s only made them part of himself out of a sense of duty that has been warped and twisted out of shape.

In 13x01 Dean is called out on this by Miriam, who says he’s Becky. Becky who takes things and breaks things, and doesn’t care about anyone but herself.

And –>

Following this, throughout S13, Dean has faced a whole string of Bad Guys who look like one thing but is really something else:

Asmodeus; wraith whose reflection give them away; shifter wearing Dean’s face; ghost wearing a mask; ghoul wearing the face of a gunslinger hero; two-faced killer pretending to be the good brother; a crossroads demon who comes in peace but does what crossroads demons do; Jack who is innocent of what Dean is suspecting him of; a vampire and a human being in a literal pig mask.

If we see each of these Bad Guys as representatives of Dean’s toxic masculinity - which is the reason he’s wearing his own mask - and each of them pushing him one step further on his journey to opening up to this fact, and letting the mask go, then there’s an immediate pattern here.

Because Dean may end up killing the wraith in 13x03, but only after we get the visual of the wraith stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach, killing him first. For Dean, this kill is made in absolute fury and self-defence. He’s nowhere near ready to recognise the mask for what it is, he’s much too deep into his grief for that to be possible. He rejects the lesson of recognising this toxic masculinity for what it truly is, and does away with the threat to his perceived identity, because the anger is all he has to hold onto.

By 13x04 this attitude has changed, thanks to Sam intervening. Sam manipulates the entire episode, getting Dean into that therapy session (only for Sam himself to reveal how much he is truly in need of speaking his mind to his brother), but it also pushes Dean’s self-reflection. The thought of catharsis has hooks and they sink in deep, no matter how Dean may reject the idea of it. By the end of the episode he’s admitted the truth to Sam: right now, Dean can’t believe in a damn thing.

Then we move forward with the Bad Guys, right? Doctor with a drill in 13x05 almost drills a hole in Dean’s head because Dean can’t believe in a damn thing. I don’t think Dean’s suicidal here, I think he simply cannot see the point, so if he dies, he dies. He’s ambivalent. He’s not going to go looking for death, but he’s not going to fight to live either. Ironic, then, that it’s Death herself who tells him to live.

He faces his old idol in 13x06 without hesitation, though Dean, still, is not the one to kill him: native american sheriff with the white hat does that. (and I’d say the White Hat represents the balanced Dean we’re all wishing and hoping for) (and he’s almost in a position to don it) (betcha by golly)

And in 13x07 he’s finally the one to inflict some pain on the toxic masculinity representative when he shoots Ketch in the shoulder. (I screamed) (Ketch is such a manifestation of a dark mirror for Dean so I kind of love that they brought him back)

By 13x08 we have a Dean interacting with a Charlie-replica. Charlie, who is a highlighter for Dean’s true nature more than any other character has ever been. And we have Dean telling this other highlighter for his true self that she should stay weird, essentially showing how he’s sincerely beginning to open up to this side to himself. (because of Cas coming back) (of course)

In 13x09 we have a huge setback when he realises that he was wrong about Mary being dead, and that old reliable self-doubt and self-hatred comes pouring back in, in copious amounts. It’s strong enough to make him pull a gun and shout in Kaia’s face for her to GET IN THE CAR. Yeah. (I screamed again) (oh the humanity!)

When 13x11 rolls around we get a whole set of our favourite beasties and Sam’s heart (SAM’S heart) is on the line. So it’s poetic that this is the man (and as Ketch, whom he wounded, this is a human man) in a mask that Dean finally kills himself, with a shot through the heart. And the fact is that Dean wearing the toxic masculinity mask does threaten Sam, because it is what informs the codependency, it’s what keeps it so firmly in place. But oh man does it begin to slip now.

In 13x12 we have our first Bad Girl… why does that actually sound dirty rather than menacing? We have our first Dark Female of the season, when we get the twins and Rowena in one episode. They tick the box for yet one more supernatural creature to add to the list: witches. And, of course, we get the epic scene of our leading Dark Female - who is a very strong Dean mirror btw - finding her release and self-liberation. Mind blown.

In 13x13 Dean is shocked to learn that Cas has been held captive and he had no fucking clue. He sticks close to Cas as they face down Lucifer, who doesn’t faze Dean for a moment, take out Ketch, who will never be trusted again, and find some semblance of a team spirit amidst all of it.

By 13x14 Dean isn’t really displaying any toxic masculine behaviour, right? I mean, he isn’t. If he was happily in love in 13x12, then you almost expect him to burst into song in this episode because he’s so relaxed, working with Cas, spending quality time with Cas (referencing rock and rolling………) and staring down two uber-masculine specimens and getting the giggles over their loincloths. Like… the very image of the male strong rough warrior is actually turned into a joke by how Dean now views masculinity. Honestly. Kill me. It’s gorgeous.

In 13x15 the coping mechanisms are sent on their way for good. I mean, I’m so sure of it. I shouldn’t say I am, but I feel very very convinced that this is the case. Dean has moved far beyond needing them, or even wanting to engage with them. He enjoys food and beer and flirtation and sex, of course, but because he enjoys these things for what they are, not because he needs to take the edge off or find an emotional bandaid. He also looks the toxic masculinity representative dead in the eye and questions his motives for behaving like an asshole. The Boss has his reasons, and Dean can recognise them, but The Boss is a strong Dean mirror when it comes to taking things and breaking things and not caring who gets hurt, because The Boss believes he’s right. Dean is fed up with this attitude from everyone.

And now then.

Now we reach 13x16.

more below the cut

12x22 allowed Dean to experience his moment of self-liberation, a necessary step toward self-actualisation (which I wrote about here in how these steps are informing Cas’ arc) (and these steps are also absolutely informing Sam’s arc as well), the brief definitions of which are:

Self-liberation: Recognising irrational thinking patterns caused by unrealistic demands placed on the self and defusing these harmful irrational beliefs in order to lead a happy, healthy life. Self-actualisation: Living creatively and fully using your potentials, driven by a desire for self-fulfilment, feeling finally yourself, safe, free from anxiety, accepted and loved.

So, if Dean experienced self-liberation when firing that grenade launcher in 12x22, then he’s been moving through these above outlined necessary steps of recognising and letting go of the toxic masculinity armour in S13, because to reach the place where you’re ready for self-actualisation, you have to recognise and let go of all that baggage you’ve been carrying around with you.

By 13x11 he’s done believing in the toxic masculinity. It lingers moving forward, because it’s ingrained, but he’s not allowing it to govern him anymore.

By 13x15 we have it underlined to us that Dean taking charge and acting like he always has, doling out orders, is not a good thing. Dean shouldn’t be sole decision maker. That time is over. The reason for the toxic masculinity armour to be worn doesn’t exist: it’s time he stripped the armour off and began to trust.

So, in 13x16 - does he display trust?

Well, yes, he does. One significant moment is when he succumbs to the rules of the world they’re in and allows Fred to play his part, setting a trap that Dean knows won’t work, just for the hell of it, while Dean has his plan B (Operation Bookworm) (FFS) ready to go. This isn’t him displaying control freak behaviour, this is him showing he can be a team player and fucking chill.

But there’s also a thread throughout the entire episode where he is just… himself. Right? Where he displays honest faith in himself, in his point of view, in his likes being his and he’ll be damned if anyone else’s opinions on these views will make him question them. Jesus, when he quoted Frozen and referenced Elsa without blinking at it, not retracting it or in any way trying to distract Sam from it, I was about ready to hand in the towel.

Especially when he made this face at Sam’s frown –>

(the heart sings with the joy of witnessing this expression)

And we get so much more, like later on in the episode, when he happily shows off the “sleeping robe” and he puts that Ascot on. The final scene and Dean’s reaction to the non-subtle judgment made me think of this one in 4x06:

This bristling at the questioning of his manhood leading to this display of insecure defensiveness (because he’s just been put through the emotional ringer coming face to face with his deep fear of judgment, due to his even deeper fear of rejection, because Good Things Don’t Last, and all of is tied in with a lacking sense of true identity) we get these dimples of discontent:

So, then, what a difference in attitude we get in 13x16. What a remarkable wonderful growth. I mean –>

TRUE IDENTITY ^^^^^

But that’s not all that we got from this episode in terms of Dean’s furthered progression, because not only has he faced down a toxic masculinity that has kept him from being himself, out of a sense of duty, believing the only way he could be strong enough to act the shield was to become only the weapon, but in 13x16 he’s also confronted with his inner child.

I was hoping for this so badly.

(I screamed when the ghost turned into a child) (no I actually didn’t) (I went OH MY GOD!!) (yeah that I did)

I was hoping for it because it’s the final few steps towards Dean being able to fully let go of the past and look to the future. (it makes me want to weep) (for real it makes me seriously emotional) And look how absolutely magically it’s handled in this episode –>

This moment underlines what Dean’s inner longing is: he just wants his dad. His dad. Not the soldier dude who was a mean drunk and raised him to survive and to protect Sammy at all costs, not that dude, but his dad. The guy who loved Mary more than anything, and who tried his best in impossible circumstances to keep his head above the waterline, the trekkie, the dad who walked into CBGB’s and had grown men go apologetic and self-conscious.

Dean lost the love of his life. He’s in a position now to understand what that does to you. How it breaks down everything you thought you were and turns you inside out. Just as he got to see Mary as an individual, as a person, in S12, Dean is now in a place where he can distance himself from his dad as well, where he can see John as a person who made choices and who made mistakes but who, ultimately, made them out of love, not only for Mary - but for his boys, too. He did what he believed he had to in order to keep them alive. He did what he thought was right. And the deep suffering and his sense of failure crippled him into becoming someone different to the man Mary fell in love with.

And this is the foremost baggage Dean needs to let go of, at least to my mind, because he needs to forgive his father, just as he forgave his mother.

Now this might be as subtly done as his progression has been through the season, we might not get this verbalised at all, and personally I’m just curious to see how and if they’ll give it to us, whether I’m right in this reading or not.

Either way, I think they’re setting up for Michael to be an absolutely smashing piece of exposition!

We also get a pretty significant callback from Dean coming face to face with this inner child of his because remember this moment? –>

This is an underlining, in dialogue, of Dean’s self-view, and it’s one that Dean must put to rest. Because we all know he’s not poison, he doesn’t hurt everyone he loves, he doesn’t cause death and destruction, he is worth saving and he deserves all the love the world has to offer.

He’s getting there. This tie-back moment in 13x16 underlines it.

Because Becky is dead. Long live Elsa.

In fact, this entire episode underlines this as we watch him freely engage with something he enjoys and he doesn’t for one moment stop simply because Sam is frowning and judging him. He tells Sam off and goes to enjoy himself. This while Sam is absolutely putting his foot down continually, questioning Dean’s decisions and behaviour and calling him out on it. Yeah.

13x15 set all of this up gorgeously and they are totally building on the moving out of toxic codependency and it makes my insides want to do the jig!!

The fact that there are traces of old Dean here is more a highlighter to me than anything else.

He doesn’t go for the blonde waitress –>

Barely even looks at her.

Daphne is a trophy he’s set on winning, because, of course, his rivalry is entirely with Fred, which is set up immediately. And that Daphne is a trophy is given to us in dialogue when he says:

Dean: Should’ve known Velma was good to go. It’s always the quiet ones.

But I actually don’t think Dean is engaging in toxic masculine behaviour, not as it’s been displayed this season. He’s a douche. He’s a teenage jock with a big ego who thinks he’s god’s gift.

I mean, come on, Dean. You’re fucking better than this. Don’t grab women by the arm like that, for example. She will run the fuck away from you to the guy she wants to be with. Learn your lessons, Dean!

Because how he chooses to relate to Daphne, and how she continuously keeps markedly blowing him off, tells us that he needs to grow the hell up already. And, to me, that’s the whole point. I could dig into the symbology and representation that I can see in the setup of the character interaction, but my dudes, I’ll throw it into a separate post.

The point is, this episode tells us that Dean doesn’t want casual, he doesn’t want a trophy.

He wants someone to sit next to him, share a beer and watch movies with him.

That’s what he wants, and the fact that he’s overcompensating for this fact by chasing a pretty woman is entirely in line with how him lusting after a man has pretty much always been handled on the show.

He wants Cas. And how we close the Scooby portion with Dean stating he should’ve known “it’s always the quiet ones” is a rather formidable plant.

Well, fingers crossed, of course. I know nothing. I predict nothing. But if they can take the time to draw Dean helping Cas up and Cas reaching out and taking Dean’s hand once he’s done so, and if they can take the time to draw them in synchronisation, then, you know… Cave of Deanitude it is? Joint shares? *mh mh good*

And whoa boy did I love this episode!

#spn 13x16 #scoobynatural #spn meta #dean winchester #cas #sam winchester #destiel #my reading #spn s13 spec #toxic masculinity #positive femininity #character progression #character arc

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majestywritez · 3 years

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Dream Sequences

Intro to Post:

Hey lovelies!! Today's post is all about dreams. Most people think dreams are an easy subject or topic to write about since you know, we all experience our own dreams but to write a good dream sequence, requires a lot of different aspects that I will be going over in the rest of today's post so without further a do let's get started!

Uses for Dreams in Literature

The Realization Dream

In a Realization Dream, something must “click” for a character in a dream, something they couldn’t figure out while awake.

Maybe a character is incapable of putting together certain pieces of evidence in his waking life, but in the midst of a dream’s storm-and-chaos, the pieces fall into place for them. Or maybe their latest desires are thrown into sharp relief in a vivid dream in true Freudian style.

2. The Internal Conflict Dream

A character struggling with an impossible choice might very well dream about it.

Using a dream sequence to colorfully illustrate internal turmoil can give a face to a character’s agony. Remember: show, don’t tell. This is something I often struggle with when writing, guys! Anyone else? Lol

3. The Foreshadowing Dream

The foreshadowing dream is probably one of my very favorites and for me its easier to write. This sequence gives a character a glimpse of the future while they sleep. This particular effect can range from mere hints at events to come—for instance, a character dreams about a ghastly trial where horrible evidence is brought against him, then wakes up and gets dressed down by his overbearing girlfriend—or outright prophesy.

In either case, this dream type should be used sparingly, and with extreme caution: if your characters are able to accurately predict the future with any sort of consistency, it can drain the tension right out of your story!

4. The Communication Dream

Also known as a “shared” or “linked” dream, this conceit comes from the popular notion that people are somehow able to communicate with one another via their dreams.

When used literally—usually in a more fantasy-oriented setting—the Communication Dream can be used either to demonstrate the close emotional bond between siblings, friends, or lovers, or simply to relay important information across vast distances without the use of communication technology.

Or, if the dream isn’t actually “shared,” it can allow one character to say something to another character that she could never say in person, creating a moment of catharsis.

Also a rule to remember before writing a dream: before you begin writing your dream sequence, ask yourself exactly why you’re including it.

If you can’t answer further than, “Because it’ll be awesome,” then the sequence probably isn’t necessary to your story.

Now that we're done discussing the uses for dream sequences, let's get into actually writing one!

Tips for Writing Dream Sequences:

1. Apply a bit of Logic

Writers and critics alike refer to how certain scenes accurately capture “dream logic,” or the fact that dreams seemingly operate on no logic at all.

That’s the keyword, however: “seemingly.”

Remember again that you’re writing a scene first, a scene that your readers need to be able to follow—at least somewhat. Your dream sequence needs to establish its own brand of consistent “dream logic" to ensure that the scene actually functions as a scene.

Even the most surreal and chaotic dreamscape needs some sort of through-line that ties it all together: as bananas as dreams get sometimes, they still have a narrative of some sort.

Even if you decide that your story would be best served by a wildly inconsistent dream sequence, you can at least be consistent in your inconsistency. Basically, keep the chaos running at the same level at all times, and the events within will hold some semblance of internal consistency—even if they’re actually coming apart at the seams.

2. Use Narrative Distance

You’ve no doubt heard of the classic “out-of-body experience” dream, where the dreamer watches their own actions as though they are a spectator instead of being “in the driver’s seat.”

Well, there’s a way to capture that floaty, out-to-lunch feeling in fiction using a narrative technique called narrative distance.

Narrative distance, or “perspective distance,” refers to the implied “space” between the reader and the narrator or character in the story. Are your readers privy to the narrator’s private thoughts or opinions about the goings-on in your book? Does he or she have a distinct personality—or even agency in the story, to a degree?

If so, that’s close narrative distance.

First-person perspective has the closest and most intimate narrative distance, but third-person has varying degrees of this as well. Can your third-person narrator omnisciently “hear” the thoughts of all your major characters—or does the narration function more like a camera lens, observing the action only on a surface level? Or can the narrator only “hear” the inner monologue of one central character? Or maybe a chosen few? All these decisions affect the narrative distance of your story.

But how does this apply to dream sequences? Well, in order to create that floaty, dreamlike feel, simply increase the narrative distance in your story for the duration of the scene. If you’ve got a first-person narrator, switch to third-person limited. If you’re already in third-person limited, “pan out” further—go for that action-oriented, cinematic viewpoint we described earlier.

The goal is to create a shift in perspective so radical that it makes your readers feel like they’re dreaming as well. “Zoom out” from the dream’s events, set your character loose inside—and watch the mayhem begin from afar.

3. Use a Little or Lots of Detail

There are two basic settings for fictional dreams.

First, there are the dreams that take place in vast voids with little detail and only a few characters and concrete objects within them. This creates an empty, lonely, and often eerie atmosphere, appropriate for both nightmares and reflection.

But these dream-voids aren’t merely seen, they’re experienced—and a very specific type of writing is required to simulate that experience on paper.

In this sort of dream, a lamp should go from “the lamp with the gold-colored lampshade and the base shaped like a crouching cat” to simply “a lamp on a low desk.”

Be vague. Be infuriatingly vague. Withhold details. Use sentence fragments. Leave gaps in your descriptions for your readers to fill in: after all, that’s what they’d do if the dream belonged to them!

The other kind of dream turns everything up several notches: the noise, the saturation, the colors, the mayhem… These dreams feel overcrowded, bursting at the seams, difficult to navigate without stepping on (or in) something unpleasant.

These are a different sort of nightmare: use them to communicate stress or illness or indecision, the product of a split, fractured, or divided mind.

Embrace that chaos in your writing. Go into detail overload. Describe things in florid or grotesque fashion, especially things that wouldn’t normally be either florid or grotesque. Have random, surreal elements intrude into the central narrative of the dream, and make sure these intrusions are as unpleasant as possible. Make your readers uneasy with their descriptions.

Not only does this overblown style suit surreal imagery, but it can make even ordinary scenery feel fevered and dreamlike.

A word of warning, however: exercise at least a smidge of restraint here. You may want your fever-dream sequence to be unpleasant, yes—but not so awful that your readers simply walk away.

Alright, I hope all of this information helped anyone who's interested in writing dream sequences. That's it for today's post, have a wonderful day and don't forget I love you all!

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ampersandnotdash · 6 years

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Catharsis

catharsis, n.

(Greek: κάθαρσις meaning "purification" or "cleansing”)

The purification and purgation of emotions—especially pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.

February, five months remaining

I know you’re not here anymore; but I have no other place to say it.

You said there’d be no ill effects and I believed it. Deep down, I knew otherwise. Your voice was low, posture hunched, face resolute in your explanation. And as you continued, I turned away because I had to maintain my composure in the face of this revelation.

The tears came anyway. Fortunately, they were few and silent.

It was inevitable: I had too many indications to point me to that eventual conversation. (I can’t think of that term without having the wind knocked out of me now.) Something kept me believing in the fantasy world I’d built over the past few months, allowing me to ignore the warning signs. Maybe that’s what this whole situation was – just an illusion dressed in paper hearts, decorated with glitter and scented with flowers.

The rest will get out in the open soon enough, I’m sure of it. Until then, I want you to know I’m happy that you’ll get the peace you need to make it work.

Take care of yourself, okay?

—

Indeterminate time following

Days strung out to weeks; weeks into months.

I knew that it’d be awkward (strained, uncomfortable, distant) between us at first. I thought that you were attempting to reconcile the words that I spoke with your life and the promises you made.

Instead, a void sprung from reticence; aloofness from avoidance.

I convinced myself that if I saw you and you me – that you recognized I still existed – that perhaps we would be able to return to some sort of semblance of where we were before that day. I shook off every dropped glance, rushed statement or hurried step, until one morning the glimmer of hope I was desperate to hold onto evaporated into the ether.

—

September, two months following

Sometimes I revisit our last real conversation to see if there’s something that I could have done or said differently to change the outcome. Should I have left it the way I did after telling you? Should I have stayed to hear what you had to say in response? Did you have anything to say?

I should have known it was going to be like this when, in the days following, you saw me and everything changed and there was nothing. To have to pull you into my path is something I would have never needed to do even a week prior. But I was naive and thought things would be strained, cordial — not so thoroughly altered that others would see us and wonder what happened.

Other times, I imagine what we’d say to each other if the situation ever arose. I want to believe that we’d able to stay calm based on how we’ve spoken before; but the topic that we’d inevitably tread upon is too charged for us to maintain a collected facade. I’d ultimately dissolve into a litany of vulgarities while trying (futilely) to keep my tears at bay. You’d stand there, keeping your voice as even as possible, defending yourself and offering small platitudes as you create and cultivate even more distance between us. It gets to the point where I say something that triggers you (sometimes, I’ll say something intentionally volatile to get you to focus; others, it’ll be innocuous, but it’s enough to set you off) and you become red and intimidating like I know you can be. I don’t hear your words, only the rush of blood coursing through my ears as my breath strains against my chest, but I can see your anger, feel the fire that defines our sign. Then you’re gone and I’m left alone the way I left you back then.

No matter how many times I run through this scenario it never ends well.

Regardless, I know that after this, we will never speak again.

—

February, seven months following

I passed you as you spoke with others and I heard your laugh for the first time in ages. I was able to keep walking without so much as a backward glance and thought that things were finally getting better, that I was able to move on without you.

Days later, I saw you again. This time my eyes found yours in the distance. In that moment, I saw you as I’d seen you so long ago. I stepped outside myself – rooted to the ground, afraid to act – and my options flash through my mind.

A brief wave. A silent hello. A conversation picked up from where we last left off.

A lifetime streaks through a millisecond and I look away.

The rest of my day was a blur: my speech too quick to follow, movements too wild to be natural. All I can think of is that breath of time where we held each other still and the world stopped.

I often go back to that day, wanting to know if you had the same hesitation when you saw me. But then I remember the distance you’ve established and the walls you’ve built to protect what you love most in this life. And then my body buckles beneath itself and I grow weak and crumple inward, gasping through tears wondering why I didn’t hold my tongue that afternoon, why I couldn’t shake the idea that this was our goodbye, why I can’t stop thinking of all the times we laughed together and talked with each other, why I don’t want to give up the naïve belief that maybe, maybe, we could put this all behind us and just be okay again.

I feel heavy in my sadness, hollowed out by grief and despair, wondering if I have it in me to keep going.

Then I remember what I told a woman when this first happened.

I’ll be fine. I have to be.

—

Indeterminate time following

There are times when an instance will trigger a memory from another lifetime when things were so much different than they are now. I get lost in the undertow of bittersweet nostalgia remembering our escapades (successful or not), exchanges (verbal or otherwise), experiences (significant or naught) and, before I realize what’s happening, I’m drowning in the past.

I can’t change what happened on a summer’s afternoon when I told you how I felt and all that took place afterward. I can’t undo everything that came from your winter’s morning reassurance that led up to that disclosure. In both instances, I’m not sure I’d want to if given the chance. The time spent with you was as perfect as it could be.

I love you now as I loved you then. I want you to know that in the days, weeks, months and years following, I will still think of you with fondness in my heart.

parrhesia || aposiopesis || verisimilitude || catharsis || apostrophe

#those four words #arc: epistolary

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myfriendpokey · 7 years

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Output Lag

What's happening during a Half-Life style "playable cutscene"? The game's stopped, but it's still going - the semblance of goals and consequence have been taken away, but the controls still respond the way they always do. In my experience it requires a kind of deliberate effort to pull back and play "in character", or even just leave the controller or the mouse alone, as opposed to absently bunnyhopping around or grinding the camera viewport against the face of whoever's talking in the vague hope that this will speed up the narrative somehow. There's a kind of goofy Wile-E-Coyote-running-off-the-cliff aspect to it, where it just takes a while for the penny to drop. But it's also a little eerie in the same way: the Brownian motion of the target reticule twitching back and forth under the impact of drives too vague and shortlived to articulate, that kind of frantic, static watchfulness, drops and smears of useless energy action-painting themselves through a controller, onto the screen. I don't know that this is play, it seems to have very little to do with choice, but it's familiar from other times I've played videogames, or even used a computer, it feels less like a kind of accidental parody of than the natural terrain for all of those activities, as if the foundational experience of playing a videogame is this kind of feedback loop of alienated consciousness - consciousness with a tape delay, recognising itself a second or a millisecond too late, correcting, revising, circling, re-expressing, trying to correct this alien record, creating in the process a perverse catalogue of elision and mistake. Like Twitch Plays Pokemon on a more individuated level. The feedback loop here is one of estrangement and recognition, both omnipresent as sensations but slipping away as soon as they appear within reach, each one turning seamlessly into the other.

Obviously a sensation most specifically present in a small group of reflex-driven action games can't be extrapolated to the whole format but part of what interests me about it is the feeling that it CAN be extrapolated to computers, to the general state of being on or using a computer, that same dissociated intensity. And of course many of the same ingredients are there: the continual movement towards greater sensitivity of input, less time on an act than on the modification of an act (like the back and forth of typing and checking the autocomplete response to your typing to get the quickest search), the movement towards interfaces that can be "read" as quickly and instinctively as possible to cut down on user-side response lag, that strange sense that results of being outside time, as if what you're watching is less a linear, sequential flow of inputs and outputs than a blurred, circular admixture of them both. And if it's familiar from computer usage then it's necessarily familiar from other computer games too, even the most sedate, if not overtly present then as a certain recurring baseline of intensity which the rest of the experience is implicitly structured around. Videogames remain too close to other forms of computer use to be unaffected by the proximity - it affects not only their production and distribution but also the network of associations about technology, certain forms of input or visual representation or spatial organisation, which we draw upon when playing through the things. And if I'm insistent about connecting this feeling to even the smallest Klik N Play games it's partly because I think it helps us with a way of thinking about those games in particular that a more orthodox game criticism would seem to lack.

Kero Blaster & The Charged Field

Kero Blaster is a Metroid style game about a frog who jumps around and shoots bugs. The frog has a boss who is a cat that seems to get more frantically depressed between each mission, for reasons which remain mysterious throughout. The scenes with the boss are very brief and make up a small proportion of the game - five or six "cutscenes" of under 30 seconds each, that play when you're about to start a new level - but tonally they're a mixture of goofy and plangent enough to stick slightly in the mind, assisted from the break they give from the experience of the levels. These two narratives - frog metroid and depressive cat - are technically connected by the appearance of a kind of plump black insect that appears in each, first as a background feature and eventual enemy / overarching threat in the frog levels, secondly as the boss's "pet", which lives in a tank above a file cabinet and seems to grow larger as the boss gets more unhappy. But the problem here is that, as much as the presence of this pet hints at a single overarching master narrative around both types of segment, it remains difficult to construct that narrative in a way which doesn't diminish or evade our experience of one or the other of the consituent parts. To say the game is about the ominous black bugs that you fight throughout is to take the strangely affecting scenes of cat depression and reframe them through the debateably less relateable lens of being possessed by a malevolent fantasy insect. To say the game is about the unhappiness of the boss character is to draw attention away from the fact that you spend most of the game jumping around and shooting stuff. So while all the pieces are there they remain difficult to join up - as gnomic and short as the game is there's still something like an excess of meaning that consistently threatens to break out from the framing narratives that we construct. This evasiveness extends to the ending of the game, where the defeat of the bug-possessed boss cat simultaneously completes the frog's quest and also signifies the catharsis which allows the boss cat to move from neurotic misery back to regular unhappiness - our uncertainty about the priority of the two frames means we view this less as specific resolution to either one than as a kind of magical synchronicity uniting both, where the solution to one problem resolves a totally different one in the manner of those fairy tales where giving a ring to a fish causes the evil baron to fall down a well. The dream here is one of some radical contingency which could cut across the discrete realms.. but a glimpsed dream it remains, one which the game shows no interest of developing into a broader or more stable thesis about the other two parts: after the credits we're back at the title screen, with the frog once more staring gnomically at the ringing phone that sends it on the missions. Restart Game Y/N.

This is the kind of structure I tend to think of as "the charged field" - where rather than grouping materials by their relevance to some central theme or with reference to some existing set of relationships a work seems to rely on the associations of unity within the concept of an artistic work itself to hold the various components together, as if dropping a picture frame around three random images was enough to, if not relate them all together in a new way, at least prompt the sort of interpretation and attention that notionally could. But what interests me is not the merit of this form or of Kero Blaster specifically so much as the unobtrusiveness of their overlap: the sense that both we and the game remain froggily comfortable in these murky waters, among such diffuse and unclear structural relationships. There's obviously a link between this tacit acceptance and the fact that such interpretation is outside the strict remit of the "mechanics", or those set of readings and adjustments necessary to progress through the game, but it's this very distractedness that the narrative relies on, plays off of - if it's animated by anything it's the constant background churn of micro-recognitions, comparisons, correspondances, surgings and leachings of attention and of intent that are thrown up continuously by the barely-registered activity involved in using a computer or a phone, and it's this churn that allows the narrative level (or condemns it) to operate in odd liminal spaces, shorn of unity or the capability for same, art for a peripheral form of consciousness.

For what it's worth I'd like to avoid from the start the kind of moralism that sees this formal reliance on distractedness as either a good or bad thing in itself, that would immediately reconfigure it as either some grumpy dad pastiche of postmodernity or as utopian anti-hierarchial space, since I think part of the interest of these videogames for us is the way that, carrying associations from both sides, they must find ways of situating themselves variously between, with or against both at different times, when not trying to escape the bind through new configurations entirely. (I'm tempted to argue that the weird persistence of pastoral imagery in videogames is a side-effect of this process, as a kind of rhetorical counterweight to newness and disorientation). And in general I'd like to suggest that what's interesting about new cultural forms has more to do with what they complicate or undercut than what they can more straightforwardly enact - desires or fears which remained unarticulated or secondary now pushed into the light, old distinctions suddenly confused, systems of value less reflected in our art then refracted in them, revealing hidden contours. The ability of videogames to unproblematically depict "choice" in effect dooms efforts to thematise "choice" to empty tautology ("Ah, I see... I made a choice..." "Ah, I see... choices have consequences, sometimes, once they remain within the technical and ideological remit of the game systems...") while supposedly more minor corrollary questions (say, the impact of input and game systems on strategies of visual representation) grow dense, rich and tangled with the effort of reconciling what's peculiar about the new format with what we know about the old ones.

Questions I Can't Answer

So all this being said I would like to pick out some similar fields of productive confusion that I think have particular relevance to our friend the terrifying consciousness churn and to the (typically small, goofy) videogames that address it most directly.

The first is the impossibility of unity in the computer game format, unity in the sense of the modernist ideal whereby form and content would both sink indivisibly into each other or in the kind of dopier sense of the work where every part can be related to some overall thematic meaning, like in a bad music video. I think this follows from the idea that the churn which this form of narrative relies on is both meaningless and un-representationable in itself, being by definition part of that plane of subconsciousness where both meaning and representation are themselves constructed but also from the more historical sense that the specific form of this subconsciousness is intimately connected with technology in a way which can't help but be embarrassingly, persistently contingent, in a way which complicates the idea of a return to some prelapsarian domain where art and life are one. Technology is also a continuous reminder of such "un-artistic" subjects as labour, politics, economics, subjects which continuously threaten to overwhelm the boundaries of a contained aesthetic work - and I suspect that the struggle of dealing with this history, and this sensed contingency, is central to the persistence of "retro" imagery in videogames, the continual effort to establish a kind of ahistorically organic rootedness in everyday life that we glimpse in people saying that something is "a game for the whole family", or that kids of the future will remember it as we remember the games of our past today, or indeed whenever a multimillion dollar piece of electronic software that would have been unplayable five years ago and will be unplayable again in another five is rhetorically positioned as part of an unbroken continuum with hopscotch and Go. The difficulty of establishing an unproblematic basis for videogames in human life results in a set of perversely historical tendencies, where old strategies and contexts are continuously, obsessively repeated and replayed, like scenarios in the Castlevania franchise.

Another is the question of what kind of claims something existing on such a diffuse level of attention can make as an object of aesthetic totality, when "playing a videogame" can just mean having some videogame-y signifiers float across your screen while the way you perceive and use your computer remain effectively unchanged, and the question of which structures are best suited for existing in that particular space.

And still another, most relevant to my mind to the games I'll be discussing below, is the question of memory; memory less as an extension of the historical focus than as an alternative to it, memory as creating alternative constellations of meanings and intensities and temporal relations outside of those allotted by the official histories of same, memory as something like a counterweight to that most disavowed part of videogames which is the experience of actually playing one. We can say there is no "time" in videogames, just experience - checking Twitter or playing Croc II are both weirdly durationless experiences in the sense that both involve miniscule tics of attention repeating indefinitely across a changeless, frozen void, and in addition we of course have all the traditional awkwardnesses of projecting videogames into a continuous narrative (fail states, reloads, adventure game characters lurking in the same room over and over as they try to use PEPPERMINT on VENDING MACHINE). The result is that what narrative there is takes on something of a sculptural quality: despite what I've said "destroying the bugs" is not really the ending to Kero Blaster, "destroying the bugs" is one of the components within that charged field, but the relationship between all these components is not primarily one of time. Our memories of videogames are similarly nonsequential, a field, jumping, something to do with crystals, feeling tired, a bloody head, a castle wall, and to break up and diffuse the elements of a videogame narrative in advance can be variously to enhance, assist, distort or speak through the operation of this process, within which the undifferentiated sludge of videogame experience can both expand and change shape like one of those dinosaurs that grows bigger in water. And what this comparison of spatialised arrangement of videogame elements with the nonlinear structures of memory gives us is an angle from which to talk about the flatgames.

Screen Door

"Flatgame" is a neologism for a type of homebrew videogame that's been around forever, or since simplified public-use game engines like ZZT, Klik N Play and RPG Maker at the very latest, which is roughly the type where you control some sort of monad that moves around a flat, barely-spatialized plane without much in the way of other "game" elements, interactions, or even such frills as collision detection or checks to make sure you haven't fallen off the screen. Some examples of same are Pink Zone, Donkey Kong City, RPG, Gassy Choose Your Own Adventure Weirdo. It's such a broad category that there's no point trying to ring-fence it but I think we can pick out some secondary tendencies which allow us to focus more on this concept as an aesthetic rather than as a bare structure. 1. Thematically split between the "videogame-y" and the personal, where by videogamey I mean more or less those jarring surface elements that tend to stick out most to outsiders - graphics that are both repetitive and unintelligible, weird little monster people, arbitrary and artificial limitations and objects of focus (BALL QUEST 3000 CAN YOU COLLECT ALLOF THE BALLS? YOU CAN DO IT.. I BELIEVE IN YOU etc), confusions of scale leading to vast bathrooms or miniscule cities. And by personal I mean specifically a kind of oblique vignette-ish interest in specific local occurances or sensations of the type which typically are not considered either interesting or relevant by the culture. 2. "Prefab", referential use of game elements - as a side effect of the various engines if nothing else which all have some variant on a basic four-way movement system, or a platformer mechanic, or similar. These elements are taken as given rather than interrogated or explored and seperated entirely from the notion of challenge. 3. Converse focus on overexpressive content, where by overexpressive I mean things which carry a larger load of affect and association than their structural role necessarily requires - an example is the handdrawn look of something like noclipangelmode, with the waves and blurs of human marker usage thickly overlaying the basic mechanics, or the ripped commercial sprite and compressed but evocative panorama backdrop of Donkey Kong City.

In addition to all these we also have the "flatness" of their name, a tendency to place elements independently around the screen which creates the feeling of a flat, depthless plane, seperated both from perspective and from the idea of a singular coherent viewing position implicit in perspective. It's an effect that tends to decenter the player further from the point of mechanical interaction, such as it is, by refusing to grant that point visual primacy over the rest of the space - it remains just one of many elements, scattered across a field. We could say that what the flatgames suggest is a movement from our idea of the site of a videogame, the site where the videogame happens, from somewhere deep inside a console or CPU onto the screen itself, where our eye meets and tries to process the objects before it into some coherent relationship - a view I think supported by the aforementioned overexpressiveness of the objects themselves, a needless overexpressiveness particular to their appearance on the screen which thus claims the screen as the native site of computer affect, of effects that seem to float free of their particular use or context. This refocusing on the screen as the site of the alien material with which we must grapple when trying to interpret what's happening in a videogame also moves the space of "interpretation" backwards, outwards from the ostensibly neutral territory of the screen - where the attention meets the game elements - to some space outside of it, where attention meets the screen itself. And this insistence on the alien, object-quality of the screen has some side effects - firstly, as mentioned, it drastically curtails the amount of "interaction" thought necessary or desireable in this context. Interaction is recast as a way of dealing with the screen, and the actual interactions themselves - that weird fugue of absently tapped wasd keys - become a kind of artificial sense-organ by which we can be "aware", in the vague way of videogames, of the movement of our insectlike subconscious as it buffers across the screen. Move move move stop move stop stop treasure treasure treasure - to adapt a line from Paul Klee in perhaps a more literal sense than he'd intended, like taking the attention span for a walk.

Secondly, on perhaps a less cosmic and more interesting level, this movement to the screen enables a new awareness of materiality, on the material sensuousness of objects, drawings, lines of text as we engage with them around the screen - now read as things in themselves in addition to projections of some ultimately underlying system and as capable of adjusting and changing said system on those terms, rather than simply being dismissed as irrelevant shadows, as if concentrating hard enough on "underlying systems" was enough to negate the fact that said systems are read, applied and understood in inescapably material and sensual ways. And thirdly, perhaps as a consequence of the latter, this new sensuousness allows for a re-emergence of material which otherwise gets suppressed with the focus on an underlying core system - material like place, history, speech, humming in the shower, half-remembered cutscenes, the entrancing surface jank of videogame representations in general, weird experiences, goofy jokes. The detritus of memory and of daydream as projected into a closed system of that restless probing pseudoconsciousness which lacks either, colonising and colonised by both in turn, and forming temporary new shapes which give us less an understanding of than an analogy for the similar process happening within our heads - the positing of memory as newly central to our conception of whatever "interactive art" might be, a way to counter and rethink our experience of the omnipresence of flux. By saying all this I don't mean to downplay the goofiness and charm of Glorious Trainwreck-type work - if anything I think having a better understanding of the sometimes sophisticated techniques they're using makes this basic goofiness more funny, instead of less - or suggest that this kind of computer consciousness is the ultimately determining meaning of every Klik N Play game. But I do think as a variety of contemporary experience they are riffing off it, and taking in however distant a way some of their humour or interest or livelihood by tuning against this background hum in a way I think deserves more thought, and that I hope the above braindumps provide some initial suggestions for.

#vgames #videogames #gamechat #criticism #flatgames #kero blaster #altgames #kirby's air ride #hello

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sending-the-message · 6 years

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Bodies in the Basement Wall by WindWakerOfficial

‘Hello, sir. I’m Detective Roland, this is Detective Manning.’

‘Which of you’s the Captain and which is Tennille?’

‘We’re both the Captain. So, we’ve spoken to Officer Brooks, whom you first reported this to. He says you saw a man break a window on the second floor of the neighboring house, jump out onto the ground below, and disappear into the nearby woods?’

‘S’what I told him ain’t it?’

‘And you say this man was covered head to toe in what appeared to be blood?’

‘If it weren’t all blood it were at least mostly blood, mighta been some other bodily fluids mixed in I guess. Fella was a mess is all I’m sayin’, don’t need to know what specific kinda fluids he was drenched in to see that much, officer.’

‘Actually, it’s detective, but that’s not important. So, beyond that uh… incident, you didn’t witness anything else out of the ordinary?’

‘Witness? No. Hear? You betcha. It bein’ a Friday night, I was up later’n usual. Drifted off round midnight. Usually round these hours I’d be asleep heavier’n a newborn that’s just been force-fed a fifth a’ whiskey. Fortunately for me, if fortunate’s what you’d call it, I weren’t yet in that deep of a sleep. I was woken up by the sounds comin’ from the house only a few minutes after I first dozed off. I know that much, cause when I fell asleep I was watchin’ a rerun a’ MASH, and when I woke up that smartass doctor was still yammerin’ on about the Korean fuckin’ war. I’m guessin’ the only reason I heard the commotion and not the rest of the neighborhood’s cause my armchair’s right next to the window ‘n that window’s right next to the house in question.’

‘Sir the house isn’t in question, just what took place inside of it.’

‘Wow son, ‘graaat-u-lations, you made an old fart like me look fuckin’ stupid, real impressive. In which part of your degree’d they teach you that one?’

‘Please continue with the story sir, apologies for the interruption.’

‘Apology accepted I guess. Anyway, I wake up to the sounds of bangin’ and crashin’ louder’n there had any right to be this late. Thought I heard some yellin’ and screamin’ in amongst it all but honestly it coulda been anything. Too hard to hear specific noises in amongst all that chaos, y’know? Ah, you don’t know. Anyways, I sit an’ listen for a few more seconds while I try to look out the window and see what’s happenin’, but I couldn’t get a clear view of shit. So that’s when I wander out the front ‘n see that mess of a fella make his escape into nature. Dunno if the Pope shits in the woods, but he sure as hell looked like he was about to. If I were a few decades younger I woulda busted the front door down and sorted things out myself. If not, I would’ve at least tried to catch up to the fella. Seeing as that clearly ain’t the case though I figured I better throw this one over to the ‘professionals’. Good luck with whatever this is I guess.’

‘Thank you for your time and cooperation sir, you’ve been a great help.’

He had not been a great help. Though it was starting to look like beyond a second-to-second retelling from whoever jumped out that second story window, nothing would be.

‘One more thing I figure I should probably add about the fella. See, it was dark for sure, so this mighta just been the streetlights playin’ tricks, but the look on his face weren’t any kinda fear. It was a face of hope. The kinda face you see on a fella’s just found out he’s finally comin’ home from war. Kinda face a fella makes walkin’ outta divorce court a free fuckin’ man. Kinda hope you’d only see in today’s world, ‘cause shit’s so god damn backwards lately. Trust me, I know the face, had it twice myself. Decorated and divorced.’

As the two detectives tried to piece the information they’d just been given into something remotely usable, the guts of the neighboring house remained much the same as they were at the time of the incident. Though initially the exit and subsequent venture into the wilderness may seem to be the strangest part of this case, one look at the interior of the house put that assumption firmly to rest.

In the coming days, several bodies; some female, some male; would be discovered hidden in the southern wall of the basement. Along with a phrase repeatedly scratched into the bottom left corner of that same wall:

‘This is where the hopeless lie, this is not where I will die.’

Moving above the macabre, sadistic mess that filled the basement, the front door had been fitted with a serious of locks. Locks to ensure that the owner was the only one able to move freely from inside to out. Police initially had to use an enforcer to breach the door. Looking around upon their entrance, what the inside truly looked like before the escape was anyone’s guess. At this point, it resembled a post-Katrina New Orleans far more than anyone’s idea of a home.

Beyond the absolute and overwhelming chaos that seemed to drench every fibre of the house, police additionally noted that all the windows on the first and second floor had been heavily barred. All except for one. On the western side of the second floor, at the end of a narrow hallway, a child’s room lay untouched. A photograph of a smiling, gap-toothed young girl was sat on a small, pink dresser. The bed, still perfectly made, had been lined with a series of stuffed animals. The kind that would’ve provided a young daughter with more peace and comfort than all the prescription happiness or over the counter numbness in the world could provide her grieving father. Her confused, angry, mess of a father.

This small piece of tranquility in the eye of the raging storm that was the remainder of the house led one younger officer to draw comparisons to the home of serial killer and noted Wisconsinite: Ed Gein, aka The Butcher of Plainfield. A home filled with unspeakable horrors, horrors which halted abruptly upon entering the perfectly maintained bedroom of the deceased mother Gein, Augusta. Hope, for some semblance of love and normalcy in these cases, lies with family. When the family leaves, hope does too. Some might call it ironic that the same conflicted state of mind that created this house of horror also created the only way out. Through all the hours spent reinforcing, barring, locking and then relocking, that one room remained sacred. The bloody footsteps and shards of glass now littering the floor a cardinal sin upon his house of worship.

It’s unknown just how that still nameless final victim managed to hold on and escape, how he stayed alive during what the media are now calling the crime of the decade. The only reasonable explanation continues to fall back on those three lines written in the basement and the statement made by one elderly neighbor. Hope. Hope that no matter how impossibly doomed things may have seemed, there was still a way out. The kind of interior, steadfast hope that no amount of torture, psychological or otherwise, can ever take away.

Police are still searching for the owner of the house, some even speculate that he was the man seen escaping into the woods. That he got away with the whole thing. Though unlikely, if that is the case, one can only hope that this experience has provided him with the catharsis he so desperately longed for. After all, doesn’t everyone need a little something to hope for?

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ricardosousalemos · 7 years

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Black Flag: Damaged

As the last song on Damaged begins, Henry Rollins introduces himself. “My name’s Henry and you’re here with me now,” he says. Then he growls, as he does on and off throughout the rest of the song. “I don’t even care about self-destruction anymore.” The song ends, and he’s nearly breathless. “Damaged, my damage!” He sounds like he’s gone through several lifetimes of torture. “No one comes in. Stay out!” It’s 1981 and he is 20 years old.

Rollins joined Black Flag less than a year earlier when he was just a fan who viewed them as hardcore punk godheads. In his memoir, Get in the Van, Rollins wrote of watching the band perform: “It was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “All the songs were abrupt and crushing. Short bursts of unbelievable intensity. It was like they were trying to break themselves into pieces with the music.” At that point, Dez Cadena was the vocalist, with bassist Chuck Dukowski and guitarist Greg Ginn handling the songwriting. When Cadena decided to move to rhythm guitar, Rollins was recruited to try out. Offered the spot, he accepted, and quit his day job managing a D.C. Häagen-Dazs store to moved to California to be the new lead singer of Black Flag.

In the trifecta of early ’80s hardcore, alongside Minor Threat and Bad Brains, Black Flag crystallized what hardcore could do at its most crowd-pleasing. Minor Threat was more existential, and Bad Brains more romantic. Black Flag took the ethos of fast and loud and made it into a lifestyle. Though they’d achieved success as a band before Rollins, it’s the tone of his voice, simultaneously conveying anger and empathy, that elevates Damaged to its rightful position as a cornerstone document in the history of punk.

Thirty-five years on, Damaged still sounds absolutely berserk. Though made up of what is easily identifiable as “songs,” the record is at its most formidable when it becomes chaotic. Bassist Chuck Dukowski’s bass sounds like rubbing two giant sticks together to start a fire. His playing often feels like the way a Cro-Magnon man might approach rhythm, harsh and mean. Guitarist Greg Ginn is a wizard, playing his guitar like it’s a dental drill. With Cadena keeping some semblance of structure, Ginn shreds riffs apart, extending them into mini-solos across half a verse. He’s closer in spirit to Jerry Garcia or Sonny Sharrock than other hardcore guitarists. His playing is violently virtuosic, sliding between wild, fuzzed-out abandon and the immaculate conception of the chug that makes hardcore so exciting. While Cadena and Black Flag’s parochial drummer Robo establish a basic lifeline of stability, Ginn throws paint on the canvas straight from the bucket.

Damaged does have its semi-traditional moments, and they all suffer from the band trying too hard. Consider the fairly crappy pogoing punk number “TV Party,” something of a cult classic for its singalong chorus. It’s perfectly banal, this dumb little song taking potshots at normies who want to “watch TV and have a couple of brews,” which may or may not have posed a threat to the way of life of Black Flag and their fans. But on an album that is otherwise adventurous, sarcastically shouting out “The Jeffersons” and “Hill Street Blues” is an unnecessary tug back to earth. These are bad details. The more they seem like feral animals, the better.

They’re at their scuzzy best on songs like “Spray Paint,” which is just 32 seconds long. It begins with a second or two of feedback, like an engine revving, before taking off. “It feels good to say what I want/It feels good to knock things down/It feels good to see the disgust in their eyes,” Rollins sings. When the chorus hits, Robo stomps the crash cymbal, and the band screams the refrain: “Spray paint the walls!” They’re the kids of Lord of the Flies with guitars instead of spears.

So thank god for Henry Rollins, a beacon. Previous singers of Black Flag are cult favorites, but none could penetrate through the wall of sound like him. His desperation is the centerpiece of the album, pleading with you—with himself—for release from pain song after song. His clarity of tone balances out Ginn and Dukowski, and he acts as a sort of ringleader pulling in tentative listeners and converting them into fans. On songs when he’s hurting, particularly “Damaged I,” he can be hard to listen to, but he is always impossible to ignore, like an actor dying in convincingly dramatic fashion on screen.

It’s the album’s inherent violence—both self-inflicted (as suggested by the cover image of Rollins punching out his reflection in a mirror), and that which is brought to bear upon well-deserving abusers—that makes the album’s hate and danger so attractive. Hardcore has continued to evolve, and the adrenaline offered by Damaged has been absorbed wholesale by hundreds of other groups. Straight edge hardcore groups utilized Black Flag’s scorched-earth approach, abandoning subtlety for unadorned aggression. Grindcore and thrash bands traded heaviness for speed; listening to them is like cheering on a car race. From Los Crudos to G.L.O.S.S., bands have narrowed the rage present in the lyrics of Damaged and used them to motivate political action, where Black Flag just kind of seemed to be bothered by unfairness.

When Damaged emerged, though, it was an anomaly. In the 1981 LA Times review of the album, Robert Hilburn compared the band to melodic punk rock group X five separate times. Though he loved the album, he noted, “The group’s grinding guitar attack … still lacks the brightness of X’s often rockabilly-accented arrangements.” That may seem like an absurd comparison now, but in 1981, the cultural and sonic space between a poppy band like X and one like Black Flag was not so large. The many shades of grey in between had yet to be defined in detail. Damaged was such a leap forward for punk, the only point of reference was miles behind.

That’s changed. Hardcore was just beginning in the early ’80s, evolving out of punk rock. This was a time before the genre splintered in a million fractions, and they were essentially all contained with Damaged: trash, grindcore, youth crew. None of those really existed in ’81, whereas now they all have a deep canon of often absolutely brutal-sounding records. We’re not yet at the place where a record like Damaged sounds quaint, but Black Flag have a lot more competition in their bid for catharsis through intensity now. And even forgetting hardcore entirely, rap is often the place wild teens look for thrills.

I first heard Damaged in the mid-’90s, when I was 12 or 13. Every song was an anthem. Black Flag railed against “them”; for me, that equaled teachers, parents, jocks. Authority is authority is authority—smash it all. now, as an adult, would I find it as remarkable as I did then? Listening to Damaged now sometimes feels as much an anthropological experience as much as a visceral one. There is a certain pleasure in reverse engineering the album’s controlled chaos. Over time, Black Flag has achieved a mythological status, and searching for the source of their timeless potency can lead to a wormhole of ephemera. Their music alone may not have sustained such fervid devotion.

In a sense, then, Damaged has survived more as a historical living document than as a piece of art. Should it be considered as it was written in the early Reagan years on the cusp of a technological revolution? Just like a well-armed militia has a very different meaning now than in 1776, perhaps the way we heard Damaged has, and should, change. Hardcore, at its most potent, has always dealt with problems pertinent to the time and place we live now. Most of the hatred expressed on Damaged is vague, “They hate us/We hate them.” The utility of that unspecificity may have run its course. We don’t live in forever, we live in a very volatile now.

Perhaps the best way to experience Black Flag was as Rollins once did: in concert, something Damaged can only imitate. Head to YouTube for a show in Hartford in 1982 and watch a shirtless, scruffy, and jacked Rollins roll around on the floor, arching his back like getting he’s getting zapped back from the dead. Dukowski smacks the bass strings more than he plays them. It’s basically impossible to see what Ginn is actually doing, his hands up and down on the strings, back and forth on his guitar neck, like he’s playing some kind of demented game of catch. The audience sings the words, comes up on stage, hangs out there. No one in the band minds. Or maybe they don’t even notice, zoned out on their own planet. Watch them play in Philadelphia in 1982. Rollins keeps getting punched by a member of the crowd. He leans into it. After a few rounds of getting hit, Rollins clocks the daylights out of him. It’s a real baptism by fire. For the wrong listener, Damaged may be just noise. But for the right one, perhaps it is too.

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