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rolandrockover · 6 months

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Why Unholy Is the Only Real Demon Song

This little essay was supposed to be called "Why Unholy is not a demon song", which in the end I preferred not to implement, because it could have led to unnecessary Misperceptions (0). Why this could be so, I suppose, should become clear in the course of reading. I would like to approach the matter, however, only slowly, in which I first of all put the question into the room, what basically, a demon actually is. In the general explanation of terms, a demon is defined as a spirit or a fateful power, roughly but foundationally. Starting from this spirit sphere of its existence it exerts influence on the human being. This definition is to form the essence of my line statement to my way of looking at the textual content of Unholy. In the course of the history of mankind and the parallel developing of mythologies and religion formations it is to be observed how the conception of a demon has developed slowly from spirit form up to various to a variety physical manifestations. This pure embodiment of the concept of a demon remains of course to be metaphorical.

However, it may well be seen that those very symbolic embodiments form the bridge to what is accepted as a demon in our common western culture: A supernatural being, with powers, bat wings, attachments to hell, evil red eyes, or just simply… Gene? A mixture of trash, fantasy & pop culture. Within this framework we can see or read them everywhere. In books, movies, or computer games, or wherever. I would like to say goodbye to this concept as quickly as possible, but before that I want to also ask what the pre '92 so-called demon songs were all about?

God of Thunder:

is a potpourri, made up of Greek and Norse mythology, an inverted changeling becoming a derivation of Superman, and … Rock and Roll? In other words, it is nothing less than epic nonsense (1). When I claim that they had no clue what they were writing and singing about, I don't think I'm taking too big a risk. I close this song for the sake of simplicity without further ado as Atmospheric Dadaism, that basically served its purpose quite well (2).

Almost Human:

obviously serves the werewolf motif - with a good dash of horniness. As much as I love the song, not much more can be said about it.

War Machine:

is hitting the shit a lot harder. It more or less gives free rein to a fantasy of violence lead by a call for regency of the fist over society - If of necessity, then even by pure forceful breaking the laws of nature in two. Similar to God of Thunder Demons merely make it in as a side note, but this time only to demonstrate the pure wickedness of the non-demonic spokesman. The latter gets pure satisfaction by calling for the release of all demons, and finds pleasure in the midst of the chaos he creates. Does that make this song a demon song? Only very conditionally, in my opinion. One could ask oneself if this could be a foreshadowing of the planned removal of the make-up for the release of Creatures of the Night, considering that the title character is "only" human, and not a changeling, werewolf or anything else, thus demonstrating that this human being, the unmasked Gene, is quite capable of not only competing with demons, but even being superior to them in pure attitude. If this were indeed the case, I would find it rather regrettable not to have been true to this line in the following years. (3).

And what about Unholy?

What is that actually about? It's about mankind, or, more precisely, it is about mankind and its fundamental core structures. Or even more precisely, about their elected representatives, and their ways and methods to direct and control this man-made world. In a nutshell: a social psychological exposition… from the point of view of a demon! And this demon speaks quasi as the personification of the entire history of mankind in its fundamental order, and, more or less accuses all of us of being complicit in it. And Gene (4) gave it a mouth to be able to do that.

So, if for this purpose it is expressly considered that the sphere of spirit within which a demon exists represents nothing else than a splitting off of our own negative qualities - a pure projection of ourselves, this must be understood as a distancing, or rather as a washing clean of our own sins (5). This alone is the reason for the conception of demons. You really have to let this abstraction sink in a bit first, in order to be able to understand it properly at all. Only then, with this full awareness of what hard stuff it basically is, should one also approach the fact that this entity's indictment certainly does not ponder the sunny side of our society. And let us add to this that the history of mankind is built at its core on war and enslavement (6) - for which power was clearly needed. And to gain, or increase, power, control is necessary. Speaking of control, let's also touch on the subject of religion, using the example of the Christianity in Unholy. I will try to concretize the symbolism contained in it a bit the way i see it:

In the search for meaning in existence, it is natural for man to have faith and spirituality (7). This natural need for faith is basically intercepted, and replaced by the substitute product of religion, which serves to take control over the life of soul and faith. One might say, thus isolating the seeker of faith from the true divine streams of this world respectively this universe. From this point on, the cycle of pain would begin. Suicide is forbidden in the Christian religion and represents a sin and does not permit the entrance into the promised heavenly kingdom. So should one dedicate oneself to this scheme devoutly on all fours, one just gets a cross placed on his grave after his death. This would bring no benefit to oneself, neither here on earth nor a uncertain kingdom of heaven, nor whatever bliss - because the cross only serves smybolically to demonstrate to the living that ones spirit belonged fully and completely to the power superior to one forever. In Unholy, furthermore, it is suggested that suicide is the true salvation from this misery. Which would also make more than just sense within this structure, if the body (enslavement) and the spirit (religion) are controlled by a power superior to me.

Unholy, however, might want to penetrate Christianity a little further. One could well see the demonic values split off from man, as a parable to the fall of Lucifer from the kingdom of heaven. And why? In the Kingdom of Heaven of God, there are two realms on His side. The right (hand). And the left (hand). To dwell at the right hand of God is usually considered the more preferable position because authority, power and strength are inherent in it (8). The Bible also mentions that Jesus was favored to sit in this place after his resurrection (9). On the left side of God, on the other hand, the Bible revealed, would be no one - and this should not change until the coming ages (10). Opposite it often remains asked whether this had not been the place of Lucifer. And so much for the father of lies.

In this, Unholy differs from the old, classic demon songs, and that is why Unholy is the only true, dogmatic demon song. It is about the evil that men do. To other men. It probably wouldn't even be too thoughtless to sound out a little less how very overrated Unholy supposedly is. Because in my own opinion, at least the lyrics of this song is still merciless and completely underrated.

Unholy (1992)

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Side notes:

(0) However, as life goes, this title has also led to some huge misconceptions in the past. But hey, so what?

(1) Richard Wagner twisted through a pop culture distortion would not be a bad description either

(2) I am, of course, sticking to the final album version, and not the demo (thought out by Paul Stanley alone, with a greater emphasis on the Greek mythology).

(3) If you wanted it that way you could include Not for the Innocent (and All Hell's breakin' loose) in this attitude scheme, although I don't see any demon motif in it at all, but only the attempt to express that one is dealing with really bad guys here. If Kiss were universe-building in their lyrics, one could assume this (and the apocalyptic theme of the Lick it up videos) was as a direct consequence of the intended world overthrow out of War Machine. Sadly, this attitude was overthrown, too, as I have already indicated.

(4) Or Vinnie for that matter. Or both. I don't care, it's all about the content here.

(5) And we are all aware of these sins. That is why we're feeliing so…

(6) From deepening sexual debauchery, involved in it, or just general sexuality, in detail apart.

(7) Even in certain ape species such as gorillas, place-based spirituality has been observed, with identical behavioral patterns noted. Ask Jane Goodall.

(8) (Genesis 48:14 - 19, Exodus 15:6, Isaiah 23:11, 41:10, 45:1, Revelation 1:16 - 17, etc.)

(9) (Matthew 28:18)

(10) (cf. Revelation 22:3)

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jackoshadows · 3 years

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Sometimes I think ASoIaF/GoT fandom is too hard on J*nsa shippers, like let them ship their ship if it makes them happy, but then I read shit about how Jon/Arya is "bad" incest because they look alike but Jon/Sansa is "good" incest since they look like Ned/Cat, and then I'm like "nah, they deserve to be the laughingstock of the fandom."

IMO, the fandom only has an issue with the 'Jonsa is canon' shippers who spend their time mutating Jon, Dany, Arya and others into unrecognizable side characters in a story called a Song of Sansa and Sansa.

Why do I dislike Jonsa? Because of the shippers.

The way Jonsa is shipped makes it at it’s core an inherently misogynistic and classist ship that undermines Jon Snow as a character and his canon relationships in the books and the TV show IMO. Dany and Arya get a lot of sexist hate because of this ship. Especially Dany. Jonsa stans turned against the character specifically after Jonerys happened on the show.

The ‘Jonsa is canon’ folks posit that:

Jon’s disdain for girls like Sansa is actually about Jon feeling that he is not worthy of beautiful, perfect Sansa because of his bastardy. He therefore settles for girls similar to Arya, who are more to his level - classism and sexism in one concise package! Jon’s issues concerning his bastardy will be resolved once trueborn, beautiful Sansa deigns to love him.

Jon is wrong to like girls like Arya and does not know his own mind. He will therefore grow as a character and acknowledge that his type has always been Sansa.

Jon has actually referred to Arya as being horse-faced and ugly and told Arya that it is right and correct to live within patriarchal rules!

Jon is also very shallow - he develops a romantic crush on his 11 year old sibling who mocked and bullied Arya for being ugly. Who cares if Arya went crying to him afraid that she too was a bastard because of her looks, 11 year old Sansa’s beauty is too hard to resist!

Arya cannot have a romance arc, is not pretty, will not marry or have children. Jon will be repulsed by her when they meet again. Jon will grow to dislike Arya, Val, Dany etc. for their masculine characteristics and for killing people. Instead he will find Sansa’s feminine courage more appealing and fall in love with her beauty, purity, innocence, singing, dancing, lady like ways.

Slut-shaming. Dany has many partners unlike pure, innocent Sansa. (They have rather puritanical opinions on sex and morality and project these notions onto Sansa. I don't know if it's because of their obsession with fairy tales and disney princesses)

Jon will turn into a Littlefinger like character who sexually manipulates Daenerys - a rape victim - in order to help his true love Sansa get the North. This is okay because Dany deserves it and it’s about helping Sansa.

Dany and Jon's child will be born deformed, monstrous. Dany will turn mad because of genes. Jon will reject her because she’s barren. The Starks are superior to everyone.

Actual defense of slavery and classism. Dany is wrong to free the slaves in Meereen, Arya is wrong to step in to help Mycah, the classism and feudal structures in Westeros is fine as long as the Starks/Sansa are the ones perpetuating it.

Jon is oversensitive and whiny about Catelyn Stark and she was right to abuse him because bastards are a threat to her children.

Jaime Lannister will become Hand of the King, for Queen Sansa and King Jon, while evil Tyrion will die.

The hard power of characters like Daenerys and the violence of characters like Arya is evil and wrong while the violence of male characters is righteous and justified. Jon, who regularly kills people, will be put off by Arya and Dany killing people.

Daenerys and Arya should be repudiated because they have masculine characteristics, masculine courage, a masculine narrative arc and people only enjoy their story because they stand in for male characters.

‘People like Dany more than Sansa because Emilia Clarke showed her tits’ - actual words written by a popular Jonsa shipper.

The scorned women trope. This is a core premise of many of their theories like political Jon and fAegon being real. Dany will be rejected by men, go mad and burn down KL.

There is only one real female character in the story - that’s Sansa. And the only reason - the ONLY REASON, people criticize or dislike the character is because of their internalized misogyny against the only real female character in the books. Only Sansa gets the fairy tale romance because she’s a real woman.

Being written as a divisive, xenophobic, isolationist, backstabbing traitor on the show is good writing that portrays Sansa as a good leader.

And so on and so forth. I am pretty sure I have only covered like half of their nonsense.

Ultimately the problem for Jonsa is that it's nonexistent in the books and both characters had an antagonistic relationship on the show. There's nothing there. So the 'Jonsa is canon' folks take away from Arya, the Jon-Arya relationship, erase Arya from her story and relationships and demonize Dany to make Jonsa happen.

Jonerys and Jonrya shippers don't have that problem. Both ships have material from the books and show and even extras like GRRM's leaked original outline to make the case for these ships. Jon, Dany and Arya are central characters in the series.

Jonerys and Jonrya shippers are not writing essays taking away from Jon and Sansa's relationship - because that relationship is nonexistent. There's nothing to take away from! Other shippers don't have to make up things out of thin air or hate on Sansa for having a relationship with Jon. She doesn’t have one!

There's actual little clues in the books that could point to either Jonerys and Jonarya instead of shippers being excited that Jon's book chapter followed Sansa’s or snow fell on her face lol.

Jonsas literally erase Arya from her story in the books and her relationship with Jon to insert Sansa in there. Jonrya shippers don’t need to do that - Arya has a central story in the North and Jon Snow literally died for her in the last book!

And that's why all these anti posts from people like Daensa shippers grouping Jonerys/Jonrya together with a crackship like Jonsa makes no sense. If anything, considering how these shippers have now started becoming obnoxious as well with their 'Oh look at us, we are so edgy and superior!' shit, Jonsa will fit right in with them.

#asks #anti Jonsa

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saby-chan · 3 years

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Why the ATLA comics fail when it comes to Zuko and his family

To whom ever took their time to actually stop and read this post, thank you in advance for not skipping my post and willing to stay and read my humble opinion! I hope I won’t disappoint you!

As a relatively newcomer to the ATLA fanbase since 2020, I’ve come across a lot of interesting debates, comments and rants about the show, characters and fandom in general, but nothing has captivated me as much as the dumpster-on-fire that are the ATLA comics, more specifically: The Promise and The Search.

On one hand we have the hardcore fans who want them to be animated or serialized into the Netflix live action, praising the comics for the new views and subject matters they’ve brought into the show’s lore, while on the other hand we have the furious Azula fandom who is really angry for the fact that best girl didn’t get the redemption arc she rightfully deserved so much after the painful event that was the Last Agni Kai and the even more angry fans of the Urzai ship (yeah, the people who actually ship Zuko’s parents unironically) who hated the retconning of the show’s cannon since the comics basically took a huge fat dump on what was previously established as official cannon, when the Search entered the scene, but between these two sides, who has the more valid point? In the end, are the comics good cannon or bad written fanfiction?

Well... Here are my two cents on this matter since I myself happen to be an Azula and Zuko fan and had huge expectations from these comics (since I wanted more from my fave hot-headed fiery siblings duo) but ended up disappointed: the comics are indeed a huge mess and actually bad written fanfiction when it comes to Zuko and his family! Don’t click off yet, because I actually documented the reasons why exactly the comics fail in this area:

1. The author of these comics is not part of the BryKe duo

Yes, I would like to start with the fact that if you actually take a second to look up who in the heck took the time to write these two books, you won’t find Bryan, nor Mike, but a fellow man named Gene Yang. This is important because while the wiki of both The Promise and The Search state BryKe as the creators, that doesn’t mean that they were the actual minds behind these comics, but rather because ATLA is their “baby” and these comics involve their characters, over which they have copyright. Mr. Yang here is the actual brain behind the plot, as the main writer, which explains why we find huuuuge inconsistencies between the show lore and the comics, especially Zuko wise.

My main issue with Mr. Yang isn’t that he isn’t BryKe specifically, but because he did an unforgivable mistake in his writing process: He projected himself into Zuko’s character, based on the relationship Zuko had with his father. This is a documented fact from an interview in which he explains that he sees himself and his dad’s relationship into Zuko and Ozai and used that when writing their interactions and built Zuko’s character in the comics. And this is wrong because when you have an already very developed and complex character such as Zuko, you can’t just come in and be like “Oh, I was an angsty teen just like him in my teenage years, fighting with my dad and whatnot, so he must have the same thought process as me!”. NO! This is bad fanfiction writer behavior! Zuko has his own personality and philosophy, which he developed over the course of 3 seasons and is not defined by only 1 unfortunate aspect of his past, so you can’t just base his whole mindset and actions off of your own personal experience just because you had the same daddy issues he had!

2. The whole “Promise that you will kill me if I turn out like my dad!” nonsense in The Promise

Reason number 2 why these comics fail and go under the category of “bad fanfiction” is because they fail to convey the core essence of the source material. The whole point of Zuko’s redemption was that he realized the wrongdoings of his ancestors and his own mistakes. He outgrew his desire of gaining his father’s acknowledgement in favor of choosing his own destiny. Having him worry that he’ll turn into his father is utter nonsense and feels like poor angsty drama material for the sake of angst. At this point in time, Zuko has overcame that obstacle in his life a long time ago and should be at the level where he himself is the “Uncle Iroh” for other people and in no way someone concerned of becoming their own worst enemy!

Not only that, but the whole point of Aang’s journey and the story of the show as a whole was to teach us, the viewers, the importance of forgiveness, empathy and love in life. Aang didn’t spare Ozai, aka “the ultimate evil” just to flex in front of his pals or because he is a “ 12 y/o vegan pacifist monk kid”, but because he knew that killing someone, no matter of what they did or wanted to do, wouldn’t restore balance into the Universe, on the contrary, him killing the villain would have meant perpetuating the “endless cycle of hate” that plagued the world. So having Aang promise to kill his best friend in case “they turned into an evil maniac like their dad” contradicts Aang’s whole character and it’s a nonsense that throws into the trash what we’ve learnt throughout the entire TV series.

3. Azula deserved (and was supposed) to have a redemption ark

This might still be pure speculation, but I count it as a documented reason because I’ve heard quite a few people saying that there should’ve been a book 4 in the show, aka “Book 4: Air”, and no, it wasn’t The Search, but actually Zuko and Azula’s journey as Zuko helps his younger sister heal her broken mind by being her very own “Uncle Iroh”. Sure, they prolly were going to end up looking for Ursa, but the journey should’ve ended with them actually being happy and a family again and not the bs we got in The Search where a still very unstable Azula runs away and becomes the “Next Joker”! The only problem is that M. Night had to pop up and curse the world with his movie, which forced BryKe to delay the project (and eventually abandoned it in favor of Korra).

All in all, either if BryKe had this preplanned or not, it made sense for Azula to get a redemption ark, she deserved it because she was just a broken 14 y/o child! If Katara’s mom’s murderer deserved to be forgiven, so did this poor child who had no fault for what happened to her since she had a dysfunctional family! What Gene Yang did in his poorly written fanfiction was to just antagonize a broken child, turning her into a monster for the sake of friggin angst!

4. The Search is the worst of the two, being flat af character wise

And finally, getting to the point that I personally find the most annoying about these comics: The Search. This one... This one is a mess on a hella lot many levels, and just to list a few: characters are flat as fudge, being either black as vanta black (like Ozai and Azula) or pure white like Gene’s Gary Stue OC, Mr Ikem (or how I like to call him, IKEA man) and his ‘victim’ rendition of Ursa, Azula gets to suffer more for no reason (see reason number 3 to why I find this as a no no), Ursa’s whole character sucks ass (man, I could write a whole thesis on why Yang’s version of her is terrible and doesn’t match the strong woman we got in the show) and Zuko does morally wrong stuff (my man literally used his unstable sister to bribe their dad into spitting info about Ursa... Show Zuko would never do that!;-;)

Oh boy, as a person who’s seen a ton of anime and other media and read many books, I can’t begin on how much I despise this type of writing: flat characters are the worst!

ATLA characters in the show are nothing close to being flat! What I mean by that is that none of them fall perfectly into pure white (aka goodest of good characters with no imperfections) or vanta black (aka lowest and darkest twisted monsters out there), each of them are various shades of grey (like Aang who is a very light grey because despite being a very kind and nice character, he still isn’t a “perfect hero” since he ran away from his duties, practiced tax fraud with Toph, had insecurities and even threatened to kill people on ocassions like with the sand benders who took Appa) and this is a good choice because that prevents them from becoming what’s globally known as Mary Sues and Gary Stues (aka those either “perfect” characters with no flaws and/or unlimited power, or the twisted monsters full of flaws).

And the other reason why many other people hate The Search: it literally negates previously established cannon. And here comes my short essay on why this comic fails Zuko’s family (since we’ve already talked enough about Zuko himself).

In cannon and even interviews with BryKe, it was clearly stated that Zuko’s family was “once happy”. Where is this “once happy” family in The Search? All I see is pain, deception, lies and betrayal, nothing close to anything that resembles happiness. Okay, some of you might come in and say that “It’s because it was never the case! It was only lies and Zuko trying to convince himself that he didn’t live in hell forever!” and here is WHERE YOU WERE ALL WRONG! And why? Because, my dear fella, where were depicted the flashbacks of Zuko’s “happy family” in The Beach? Ember Island. And what do we know and had been even quoted in the show? "Like waves washing away the footprints on the sand, Ember Island gives everyone a clean slate. Ember Island reveals the true you." (direct quote from the show). Exactly, no matter who you are or how hard you try, you can’t hide your true self when you are on the Ember Island, best example being Azula, who’s impenetrable though shell cracked and revealed the true vulnerable child that was underneath. If Azula couldn’t resist the “spell of the island”, no one can. So this means that Zuko’s family was indeed happy once and yes, Ozai wasn’t always the douchebag we got to know in Season 3 (I have a whole nother essay on my theories regarding what could be his real past story and why he’s actually the “Zuko” of his generation, based on stuff I gathered from old wiki entries and character analyses I made, but that’s for another time, lemme know if ya’ll are interested).

And what I guess is the biggest proof why The Search did this family’s past trash is comics Ursa herself. My dude, if this woman were indeed the victim of years of endless abuse and never loved her husband, I guarantee you that she would’ve been closer to what we saw in Todoroki’s mom from BNHA and Zuko would’ve gotten that scar or even worse long before the Agni Kai, not from his “daddy dearest”, but from “mommy dearest” herself, because no sane woman would be soo affectionate and attached to a child that’s the perfect copy of their abuser, sepecially appearance wise (again see Todoroki’s mom’s case from BNHA because the stories are really similar) and in no way would’ve she been willing to sacrifice her life for said child’s sake. With this ocassion, I remind ya’ll folks that according to the ancient ATLA cannon wikis on Nick’s site, Ozai was designed with Zuko’s appearance in mind, being meant to be like a “grown up scarless version” of Zuko. So yeah, remember this with a grain of salt that whenever you simp over grown up Zuko, you involuntary simp for Ozai too.

So yeah, I guess this kinda concludes my “not so short” rant about why the comics fail and are bad fanfiction. Lemme hear your thoughts in the comments and if you agree, feel free to leave a like and even reblog.

Bye bye and remember that Momo is the true strongest character of the show!

Saby out.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #atla comics #zuko #azula #ozai #ursa #fire siblings #the promise #the search #atla rant

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life-rewritten · 3 years

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Lovely Writer Episode 3/4; The Discovery of Identity; Transformation, Perceptions and Hidden Ideals

Writing about this show is interesting, mostly because I have so much to say about everything. With this show it’s layers upon layers upon layers, it’s a lot of information even if it seems like a cheesy BL and like a typical storyline. The story tackles with so much irony and hints and clues to unveil and also representations of real life that takes sensitivity and time to understand and acknowledge. The show is so good already in 3-4 episodes and it’s also at times soft and romantic whilst also at times real and painful about some of the truths about society and the acting and writing industry. The director, screen writers and producers of the show have come with this ideology that they are making a BL storyline but they do not want to repeat the same mistakes as the previous, no instead they will call it out, educate the audience and also still have flawed characters learn and grow from their actions. That’s why with this show even the villains are not villains per say but humans who are forced to act the way they do to survive, they’re understandable and have reasons for why they will end up being an obstacle but also this show has no heroes, at first it seems that Gene and Sib the main characters are going to be perfect, and one dimensional caricatures that fall in love with no personality, depth or growth but actually both of them are flawed, have interesting perspectives on things, attitudes to people and ways of thinking that is vital to connecting them to where the story is going. And that’s brilliant. Whilst episode 3 is more information and outlook into the other characters as Gene deals with pressure of the industry and people and his new feelings for Nubsib, episode 4 is a softer , calmer episode dealing with Gene and Nubsib actually making their relationship mean something to the audience, showing that they could have a chance to grow a healthy, romantic love story and not the toxic, worrisome ones we feared. And I adored both episodes. So this essay we are going to be focusing on the love story of Gene and Nubsib portrayed in these two episodes, but also how it connects to Gene’s self awareness, and also unveiling Nubsib’s character more and changing him from being seen in a sinister scary light to a soft romantic light instead.

The Price of Ambition: The Effects of Pressure

So First of all Episode 3 maps out what the writers and director want to achieve with this show. I tend to think this show becomes like a self insert for the director/writer. What they make Gene say about the way a story should be written, is also what they want to tackle and achieve with this. The nightmare scene discusses about the physical nature of BLs when it comes to NC scenes, the show mocks the lack of actually talking about the reality about what that entails by showing us Gene learn about positions and educate himself on that topic, but also it mocks the audience who expected from the books for the show to be more explicit and aggressive with NC since that’s what happens in the novel with Gene and Nubsib. Gene says in the nightmare scene that all he wants is a story that does not need that type of content to get fans but focuses on the depth of its characters, fleshing out their romance and showing why they are in love, a way to make the audience focus on the humanity of the characters as they fall in love. And that’s exactly what immediately the show starts to show, we start to immediately after the nightmare scene see Nubsib’s true colours and realise he’s not just with Gene for physical chemistry but he’s actually warm, comfortable and his love for Gene is actually quite pure and innocent despite him using inauthenticity to show it. So that’s important to think about because the next episode goes into more detail as well about these two’s romance, we start to really flesh out our characters opinions on companionship and love and we evade a NC scene by focusing on gentleness, devotion and protective love that Nubsib has for Gene as he ensures that he treats Gene properly and does the right thing and wait for consent. That’s one of the best things about this show, it will talk about the issues of BL industry but it’s not going to repeat the same mistakes its making. Yes Nubsib seems like a typical controlling, manipulative BL lead but actually he’s different and all we have to do is wait to understand why he’s hiding who he is and what his aims are. But the show is also not afraid to talk about flawed characters, and problematic actions, we may have characters that make mistakes because that’s life but they will learn from those actions. This is why I’m really in love with this show.

Episode 3-4 also tackles transformation and the discovery and awareness of self. Especially since in episode 3 the theme is pressure, the pressure to conform which makes Hin want to start writing new BL novels like Gene did so he can get more success and notice from his writing, pressure to be something different like Aey has to do because he’s pressured to act romantic on set with Nubsib with people who objectify and sexualise them, and pressure for Gene to write more NC scenes and lose his own values and ideas on what he wants his content to be like. So there is this idea of pressure causing characters to transform and push down parts of them self.

Desperation and Transformation

I do not know where Hin is going in the storyline of course episode 4 focuses most of the story on the development and intimacy of Gene and Sib’s new relationship but in episode 3, I still feel like I could be right about Hin. Hin is a mirror image of Gene just like Aey is a mirror image of Nubsib. Both of them are exposing the hidden flaws of the characters. The more we focus on him the more we have a storyline for him building, we’ve been told he wants to be a writer, he’s not making money, he’s not being noticed, he has a lot of things that he wants to do but his sacrifices hint that there is a desperation in him that I think it’s really important to observe and notice that’s going to make him soon snap or act out. In episode 3 Hin mentions his new BL novel more, and he asks Gene to look into it. I do need to mention that Hin and Gene have essentially the same outline/novel idea because it’s both based on the love story of Gene and Nubsib brewing. Gene is writing about an actor and a writer falling in love with each other, Hin is writing about an editor in chief falling in love with an actor it’s really similar, like really really similar as a layout, it may be different because he doesn’t always see them but what are the odds that he is writing out the same dynamics as Gene’s new novel and asking to Gene to look at it. If the novel ends up being similar isn’t he essentially a rival to Gene? Where is Hin’s storyline going? No matter how much I want to say his journey is to write and become popular and to assert himself with his BL writing, I just don’t see it not being more important?

All I see is a layout for Gene and him being rivals even though it doesn’t seem like it right now but for him to be like Gene you’re my idol, I look up to you and I really love you, yeah positivity, it’s great he’s inspired by Gene, it’s great that he feels these emotions towards Gene, and there’s no hostility, but I do think that if he thinks Gene is taking writing for granted, or doing something that makes him look like he’s taking that path for granted, then he would be affected, and be disappointed, and disappointment breeds resentment so I think it’s really interesting Hin isn’t being noticed by the publisher, he’s in a desperate situation right now, pressured right now to do something good and so he’s started to start writing BLs similar to Gene, I can’t help see similarities to ideas about plagiarism, because twice they have mentioned him being immensely helpful and writing the same ideas as Gene, I can’t help notice that they’re both writing for the same publisher and one of their new books is going to be seen as more fit for the publisher, and three Tee has directed and loved characters that seem positive and obsessed with the main character only for that character to be revealed to be the obsession drove that person to villainy. Pressure and Desperation reaches a height with him, and he reacts by giving into that and being an obstacle to Gene later. I love Hin right now but I can’t help thinking he’s going to be an obstacle to Gene and Nubsib, I can’t help thinking he’s an obstacle to writing path of Gene because he really could sacrifice Gene to become like Gene, to replace Gene, because he needs money and notoriety to make it as a writer. Hin also mentioning Gene as an idol is mirroring Nubsib because that’s exactly what Nubsib also sees him as, Nubsib relates to Hin, because he understands being affected and looking up to him the same way. Gene gives him a positive feeling and makes him want to do well, and pushes him to do more I’m guessing.

There is twice that Gene is mentioned as an idol to others, he’s an idol to Hin and he’s an idol to Aey. Nubsib does not like that Aey has read Gene’s novels, he does not like the fact that Aey seems really supportive towards Gene. One Nubsib can call out bullshit, because he’s king of faking and pretending, and as mentioned Aey is like Nubsib’s mirror character, I think Nubsib knows how fake Aey is and he sees Aey as a rival. I really do think the mirror characters may be rivals to each other to and that’s the pattern. Two is Nubsib jealous because he thinks there’s any chance for Gene and Aey to get close? The jealousy and frustration and possessiveness he feels for Gene around Aey is something that needs to be noticed, because Sib definitely has an issue with Aey only he and Aey knows about. I don’t know why he’s so upset about Aey’s actions because he’s literally doing the same thing, he sees Gene as an idol etc, so why’s he upset about Aey unless he sees Aey in him and that he’s just as fake as he is being. So there’s two reactions from Nubsib towards the two who mention they look up to Gene, one is jealousy and disgust and anger towards Aey and the other is support and understanding towards Hin.

In the episode where the nightmare scene talks about how Gene wants to focus on characters and not focus on the sexual relationships of the BL storyline, not focus on the toxicity of the characters but the depth and reality about their relationship and personalities, we finally get to see the answer to our question, Nubsib is 100% in love with Gene, there is no weird scary feelings about him in both episode 3 and 4. Episode 3 exposes how he feels for Gene, his natural state and personality with Gene, even when Gene is not watching him, he’s still devoted and caring about him when Gene is sick, he doesn’t need to do that if he’s being creepy and evil and what not, every single thing he does with Gene it’s like there’s a hold on him, and he forgets where he is and it’s just filled with ultimate devotion, ultimate care, and three Nubsib is someone who cares and cherishes Gene so much that his consent is important to him. Nubsib is very practical and serious about issues with consent, even with the kiss, he ensures Gene is okay with it, even in episode 4, he struggles to not give in to Gene’s drunk demands telling Gene he’ll wait till he’s ready. He’s not forceful, he’s not controlling, all he wants is for Gene to be near him and okay.

Now you could argue that there is a line between non consent and manipulation/coercion but I do think Nubsib was falling more into the line of coercion a little bit as first like manipulating a need for a kiss, but the most important thing that has been noticed since episode 2, is that it’s not by force, he gives Gene a lot of options repeatedly, even if he acts all sad to get guilt, or what he wants. It’s also not because he is sad that Gene is like let’s do whatever it is, it’s more like Gene sees it as opportunity to get better with his writing since Sib inspires him to write, but also he feels comfortable and safe with Nubsib. Nubsib asking for consent is something I really appreciate about him and something I like about him so much.

Gene’s self discovery is also explored in episode 4 more when we have an episode that just focuses on him and Nubsib starting their relationship. There is a transformation of Gene who is avoidant and evasive of companionship to someone who starts to want that and see the value in that by living with Nubsib for almost a month. By the end of episode 3, his fear of vulnerability and the truth makes him regress and try to bring back what he sees as normal and get some kind of control of his environment that Nubsib has successfully invaded in.

Nubsib; The catalyst for transformation and inspiration

Nubsib causes Gene to have a transformation. Not that being an introvert is a bad thing, I’m an introvert and I also dislike always being forced to go out and hang out in large crowds. But it’s about how Nubsib’s presence is essentially making Gene become better, discover his loneliness in distancing himself from people due to his obsession and focus on writing. Nubsib makes Gene feel good and that’s why you see a difference in him from episode 3-4 after spending just almost a month with him. Even though I was confused with his transformation this episode just because he seemed more outgoing, a bit more open to people, as we see in episode 4, his work is what pulls him away from people but also it’s how he feels when he’s surrounded by people who make him feel uncomfortable. People who bring out worry, insecurity and more. He rather just focus on writing than deal with those people.

I do agree that Nubsib is invasive until episode 4 ha. Gene is an introvert. And as one the way Nubsib does invade his space was a lot, but Nubsib just has feelings for Gene, he’s a doe eyed puppy around him, he loses himself basically when he gets into caring mode with Gene, he doesn’t try to hide his support and eagerness to be with Gene and show him affection, because it’s so automatic for him to take care of him, protect him, treat him, because he sees Gene as a romantic partner so I do agree it is uncomfortable but that’s not the reason why Gene is even weird about it. Episode 3 and 4 is about Gene’s internalised homophobia about his sexuality. When Gene starts to put two and two about his feelings for Nubsib he explodes with anxiety and anger because he’s still struggling to accept who he is, but also he has a lot of misunderstandings and biased opinions about what being gay/queer actually means. Because of the way BL has made him view it as unrealistic, shallow, and well toxic, not that being gay is that, but he believes him ending up that way makes him like the characters in his novel, makes him be part of a world he’s seen so negatively about, something he’s trying to escape from because of seeing it as shallow and toxic. When Nubsib invades Gene’s space as well, its for positive reasons it’s not him purposely trying to make Gene uncomfortable, it’s to help and make sure Gene is okay, safe and cared for. So it’s not because Gene is scared by Nubsib’s actions because he’s scary but it’s because of panic and repressed feelings he’s felt for him since episode 1. So these are ways we can tell that Nubsib’s feelings under his façade is genuine, he’s just like Aey and others where they are inspired and affected by Gene.

Nubsib: The catalyst for transformation and self discovery

The past two episodes instead of seeing Nubsib being ‘shady’ just like what Gene wanted from the nightmare scene, we saw Nubsib’s good side. His genuine personality with Gene is exactly how he treats him. What I’ve decided with Sib’s character is he’s not evil, manipulative or someone so powerful he thinks he can get with everything. He’s not greedy or scary. He’s just a spoilt child. A child who wants attention, a child who feels neglected, hence he acts like how a spoilt child does, he manipulates the situation to get what he wants and is a brat, but acts like an innocent person on the surface to get what he wants but he’s in a position of being used to getting what he wants, a position of power especially with Tum who he screams at and shouts at, that’s what a child does, just throws tantrums and make it hard for the person they know they have control over. He’s just a child who’s naïve, puppy like, who wants Gene to look at him. But he’s also spoilt because he’s in a place of privilege, so him being spoilt makes him treat others badly, but Gene makes him different, he wants to be someone better for Gene.

As of episode 1, it has been hinted that Gene is attracted to Nubsib, he feels this inherent care for Nubsib, wants to hang around him and is also curious about him naturally. He is affected by Nubsib’s presence, and his presence is the the thing inspiring him and makes him want to write. He’s being inspired by his real feelings but doesn’t know that because he has IH. So the question was in episode 3, as the show started to hint about it; if Gene knows about his identity and sexuality and who he is or was he learning about himself through finally falling in love with Nubsib. I thought he was learning about it but episode 4 made me think he’s known and has just been avoiding it. Gene isn’t homophobic as I’ve seen people worry he is, he has a very ignorant, uneducated, societal opinion on what those relationships is like. So Gene is like very similar to another character Tee directed Type from TharnType (before all those who detest this idea start to click of listen to the explanation), the thing with Type was his was psychological trauma and hate and pain making him have the mindset he had, he never got to know or understand who he was because he tried hard to avoid thinking about anything to do with sexuality. With Gene, it’s his writing that makes him act sometimes homophobic, makes him overreact when there’s ideas to him being queer/gay or being in a situation like that, the way he acts is because of the corruption of the industry he has had to witness; its why he thinks its all shallow, no substance, it’s so ironic and funny to me because he’s about to find out that what these stories portray or the boys love does have substance, because now he’s falling in love, like real love, authentic love he now understands the real feelings behind wanting to write a boys love story about just two men in a relationship, he now understands the sexual attraction behind some things, why it’s just like any other novel about real life relationships, he understands why characters in BL might be more important than just what the industry is using it for.

Gene’s way of educating himself as the show goes on in this industry is so great to me and one of the reasons I adored episode 3. Opening himself, researching and trying to understand more about things is so important because

1. He’s a writer trying to do well by this genre but he also feels uncomfortable about

2. He’s someone represented by this genre as he is queer character.

3. He’s literally going through self discovery the more he writes his novel

For example the nightmare scene in episode 3 is the catalyst of that episode. It what spirals the transformation in Gene’s character we start to see, from being withdrawn to starting to be comfortable and open. He goes through the nightmare and Nubsib shows him care when sick. (That’s what he represents to him, comfort, healing, warmth, companionship, protection). Because he feels cared for by him, he also starts to want to show the same to Nubsib to show him the same care, warmth that Nubsib was showing him etc. And because he has been holding unto his feelings for Nubsib, has been feeling overwhelmed by his fear about them, when he gets drunk to avoid dealing with him sending him away, he blurts out all he’s felt, he becomes the most truthful at that moment because he’s been holding unto all these thoughts since he first met him. But he also says to Nubsib in episode 4 that he reminds him of a lead BL character and it’s like aww he complimented his looks but the fact that Nubsib reminds him of that isn’t a good thing to Gene remember, he doesn’t want to end up like BL characters because he thinks there’s no substance, no truth, just toxicity with that situation so it’s something he panics about that it’s ironic because he’s essentially falling for someone and playing out a BL trope.

BL: The pressure of transformation and authenticity

Another thing meta about this show is the inclusion and mirroring of Bad Engineer the series. I mentioned in my previous essay whilst Bad Engineer is another meta call out to the industry it also could play a role as a shadowing device to show you similarities and differences between Nubsib and Aey the actors who play Kin and Bun the caricatures and characters that are exaggerated. It kind of exposes the thoughts and ideas about these two in an interesting way. Let me explain. Bad engineer starts of with Bun being forced to get the attention of Kinn who is aggressive and seen as wanted and powerful but too scary to go near to. After he hugs Kin we already are hinted from Nubsib’s audition line that Kin could not let go of the mark Bun left on him and becomes essentially obsessive and controlling over Bun wanting to be with Bun. Okay first of all it’s already calling out and exaggerating the obsession that Nubsib seems to have for Gene, he would go to lengths to hide who he is, make up excuses to be near him and hide his power and privilege (by lying he’s poor, and about his housing situation essentially lying about the power he probably does hold over people) which is why his exact words he says to Gene in the audition is foreshadowing, he knows who Gene is before, he’s been affected by whoever Gene was to him in the past and he’s in love with him. Just like Kin proceeds become hooked onto Bun.

What’s really funny is that Aey is playing a character that is very vulnerable and gentle and sweet, like what is normally perceived as a typical feminine uke stereotype. It’s interesting because its because he gives of this vibes that he was chosen for this audition, but also in reality he’s wearing a mask to act like this to Gene and everyone around him especially the vulnerable act, where he makes you feel guilty for being in his way or making you feel pitiful for how he’s treated by Nubsib. The fact that Tawan (played by Mhok in the series) is a second lead in bad engineer the series and Mhok is essentially in the second lead role for Aey, he’s the one behind the scenes unrequitedly loving and caring and worrying about the main lead but is always neglected or pushed aside for the other main which is mirroring how Aey isn’t seeing how Mhok cares for him (he gets so jealous if you notice whenever he has to see Aey and Nubsib together) and is pushing him away to focus on his hunt for fame by getting Nubsib’s attention.

Nubsib has a different type of similarity with Kin. It’s how people perceive him that’s similar to how Kin is on the surface, but also Kinn is an exaggerated character, who is toxic and Nubsib as finally shown isn’t going to be toxic or problematic because the writers don’t want him to be that way. For some reason Kin is filled with anger and is aggressive and loud, Nubsib isn’t as angry as Kin but he also expresses his distaste of things when it doesn’t go his way with anger and tantrums to Tum especially because he’s a spoilt child. Kin is possessive, aggressive and obsessive and even though Nubsib isn’t like that in a large scale, he has some of those traits, he is possessive with Gene, and protective and jealous easily when it comes to him thinking something is in the way. Kin is a trope, he’s written to make fun of semes in BLs like Fighter from WhyRU, someone seen as cold and indifferent to people who is meant to be seen as rough and mean, rich, but then the story unveils a softer side when he’s with his partner later. Or Kin also reminds of toxic Kdrama male characters (its not just BL this trope is used), like Gu Jun Pyo from boys over flowers who is just like Kin because he’s rich and spoilt. The reason why Kin and Nubsib is similar is because is that Kin likes to get what he wants, he’s just as invasive, he’s forceful (though as mentioned Nubsib isn’t as problematic with this as Kin), he’s just as determined to do what it takes to get his partner. Both portray this demenour around them where they are not meant to be messed with.

And I think that’s important about Nubsib, there’s some kind of power and control he has that makes people not mess around with him when Gene is not in front of him, he doesn’t try to be nice or kind as he does when he’s with Gene. Things that they don’t have in common is that for Gene, Nubsib is the opposite, he’s gentle to Gene, because he’s determined to a better person to him, he’s manipulative but he’s not forceful or aggressive towards him, although he wears a mask, he’s actually authentically automatically the way he is with Gene as we have seen in both episodes. Gene transforms him; he makes him kind, caring and sweet. Gene is a prized person to him; so valuable and worthy that he doesn’t even think he’s worthy as he is for him hence why he chooses to be better with him, he doesn’t see Gene as less than him but the others he does which is something that does need to be worked on. But if he is spoilt and privilege, if he’s been so used to people treating him this way then I can see why he can be this way. So Kin and Nubsib’s character calls out Nubsib’s flaws and Aey and Bun’s character also show what Aey wants people to view him as on the surface and Mhok and Tawan are mirroring the same roles.

Bad engineer being written by Gene is so funny to me since all he does is like complain how much he hates everything to do with tropes like it, so there must be some kind of shame inside him for him writing it to remove pressure from his company even though he doesn’t want BL to mean that. It also again shadows Hin’s desperation as Hin takes on his own BL novel, because Gene must have been so desperate when he first wrote it because he was writing it just to also please people and be noticed as a writer more.

Lovely Writer is it obvious despite my late releases of my analysis that I am obsessed and I have high respect and love for this show? The fact that there is problematic worries in the storyline, there are flawed characters and action in the plot, but they’re so real and human. The fact that this show talks about BL, and is trying to make fun of it, call it out but then the characters in it are also falling into some of its tropes and ideas. But it does show that with love sometimes people do get into these situations even though it’s seen as problematic or weird, but it’s dealing with sexual attraction, showing instant connections and portraying passion, sometimes when people are into someone you can get crazy, possessive, sometimes you may even want to be with that person all the time. It’s really important that the show is drawing a line between what is toxic and what is not, what is romantic and what is not, the authenticity of romance vs the idealism of romance in tv shows and books. The fact that Gene and Nubsib are falling in love with each other and are going to go through a lot together I think shows me that at the end I will also think they’re meant to be together, they’re like a realistic couple falling in love. Gene feels real to me. Nubsib feels human to me even though we’re uncovering his personality. All of the characters feel real and dimensional to me. It’s something I love about the show, it just feels so real despite being literally a BL that’s making fun of how unrealistic BLs are, it’s so real, it’s so meta, it’s so important and I really think it’s needed in this genre, and industry. I think it’s such a great, great show. I love Tee, because he’s good at directing these layered, meta, deep shows always able to provide reasons for why the story is the way it is, what its trying to show, why the characters are the way they are and make mistakes, there’s so much depth to his stories and the things he chooses to focus each time he does a show. In a way Gene’s character development and growth is so important to me because to him the BL industry and genre is bad, and the show seems like that’s what its message is as well, because that’s what his perception seems to portray only, as Gene falls for Nubsib who is literally like a trope that reminds him of the stories he seems to hate (especially when he discovers his inauthenticity) , as he falls in love and finds out more about his relationship, his sexuality, his identity as he starts to realise how BL should be written, why it should be created, that there can be authentic love stories in BL, he can change what BL represents for people like him. I just think its fantastic to see him with a negative perception on writing BL to finally understanding why it should be written but it should be written in a different way, or changed to fit a different way, instead of letting corruption happen he shouldn’t give in but should try and change. He may be making fun of the fact that BL is known for its weird tropes like NC, but NC is real its just attraction between two people, as long as its not toxified or problematic its just another way people can show feelings, there’s so many het series that have NC scenes but when it comes to BL its seen as a fetish or something negative when really if done right its just two people being like normal couple and giving into their affections for each other. Yeah I think this is amazing to talk about and portray. This is one of my favourite shows right now, and I’m so eager about where we’re going with this. Because I just love the layers, the message and the story.

#lovely writer #lovely writer the series #thai bl #bl series #bl drama #nubsib #cwg #nubsibgene #march #kaoup

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lumiereandcogsworth · 4 years

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UNO REVERSE. GO OFF, GIRL: deep ask time: tell me about your love for beauty and the beast. when did you get into it. what were your first impressions. when did you Know it was a big fave for you. how many times have you seen it. what’s your favorite thing about it!!! why the heck do you love it!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH OKAY🥺 this is gonna be long i’m just already warning you. I gotta do the under the cut thing cuz really I just can’t unwillingly subject people to such an essay. It’s good but like. anyway, here ya go:

when did you get into it? well [the stage goes dark, a spotlight centers on me, fog forms around my ankles] it all started on a calm spring evening, april 12th, 2017.... okay lmao i’m not gonna do that the whole time. but yeah so i loved the 1991 cartoon version a lot! it had always been one of my fave disney films as a kid, it was one of ones we had on vhs so it was a frequent flyer in on the big boxy dinosaur tv! but then, when me and my parents were touring my future university (i was a junior in high school at the time) we decided to catch a movie! i couldn’t tell you what else was playing that night, but live action batb was the only one that jumped out at me. it’s funny cuz it had been out for nearly a month, i really didn’t make any effort to go see it. i was like “ah, disney makes live actions all the time. who cares.” LITTLE DID I KNOW. but anyway, we went to see it and.... gosh i was enchanted. even that first night, it was like a switch turned on in me that i didn’t even know existed!

what were your first impressions? goodnesssss. it’s interesting because i hadn’t seen batb 1991 in YEARS, but as i watched the live action it was all coming back, i was comparing everything. which is funny too because, the comparison is what turned a lot of people AWAY from batb 2017. now, i could make a whole powerpoint comparing them, but i have no shade!!! if you like 1991 better, go off!!!! just don’t hate on one or the other :/ hate is lame! there’s a lot of love in the world and there’s, my goodness, CERTAINLY enough love for two film versions of a disney princess movie. goodness gracious. anyway, let me hop off my soap box!!!!!

i remember thinking it was DOPE that they made belle the inventor, and that they made maurice an artist. i remember loving the new songs, eSPECIALLY evermore. like wow. i was so happy they gave beast his own song. i remember being so entirely delighted by how extravagant be our guest gets. like lumiere!! you dramatic boy!!!!! it just kept going i was so dazzled and amazed and happy. i can remember how big the smile on my face was during that whole number. i remember how INCREDIBLY swept away i was when there was the whole “what do you say we run away?” scene and the enchanted book and going to paris!!!!!!! still to this day, every time i see the scene where it goes from belle’s hand on the book pages and pans up to the starry sky, i feel that joyful peter pan magic. and that’s what i thought the first time too. i LOVED all the added backstory for belle and beast. absolutely stunning. even at the beginning! they open it right away, really take you to the scene of the crime, in a sense. you see young, spoiled prince adam. his nasty, pompous behavior and all. it made him so much more real. i remember just overall being so thrilled with how much longer it was. it gave belle and beast so much more time to fall in love, it made the culminating end way more genuine. and of course i loved all the little jokes and their quirky little personalities shining through. and i also remember being so punched in the gut by the last petal falling and actually seeing everyone turn into inanimate objects. i was like *sobbing* HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME. but, even today, it makes the turn around of the curse lifting way more relieving and joy-filling. and don’t even get me started on The Kiss. the silent amazement between them. i can’t. surely, you get the point. i was in the car ride back to the hotel just utterly astounded, i couldn’t stop thinking about it. i’d never seen such beauty.

when did you Know it was a big fave for you? pretty soon!! i saw it a second time in theaters and i regret to this day not going a third time. but that’s life. i couldn’t pin point when it became my number one, but i’m sure it was that summer when it went on netflix and i had unlimited access and was deadass watching it most every night. that’s an exaggeration but is it though? anyway yeah it was love at first sight so it didn’t take long to reach my favorite movie spot at all.

how many times have you seen it? UHHHHHH okay so, that was something of an exaggeration, to a degree. i was counting how many times i was watching it but i stopped at ten. i honestly wish i had continued counting. do you know how cool it would be to do my 100th watch?? i’d have a whole party. my dad and i tried to do the vague guesstimate math once, and we figured something around 60 times. i don’t know how accurate that is but it sure feels like i’ve seen it 6,000 times. at this point i watch it every few months but... summer of 2017..... yikes lmao.

what’s your favorite thing about it!!! the film itself? is that an option? the entire. gosh dang,,, thing? lol but idk i think what i love most is adam’s growth, probably. i mean. it is. you can’t write an 18k pre-canon fic highlighting adam’s troubled past and then go on to write who knows how many thousand words of fic of post-canon adam just being so gosh dang happy and happier than he’s ever been without his growth and arc being your favorite part. so :”) yeah. adam deserves the whole entire world and he’s got such a big heart, he just never knew how to use it, never thought he had it in there. he’s been kicked around and torn apart and Literally Turned Into A Monster, but he still grows and learns to love and learns that maybe life can be okay for him. but also i love belle so much too. her courage, her adventurous spirit, her no-thoughts-head-empty griffindor attitude about everything. like who just sees a giant castle and is like “cool, allow me.” it’s in the genes, cuz maurice does it too shdkdksk. anyway i just love belle so much, she’s so smart and clever and sweet and KIND and she has so much compassion in her heart. so much love when she’s literally been seen as a social outcast like probably her whole life. and yet? the kindest. but also so funny and sarcastic and GAH!!! i love my girl!!!!!! and the uniting of my two favorite characters in the whole world.... it just floors me every single time.

why the heck do you love it!!!!! oh my gosh literally how to answer this. i think at this point in the essay it’s pretty clear all my passionate opinions about it LMAO. the way i usually explain it to like, my dad, for example (i’ve brought him up twice now, he’s just always been a good ear for my fangirl interests. let’s me go off about anything haha.) anyway, the way i explain it is that it just checks off all the boxes. and i don’t even know what all the boxes are, but it’s everything. i think i’ve always loved beauty and the beast (even as a kid) because it flips the damsel in distress narrative. SHE has to save HIM. and of course, that’s been done countless times. but idk, for a disney princess, for my little kid mind, belle was special and this story was different. but more specifically to batb 2017, the aesthetic just slays me. the wardrobe is exquisite. the characters are so lovely and funny and wonderful. the songs, the NEW songs!!! the DANCE!!! THE CASTING. i love the cast so much. there’s so much gosh dang heat about emma watson as belle especially and it’s like i will fight all of you in the streets come to my house my address is— okay anyway. i think the casting was absolutely 15/10 phenomenal everyone from josh gad and luke evans to audra mcdonald and stanley tucci and literally everyone in between. DAN STEVENS HAD TO DO EVERYTHING TWICE. ONCE IN THE SUIT THE BIG CGI SUIT AND ONCE MORE WITH HIS FACE TO GET BEAST’S EXPRESSIONS JUST RIGHT. the dedication. i’ll fight everyone. he did a ballroom dance in a big suit on stilts. i just. okay so yeah i love the cast and i love THE LOVE STORY OBVIOUSLY. I REFRAINED TALKING ABOUT ADELLE UP UNTIL NOW BUT HELLO?????????? i guess that’s not true i talked about them a little bit. but obviously their love story drives it and boy do i love taking that drive every single time. it’s about the enemies to friends to lovers my guy. it’s about the saving each other. it’s about the seeing each other. i’m gonna lose my mind. i need to finish this oh my gosh i don’t know how to shut up about this film.

#I SERIOUSLY WROTE AN ESSAY #IM SORRY TO NOBODY BUT WOW #so anyway...... love that live action disney film........#batb 2017

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eldri-sv · 3 years

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2 - Shinsou

Kaori Shinsou has always been fascinated by people's minds. She is one of the best students in her Criminal Psychology course at U.A. and - being the lucky girl she is - her professor is not only one handsome dude, but is also working on the case of the serial killer Stain - a case that has been going on for years. As she is about to become Professor Aizawa's TA during the next term, a lot of other interesting cases start popping up all over the country... AU, OC x Aizawa

Trigger warnings: insomnia, stress, mentions of death

(possibly incomplete, if you’d like something added, please let me know)

You keep me up at night

(Florence + The Machine - Big God)

Kaori Shinsou had trouble sleeping, as usual. She was tired, that wasn't the problem. She had no nightmares. She was just not able to turn off her brain for some reason. Thoughts kept racing through her head and she couldn't stop thinking and she couldn't sleep. They were stupid thoughts, too. Not even worrying. Just stupid thoughts. Kaori tossed and turned and then gave up.

She grabbed her phone from the night table and checked the time. It was 4 am. She would have to get up in two hours anyway and get ready for university. There was really no point in lying around and waiting. She might as well be as productive as she could. She closed her eyes and let out a loud and annoyed groan.

Then she opened her eyes and quickly sat up. She crawled out of her futon and turned on the lamp on her desk. There were a bunch of opened books and half-written essays lying around. Kaori had made it a habit to start her essays the first day they got them and finish them with minutes to spare. At least that way people couldn't say she should have started earlier.

She knew exactly Professor Aizawa wasn't buying it, but he seemed to get some sort of amusement out of her trying to be organized and repeatedly failing. She looked over the half-finished papers absent-mindedly. Maybe she could actually finish one ahead of time for once...?

Kaori shook her head to herself. No. Not like this. She couldn't go and write papers while she was still in her pajamas. Maybe she should just get dressed for university already. It wasn't like she was going to go back to sleep anyway.

With another sigh she got up from her desk and walked to her wardrobe. She grabbed a pair of knee-highs and some fresh underwear from her closet and then proceeded to grab some clothes from her pile on the floor. Kaori was glad at first when she realized she didn't need to wear her school uniform anymore, but she quickly found out that life had been much easier when there was one less thing to worry about.

So she stuck to wearing skirts and knee-high socks and blouses a lot of the time, simply because she was so used to herself looking like that. She just couldn't imagine anything else looking even remotely decent on her. She tried a few styles and had at this point assembled a wildly diverse range of outfits, but she still felt most comfortable in something that resembled a school uniform.

She quietly opened the door to her room and snuck outside through the hallway. Her parents would get insanely mad if they knew she hadn't slept again. Kaori had been telling them her insomnia was fine again, mostly so she didn't have to take the sleeping pills her doctor would prescribe for her. They made her sleep like a baby, but she hated the side effects that caused some random memory gaps in her brain. And she really couldn't use that while she was in the middle of university.

As she was passing her little brother's door she heard a loud bang coming from the room. Not loud enough for her parents to hear it, but Kaori had learned to hear even the tiniest sounds. Especially when it was as quiet as it was right now. She knocked at the door, careful not to be too loud. There was no reply.

She carefully opened the door just a little bit. Her brother was lying in his futon, eyes closed and his hands folded over his chest. He looked like a mummy. No one slept like that and he should have known better. She looked over to the desk. The lamp on it was still glowing a little, as if it had just now been turned off. There were a lot of open books on the table as well.

"It's just me, Hitoshi. No need to panic." she whispered. Hitoshi Shinsou opened one eye and visibly relaxed when he saw it was only his sister.

"You gave me a fright." he said to her and quietly sat up again. Kaori grinned a little. Hitoshi had a similarly severe case of insomnia as she did and he also had no intention of taking sleeping pills.

"Can I come in?" she asked. Hitoshi nodded slightly, it was barely noticeable. Kaori slipped inside the room and closed the door, conscious of not making any noise whatsoever. Not that their parents were easy to wake. For some reason the insomnia genes seemed to have skipped them, but they were wildly rampant in both Kaori and Hitoshi. Or maybe their parents were just too exhausted after their work at the hospital.

"Can't sleep?" Kaori said to her brother, as he got out of his futon and went back to his desk. She sat down on one of his side tables. It was more of a rhetorical question since both of them knew that he couldn't sleep. And it wasn't like Hitoshi even wanted to sleep. He had other plans.

"No. You, too?" he replied. Kaori nodded and glanced over the books that were open. They were her old Criminology books. Hitoshi had tried to get into the Criminology course himself, but hadn't made it. It was a really close cut for him, too. All he wanted was to get into Criminal Psychology like his older sister. He had made the cut for the Psychology course and was now studying and tormenting himself relentlessly to get the best grades he could possibly get, in order to transfer into Criminology next year.

"Late night study session, I assume?" Kaori asked him.

"Yeah. I can't slack off. I finished all my assignments for Psych, so I have some time to catch up on all the Criminology stuff. And since I can't sleep anyway..." he answered and grinned. Kaori chuckled and shook his head. His hair was sticking out wildly in all directions and she just knew he wouldn't even bother with it before going to university. His eyes were as tired as usual, which made his grin look almost scary.

"You do know you can get into Criminal Psychology with a Psych degree, right?" she remarked.

"Yeah, but I don't want to." he replied.

"Why not?"

"Because that's the route people go who aren't good enough to get into Criminology and are too lazy to try and get in the next year. And that's what it'll look like on my CV, too. And I know I can do better, because I really only had a blackout during the entrance exams. And I'm shit at interviews."

Kaori smiled at him. She always admired how determined Hitoshi could be and how he could look so unmotivated at the same time. He had always been the one working harder for what he wanted. Academics had always come easy to both of them, but more so to Kaori. Hitoshi really had to crunch to keep up.

"I assume you're heading into uni early today?" he asked looking at the scrambled up clothes in Kaori's arms.

"Yeah, just trying to kill some time, so mum and dad won't get suspicious, in case they hear the shower." she said and yawned. Fuck, she needed a coffee. Extra strong and black, without any fancy milk or sugar or any of that shit.

"They won't wake up. I heard them come home at around 2 or something. They'll be fast asleep by now." Hitoshi replied. Kaori nodded.

"You taking the car?" he asked.

"Pfft, no."

"Are you sure? Did you look at the weather outside?"

Kaori got up and went up to the window. Was the weather really that bad? When she looked outside she saw heavy raindrops falling against the window. Judging from the puddles it had already been raining for quite a while. Kaori sighed.

"You know I hate driving." she said.

"Not my fault mum and dad managed to convince you to take the driving test." he replied and shrugged.

"It's just a little water, you won't die from getting a little wet..." Kaori answered, sounding much less convincing than she would have liked to. She knew exactly how much she hated to get wet and sit in class while feeling uncomfortable about just everything. Plus, it would get really cold and she might fall asleep during class from that.

"You know you don't mean that." Hitoshi said with a triumphant grin. Kaori sighed again. She knew that she would be driving the moment Hitoshi had brought it up. He just had a way about him to get people to do what he wanted. He used to be a real brat with that, but once he was mostly through puberty, he had gotten much better with it.

"Why don't you drive for once? You've got your provisional license and I would be qualified to come with you, you know." Kaori suggested.

"You really want me to drive your car and be on the passenger seat while I do that? Are you... are you okay? You know you can talk about it, if you're feeling suicidal, right?" Hitoshi replied. Kaori grabbed a pair of socks from the floor (hoping Hitoshi hadn't worn them yet, because... ugh) and threw them at his head, barely missing it. At least she messed up his hair. If there was even a way to mess it up.

"You're such a dick sometimes, you know that?" she said. Hitoshi just shrugged, pretending he didn't care. Kaori knew that he cared, he just didn't like showing it. He had always had this whole tough exterior thing going, but he was really a big softie at heart. Kaori knew because she was similar.

She remembered how distraught Hitoshi was when their cat died after they had gotten her as a kitten 14 years ago. He was crying in his bedroom for days and even skipped two days of uni for it. He barely ate. He had loved that cat more than life itself and he kept saying that he still wasn't ready to move on and get a new kitten. (Kaori knew that he had been looking at some ads online, though. She had caught him during lunch break in the canteen one time, when he wasn't fast enough to hide his phone.)

"Fine. I'll drive. If we die, it's on you, just for the record." Kaori said. Hitoshi gave her a heartfelt smile.

"Thanks, sis. I'll make sure it'll be mentioned at our funeral." he replied. Kaori glanced at the clock hanging at Hitoshi's wall. It was ticking loudly. She had always wondered how Hitoshi wasn't annoyed by this, but he kept insisting that it was relaxing him. It was 4.47 am. Even if her parents would wake up, it wouldn't be too early to find a suitable excuse. She walked back to the door.

"I'll go and take a shower then, I guess. Don't study too much, Toshi." she mumbled on her way out.

"I'll be fine."

#inside your mind #aizawa #fanfiction #shouta aizawa #shota aizawa #aizawa x oc #quirklessau #aizawa fanfiction #hitoshi shinso #shinsou #shinso #hitoshi shinsou #insomnia #university

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evanfleischer · 4 years

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Truth, like love and sleep, resents Approaches that are too intense. — W.H. Auden, “New Year Letter”

Walter Benjamin spoke of an “angel of history” in his unpublished-at-the-time essay, “On The Concept Of History,” writing that —

His [that is, the angel’s face] face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Benjamin’s definition of ‘the angel of history’ enables us to look a little bit more closely at the function of the symbol and the idea of ‘an angel of history’ in The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. It’s also in discussing both Walter Benjamin’s angel and The Rings of Saturn that we can discuss Wings of Desire and take note of how the three engage with the other.

There are literal connections and all but literal connections that can be drawn between the three texts: in the library scene in Wings of Desire, per the screenplay, one reader studies Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus,” which is referenced by Walter Benjamin in relation to “the angel of history” (and which prompts the above-quoted paragraph), which itself serves as a point of intellectual reference in The Rings of Saturn.

Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystalizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history — blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled (orig.: aufheben) … The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.

The Rings Of Saturn is manifestly aware of an oppressed past and the notion of “blast[ing] a specific era out of the homogenous course of history.” The text is aware of how frequently it looks upon a “wreckage,” so aware that the voice of the text frequently slides upward into a register filled with hauntings — but not just Gothic-styled hauntings pegged to a specific object, i.e., a single ghost haunting a single house because of a single terrible act committed one generational leap back into the past.

Sebald pursues a different path: when the reader ascends to a certain level in the text when one might feel a more ‘direct’ encounter with a ‘ghost,’ i.e., that space between a pile of herring and the bodies of those murdered in the Holocaust as defined by the implicit metaphor, we also share an intellectual space with thinking over of what generational trauma means while also operating in the middle of an encounter with ‘place.’ (The narrator can be expected to only accomplish so much, being human, after all.) The book has names for the things that have produced that “wreckage” — imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and fascism; and the book traces their evolution well — but merely indicting a large ‘-ism’ isn’t where the mission of The Rings Of Saturn begins or ends. Sebald the narrator seeks out a saint in Nuremberg. An angel seeks to become human in Berlin. Each are on an analogous path and make use of similar tools. In a small essay called “Why Do You Make Films?” written in 1987, Wim Wenders remarked that “The camera is a weapon against the tragedy of things, against their disappearing.” Sebald himself was quoted in an interview flagged by the podcast Backlisted as saying that “The photograph is meant to get lost somewhere in an attic — a nomadic thing that has a small chance only to survive,” making their survival — and the act of ensuring their survival — all the more striking. And, more often than not, both Sebald and the angel seek to commune with nominally empty spaces.

To explain what occupies this emptiness requires us to talk for a moment about what we mean when we use words like trauma, collective trauma, and generational trauma.

With all three, there’s a rough feeling that lingers with us where we can say that we know it when we see it, feel it, or hear about it. We know it when we keep friends safe in the middle of the night, telling them over the phone to breathe in and breathe out. We know it when we hear a blues song scratchily emanating from the side of an open and otherwise quiet car mechanic’s garage late at night. We know it when we read a book like The Body Keeps The Score and we know it when we watch a television show like Watchmen.

Now, there’s a DSM-5 definition we can break out — which talks about “actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” — but that doesn’t incorporate a thousand other things that are part of the landscape of trauma. There is also a certain level of complexity in tracing generational trauma from one generation to the next at the level of biology. As of 2018 — insofar as this writer can make out — no studies exist that follow the trauma a mother might have before she conceives a child, how that trauma changes the genetic make-up of an oocyte (a cell in the ovary that changes to form an ovum), and how that link between the trauma established before conception and the trauma felt by the child is established after the child has been born.

That difficulty doesn’t mean the investigation into generational trauma is illegitimate. In 1966, Vivian M. Rakoff, a Canadian psychologist, described the children of parents who survived the Holocaust as suffering more acute psychological symptoms than their parents. In the 1990’s, as Rachel Yahuda and Amy Lehrner note in World Psychiatry, as technology developed, time passed, and more investigations were made —

… offspring of Holocaust survivors were more likely to show HPA axis alterations associated with PTSD, such as lower cortisol levels and enhanced GR responsiveness … Subsequent investigations documented that maternal and paternal PTSD were associated with different biological outcomes. A post‐hoc analysis of cortisol circadian rhythm data indicated that lower cortisol levels in adult Holocaust offspring were associated with maternal, but not paternal, PTSD.

The HPA axis refers to the connection between the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and adrenal glands. GR responsiveness refers to glucocorticoid receptors, which are found throughout the body and play a role in regulating the genes that control development, metabolism, and immune response.

Looking at these results suggests that it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to offer up the reductive assertion that lower cortisol levels and enhanced GR responsiveness means that someone is both hyper-sensitive and might not feel the stress that the body should otherwise feel if it were in a ‘flight or ‘fight,’ trauma-inducing situation. In other words: the children exhibit the symptoms of the traumatized.

There is much more detail at hand here — studies involving GR gene methylation that parallel but don’t explicitly show genetic transmission of trauma, mothers with PTSD who experienced September 11th rating their children as having higher anxiety in the morning than mothers without PTSD, animals exposed to “chronic stress in utero [that led to] increased male, but not female, HPA stress reactivity,” and ‘secondary traumatization’ — but we should zoom the camera lens out to flag the fact that trauma simply makes itself manifest in the day-to-day lives of individuals in a variety of ways. In Bassel Van Der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps The Score, the doctor describes patients who “felt emotionally distant from everybody, as though [their] heart were frozen and [the individual in question was] living behind a glass wall,” as well as other patients who were “suffering from memories,” and notes that “I [the author] could not be [the doctor of a traumatized group] unless they made me one of them.”

This characterization brings us back to the idea of the lead characters in The Rings Of Saturn and Wings Of Desire encountering nominally empty spaces. At Somerleyton Hall in The Rings Of Saturn, the narrator thinks of how “fine a place the house seemed to me now that it was imperceptibly nearing the brink of dissolution and silent oblivion,” a house where “there are … moments, as one passes through the rooms open to the public … when one is not quite sure whether one is in a country house in Suffolk or some kind of no-man’s-land, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean or in the heart of the dark continent.”

The house is only ‘nominally’ empty because of the action implied by the phrases of “the Arctic Ocean” and “in the heart of the dark continent.” Open up the door of the latter phrase and voices will come rushing through. The alexithymia of trauma located in more than one place — in both the house and the ‘dark continent’ — will find a voice — of exploitation, cruelty, and worse. (Later on, the narrator goes so far as to suggest that the colonial violence of the Belgians in the past makes it manifest in physical deformations in the near-present.)

Consider two scenes in Wings Of Desire. The first is the montage that shows us a glimpse of what happened to Berlin in the war: the camera passes by a destitute man, a domestic argument, and a child screaming for his mother in the street before we transition to the sounds of a bomb siren, see for ourselves the bombs flash bulb across the sky of the city, the shadow of planes and white-yellow search lights, and buildings on fire. Or, as the English writer Thomas Browne puts it in one section of The Rings Of Saturn —

The shadow of night is drawn like a black veil across the earth, and since almost all creatures, from one meridian to the next, lie down after the sun has set, so … one might, in following the setting sun, see on our globe nothing but prone bodies, row upon row, as if levelled by the scythe of Saturn — an endless graveyard for a humanity struck by falling sickness.

The second scene is Peter Falk standing outside a small snack bar in the middle of a muddied expanse. He talks to Bruno Ganz, the angel, and — even though the angel says nothing — they share a moment.

I can’t see you, but I know you’re here. I feel it. You’ve been hanging around since I got here. I wish I could see your face. Just look into your eyes and tell you how good it is to be here. Just to touch something. See, that’s cold. That feels good. Or, here … To smoke. Have coffee. And, if you do it together, it’s fantastic. Or … to draw. You know, you take a pencil, and you make a dark line … then you make a light line. And, together, it’s a good line. Or when your hands are cold — you rub ’em together. You see, that’s good. That feels good. There’s so many good things. But you’re not here. I’m here. I wish you were here. I wish you could talk to me, because I’m a friend. Compañero.

It is agonizingly tempting to liken Falk’s voice here to Sebald’s voice in a one-to-one ratio, even in spite of the fairly central role ‘wreckage’ and melancholy play in The Rings Of Saturn, especially if one were to factor in the consistently sumptuous turns of Sebald’s language, i.e., how the scratchy sounds of a transistor radio playing on a beach are “as if the pebbles being dragged back by the waves were talking to each other”; how — instead of a child — one couple in The Hague has an “apricot-colored poodle”; and how — “every now and then” at the Schiphol airport — “the announcers’ voices, disembodied and intoning their messages like angels, would call someone’s name.” But just before that scene in the film, Falk is seen wandering through a muddied expanse of earth. “Walking and seeing,” he says in voice over. He turns and looks off in the distance to his right (and the lingering background of the shot.) “That must be the station — not the one where the trains stop, but the station where the station stops.”

“The station where the station stops” is a roundabout way of talking about “the zero hour,” the end of history, or the “inclusion of all exclusions,” which is how the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann once described the apocalypse. Falk goes from contemplating the “inclusion of all exclusions” — an enormous collective trauma collectively felt — to talking about simple things with a spirit he can’t see, a spirit who doesn’t feel like it’s part of humanity and wants to be a part of humanity. And Falk wants that spirit there.

Sebald’s narrator has a role in reaching out to the spirits. The angel has a role in reaching out to humanity. Each are working to build a narrative bridge over which those impacted by collective trauma and generational trauma can pass into the story of the present. The aforementioned individuals who felt “emotionally distant from everybody, as though [their] heart[s] were frozen and [they] were living behind a glass wall” might now have a better idea of the path they need to take to unfreeze the heart and come from behind said glass wall. (Or, as it was put in HBO’s Watchmen: “Wounds need air.”) Neither narrator in either text can accomplish the project of building this bridge without the other, as is evidenced by the fact that The Rings Of Saturn all but ends amongst a reconstructed Temple of Jerusalem — an appeal to the judgement of eternity — and Wings Of Desire ends with the angel becoming human and falling in love.

There are a few complications that linger along our path: on one level, Sebald’s narrator doesn’t really ‘do’ much of anything. He walks around, has some associative thoughts, and eventually ends up in the hospital. The same judgement could be passed on the angel: he drifts, becomes human, and — for his troubles — ends up with a colorful coat.

But that reading ignores the role of what it means to be a witness.

“A witness is needed in order for the particular narrative to rise from the inundation of universal sound,” Xavier Vila and Alice Kuzniar wrote of ‘the library scene’ in Wings of Desire in the 1992 Spring issue of Film Criticism, and witnesses abound in both Wings of Desire and The Rings of Saturn. Roger Casement is witnessed on television. The gaze of the painter is witnessed in The Anatomy Lesson. The pathway of a Nazi who becomes the head of the United Nations is witnessed from one era to the next. The descendants of the colonialists — as well as what they took — are witnessed. In looking at a bridge crossing the river Blyth, the narrator also performs an act of witness concerning the growth of capitalism and empire in China.

It is this repeated act of witness that lends a shape of characterization to the seemingly unobserved, un-filled-in narrator. In observing this, we observe a man who is quiet, decent, and thoughtful. We observe a man who knows what it means to genuinely ‘live in the moment.’ We observe his silence in the same fashion that the narrator and housekeeper observe the silence of Major George Wyndham Le-Strange after the latter was one of the ones who liberated Belsen.

By contrast, the angels in Wings Of Desire observe things in an earthward direction, i.e., someone reading in a library — or someone dying as the result of a motorcycle accident and seeing their life flash before their eyes —

Albert Camus. The morning light. The child’s eyes. The swim in the waterfall. The spots of the first drops of rain. The sun. The bread and wine. Hopping. Easter. The veins of leaves. The blowing grass. The color of stones. The pebbles on the stream’s bed. The white tablecloth outdoors. The dream of the house in the house. The dear one asleep in the next room. The peaceful Sundays. The horizon. The light from the room in the garden. The night flight. Riding a bicycle with no hands. The beautiful stranger. My father. My mother. My wife. My child.

In each case, we see a deepening of the role of the angel of history as described by Benjamin in his essay. It isn’t just that the angel witnesses the wreckage; it’s that the angel has emotions about the wreckage it wants to share with us. It isn’t just that the storm propels the angel into the future; it’s that the angel has an opinion as to how that wreckage should have conducted itself. The angel of history isn’t about the truth or falsity of history; it’s about who is acknowledged and what it means to share care and concern for those initially lost to history.

The other complication to the arc of this argument is that solely ascribing an interest in the traumatized ‘lessens’ the work of either text — that it strips them of the necessary ineffable mysteriousness that makes art ‘art.’

If that were to hold true — if we were to push our concern with trauma to the side — it still wouldn’t get rid of the fact that there is an emotion we can ascribe to the wreckage of history as described in The Rings Of Saturn. You can’t look at the very end of the book — wherein Sebald notes the death of his father-in-law — and not feel an emotion — that, over the course of history, when a ‘lady of the upper classes’ suffered a grief — which the reader could reasonably read as barely concealed code for ‘a very important woman’ — this is how history would respond (ergo, how we could respond), with …

… heavy robes of black silk taffeta or black crêpe de chine … black Mantua silk of which the Norwich silk weavers … had created … to rape black mourning ribbons over all the mirrors and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruits of the field …

— but the text doesn’t just stop with the emotion. It begins to move and slides upward to note that these arrangements were done so that —

… the soul, as it left the body, would not be distracted on its final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land now being lost forever.

In other words: amidst the wreckage of empire and silk, as you cross from a story about Queen Victoria to fictitious words falsely attributed to Thomas Browne, we realize that a bridge has been built for a dear one close to the narrator’s heart. In fact, all of this is done in the name of building a bridge: the angel bearing witness to the words of a dying motorcyclist in Wings of Desire; Peter Falk (as an ex-angel) bearing witness to an empty space on his way to get a cup of coffee; Sebald’s narrator bearing witness to an empty house or to fishermen on the beach who looked

… as if the last stragglers of some nomadic people had settled there, at the outermost limit of the earth, in expectation of the miracle longed for since time immemorial, the miracle which would justify all their erstwhile privations and wanderings.

The late David Foster Wallace once characterized true heroism as “minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care — with no one there to see or cheer.” The actions undertaken in Wings Of Desire and The Rings Of Saturn highlight just how much weight the words ‘probity’ and ‘care’ carry over the course of a story, as well as what it takes for someone to actually earn that epithet of praise.

#writing #essay #lit #literature

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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(REVIEW) Not your minute turns from the blueprint: Body Work, by Tom Betteridge (SAD Press, 2018)

Denise Bonetti <[email protected]> Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 20:21 to maria.spamzine Hey Maria, Hope life’s good :) I’m just writing to see you if you’ve read Tom B’s new Body Work? There’s a paper I should be writing, but have been reading and rereading that pamphlet instead, or more like dipping in and out really, cause it's so beautifully layered and expanding that you can only take so much at a time. Don’t you think Tom’s poetry has this strange earworm quality to it? (I think he’d like the annelid comparison.) The way he choreographs words (I don’t want to use the word 'images’) makes its way into my brain and never wants to leave. He draws these, like, lateral paths of meaning so clearly that the weeds never grow back.Tom Raworth has this bit in 'Writers / Riders / Rioters' that goes:

the present is surrounded with the ringing of ings which words have moss on the northside

like, words naturally arrange themselves into a system of semantic habit, which is so stable and stale that makes them grow moss, but also so rich and vibrant when it's exploited productively. Obviously this is Raworth so it probably also means the opposite of this and so much more, but it kinda makes me want to say that the present (poem) makes the ringing of ings deviate so well that the moss can never grow again. I’d say that his poems behave like sophisticated lines in the sand, but they're more like brutal carvings on a rock. He had a couple poems in Blackbox Manifold ages ago (I think) and there was this one bit

‘nerve truffled plume lead pickled breast’

I think about all the time (especially when I cook). It’s so smooth. Why can I not stop thinking about it. It’s cause it’s so shameless, it wants it all - the feather-light and the corpse-heavy, never perturbed, so lucid. It plays at tasting good, but it tastes of an unrealistically blank texture. A-ha! Anyway the new pamphlet is gr8, if you haven’t read it yet look at the first poem pls - ‘OCCAM OCEAN’ (sounds like an anagram or palindrome)

It all dwells in systematic abstraction but flies so close to materiality, like a mosquito buzzing around the ear ('Not your minute turns from the blueprint'). I love that ‘plate’ in the first phrase, too: it behaves like an adjective but feels nothing like it. I can't help but think it's the subject of the sentence in a parallel universe that's created by scrambling syntax. It makes me think this is the way language should always work, and that we're the fkn idiots living in the parallel universe in which syntax is scrambled in ordered to be as boring as possible. Idk - it's late and I need to go back to writing boring essay syntax 'bound to decision and the pursuit of what follows'. Lemme know ur thoughts you smart queen D xxx

Maria Sledmere <[email protected]> Wed, 12 Dec 2018, 17:30 to denise.spamzine

Dearest Denise,

Life is good thanks. I'm sitting in the attic of the law building and I can hear the construction work going on and every time I leave I look out at the skyline and slivers of infrastructural alteration. I was walking along the road earlier because the pavement was closed off for construction and cba crossing and the high-vis guy was like, 'you'll not see Christmas walking on the road like that', but I guess I misheard him saying something else because I was really engrossed in this old Slowdive album, so I just smiled sweetly. Anyway, that got me thinking back to the question of erasure, which I think is pretty vital to Body Work.Have been carrying this pamphlet in my bag for so long that the cover has started to peel and revealing speckles of white underneath, like the text itself is ready to reveal itself, and yes I was thinking Barthes and strip-tease and paratextual enticement.

So I had to google the word annelid and now can't get the phrase 'segmented worm' out of my ear/head/throat (gross!). I was thinking about what sort of stains are on the cover of this book, you know, with Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir's gouache/pencil work. A stain is one thing stuck to another. Gouache is a funny kinda substance that is half watery gauze, half binding, thick, gummy akin to acrylic. Wet, it will easily smudge. My thumb keeps bleeding where the skin thins, hardens, peels and sloughs off. Tom's poems are kinda mucilaginous in parts (v. insecty, molluscky, sap emission; but also they have a crispness and precision, like cuts of leaf). Things that smudge or fall in flakes. Bodies are maybe whatever we leave behind. I didn't want to mention Hookworms the band because of the singer's sexual abuse scandal BUT it seems significant that a group named after an earworm/type of parasitic larvae would have a song called 'Negative Space'. Like what we eat into in the process of making, existing, remixing. Is language a rash, the result of these parasitic inf(l)ections?

I've been to a couple of reading groups on microbiomes lately, and we were thinking through this idea of how acknowledging your bodily composition in terms of myriad genes and organisms challenges conventional, bounded notions of 'self'. What kinds of affects does this produce? There's a weirdness to that, in Mark Fisher's sense of the weird as 'that which does not belong', that which 'brings to the familiar something which ordinarily lies beyond it, and which cannot be reconciled with the "homely" (even as its negation)'. Fisher suggests that the form most conducive to rendering the weird might be montage. So I was thinking about how montage involves splicings, gaps, juxtapositions, cuts and suddenness. I mean you open the very first poem of Body Work, 'Occam Ocean', and see that its prose-poetic paragraph compacting is split in the middle by the juncture of line break and indent. And ofc the title recalling Occam's razor, the philosophic principle by which in the case of two explanations for an occurrence, it's best to go with the one that requires least speculation. Razor things down and erase speculation? What are we left with, more of the Rreal? Lately I've been hankering for cleaner prose, crisp lines, simpler solutions. The Anthropocene is all of a goddamn tangle. Do I want to follow the myriad threads or just cut cut cut -- who gets to do that?

Did you ever cut a worm in two as a kid?

Okay so I love how 'Occam Ocean' might promise, title-wise, this clean prosaic expanse (like the oxymoron of expanding ocean and occam's, which requires surely a condensing), but what we get is clustering, motion, shiver, containment. The sensual trash magickk of P. Manson! The little syncope of this thing or that, the 'maple neck', vibrating canes, 'chambered breath bowed into the driest soundboard'. These aren't like 'Latour litanies' because they are not like concrete OOO segments of things; idk, they are more about processes and mutable assemblages, emphasis on action and change, sometimes transmission, things inside things. Lynn Margulis and symbiogenesis. How things interact, communicate up close; all of a mutable, prose-poetic swallow. It's actually an incredible intimate pamphlet, don't you think? I feel inside a thing inside a thing inside a thing. I feel a vague ecological sorrow, which gnaws at introspective tendency. The clue to that, you might see, is the cutaway phrase, 'emo Chord' in 'String Growth'.

'Collapse all tears allowing echo retreat'; these lyric lines of 'Glissando' expression, smoothing and shimmering over cuts and junctures: a slide between notes. I used to play trombone and I wish I cld articulate linguistically what kinds of lip vibration occur when you attempt a glissando and feel it slide down your arm muscle but then also through your chest as you try to sustain a sound. It's maybe the way you glide through a scattered poem, with your eye, which is different ofc to the spikier way you'd have to read it aloud, stuck on the vowels. Stuttering. I would love to hear Nat Raha perform these poems, because she does such wonderful things with punctuation and bodily performance, a kind of grammar of breath and cough and click. Reading over the more field erasure poems like 'O--NE' and 'String Growth', it's easy to say something like ~vibrant materialism~ here, but as usual I reach for Steven Connor on noise. Return to the ear, which is 'vulnerable' and 'resembles the skin in being the organ of exposure and reception'. I love what Connor says about Levinas' perspective on 'the awareness of the vacant anonymity of being, of an abstract, encompassing sense that "there is"' being 'an experience of noise'. <3 Acknowledging that breath in the void, that is not nothing but a sparkling something, entails a sense of noise. I am here in the attic of the law building, listening to construction, the type of my fingers on the keys. Someone is murmuring of their distress. What is the difference between living and existing, and being and nothing?

Karen Barad:

'Suppose we had a finely tuned, ultrasensitive instrument that we could use to zoom in on and tune in to the nuances and subtleties of nothingness. But what would it mean to zoom in on nothingness, to look and listen with ever-increasing sensitivity and acuity, to move to finer and finer scales of detail of...?'

When she asks, 'What is the measure of nothingness?' I think surely it is a bodily measure, as everything is: 'bound', as Tom puts it, 'to decision and the pursuit of what follows'. Of course 'what follows' recalls Derrida's 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', where he's just out the shower and watching his cat watching his phallus, etc. What kinds of dislocation occur. But I mean in all that grandeur of encounter, there's still anthropocentricism. Tom gives you this cinematic CUT, like the instructive 'keen SNAP' that occurs in 'Occam Ocean' to dramatise 'Still, pondsnails whir and blindly source [...] a working leaf shutter'. Soever the language enacts the slurs of the snails up close. We look for the answer to the question of ellipsis, the more to follow [what follows]: inevitable, a question. Sometimes Tom is writing about silence ('then silence confronts an earful underhand') but the music of his language does all the noise, so we just can't have nothingness: there is always a vibrational residue that speaks of something in miniature, atomic, happening.

Ofc with the ear again I am thinking of the ear at the start of Lynch's Blue Velvet and how it's covered in rasping wee insects whose hum is a sort of white noise of trauma that runs through Lumberton's suburban idyllicism.

And so what happens next is I flip open to the following page of Body Work and there is 'String Growth', one of Tom's sprawling erasure poems, which for more than a split-second resembles hundreds of crawling, shimmering ants. I actually think my earliest childhood memory is of looking down at my bare feet on the patio of our old house in Hertfordshire and seeing red ants run over my toes. Then looking up to a greying, English sky. Constantly struck by the cinematic image of that, its splicing out of time: the vividness of insects on human flesh, then milky smog of skyward nothingness. 'String Growth', the accompanying notes to Body Work tell me, is an erasure poem of the Chordoma Foundation's 'Understanding Chordoma' information page.

Erasure can expose sequences of nightmare at work in the lexis and syntax of the text on which it parasitically feeds. I am scared to go on the Chordoma Foundation's website, for fear that just reading or saying the word 'tumour' will activate some kind of malignant growth in my body. And so something of the word chord as a sonorous relation between materials (bodily, textual; textural, cellular). Chordomas are tumours often located in the spine and so I find myself looking for the undulating shape of a spine in the scatter-text of Tom's poem. My eyes cascade down textual spines. Why is it sometimes I otherwise latch upon a 'keystone' word which then extends with adjacent resonance? Musical abnormalities accumulate. Thought swells.

And yea I wonder how this fits into what you say about the poems being 'so smooth'. Like Lynch's waxen silicone ear. Because even though fragmentation makes me think of bits and jaggedness etc, there's this sheen of aestheticism to Tom's work that makes me think of gloopiness, fullness, thereness but also the glaze of potential nothingness. Like in Barad's sense, or miniaturised ecological window shopping - a la Morton's Romantic consumerism? Or do we get into the things themselves? What are your thoughts on the question of recalcitrance? Maybe cos he named a previous pamphlet Pedicure I've just got varnish on my mind. Things an insect might stick to, and be amberized in. Mm.

'[...] Phosphorus crystals may be white, red, burgundyor alight as urine passes'

I keep a stone of citrine under my pillow sometimes. It is supposed to alleviate nightmares and 'manifest abundance'. It is the colour of a rich, dehydrated piss and sometimes when I come back to bed after peeing in the night I think it's some kind of organ lain on my bedsheets, hopped out of my body, and I have to stop my heart and breathe. Is that syncope?

On the <topic of piss>, isn't there a sort of caustic quality, even to the smoothness? Like it is working at making a brittleness of its sheen? And that is what poetry is, cracking the veneer of language or something? Punctuational insects dwelling in splits and fissures? It is nice and cool in Tom's poetry, a place for thinning the self and dwelling. Even though the lexis is so rich and dense, it still seems slender somehow; there's a suppleness. Tease threads of your silk(worm).

Was thinking about what Lisa Robertson says about 'commodiousness' in poetry and what kinds of space there are for the reader here, because I don't think there is much space at all, in the conventional humanly readerly sense. Maybe what I mean by (straw man: Romantic) lyric, which requires something of declarative expansiveness? The density and clutter of specialist language in Body Work makes me feel like a worm, trying to hook my way lusciously into a line: 'espalier's / strains unfinished by the scarp trellis' ('Body Work'), 'rooted to a middle-ground / no more than motion defibrillates'. And I become a parasite on the body of the text, which is a parasite on the body, which is made up of millions of (para)sites. Para ofc meaning side by side, which made me think of Haraway's sympoeisis (making-with) but also, admittedly, Limmy's madeup psychic show, Paraside (lalalol what you were saying about the scrambling parallel universe maybe, is that a lalaLacian Real which necessitates ululation, stammering? Complex remixing musicality of language throughout Body Work as summoning?). Going back to my incidental Slowdive reference earlier, maybe there's a shoegaze thing here, like setting up these 'noise-worlds' which shimmer indiscriminately behind/inside/through the semiotic oscillations of lyric? Is shoegaze a form of sonic gouache? Well it is certainly an ontic form of seduction, where I can't pick out the instruments of expression but I look for them hungrily in the haze. And the idea that transmission between worlds (the living/dead, human/nonhuman) might require a strain of humour (like haha but also meant in the sense of bodily humours?). For instance, shoegaze is decidedly not a humorous genre, but it sort of works on bodily humours, sometimes giving me the bends, or the blurry spaced-out feeling of having one's pleasure receptor's caressed by sound. Was wondering how YOU experienced the space and physicality of the poems -- was there anything u found FUNNY or sufficiently sultry as to produce a long and gorgeous sigh?

Mm and aren't there these tasty, cute moments of wow like 'tropic glut' ('O--NE') and 'prism arousal' ('Body Work') and 'clamour to emboss' ('Sapling').

Come to think of it, there are quite a lot of trees in Body Work, at the very least between 'Sapling' and 'Copsing', but also resonance in 'Awning', 'Annual' (which mentions 'yield', 'Thicket', 'sky-light muddle' etc) and 'Georgel' (georgics, idk?). Something about sprawl and thread: like the action of branches as arboreal mirror for threads of viruses, threads of code?

Side note: Can a person in a crowd of people experience canopy-shyness? Emily Berry has this lovely poem about crying and canopies and language.

Ways to dwell in inertia, violence, suspense ('Poem for July') as a 'clearing' within the pamphlet? Body Work as a title seems to combine two distinct fields: car repair and alternative medicine (hence mention of plants, cancers and crystals). The question of holistic approach, therapeutics, restoration. The sheen of metal, the sheen of health. O wise one of la letteratura del contemporaneo, pray tell your thoughts on possible Ballardian comparisons? Like obv v. different but I was struck by something to do with the cut-up structures of The Atrocity Exhibition and the way erasure works in Tom's work (probably in a more precise, attentive way, like the specialist's collage of tiny skins and digits, as opposed to grander themes of mediation that explode all over Ballard's work? -- generalising for the sake of interest obv).

Longing for a 'carvery [of] / uncommoning / rave'. Some kind of party you'd give up your skin for (is skin mere synecdoche of identity here?). Maybe the rave is what you were saying about scrambling.

Anyway, I hope your essay is going well. I must go read Hillis Miller's thoughts on Ariadne's thread, maybe make a tea. I've been getting these headaches lately, dawn to dusk & beyond, like the kind you get after being swimming (chlorine headache) or after crying (hormone headache). Pressurisation. I wonder if I have a parasite in my brain? So tonite I will probs lie awake, sleepless, listening for tinnitus :(

With warmth, Maria xxxxxxx

p.s.

Of course, by the time I get to the end of rereading I realise that it's only white marks being revealed underneath because literal holes have appeared in the Body Work cover, like some kind of fungus has been eating away at the book, performing another erasure.

Denise Bonetti <[email protected]> Fri, 1 Feb, 12:15 to maria.spamzine Dear Maria, Once again my legendary inability to reply to personal emails within a reasonable 1-month window manifests itself. Invoke my Scorpio moon (?) etc. I love it when people are like 'RIGHT - enough Facebook for me, email me if you want to talk etc', because that sounds like a nightmare to me. Long live IM! Long live the short form! (quite rich coming from someone whose job at the moment, I guess, is to churn out a dissertation?)

But then you know what I was thinking - someone like Clark Coolidge, for example, can get away with long form, intense long form. Not only get away, but own that long form. That long form I'm into. Clark Coolidge drown me in words and I'm fine with it, because he never dilutes, there's never any stagnation, you know what I mean, he just goes and goes and goes and you're like !!? YES!! HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS!? He just never runs out of steam. And I'm thinking of Coolidge because you mentioned crystals as agents in Tom B. (cf. The Crystal Text, how would the crystal speak etc), and of course because both Tom B. and Clark C. are just doing mad things with language, bold things and exciting things... They are like scientists you're friends with but who (maybe) don't like to talk about their work, then one day they decide to let into their basement lab where they've been secretly working on the most complex, organic, project for years, and they're like, don't freak out, here it is:

(Sorry for terrible quality [#postinternet] First is Tom B., second is Clark C.) Body Work looks quite controlled in form, visually speaking, with its vaguely justified lines, BIG symmetrical margins.. even the scattered pages look orderly! Like the bit of 'STRING WORTH' you sent. Which going back to your erasure thing, it makes me feel like Tom B. is giving us an OXO cube of his writing, all concentrated and delicious. But then my response is - show us more!!! Which rarely happens because I am scared of long form. And email. And dissertations. I also LOVE what you said about how Body Work combines car repair and alternative medicine!! That is absolutely spot on. Like the material, pragmatic tinkering motions of his writing, the referral to structures and the intention of like, see how far we can bend them and push them, but then it is never as dry as that! Very sweet motor oil. It's very kind poetry... generous! (A word that my friend Phoebe used to describe a certain type of poetry at a party last week and I thought, very interesting). Linguistically generous because it offers so many networks of reading, but then also.. approachable? As approachable as experimental poetry of this kind can be. I'm sure like, DANIEL would not think this is approachable lol (#COYBIG #romance). Which, fair enough. But if you're a nerd for this kind of poetry, then yeah. Like this bit from 'ANNUAL'??

*Cries!!! This is like you said, healing!! I feel looked after! 'Stomach prefers sound to day-to-day camphor'!!! Honestly what is this! So touching, so simple!

(Btw, I started experimenting with aromatherapy in my tiny room lol, do you know how to stop the water from boiling in the oil burner??)

Thanks for sending such interesting ideas over, I have to shoot to a seminar ! PPS: I saw Steven Connor in the English library yesterday (Oliver pointed at him silently like !!!!!!!!!!) so I kind of followed him to see what his approach to book browsing is.. very natural-looking and orderly? Surprised. Love the guy. *bubble sounds*

Lots of love Maria ‘let’s see where the spirits take us’ ur the best

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Maria Sledmere <[email protected]> 6 Feb 2019, 23:19 to denise.spamzine Dear Denise,

Makes so much sense to map your message sensibilities onto your taste in poetry! I am so torn between the percolated richness of the email, its classic deferral (omg hun I owe you a million emails!) through a sort of quantum dimension of procrastination, and in opposition the sugar rush nowness of IM. I am such a frantic typist that often I send the wrong messages or cross my wires or just gush too much, so email is probably a safe option for me. There is all too much blue in my Messenger windows...Temptation of x's and endless emojis. But such a beauty to IM and texts out of context, like I wonder how many people read your probs too late 4 a snog now :'((( as micro-fictions, versus poems. I have a whole folder of screenshots on my computer from things that happened on Facebook that I have no memory of. Something about the Romantic fragment, accumulating ruin.

(btw) I feel like these extracts also shed light upon Body Work somehow. Biodegradables versus hard minerals and synthetic matter. Inner/outer. Flush. Tbh I think the middle one was from you?

Yes the dissertation, the dissertation as labour; it's like you have to find your scaffold first. Sometimes I feel like the scaffold in that wonderful Sophie Collins poem, 'Healers', and I write and don't notice myself and suddenly I'm so there, but the scaffold is secretly taking her bolt pins out the more I write around her. You can only be so respectful to your scaffold when she's so in the way. Gemini problems?Duality; structure/content. What is it Tom McCarthy says: 'structure is content, geometry is everything'. I want to be a wee fractal in a sequence of massive refraction. Is that how it works? Back to scaffolds, maybe we need to find the kindest mode of dismantling, and that's when you work into a form or something. And then also the more organic structures! So for CC it's the whole crystal thing, and working out of crystal logic. And then you just go and go and it's wonderful, much extravagant fractality, almost like poetry as virus, replicate replicate, grow, change. Mm, it's so good. My friend Kirsty did this mad poem about a tree, I couldn't tell if it was a story or poem, it was just branching out in a way that seemed hungry, necessary, spreading its roots. She said she wrote it in a rush! As if trees could rush! I like to think she inhabited a concentrated moment of becoming-tree, like she was a myriad in the roots or leaves. I don't think it could have happened without the tree, you know? But also the tree was almost entirely absent, it was like a ghost of form. Maybe I forgot how it goes. The lines looked like branches or something. Can you have long-form concrete? Concrete I guess by necessity is long-form. It takes a lot of energy to make. People are building houses out of mycelium instead, which is rad. Talking of roots and that, I just wrote 26k words on ecopoetics & t h r e a d s over the past fortnight and it was kind of that process, like letting a sort of tapestry take hold and I was maybe just one more thread, I was hardly doing the weaving, everything was moving around me and I wanted to wriggle into more and more gaps. Becoming-thread, perhaps. The next step is to slack and cut, which is exciting. Where to even start?

Your description of the complex, organic project is so gorgeous. Poems slow-cooked in a lab with tender organic care. My two scientist PhD pals are always gramming these beautiful pictures of crystals they're growing or mad wave patterns on screens. And we go for lunch and I'm like what you doing this afternoon and they're like, Oh just shooting photons. And is that much different from spending your afternoon writing poems? (Yes, they'd groan). I'm just chasing bits of light. Reading Tom B's work it's this whole precision thing, the actual inhabitation of process as such, so you see the energy buzz between things. I don't mean to say simply this is atomic poetry or poetry as tool analysis. It's more a betweening.

Isn't it super difficult to write non-anthropocentrically and really inhabit micro-relationality and also sound interesting and sexy in the way Claire Colebrook (she has that great essay in Tom Cohen's Telemorphosis) describes as 'sexual indifference', i.e. that threat to heteronormative reproduction that 'has always been warded off precisely because it opens the human organism to mutation, production, lines of descent and annihilation beyond that of its own intentionality'? Well anyway Body Work really works this way for me, it's like a poetics of sexual indifference that is nevertheless charged with desire you can't really predict, it's something in the frisson between objects and lines and coils of form. I think of crystal charge, iPhone battery (mine's always dying, Gemini trait 100%), engines. Neat miniaturisations of entropy, surge, spike and flux. When the 'I' comes in I'm like hey, what flow are you? It's actually so satisfying to quote these poems as fragments btw, they can do so much on their own as much as in poems and pamphlets, I wonder if that goes back to the accessibility thing. Like the absolute charm of a line as auto-affection:

This bit is from 'Temper' and I go back to my point about the flush/fluster! Globe of air/your *bubble sounds*. Isn't everything held so neatly, and yet it never feels neat, it just feels sharp and sparking, this 'technical glossy finish' like a really nice car, the body paint of a poem, its prosody so tightly held it feels more surface, a selection of hues and textures. And the erotics of the text or at the very least its pleasure is the shift between bodies, synecdoche, yes you could say bodies without organs but things in themselves are also important. Maybe another poet who does this is Sylvia Legris, she writes these apparently impersonal poems filled to the seams with specialist lexis (you have to have like twelve tabs open per poem to get it), but there's an affirmative humour and energy that feels v much a personal sensibility, a deliberated skewing of world that splices the poet's agency among items, artefacts, language. I mean how nice are these poemsshe published in Granta. I feel like I want cutlery to read them with, if that makes sense. Maybe a scalpel, for the succulence. The appearance of an ear again!

And then the beautiful metallurgy of this line from Tom, like somebody pierced my ears with perfect silver and it let all the demons out:

I am worried about what a certain seizure would look like. When we talk about vitality is it a willing naivety towards matter qua matter, as if we could just step out of correlationism? Such thoughts for 11pm of a Wednesday night. I can't help but think of the body image that Elizabeth Grosz describes in Volatile Bodies, kind of riffing off Paul Schilder: 'What psychoanalytic theory makes clear is that the body is literally written on, inscribed, by desire and signification, at the anatomical, physiological, and neurological levels'. And yeah, cool, what about the nonhuman body also? Has anyone done a really good psychoanalysis of the object. Parsed its psychic striations (traumatic or pleasurable residues of every microbial, huh?). In fact, what about the psychodynamic model of actual icebergs? Time we started literalising the matter of metaphors, absenting 'real cultural / medium' and filling with meltwater, fire and flow. Maybe it comes down to a bead of ink, the 'intimate concentrate' which is Lucozade, hangover piss, sick pH levels. So yeah, Body Work for me is this totally seductiveintersubjective space which actually works out pretty visceral states, sometimes disembodying me into a more fractal, mineral or bacterial being. I could start talking Kathryn Yusoff and geomorphism too, but maybe enough strata for one email? Plus I'm mixing my metaphors, I'm sure, mostly because I'm still morphing, dissolving inside those lines. I think I ate too many OXO cubes.

As for your oil burner boiling, sounds like you have an overactive candle? Maybe try a cooler tealight, nestle it to the back a little to redirect the strength of the flame? I like rosemary oil for remembrance, cranberry for comfort, ginger for energy. That line about resin is so nice. I was in Crianlarich at the weekend and my friend Patrick found this massive log and he carried it for so long that you could smell the resin on his skin, it was amazing. I keep thinking about the word 'pitch' and lush tree-ness, and the Log Lady in Twin Peaks and poetry you can chew like new molasses, prior to melt. Is that how it works?

Somebody is smashing glass into a bin in my garden and probably I should just close the pamphlet...

...but it's like a delicious pdf that gives infinities...

Yours in multiples & cherryish flusters,

Maria xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxox

#review #tom betteridge #body work #Sad Press #reviews

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tuanyiems · 6 years

Text

Wingman

Character: Got7 Bambam; High school AU! Genre: Fluff Word count: ~3500 [Masterlist] Plot: Your best friend(/long time crush) asks you if it’s okay to pursue your sister and instead of saying no you decide to be his wingman a/n: It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but my semester is officially over so more will be on its way~ c: - When you first met Bambam he was doing the whip in the middle of the cafeteria, effectively earning him an ear pull from a very annoyed English teacher. With an eye roll and swift toss of the arm, Bambam was sent forcefully onto the seat across from yours. With a smooth dab and wink for good measure, he succeeded in breaking a giggle out of you. In fact, you laughed so much the strawberry milk you were drinking shot straight out of your nose. To put it simply, it was love at first sight. At least, it was for you.

So when Bambam sat across from you during lunch that Monday afternoon, you thought nothing of it except that he was your best friend and you wouldn’t trade this mundane moment for anything else in the world. Except it wasn’t like any other day. You realized this as soon as he spoke. “Hey,” he said, looking at you as you were in the middle of biting into your burrito. And it sent chills down your spine. But no, this time it wasn’t because of your little crush. This was a scary chill. You could feel it in the way he couldn’t look you straight in the eye, in the way his fingers rubbed against each other nervously, in the flush of pink across his cheeks. The Bambam you knew who did crazy dances in front of the whole school and daringly stood out on the first day of school with his dyed, tomato red hair, was feeling shy. Shy. You gulped down your bite of burrito, nodding for him to go on, though you desperately wished for time to stop. “Is your sister dating anyone? I heard from Gyeom that she gave her number to…” You couldn’t listen anymore. It was worse than you were expecting. You figured he would break your heart eventually, but…why did it have to be your sister? Your sister was just a year older and a senior at your school. However, despite being so close in age, the two of you were worlds apart. She seemed to have gotten all of the good genes, leaving you with the leftovers. She was the star player of the soccer team and the senior class president. She was beautiful and talented and witty. Everyone who ever met your sister was immediately charmed—so it should’ve come as no surprise when you saw Bambam melting into a blushing mess right in front of you. That didn’t mean it hurt any less though. “I mean, I’ll ask her myself obviously, but I just wanted to make sure she’s actually looking,” Bambam blabbered on nervously. You forced out a weak chuckle, putting your burrito down to rest your head in your palms. “Bambam, you must really like her, huh?” “W-what? No, I’m just curious, I mean…” he sighed, a silly grin resting on his face before he finally looked you in the eyes. “Doesn’t everybody like her?” “That’s true. She’s my sister, of course she’s amazing!” You joke, watching as his eyes light up in agreement. “You won’t feel weird if I ask your sister out then?” You shrug your shoulders nonchalantly. “As long as you’re both happy, I’m happy.” Bambam smiles sweetly back at you. “Obviously I don’t have my hopes up that it’ll work out. I just—I’ve always waited until it was too late—I don’t want to regret not doing it, you know?” “Ayy, have more confidence Bambam! If anyone is as awesome as my sister, it’s you!” He broke out into a shy laugh, rolling his eyes in embarrassment. “You’re just saying that because you’re my best friend.” You cringed inwardly at his last words but kept a smile plastered on your face. “Well, you’re my best friend for a reason,” you reminded him. “Actually, maybe I shouldn’t ask. She probably still sees me as the silly kid friend,” If you were being completely honest with yourself, a part of you wanted to tell him not to. But Bambam was an amazing guy. It was why you loved him, why you cherished every moment with him, so when you saw his confident glow disappear, you turned a blind eye to your breaking heart. “Bam! She’s only a year older than us! Stop putting yourself down and dab your way into her heart. If she rejects you, she’s a fool!” He laughed at your ridiculous expression, but you could see in the shake of his head that he wasn’t convinced. “But she won’t reject you,” you continue confidently. He looked at you skeptically but you went on. “She won’t because you’re gonna have the best wingman to guide you—me!” He chuckled softly. “You’re the best, Y/N.” “What are friends for?” - Clearly, you were the greatest friend. Who else would spend their Friday night begging their sister to go on a date with their crush? “Bam told me you said you would think about it,” you insisted as you sat on her bed, watching as your sister turned away to her desk full of open textbooks. “Obviously, I said that to let him down easy. Bambam is a smart guy, he should be able to read between the lines,” she replied back stiffly, her nose buried in a book. You sighed. That was exactly it though. You saw how crestfallen he looked when he told you your sister’s answer. If there was anything worse than seeing Bambam fall for your sister, it was watching his heart break from her too. “What’s wrong with one date though?” You continued. “Bam’s an amazing guy if you give him a chance.” Your sister chuckled, swiveling around in her chair to face you. “Yeah, he’s an amazing guy—for you. Haven’t you been pining after him since you first met? Why don’t you ask him out?” “W-what?” You stuttered out, growing red in the face. “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Y/N, I’m your sister, I know you…and I know where you hide your diary.” Your face scrunched in defeat. “Dammit, I moved it to a new spot just last week.” “I only read it because I care, Y/N. I’m not going to give Bambam a chance ever. Don’t even think you can sway me. Even if I liked him, which I don’t by the way—don’t give me that look—I would never date him because I know exactly how much you like him. You’re my sister. Family comes first.” You let out a groan, letting yourself fall back against her pillows. You wish you could hate her, but she had a point. You would never date her crush either. “Urgh, fine!” You whined, rolling your body off her bed. “I’ll let you get back to studying…And stop reading my diary!” “I will if you can find a better hiding spot!” - But you didn’t give up. How could you when you had to come back to a crestfallen face like his? In all the years you’ve known him, Bambam has always been a silly guy, but you know that silliness was also part of his tough exterior. He hid himself behind jokes and laughter. So when you saw him at the usual lunch spot, your heart hurt for him. He was laughing loudly as usual with Yugyeom, but you knew better than to fall for his act. His under eyes were lined with hues of sleepless grey and his bowl of noodles were barely touched. “Hey Y/N!” Bambam waved you over as you approached the table. “Listen to Gyeom rap! It’s amaaazing!” You roll your eyes as Yugyeom proceeds to rap for you, reluctantly letting out a chuckle of amusement. “You guys want to come over this weekend?” You interrupt. The two fall silent, exchanging quick glances. You force out a smile of enthusiasm. “Yes, my sister will be there too. We can all study together!” “She’s been texting me one word responses,” Bambam replied back with a sigh. “I’m pretty sure she’s not interested in seeing me around.” “Yeah, it’ll look like Bambam’s stalking her,” Yugyeom added with a laugh. “Hey! My sister doesn’t own the house; I can invite anyone over! Besides, she’s just a stubborn girl. Once you hang around her more, she’ll open up to you in no time.” “I don’t know, Y/N, I don’t want to come off as annoying.” “You won’t! Trust your wingman, Bam!” …is what you said, but when the weekend approached, you felt sick to your stomach. The whole night you kept thinking up strange dreams of Bambam and your sister getting married and asking you to be their best man and maid of honor. It had you in a cold sweat by morning. “You don’t look too good. Are you sick?” your sister asked as you entered the living room, taking a few steps back from you. You frowned, plopping down on the sofa. “I didn’t sleep well last night.” She grinned devilishly. “Are you nervous about your boy coming over to visit you?” You roll your eyes. “We’re just going to be studying. You’re still joining us right?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I have to study for college entrance exams anyways.” When the doorbell rings, you take in a deep breath, sucking in your last bit of nerves before going to open the door. When you do, only Bambam is standing at the entrance. “Where’s Yugy?” “Hello to you too,” Bambam snapped, feigning offence. You chuckle at his act before pulling him inside. “Gyeom had to help his mom last minute.” “I guess it’s just us then. My sister’s in the kitchen,” you pause, giving Bambam a suggestive smirk. “Do you want me to leave? Sounds like Yugy could use a hand.” Bambam grabbed at your arm, making your heart skip two beats at the contact. He gave you a stern look. “I swear, if you leave us alone, I’m disowning you as a friend.” “Good,” you mutter under your breath before quickly turning around and heading into the kitchen. “What was that?” Bambam called after you, following right behind. “Nothing,” you shrug, before turning back to look at him, a smile back on your face. “Just leave it to your wingman.” With a final wink, you settle yourself down at the kitchen table where your sister is already typing away on her laptop. “What’s up Bam?” she asks nonchalantly, eyes still fixated on her screen. You gesture for Bambam to sit beside her. “Nothing much,” he answers back just as casually, following your orders and taking a seat next to her. “What are you working on?” “College stuff. Trying to write my essay, but I still have no idea what topic to do it on.” “Ah,” he gave an empathetic sigh. “Sounds stressful.” She glanced at him with an appreciative smile. “Trust me, not at hard as junior year. I bet you guys have it tough.” You groan, pulling out textbooks from your bag and onto the table. “Tough doesn’t even begin to describe.” Your sister gives you a knowing smirk, glancing slightly at Bambam before looking back at you. “Oh, I bet.” You roll your eyes. The kitchen quickly grows quiet and the three of you swiftly fall into rhythm, working on your own separate assignments. The consistent tapping of your sister’s fingers on her keyboard, with the soft, warm smell of Bambam’s laundry detergent, not to mention your lack of sleep the night before, it doesn’t even hit you when your eyes glaze over the black and white text of your book and you fall asleep right at the kitchen table. But your sister notices, and the smirk on her face grows wide when it’s clear you’re in a deep sleep. “Hey Bambam,” she whispers, tapping the nervous boy beside her. “Can you help me with something?” “Of course, Noona.” She ushers him upstairs and into your room, leaving you alone and unaware. “I still don’t know what to write about so I figured we could look through our old photo albums. Maybe I’ll find some inspiration there.” Bambam smiled, nodding his head eagerly. “I think all you’ll find are embarrassing stories of Y/N in these,” he laughed, as he pulled the albums from underneath your bed as if he knew your room like the back of his hand. The gesture was not lost on your sister. “Have you seen all the pictures already?” “Most of them, I think,” Bambam shrugs, his smile widening as he opens an album. “We went through them together the beginning of last summer.” The smile on your sister’s face grew bigger. “Oh, but that’s practically six months’ worth of memories you haven’t seen yet then.” He laughed incredulously. “Nobody updates photo albums that often. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all of them.” “Oh look! Do you remember when this photo was taken, Bambam?” How could he not? It was a photo of your sister, you, Yugyeom and him all underneath the cherry blossoms near the school. It was about a month after you and Bambam met and everything he did made you laugh. Not that he didn’t still make you laugh, but during this time, everything he said made you laugh. And in the picture, you were ugly laughing away, your arms around your sister and Yugyeom to keep you from collapsing altogether. And Bambam, with his bright red hair against the soft pink of the flowering trees, was looking at the three of you, mouth wide open. He must’ve been in the middle of saying a joke, because you were definitely dying of laughter over something. “You guys look so young even though it hasn’t even been that long,” your sister interrupted his thoughts. “Puberty hit you hard, Bambam.” “Thank god,” he sighed, still smiling at the picture fondly. “Who was taking the picture again?” She turned the photo back to her and her expression softened as the name left her lips. “Mark.” And Bambam knew exactly what that meant. And for some reason, it didn’t make him feel that bad. That day was actually Mark’s last day of school. He was just one grade above your sister. To be honest, everyone thought Mark and your sister would get together that year. But months passed and then he was already graduating. In the yearbooks, your sister’s name was etched perfectly beside Mark’s under the perfect couple that never was. Bambam (and everyone else for that matter) always figured Mark was the reason your sister never jumped into a relationship, despite the many offers she received throughout the year. “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?” Bambam spoke up suddenly. “It’s not like Hyung moved across the world or anything. He just went to university.” She shook her head, tucking the photo back into its sleeve. “Why would a university student want to be dragged down by some lame high schooler? Besides, he has to focus on his education.” She gave an unconvincing smile before pulling out another photo to change the subject. “Have you seen this one?” Bambam took the photo in his hands, his eyes faltering slightly. “No…” The picture was of him sitting on the floor of their gymnasium, right next to Yugyeom. His hair was still bright red. “It’s not new.” He stated quietly. The smile on your sister’s face resurfaced. “I bet there’s a lot of old photos you haven’t seen,” she remarked, a twinkle in her eyes. She continued to flip through the pages of the photo album, pulling out photos that were hidden beneath their family pictures—all of them featuring Bambam. “Bambam, you asked me out on a date and now you’re telling me to go after another guy. When did you even start to crush on me? Or more importantly, why?” Bambam gulped, not knowing what to say as he picked up each hidden photo of himself into his hands. On the back of each photo, you had written random facts. July 12th, First Year – Bam said he likes my peach lip balm. I didn’t tell him it was actually grapefruit. July 30th, First Year – Our first time at the beach together. Bam prefers girls in one piece suits. Guess what I wore? Heh~ August 3rd, First Year – Bam is going on vacation back to Thailand. I miss him already. September 5th, First Year – Bam grew two inches taller over the summer. I wonder what else of him grew two inches ;) He scoffed at the perverted emoji you drew beside your own comment, a silly smile quickly running across his face at your immaturity. Your sister cleared her throat when it was obvious he wasn’t going to answer her. She pulled out the last hidden photo of the album and read its back aloud. “December 17th, First Year – Today I thought Bambam was going to ask me to the dance. He took me to the park just to tell me to dance with Yugy.” “She never went to the winter dance.” Bambam whispered quietly, taking the photo from your sister. It was a photo of your old classroom. The girl that Bambam had gone to the dance with was talking to him at his desk. You had taken the photo secretly at your own desk that was two rows behind his. “She doesn’t know that I know this, but you made her cry that day,” she stated, trying her best not to sound vindictive, though it came out cuttingly anyways. “I-I thought she liked Gyeom…” Your sister lifted her head in surprise at the slight admission. “You—” “You what?!” You opened the door of your bedroom with a bang, staring at Bambam with wide eyes. You looked crazy with the creases of your textbook lining your face with red marks and dry, white drool flowering at the edge of your lips. “Y/N?!” Bambam jumped back in surprise, the photos leaving his hands as if he were caught red handed. If it were possible, your eyes grew even wider when you saw what was scattered on your floor. “Unnie!” You screamed in horror, rushing to collect your pool of hidden photos. “What the hell are you two doing? And why the hell would I like Yugy?!” “I-I…Y-You were always…You and Gyeom were…always together…” Bambam averted his eyes like a guilty puppy, his fingers naturally intertwining nervously. “Because we’re childhood friends, you idiot.” “But…” “But?” “…You guys were always touching…and laughing together.” “Damn it Bam, you don’t know how much I wanted to touch you!” “Woah there, let’s keep it PG kids,” your sister interrupted with a chuckle. You only glared her way, snatching the photo album away from her. “You didn’t think I didn’t either?” Bambam raised his voice, looking directly at you now. “I’ve wanted to hold you close ever since you laughed out strawberry milk from your nose! You could’ve had garlic and onion lip gloss and I would’ve loved it. And of course I like bikinis more, what guy doesn’t? And when I left for Thailand I spent every day of my vacation staring at my phone, waiting for you to message me!” You put down the photobook slowly. “Did you like me back then?” He nodded his head eagerly, glad that his message got to you. “But then…” your face fell again, before you replaced it with a fake smile. “But not anymore right? You like Unnie now…” “I-” Bambam glanced at your sister quickly before scooting closer to you. “I…yeah…I grew some kind of crush…” Your heart fell. “But!” Bambam continued, taking hold of your hands. “That’s because I spent all our time trying not to like you! I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.” His voice faltered at the last sentence, as if even saying it hurt him. You huffed in disbelief, squeezing his hands more. “You?! I was worried that I would ruin our friendship.” Bambam’s smile slowly began to widen before he finally whispered, “I like you a lot more than a little crush.” Your sister chuckled before rising from the floor, dusting her hands together with satisfaction. “Well, I guess my work here is done.” She smirked at the two of you. “Real Wingman, 1. Y/N, 0.” You rolled your eyes as your sister left the room, though you clearly couldn’t hide your smile. “Please stop reading my diary!” “Find a better hiding spot!~” Bambam chuckled softly, resting his forehead against yours. “So…you really aren’t into Gyeom?” You scrunched your nose in annoyance. “You idiot. Can you shut up about Yugy and just kiss me already?” Bambam pursed his lips together shyly, before leaning in and taking your lips in his. He smiled into the kiss, his tongue lightly grazing against you. “You sure it isn’t peach lip balm?”

#bambam #got7 bambam #got7 fanfic #fanfiction #writing #kpop #kpop fanfiction #fluff #got7 imagine #got7 reactions #got7 scenarios #markiepoostudies

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micolashsucks · 7 years

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HEY, so a really cool person submitted this to me, but they didn’t want their url to be shown so I have to post it like this. Holy shit this is really cool and the writing is so good!! Thank you so much for sharing this! @ everybody please read the whole thing if you can, it’s A+

So here is what I came up with at 3am while having to finish an essay that I forgot about (Keep in mind that I am German and my English is self-taught):

The soviets might have done a cloning project with Ocelot as well except they figured out some stuff about direct replication of genes to make exact clones. Which is possible. You can make an exact copy of someone, the only thing you absolutely can’t clone is the mind because experiences aren’t stored in DNA. Logically.

~~~~~~

Ocelot was very capable at a pretty early age, so the soviets decided to clone him once he turned about 19 from DNA samples they had taken earlier on. Since they weren’t exactly sure how he would react though, they never told him, making it a secret underground project beneath the Verkhoyansk Range, far off from anyone who could notice, below the mountains, safe from all attacks.

Their plans were to make the perfect soldier and they got help from former Nazi doctors who were interested in testing certain theories about DNA and superiority of certain genes. Later on, the project kept going under Russian, Chinese and Korean scientists that were eager to see how close they could get to making the perfect human machine.

The first tests were not going as planned, with lots of still-born children and even some creatures that could barely be described as human, ranging from unlivable clots of flesh and bone to abominations closer to invertebrates than mammals.

In the end, laser technology brought a major breakthrough as the scientists began to understand just how well certain frequencies and brightness values could influence DNA.

With the nearby areas of Russia and China being sparsely populated, it was more than easy for the scientists to kidnap women, bring them to the labs for artificial impregnation or even just ovum removal. Those who survived the process were released again, threatened so they would keep quiet.

The first children were all useless to the scientists though, with the young boys developing tumors and unhealthily thin bones, but within a few months, those imperfections were cancelled out of the used DNA strands and the children were disposed of.

After every series of tests, they allowed one specimen to live to see how he would develop, but never letting more than five live at once. After all they had to see long term results. There was no way a toddler could win a war by himself.

~~~~~~

Seven years after the first living specimen came out of the project, they finally got what they wanted; A child, physically healthy and intelligent, ready to be molded into the perfect soldier.

A41-5920

He quickly adapted to the changes in his life once they took him out of the lab and brought him even further downstairs into their research facility. He never once complained about his room being cold and small or his meals being dry and tasteless.

Once the boy had turned 4, they had begun to teach him in what they considered essential: Russian, Chinese, English, Spanish, Math, Biology, Anatomy, Psychology, Technology.

At age 8 he was deemed ready to learn about more complex topics, his usual reading material ranging from Tolstoi’s War and Peace to advanced medical books.

While he did have some physical activity in his schedule, his training was not meant to begin until much later, out of fear that he might get hurt badly early on and would not grow up healthy enough. That left the boy skinny, with wiry arms and legs, knees not touching even if he stood with his feet closed and elbows sharp enough to cut someone.

~~~~~~

As much as they wished for the boy to be obedient, they were fully aware that children grew more and more curious over time, trying to understand things that were none of their concern.

What nobody expected though, was that A41-5920 was clever enough to outsmart them once he reached age 11, avoiding cameras and sneaking to the upper levels of the giant concrete complex, eager to explore the world out there and to finally see the sky and clouds for himself.

Whenever they did catch him, he would cleverly conduct some lies, trying to convince them that he only got lost due to unfortunate circumstances.

Punishment for disobedience was hard and he knew as much, having endured it enough times already, so he did everything he could to not be detected in the first place.

Every now and then, he heard the military guards talk about how cold it was outside, about the snow and rain making them feel depressed, but he didn’t understand how they must have felt. All his life he had been down in the dark concrete bunker, deemed unable to see the outside world just yet.

But then, one day, during an accident in the labs upstairs, people were just distracted enough for the boy to slip out between the heavy steel doors.

The cold wind on his face hit him with immediate regret, his bare feet burning and stinging in the snow. Part of him just wanted to run back inside and never leave again, but now that he had made it this far, he couldn’t just give up.

The next gust of wind made his nose feel so cold, he was sure it would fall off at any second and his fingers were already getting numb while his legs seemed to turn extremely pale, almost a little blue from what he could see.

And so his first impression of the outside world was a bad one, making him question why anyone would ever want to leave in the first place.

He turned as quickly as he could, his feet feeling too heavy to lift properly, kicking the snow around.

It took his entire weight and some of the harsh wind to help him open the doors back up and as soon as the light fell inside, he knew he was in serious trouble. Familiar and unfamiliar faces of scientists and guards stared at him, most of them very clearly twisted in anger and disappointment, some even looked disgusted.

~~~~~~

A month later he still got lectured every now and then, just to remind him of how stupid he had been. He almost lost a toe as well, making the scientists whisper about him being a “failure” as well.

A41-5920 couldn’t help but feel like they were right. He had been stupid, had risked his life being reckless and they put so much time and effort into making sure he was fine, so he definitely had no right of disobeying and ruining everything like this.

So after everything that happened, he was surprised that Professor Zima and Professor Volkov offered him to travel for the very first time in his life, telling him that he had to know what the world was like in order to fight for a better one.

As he began to pack his few clothes into the box they gave him though, he heard the guards outside talk about some president talking about attacking the country during some sports event and how they had to leave until they could be sure they were safe.

In a way he was glad to know that Professor Volkov wanted him safe. Even after he tried to escape. Professor Zima didn’t seem to trust him anymore, though, so maybe he could try to take this as a chance to prove himself worthy of the support and cultivation.

~~~~~~

They escorted him out of his room in the early morning, a soldier carrying his small box of clothes while two others made sure he didn’t run off as they made their way into a part of the complex he hadn’t been in yet.

Giant machines seemed to loom over him once he stepped through the door and one of the soldiers pushed him towards the biggest one. He had seen something like this before, but it took him a while to remember.

“Helicopters…”, he finally mumbled, just to be shushed by one of the scientists, followed by the soldier grabbing him by his bony hips and lifting him into the chopper.

He quickly sat down, making sure that he looked as proper as he could to show himself ready for his first adventure in the real world and to prove to Zima just how perfect he was for the project.

His composure quickly faded away though as the pilot entered and started the whole thing up, making the chopper shake and vibrate. It felt strange and scary, and he dug his nails deep into his skinny legs, trying not to freak himself out even more.

Then he was thrown to the side. Everything had shifted very quickly and his stomach turned and twisted and knotted, making him dizzy and his spit sour.

It dawned on him once things straightened again that they had simply taken off. His books had told him that helicopters would dip their noses down for starting and landing if they had to go straight up or down.

~~~~~~

His excitement quickly returned as they made their way southwest. Volkov allowed him to get up carefully to take a look out of the window, letting him see how close they were to the sky and how soft and vaguely tasty the clouds looked.

Rays of sunlight danced through the chopper every time they turned and the boy was sure that this would be the most beautiful thing he would ever see.

If it was up to him, they could keep on flying forever.

~~~~~~

His excitement had settled down a little by the time they began to sink over what looked like a light brown ocean. Only when they touched the ground and the doors were opened, he realized that they were in fact in some sort of desert, the ripples in the brown water were actually small lines in the sand.

Once the chopper took back off and they could look on without squinting, they began to guide him towards a camp a little up a small hill.

The buildings looked like they had seen much better days and there was still sand everywhere, but the sky was so blue and the sand so lovely and warm that he was happy to be there. Everything felt like a different world. This was nothing like the first time he went outside.

His room was much nicer as well, it looked warm and a little bigger than the room in the research facility, and his bed had this soft, colorful blanket on it.

As soon as they dismissed him, he threw himself onto the bed, curling up in the soft blanket and grinning to himself. This had to be the best day anyone ever had. First he got to be between the clouds all the way up in the sky and now he had this amazing room with this great bed.

And before he knew it, he was deep asleep.

~~~~~~

The next A41-5920 knew was that everything was foggy and that there was a deafening noise somewhere around him. He tried to comprehend the situation, but there were too many unknown elements to it.

Sneaking towards the door, he carefully and quietly opened it just a crack, peaking outside.

The first thing he saw was Zima, face down on the ground in a shimmery, dark puddle. Then, suddenly, a dark figure stood right in front of him as the door was thrown open, knocking him backwards.

Blinking rapidly, he got up and into fighting stance, or what he assumed was a fighting stance from the drawings he had seen.

The man was a lot larger than he was, in every way. His hair was ruffled, there was blood on his face and dark shards sticking out of his head. He looked dangerous and possibly murderous, but he had a strange look on his face, as though he had no idea what to do now.

“Kaz, this is strange…” The man mumbled, followed by muffled sounds coming from what A41-5920 assumed was some sort of headset.

Then, suddenly, the man moved towards him again, a lot more careful this time, like he tried to not scare him off.

Should he fight back? Should he just go with the man and hope that he wouldn’t get hurt that way?

It very quickly turned out that he had no choice as the man picked him up, holding his wrists together with just one hand and still reaching perfectly around both of them. Fighting was no option, he would only hurt himself.

“No, it’s not just you….I see it, too.” The man mumbled again, staring directly at A41-5920 with his one eye, the other being hid behind an eyepatch of sorts.

He was lifted up by his wrists, struggling a little against the other’s grip, before he was simply thrown over the man’s shoulder.

Everything around him moved so quickly and was shaking with every step the man took. It was close to impossible to see where they were going, especially in his current position, but they definitely went on for quite a bit before the man set him down on the warm sand.

“Look. I’m not going to hurt you. Just stay calm.” The man’s voice was soft and he spoke slowly, accentuating his words with gestures.

He wanted to tell the man that he understood him, that they spoke the same language, but his body wouldn’t let him respond. Despite the warm sand he shivered over and over and as he finally remembered how to properly open his mouth, the only thing escaping him was a soft whine.

~~~~~~

After they sat in the sand for a while, A41 not being able to speak properly, like he wasn’t in control over his body, and the man smoking something, he spotted another helicopter at the horizon.

The thought of flying again almost made him excited, but he also didn’t know what to think about some stranger taking him anywhere like this.

Volkov would be angry if he found out that he left just like that.

As soon as the chopper was close enough to the ground, the man lifted him up again and carried him over, almost throwing him into the cold metal machine before climbing in himself.

The pilot threw them a quick glance, then another and another, looking confused, but then he pulled them up again and took off.

Why did everyone look at him like this? Was something wrong with him? Did he know those people and just forgot about them? He was not someone to forget stuff like that, and if he did he would remember after a couple of minutes.

~~~~~~

The flight in itself was mostly silent, almost awkwardly so as the man seemed to stare right into his soul while quietly typing on some strange device.

They seemed to go further south from what he could tell and then almost seemed to plummet into the ocean, except the did land on something he simply didn’t see from his position on the ground.

The man pushed the door open and he was greeted by bright lights and the clicking of guns.

Sitting up carefully, his eyes followed the man leaving the chopper until he saw a group of men, some with black masks on, some without, all clearly soldiers.

Then there were two others, one walked a little weirdly, he didn’t know why, but the man seemed to have a strange way of walking, the other immediately began arguing as soon as he reached the man who brought A41 here.

He carefully sat on the edge of the chopper, then jumped out and landed carefully on the ground.

The chopper took off immediately after that and left them all in a strange silence. The man who had been arguing slowly took a few step towards him. His shoes made strange jingly sounds whenever he took a step. Everyone’s eyes were on him now.

“Who are you, boy?”

~~to be continued~~

#ASASDLASJKDKJF I LOVE THIS #man I wish I could contribute something more to this but there's not much I can say beacuse it's already so good #thank you so much @ the person who sent this in! you should try putting this on ao3 so more people can see it!

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marshmallowgoop · 7 years

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So, yesterday I posted some replies to an old post I’d written about Senketsu’s death that kinda shifted into a discussion of romantic interpretations of Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship, and in one reply, I provided a bunch of links to rebuttals for common reasons to not like the pair. But I’ve thought since that it was probably Bad Form to just dump a bunch of links without summing up their arguments in any way, so, hey, I can do so here, in a separate post that’s not so all over the place content-wise? Because I’m #passionate?

So:

8 Reasons Folks Can’t Get Down with Pairing a Girl and Her Sailor Uniform Together

1. Senketsu literally is or represents Ryuko’s father.

Much of this argument stems from the supposed shared appearance Senketsu has with Isshin, Ryuko’s dad. However, this so-called “shared appearance” really boils down to just an eyepatch, and that eyepatch has never been stated—by either the characters or the show’s staff—to be there because Senketsu is supposed to be reminiscent or representative of Ryuko’s father. In fact, it’s actually there for quite the opposite reason: it’s meant to say that Senketsu, much like a teenager, still needs to grow, and this is why he gains his eye in the finale. The eyepatch’s canon purpose was, in all actuality, to point to the fact that Senketsu is not a wise, old, mentor figure.

On that line, Senketsu is just a kid! He was only born six months before the events of the show, has absolutely zero life experience, and even admits that he is immature in a preview for episode 13.

Beyond this, Ryuko never seems to consider Senketsu to be like her father (amusingly, she refers to Gamagoori as “Dad” in the English dub), and there’s a huge, thematic idea of the two being equals. If Senketsu is supposed to be Ryuko father’s figure, the thought of them being “two in one,” “true partners,” “soulmates,” etc.—which are all canon, in-show descriptions of their relationship—simply does not gel very well. Fathers and daughters have, after all, by definition, a built-in power imbalance and are not equals in the relationship, and that’s clearly not what Kill la Kill is going for with Ryuko and Senketsu.

Perhaps most significantly, though, interpreting Senketsu as a father is intensely uncomfortable. As I’ve written before:

Ryuko and Senketsu constantly become one with each other’s bodies, Ryuko makes a joke about him not “cheating” on her when Maiko wears him, Mako says Ryuko loves him the most! and clearly means it like that because of the focus on nudity that would be super inappropriate in any other situation, Ryuko says that she’s going to make Senketsu “jealous” as he’s dying by getting together with stuff that’s not him, there’s the hugely flirtatious official song “Suck your blood” clearly from Senketsu’s perspective that includes lines such as, “You’re so hot, good looking,” there’s an official card featuring Ryuko in a bikini called “Senketsu’s Date with Ryuko”… and serious or not, all of this is hugely, hugely squicky if thought of as between a father and a daughter. Add in the fact that Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship is pretty much always viewed in a positive light, and it seems very unlikely that being creepy is the intended effect here.

Finally, to get heavy (and to quote myself again): “This interpretation [of Senketsu as a father figure to Ryuko] implies to me that only parents can be protective and respectful and loving rather than friends or lovers, and this strikes me as… really distressing.”

Further reading: Is Senketsu Isshin? In-Depth Analysis, Response: Isshin Protecting His Daughter Through Senketsu? Design Similarities Between Isshin and Senketsu, Innuendo in Ryuko and Senketsu’s Relationship, Further, Isn’t Senketsu Like Ryuko’s Dad?, Response: Why is Seeing Senketsu as a Father Figure Such a Popular Interpretation?, Is Senketsu Isshin Reborn?, Senketsu is His Own Person, Sentient Sailor Uniforms are Serious Business: Trope-Twisting in Kill la Kill, Is Ryuko Subconsciously Attracted Towards Senketsu Because He Reminds Her of Her Dad?, Why the Heck Would Anyone Ship a Girl and Her Sailor Uniform, Why Does Senketsu Have an Eyepatch?, Eyepatch as a Counterpoint to Purity

2. Senketsu is alien clothing, so he can’t be interested in a romantic relationship.

Depending on how “canon” you view Senketsu’s episode preview narrations, this point could actually be argued to be canonically debunked. In a preview for episode 11, Senketsu considers the girls at Honnouji Academy and wonders who is “his type.” Additionally, he acknowledges that he’s just “a mere uniform” and nobody wants to hear him talk about favorite girl types, growing flustered and offended at the notion.

While aromatic headcanons are great, having these headcanons simply because a character isn’t humanoid and isn’t traditionally attractive totally stinks. Just because Senketsu isn’t exactly “hot” and is alien clothes doesn’t mean that, by definition, he’s not interested in a romantic relationship, and, judging from this preview, he’d be really hurt by such an assumption.

Further reading: But Senketsu Is Clothing! He Can’t Be Interested in Romance!, Senketsu is Against the Idea that He Can’t be Interested in Romance!

3. The idea of a girl and a piece of clothing being together romantically is too ridiculous because it’s not aesthetically pleasing or hot.

Yes, it’s absolutely ridiculous. But take a moment to consider Senketsu’s situation. To quote myself:

In the world of Kill la Kill, Senketsu is constantly degraded. He’s just a shirt, or, even worse, he’s a monster and a parasite who doesn’t deserve love and should be killed, kept away from Ryuko forever. Later on, even when people stop demonizing him so much, his autonomy is thrown aside. It doesn’t matter that he has free will and his own thoughts and feelings and emotions—he’s just a tool. He’s dangerous and should just be used for as long as necessary, and then forgotten.

Regarding his relationship with Ryuko, the two are repeatedly mocked for their friendship. Ryuko is seen as lonely and delusional for even talking to him. Both Tsumugu and Satsuki (initially) think that their friendship is impossible, since Senketsu is going to be the end of Ryuko eventually. Ryuko’s even embarrassed to be seen with Senketsu at first because of society’s standards, all due to what Senketsu is.

Sound a bit familiar? While fantastical representations of real-life problems of marginalization and prejudice have very valid criticisms—namely, that they’re not exactly examples of real representation—I also feel their significance is misunderstood.

I’ve seen folks complain that, say, fans of X-Men will write lengthy essays about the oppression of mutants but then turn the other cheek at real oppression, but these narratives are really for the oppressed and marginalized, not those who don’t experience it and have the ability to ignore it.

The late children’s author Diana Wynne Jones once powerfully wrote that stories that were a “factual presentation of any social problem” either “passed you by, or [they] upset you because there was nothing you could do about it.” Children, she argued, feel helpless when reminded in Very Real Terms of how dire their situations are, and she had a reason for such an argument: she had a terrible childhood herself, and it was only through fantasy that she was able to find catharsis and better manage the very real problems she faced. Through the fantastical representations of these problems, she was able to look at them in a new light and help herself. (Source: Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, page 183.)

I don’t wholly agree with Jones myself, and I definitely see the value in those “Real Books” with the Real Problems that she dismissed, but she brings up a good point: fantasy matters. Ridiculous as Kill la Kill is, there’s value in Senketsu’s story and value in a story where this oppressed, marginalized character with a criticized, mocked relationship with another finds happiness in a romantic relationship with them.

As for the other part of this argument, love isn’t all about looking hot together or making out.

Further reading: I Don’t Like Ryuko/Senketsu Because Senketsu’s Not Human, A Misinterpreted Platonic Relationship

4. Senketsu was made with Ryuko’s DNA.

In episode 17, Aikuro reveals that Senketsu’s Life Fibers were spliced with Ryuko’s DNA, but gene splicing does not suddenly make two organisms siblings, related in any way, or clones of each other. Ryuko and Senketsu being together is as much incest or selfcest as a glowing rabbit and a jellyfish being together when the rabbit was spliced with the jellyfish’s protein that makes it glow. Just as it would be ridiculous to suggest that those two creatures are suddenly related or clones from gene splicing, it would be ridiculous to suggest that Ryuko and Senketsu are suddenly related or clones from gene splicing.

Further reading: Gene Splicing, Could Senketsu Be Considered Ryuko’s Brother/Child?

5. Senketsu is Ryuko’s abuser and it’s gross to pair them together.

Yes, Senketsu’s first scene is awful. Though it’s completely out-of-character for him, he never behaves similarly again, and I’d argue that he’s out of his mind and starving in it, that doesn’t excuse what he did, and it’s fair to feel that his actions are unforgivable.

But if they are, then that makes the actions of many other characters in this show unforgivable, too. As I’ve written before:

...characters like Mako and Aikuro do similar things to Ryuko [as Senketsu does in his first scene] when they are in their right minds. Mako gropes Ryuko’s breasts in her Hallelujah in episode 3, takes off her bra in the one in episode 5, and constantly invades Ryuko’s personal space and grabs onto her when it clearly makes Ryuko uncomfortable (see the motorcycle scenes in episodes 8 and 17). Yet, this is seen as funny, cute, and romantic. Then there’s Aikuro, who completely disrobes Ryuko in episode 2, immobilizes her with needles while she’s naked, and flirts with her when he’s her teacher and when doing such is completely inappropriate and brings Ryuko a lot of discomfort. And this, again, is seen as funny.

That’s not to say that I want to bash on these characters or pairings. I just ask why it is that these scenes and behaviors are excused as funny and cute when they’re very clearly not, while Senketsu’s first scene is—as it should be!—almost universally agreed to be disgusting and uncomfortable. Ryuko and Senketsu are one of my most favored relationships in all of fiction, but I would never dream of saying that their first meeting is anything adorable or hilarious. I honestly find it frightening that a lot of similar behavior—unwanted touching and removing of clothing—is brushed aside and laughed at because the perpetrator is a sexy teacher or a cute girl.

Of course, Senketsu’s first scene is a lot more intense, and I’m not stupid. I know exactly what they were referencing with it. It deserves to be controversial, and deserves to be spoken up against. But I think the hate against Senketsu for it is pretty… misguided, to say the least.

In my mind, there are bigger issues with the series’ handling of assault than Senketsu’s first scene, but beyond that, Senketsu is honestly probably the most respectful character towards Ryuko in the entire show. He never forces her to wear him when she doesn’t want to—and the fact that Ryuko does take him off multiple times across the series when she doesn’t want to emphasizes that her wearing of him isn’t her being a poor prisoner, but her choosing to be with him—and Senketsu values Ryuko’s thoughts and opinions, openly communicates with her, and constantly considers her wellbeing.

As I once put it, “[Senketsu] is nothing like that first scene in all actuality, and Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship is built not on nonconsensual behaviors and violence, but on respect and understanding.”

Further reading: Senketsu’s First Scene*, Further Analysis*, Even More*, Final Thoughts*, Ryuko’s Choice to Wear Senketsu, More, Even More*,Implications of Ryuko’s Acceptance*, Senketsu: A Sweet Character

6. It’s offensive because it erases wlw representation.

This is a very valid point, and it’s admittedly caused me some feelings of shame. “Is something wrong with me,” I’ve wondered, “for preferring Ryuko/Senketsu to Ryuko/Mako? Is it offensive?” After all, I don’t especially feel comfortable pairing characters in canon, same-sex relationships in opposite-sex pairings. While the characters could indeed be bi or pan and this is not inherently offensive in itself (and, indeed, could be very, very welcome!), oftentimes it can feel... rather distasteful when there are so few canon, same-sex pairings out there.

But here’s the thing: the idea of canon wlw representation in Kill la Kill is always going to be a subject of debate when the Word of God literally denies it. And here’s the other thing: representation matters, but so does good representation.

If Mako were a man, his relationship with Ryuko would not get the same kind of praise. As I’ve written before:

[Mako as a man] would be hated. So incredibly, horribly hated. People would look at the way he touches Ryuko’s breasts (episode 3), removes her bra (episode 5), and drools over her (episode 9) and find such things disgusting and dehumanizing. He’d be pointed to as one of the worst things in the show, and seen as evidence of how the series is awful for women. Mako’s behavior coming from a man would no longer be seen as cute and endearing, but despicable.

And when the finale came? If that kiss were held up as inarguable proof that Mako and Ryuko are a canon couple, there’d also be a huge backlash. Ryuko, pulling her lips away and uncomfortable as a man kisses her in a comical fantasy sequence—when that man also has a history of disrespecting her boundaries? Ew!

“If they are supposed to be a couple,” I can imagine people saying, “then it’s atrocious and evidence of how straight people and straight romances are awful.” That kiss would not be widely seen as a mutual attraction, but evidence of how Ryuko is victimized, and how this victimization is a joke.

Of course, I think this is all going a bit far, and don’t especially agree with such statements if Mako is a man or a woman. But the fact remains that most of the folks who come to the defense of Ryuko and Mako’s kiss as the encapsulation of a healthy romance that deserves praise would probably not had Mako been a man—and for more reasons than just because Mako would be a man.

And I really do feel this: I’ve seen the argument that it’d be offensive if Ryuko and Mako weren’t canon because of the abuse and that the canon-ness makes it okay. I’ve seen the admittance that the pairing would not be good at all if Mako were a man because of her treatment of Ryuko.

Which—as someone who has had a partner treat me like Mako does to Ryuko in a relationship that ended extremely, horrifically badly (and, heck, as someone who just pushes for healthy relationships!)—this deeply disturbs me.

To quote myself again:

There are many reasons I prefer Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship to Ryuko and Mako’s, but one of them is that I find it to be a much more positive, healthy relationship. Senketsu doesn’t idolize Ryuko like Mako veers into, Ryuko really talks to him and communicates with him while she often puts on a façade of being okay for Mako, and there is a lot more respect here—I feel Ryuko rather undermines Mako’s abilities (always trying to push her out of fights when she’s more than capable, and even going so far as to promise her snacks to stay out of it in one instance like she’s just a little kid), but most importantly, we don’t have all these nasty instances of Senketsu invading Ryuko’s personal space, grabbing her boobs, etc. all in the name of “cute” humor or fanservice.

Add in the idea that Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship is arguably rather progressive in itself as noted in Reason #3 above (and especially if you consider that Senketsu’s gender identity is completely up to interpretation), and that it basically has just the same amount of “evidence” going for it as Ryuko and Mako do (most notably with an official card literally titled “Senketsu’s Date with Ryuko” and Ryuko explicitly stating that her feelings for Mako and Senketsu are the same in episode 22 in that they’re both “more than friends” to her), is it really so wrong of me to prefer this pairing, personally, and does it really make me a terrible, awful person, especially when I do find many things about Ryuko and Mako’s relationship very personally hurtful?

Everyone values different things, and I completely understand and respect those who disagree with me here and prefer the idea of a romantic Ryuko and Mako relationship. But at least for me, my preferences for romantic Ryuko/Senketsu is less about how I’d “rather ship a girl with an article of clothing than admit she has romantic feelings for another girl” and more about how I’d rather ship what I see as a healthier, more respectful relationship that does have a good message about overcoming prejudice and is just as canonically feasible as the wlw relationship (and could actually be argued to be that in itself anyway!)

In this way, I don’t think there’s anything inherently offensive or homophobic about preferring romantic Ryuko and Senketsu, and, hey, let’s be real, SenRyuMako is honestly the most canon.

Further reading: “People Would Rather Ship Ryuko with an Article of Clothing Than Admit She Has Romantic Feelings for a Girl,” Returned to Here, Ryumako* (Kinda Here), What if Senketsu Had Been More Female-Coded?* (Kinda Here, Too)

7. They’re better as friends and the idea of platonic soulmates is nice.

Completely valid, solid point.

8. Just don’t care for it.

Same here.

#shut up goop #ramblings #long post #really long post...#meta #i guess #this is kinda for my meta page just to have all this in one spot #but i spent waaayyy too long writing this stuff out lol #i thought it'd just be a quick job #anyway...#i'm in a mood :P #the discourse #serious talk #incest mention #death mention #kill la kill

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brandyfaust5158-blog · 6 years

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Can Our company Make The lord Pleased? Learn How Our team Can easily

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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WORK ETHIC AND JOB

But it's harder, because change is accelerating. But elegance is not an issue in the seed stage. Initially you have to have extracurricular activities. And once you understand the origins of successful startups have, by building something you yourself need, the first step is to realize that those famous writers actually sucked. Does that make written language worse? A good growth rate during YC is 5-10% of the ideas writing would have generated. The spread of the Industrial Revolution. Many a founder would be happy to sell his company for 15 million, but VCs who've just invested at a valuation of 1 million.

On closer acquaintance they turn out to be in the same way a gene pool does. Get a version 1 out as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the details, and even then you don't make much from it this year as you could get the right answer for dealing with Internet distractions will be software that watches and controls them. Simple as it seems. Much of the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like a job, leaving only the important stuff. It increases the work of essay writing on a small scale in the matter, if you want to write. In fact, ff0000 html for bright red turns out to be the right plan for every company. And yet a lot is don't worry. If your city isn't already a startup hub. Essays should do the opposite. They know they'll feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. This approach is less daunting, and the way to think about other things.

Google, but if I get free of Mr Linus's business I will resolutely bid adew to it eternally, excepting what I do, I almost included a fourth: get a job programming, you'll be done a lot of catches as an eight year old outfielder, because whenever a fly ball came my way, I used to think it was. The Spitfire's original nemesis, the ME 109, was a very inconvenient one for startups, because there is less risk, and are willing to compromise. If founders become more powerful, and dangerous. But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. So don't try to fix the world behind the statistics, we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? Book of Household Management 1880, it may inhibit you from thinking about taste, even as yours grows. But I don't think many nerds would. The closest to a general term seems to be a case of premature optimization. Most people in the Valley and not Boston. If someone seems slippery, or bogus, or a format directive, is an element; a new block is an element; an integer or a floating-point number is an element; a segment of time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school. One of the things that makes the company worth more than twice as much.

It's odd that people think of grand ideas. A hilarious article on the site itself, instead of making a bad car. Let's start with the obvious one: lobby to get Sarbanes-Oxley must have. The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble, but they were very deep. Hackers tend to think of them as markets. Some VCs will probably adapt, by doing things that are arbitrary, and believe things that will later turn out to be one-directional: support people who hear about bugs fill out some form that eventually gets passed on possibly via QA to programmers, who put it on the cheap and pick only 10 for the initial stages at least, pick your battles. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Dan Siroker, Harj Taggar, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this essay explains that. Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be a tenth as sure. 1-x Though I can't off the top of the field, what's the test of whether people love what they do. Raphael so pervaded mid-nineteenth century taste that almost anyone who tried to draw was imitating him, often at several removes. So if you want to work full time on just being a startup founder can tell you what to do in software what he seems to have been offered by the newer colleges, particularly American ones.

It would have spoiled the narrative to acknowledge Jessica's central role at YC. 6546 In the Plan for Spam filter, all these ideas were anything but at first it takes a while to grasp this, but it's clearly now the established practice. They were the kind of people, and it's hard to get an accurate drawing is not to be vulnerable to tricks is to explicitly seek out and catalog them. Teenagers seem to have been nerds in high school? From hackers. That's the absent-minded professor is wise in his way, or make it seem like work, the number of startups. If you want to make terribly risky choices, if the conflict between VCs and other investors: VC firms are partners. Philosophy, but if feeling you're going to be a chance, however small, of the thousand or so VC funds in the US. So the downhills of the roller-coaster are more of those to be had for the asking. Technology Innovation: Free Markets or Government Subsidies?

Notes

If only one person could go at a 15 million valuation cap. But it takes more than their competitors, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way. There is no longer working to help their students start startups, but in practice that doesn't mean the hypothetical people who currently make that leap. Incidentally, this idea is the unpromising-seeming startups are often mistaken about that.

Start by investing in a safe will be near-spams that have hard deadlines, like indifference to individual users.

And while this is certainly an important relationship between the government had little acquired immunity to dictators. I don't mean to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of business, Bob wrote, If it failed. More often you have to spend, see what the earnings turn out to coincide with other investors doing so.

Oddly enough, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, because for times over a hundred and one different qualities that some of those things that's not art because it made a better education.

1886/87. Apparently the mall was not just something the telephone, the only companies smart enough to be a problem that I knew, there was nothing to grab onto.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college.

The chief lit a cigarette. 1886/87.

Experienced investors know about it as if you'd invested at a time machine, how little autonomy one would have disapproved if executives got too much. If a man has good corn or wood, or at such a brutally simple word is that a person's work is a service for advising people whether or not to be about 200 to send a million spams. I'm writing about one specific, rather than insufficient effort to be spread out geographically. And then of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what investment means; like any investor, and why it's next to impossible to write an essay about it.

It should not always intellectual dishonesty that makes you a couple years. Predecessors like understanding seem to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I also skipped San Jose is a matter of outliers, are available only to emphasize that whatever the valuation is fixed at the command of the first half of the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get attacked a lot of the 70s, moving to Monaco would give you more by what you love: a to make money.

Could you endure studying literary theory, or to be the model for Internet clients too. 5 mentions prices ranging from 50 to 6, 000 per month. Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1996. I'm clueless or even why haven't you already built this way would be to say Hey, that's not directly exposed to competitive pressure.

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