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fleetingvow · 2 years

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The nonexistent veins of this blog runs purely on angst. If you’ve come looking for written works of that category, please feel free to name the fics that have piqued your interest! A fair warning that the author’s first language is not English therefore perfection is not guaranteed, but that’s the beauty of it, is it not? Angst is an art of imperfection meeting a scale of perfection, or otherwise — if that makes sense.

Be reminded that this author writes under a nome de plume, which means all personal information are meant to be anonymous and not meant to be disclosed to the audience. This detail is relevant to those who wish to send an “ask” regarding the writer.

This blog’s works include gender neutral and female insert reader fics written about: Wednesday Addams, Evelyn Deavor, Anthony Lockwood, Henry Creel, Brienne of Tarth, Robin Buckley, Kang Sae-Byeok, and ( formerly and not anymore ) Camilo Madrigal.

Wednesday ‘ Wednesday Addams

BITTER SOLITUDE

Wednesday has always loved being alone. She enjoyed the company of solitude and the opportunity for something haunted in the eerie silence, but somehow your presence was missing. Did she do something wrong? ( Angst, Female Reader Insert. )

DEAD OF NIGHT

In which you and Wednesday open up to each other as comfort after you woke up from a nightmare, replaying the moments in the forest when the hyde attacked you not so long ago. ( Slight Angst, Fluff, Comfort, Female Reader Insert. )

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS — I and II

wednesday addams never cried for anyone, not until she held you fighting for your life, desperately trying to stay alive to return the whispered confession. ( heavy angst. character death. female reader insert. )

WISH I NEVER MET YOU

a massive fight — you and wednesday never had that before, not until now that the walls almost crumbled down from the shouts being passed on back and forth. it could have worked, but then came the statement that ended it all for good. ( in progress. heavy angst. female reader insert. )

PRIORITIES

ever since wednesday got tangled with the monster mystery, her priorities seemed to turn into shambles as she brushed off your existence to get to the leads of her case, even if it meant kissing other people to do so. ( in progress. angst, cheating (?) toxic wednesday, toxic reader. )

Encanto ‘ Camilo Madrigal

JUST ANOTHER BOY

You were the new kid in Encanto and your family already tried to help building up the community by coming up with an idea of a school for the children in the small town. Whilst trying your best to survive education, you met a rather weird and awkward boy from the very famous family; The Madrigals. It was strange how he was outgoing and easily social to the others but you. Nevertheless, that's what made him interesting. Then, he just got weirder. ( Fluff. Gender-Neutral Reader Insert. )

FALLEN DEBRIS

After the disastrous dinner where Mariano and Isabella were supposed to come out engaged, you and Camilo had an extremely heated argument about Bruno after defending him causing your relationship to deteriorate completely. You were there when Mirabel and Abuela fought causing the downfall of Casita — you along with it. And when Camilo found your unresponsive figure underneath the piles and rubbles of the fallen shelter's debris, well . . . ( Heavy Angst. Gender-Neutral Reader Insert. )

FLEETING PROMISE

You were anything but mortal, and when you met a strange young boy, the light you provided only became brighter. But see, the thing is, you were strictly prohibited to be involved with any human interactions. So, when something found out that you talked to Camilo not just once but every night — much worse, felt things for him, you had to deal with the consequences. Before you disappeared, he had made a promise; a promise to let his heart reside in you forever until death do you part. But when you came back a decade later, there was nothing else you could do after you witnessed a purely uttered promise become a fleeting belief you clung onto for faith that even someone like you ever deserved mortal feelings such as love. ( In Progress. Heavy Angst. Gender-Neutral Reader Insert. )

Stranger Things ‘ Peter Ballard

AFFECTIONATE DISDAIN

Peter didn’t like the way you stood as if you owned the world. It was meant to be his. Not you. He hated your eyes all the way down to the tip of your toes, but as he had no choice but to put up with getting stuck with you, how was it that the way the light reflected on your angle changed? You were brighter than the daylight shine, and he was disgustingly allured by it. But no, you weren’t going to make him crumble. ( In Progress. Fluff. Enemies to lovers. Partial slow-burn. Gender-Neutral Reader Insert. )

ALLURE

Who knew that you could meet your strange neighbour again? Only this time, he wasn’t so quiet nor friendly. He was older, more dangerous — and just as you were about to kill him as a mission, your wants got in the way. Both of you couldn’t resist. Maybe that’s just how alluring you were. ( Romance. Angst? SLIGHT NSFW. Gender-Neutral reader insert. )

THAT WAY

You were once prepared to throw your life away just for him to look at you the way he did another. It took him years to realise. It took him years to feel what it was that you couldn’t feel twice. He knew it was too late, but he had to tell you somehow, even without talking. ( Angst. Gender-Neutral reader insert. )

GHOSTING PRESENCE ' Robin Buckley x Reader

You both had a massive fight, and the fact that you moved in together made it more difficult to handle. For the rest of the day, no one acknowledged anyone. The space between the walls were silent, and as you went to bed facing the opposite sides, she just knew it had to end. ( In Progress. Angst. Female Reader Insert. )

Squid Game ‘ Kang Sae-Byeok

MIRROR SHARDS

You’ll never forget the metallic taste of your lips joined into one as she choked back on her groans with your fingers pulling the large shard of glass from her side. ( Drafted. Slightly explicit. Fluff, Angst. Female reader insert. )

Lockwood & Co. ‘ Anthony Lockwood

DEAD WEIGHT

The reader’s skills got rusty and with anthony breathing down her neck all the time, well, things that were better off unsaid were spoken. that’s when four became three. ( Angst. Female Reader Insert. )

GHOST OF THE PAST

in which anthony recalls the tragedy of the only person who stirred his blood and thoughts. the girl who stayed young forever. ( heavy angst with a character’s death, specifically the reader’s. unproofread. )

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whumptober · 9 months

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Okay this is like a general question but it’s related to whumptober

How do a03 tags work? I saw that the info said to use the whumptober2023 tag but I don’t really understand tagging in general?

Please help 😭

No worries, Anon, I shall do my best to explain!

Our tumblr tagging system is for the those posting on tumblr and would like to be reblogged to the @whumptober-archive. If you're not fussed about that, then feel free to use #whumptober2023 for your posts, with any other tags that you feel best describe your work.

Ao3 tags are incredibly useful for finding fics/excluding fics with things you don't want to see. For example, when searching a fandom you can exclude 'smut' if you do not wish to see those kinds of fics. Similarly if you want to find whump (more commonly tagged as 'hurt/comfort'), then you can choose to include those tags in your search.

(AO3 tagging system under the cut)

On AO3, tagging is slightly different as it is put into sections:

I'll start off by saying that you know your work better than anyone else, so use your best judgement when filling out warnings etc. The '?' symbol next to each section title provides some good information that may help your decision making.

Ratings: for whump, 'teen and up' is generally a good place to start, though depending on how mild/graphic it is, you could just keep it to 'general audiences' or rate it as 'mature.'

Archive warnings: (As above, this section can also be hard to judge with whump fics.) Personally, I find 'choose not to use archive warnings'/'no archive warnings apply' as a decent middle-ground for whump. Others may have different ideas of this, but my decision is based on the fact I generally post on the 'milder' side of whump, and I include a lot of tags. If you think your fic contains graphic content, select 'Graphic depictions of violence.'

Fandoms: Here you can search for the fandom you're writing for. It should show up in a drop-down menu beneath the bar. If you're writing for multiple fandoms, list all of them! If you're posting original content to AO3, use the 'Original Work' tag. For a small fandom that may not be listed already, you can just type in the fandom name and It'll create that fandom tag.

Categories: if you have relationships in your fic, you can tag them here. For example if your fic contains a male x male pairing, you'll select 'm/m'. If your fic contains general relationships (non-romantic) or the ships aren't the focus of the fic, you can select 'Gen'. You can choose as many of these tags as you want, depending on your fic.

Relationships: In this section, you can list the characters in the relationship. You can start typing a character's name, and the list of pre-exisiting ships will appear in the drop down. For example, if you type in 'Dean Winchester', 'Dean Winchester / Castiel' will be an option. If your ship is a rare pair, then you can create a tag yourself by writing both characters names with a '/' in the middle.

Characters: All of the characters that appear in your fic, are listed here. If a character is only mentioned, you can tag them as the following: 'John Constantine (Mentioned)'

Additional tags: Everything else goes here: whumptober2023, whumptober, whump, angst, hurt/comfort, injury, illness... any tag that you think fits your work goes here - especially content/trigger warnings. For tagging whump, I recommend tagging the main tropes (eg, 'water inhalation', 'drowning', 'torture').

Tags can always be added/removed even after the fic is posted, so if you think of a tag to add, or think one isn't relevant to your fic, you can always adjust them!

AO3 also has a tag FAQ section: here

I do hope this helps, but as always the ask box is open. If anyone else has advice for Anon or any additional information, feel free to mention in the reblogs/replies!

#asks #mod surro #tagging system

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x-neurodivergent-reader · 6 months

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Heyy i Hope You’re Doing well! I’m a new writing acc and I don’t really have any requests or an audience, can I please ask for your advice on how to start writing more or gaining an audience, because I struggle to write without any ideas being given or a prompt list.

Sending love!! Byee

Hello, welcome to the world of writing fanfiction! Since this might get a bit rambly, I'll stick my advice under the cut. I'll also break it up into categories, and bold the most important parts, just for easier readability.

Writing a particular niche/experience

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how universal my experience with writing/the following I built is, because my blog is directed towards a specific niche? It was genuinely a case of there being very few fics directed at/including neurodivergent readers, deciding "fine, I'll do it myself", and then the people who also wanted more of such fics were drawn to my writing as they came across it.

As such, writing one or two things based on your unique personal experiences (that you're comfortable sharing) might be a good start?

Your blog doesn't have to be centred around those experiences for you to write about them, and it doesn't have to be very specific, either (a few of my first posts were literally HCs for "[character] x Autistic!Reader - Established Relationship"). My more specific/unique ideas came along as I wrote more, and from the requests that came in over time.

There'll always be someone out there who not only relates to your experiences and feelings, but is waiting to see themselves in your stories!

Prompt lists (even without anyone to send them!)

Other than that, though: there's no shame in starting with a prompt list! Even if there's no one to give you a prompt yet, you might be able to find a small list, and then put the numbers/prompts into a random name picker to choose it for you?

I've just had a look for some examples, and a lot of prompt lists tend to be fairly long, from what I'm seeing (around 15-25 prompts seems to be the average) - but I've found this blog, that has some smaller lists to choose from. If anyone else knows of any others that anon might find useful, feel free to share them here!

An extra bit of advice...

This isn't really relevant to your question, but is the No. 1 bit of advice I would give to a new fic writer: figure out what you are/aren't comfortable writing before you start taking requests.

When I got my first request, the requester ended up having to change it a couple times, because I hadn't considered that, for example, someone could request a character I wasn't familiar with - leading to the "don't request characters I haven't already written for" rule in my guidelines. In hindsight, I'd recommend writing several fics before you start taking requests, so you have a better idea of what your boundaries are, and can list them out for people to take note of. It'll save you, and the requesters, a lot of trouble!

It's also important to not let anyone intentionally try to break those boundaries (e.g. by blatantly guilt-tripping you). While it's wonderful to have people appreciate your writing enough to want to see more from you, they aren't entitled to cross the line like that - it's OK to stand up for yourself. Do no harm, take no shit, etc. etc.

And that's all I've got!

I hope this was at least a little bit helpful - again, I'm not sure how universal the way my blog grew is, but hopefully there's something you'll be able to take away from this!

I hope you have fun writing! c:

#not imagines #anonymous #writing advice #sorry if there's some spelling errors #it's like 9:30pm at the moment #also I've barely written anything other than for uni work in months 🫠

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maybe-homestuck-now-or-something · 3 years

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I really wanna talk about homestuck in relation to this post but like, idk if I wanna add to it because it might be a total derailment of the topic but homestuck is such a weird apocalypse narrative.

like... the way it handles it is so odd because earth itself is not very well characterized before the characters leave it. the characters themselves are massively well characterized, and that takes up the bulk of the narrative, but like... we never even hear them talk about school? or much of anything more than their shared interests and what's immediately happening to them. and in a way, that is kind of authentic. because when kids get together to hang out, the last thing they ever wanna talk about is dry, boring stuff about their mundane lives. they'll mostly just yell memes at each other, talk about anime, play video games... it's possible to simultaneously know nothing about your friends, but feel closer to them than ever, because you're mostly around for the parts of their life that they want to experience when they're having the most fun. you see them as they are when they have the most agency to choose that. and that might be totally divorced from the reality of how their day-to-day life unfolds.

in this way, homestuck presents these characters as people who have shed that mundane portion of their lives. they are now left with only the part that they typically share with their friends. and in reality, if a SBURB type apocalypse were to literally happen to you, it'd be traumatic as hell. but this is the place where homestuck chooses to ask you to suspend your disbelief. let's just believe that John didn't have any other friends or family to think about when the world ended. let's pretend they left zero people of any interest whatsoever behind. all they are shaking off is the society that they were obligated to participate in so mundanely. they no longer have to make any compromises with anyone... they get to fully center themselves.

okay, so that's obviously not entirely true... playing SBURB is a cooperative experience, and being friends with someone doesn't always mean that your relationship is easy. but homestuck allows the narrative to become self centered. it's about one individual and the tiny sphere of influence they have, among solely the people they've developed meaningful bonds with. it allows them to become a case study.

so when the world ends, the world is not necessarily what matters. what matters is the identities of a few specific individuals who we spend a lot of time cultivating our own connections with as a reader.

and that all becomes incredibly interesting when you consider classes and aspects.

basically, in terms of the post linked above, classes and aspects are the harry potter houses, the factions, the "what bender are you" or MBTI type... they're not the only way you could categorize the characters, but they're the most universally applicable to all of the characters that are important in the narrative. and what's interesting is just like... what classes are for, and how complicated it actually is to know what aspects are, or what they mean.

starting with classes, these are basically a series of archetypes that are specialized so that everyone has a role to play that makes them uniquely valuable to a collective. if we're considering this in terms of DnD, you can think of what classes might make for a balanced party, and how having a balanced party makes it satisfying to play the game. no one player could handle everything on their own, and at the same time, everyone feels needed. nobody is useless.

this already seems fundamentally different from some of the means of categorization that I listed above. a lot of these systems are meant to divvy up the characters into societally recognized in-groups and out-groups... people who can be identified as allies or enemies. even if the groups are ascribed certain archetypal skills, the goal is rarely so explicitly for the archetypes to work together, or cover each other's weaknesses. Avatar is probably what comes the closest to this idea, with its underlying endeavor to find harmony between the elements, but homestuck uses classes both as a way to communicate unique specialization, and as a way to unify the characters by their need for support.

and that's a little weird isn't it? these characters just shed all of their obligations to a broader society, and we're taking that as a freeing event... right? but there is a difference between society and community, and while homestuck might use the destruction of society as a catalyst for adventure, it uses the formation of community as the driving force behind the story's progression. the characters are all motivated to work together and help each other... and that doesn't always mean that it works. even within a community, one person's drive to center themselves and their own personal growth can trample others who were trying to do the same thing. perhaps not everyone in the community consents to being cooperative. perhaps the difference in archetype could drive someone to become competitive instead. and these are all value-neutral observations... no archetype is specifically acknowledged as being evil, even when they have friction with one another.

basically... this is character writing. and I find it funny that these broad categories that kids like to identify themselves with are seen as ways of flattening characterization into broad strokes like "the brave one" or "the sneaky one" or what have you, because in the case of classes, the characterization becomes deeper. and I think that's because the categories are used well... the characters all have specific relationships with the stereotypes they're ascribed by others, and the archetypes they're told they must fulfill. the classes don't define them, but they do give them something to contend with. can they fulfill their role? can they live up to their purpose? is there a place in the story for someone with an archetype like theirs? do they want to be this?

aspects get even trickier, and for this I might just link to a video I really love that covers a lot of the thoughts I've been having. it's kind of front loaded with a lot of technical talk about computer science and philosophy, and tbh I love that homestuck does actually link up those concepts with so much of it's presentation, but the main bit that intrigues me is the way the video talks about aspects as irreducible components of thought. like the periodic table of elements, but for ideas.

this drastically elevates the importance of each character's assigned category, and makes it function so much better as a tool for characterization. because, like, the aspects are actually really abstract. when someone says their aspect is "wind" or "light" you could take that 100% literally if you wanted to... but by the time you've read enough of homestuck to connect those to John and Rose, you probably understand that it's not that simple. and other concepts, such as astrology, have taught you that this is the sort of system that you're supposed to interpret, right? what is a capricorn if not a loose collection of traits that give you a certain vibe? that's what we're working with when it comes to aspects. otherwise, how would you know what void, or doom, or mind are? tbh it's actually pretty genius that astrology was worked into the comic as an aesthetic element, just so we'd all be mentally primed to do this kind of categorical interpretation... hell, even the actual signs themselves constitute a framework with which you could analyze the characters, like, how does Nepeta display typical leo traits, or how is Vriska a stereotypical scorpio... it all still works, even as you understand that each individual is more complex than the traits which support that interpretation.

in this way, the aspects are never really explained exhaustively verbatim, and are almost solely defined by the traits you've observed from individual characters, who act as representatives for what these categories actually are. or at least how they function in this instance, which is what's relevant. it's not just superpowers, and it's not just archetypes... it's both at the same time, and you come at them from a character-first perspective when you're trying to figure out what they mean. the characters inform your knowledge of the categories, and the categories act as a framework for analyzing the characters. and I love how homestuck tricks you into assuming that it has a lot of little rigid categories for the characters to slot into, and how quickly it becomes apparent that everything is way more abstract than it first appears. and yet, it all still means something. and it's really interesting to, say, compare two different time players to try to piece together what is typical for that archetype, while also accounting for their class, and trying to understand how that changes the roles they play and the ways they behave. and then you have the trolls' caste system on top of that, and the astrology angle I mentioned earlier, and there are honestly so many overlapping ways to think about it all, and I think that's the point.

#homestuck #classpect #my rant

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intergrader · 3 years

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I wanted to redo my post on the asexuality discourse because it was all over the place and some of my opinions have changed, so here it is.

1. Asexuals shouldn't be a part of the lgb community because they aren't oppressed.

What I think matters is that our experiences still differ from the norm, heterosexuality, even if it's less than other identities. It's present in little things to big things - from seeing sex in media and being repulsed at the thought of doing it ourselves to corrective r*pe. If there's some range of oppression you need to face to be a part of the community, then feel free to cut us out I guess (although that just seems ridiculous imo). What's important is that asexuals and those who are questioning are able to find resources and outlets, even if there's less exposure after being shunned by the community. In other words, asexuals should be able to have their own community and spaces. The problem is, we can't. At least on tumblr, I've seen numerous ace themed blogs or posts get invaded by exclusionists when anything relevant to the discourse wasn't mentioned at all. Please just let us be, even if you can't accept us.

2. Heteromantic asexuals especially!

Again, everything mentioned above. Straight passing privilege is only received by not being able to talk about our identity.

3. Gray asexuals don't exist because asexuality isn't a spectrum; you're asexual and you don't experience sexual attraction or you aren't.

The only logic I can find for this is the etymology of the word, so I'd assume this is due to a misconception. Gray asexual should not be a label for allies who want to be a part of the community to hide behind, nor for those who are really just allosexual. If someone feels significantly less sexual attraction than what would be considered normal, enough to warrant them relating to both asexuality and other labels such as homosexuality, but not fully to either, they should be able to find others who feel the same.

Actually, I agree with this.

demisexual (someone who does not experience sexual attraction until they have formed a deep emotional connection with someone) = so you don't want hookups

fictosexual (umbrella term for anyone who experience exclusive sexual attraction toward fictional characters, a general type of fictional characters, or whose sexuality is influenced by fictional characters) = wth

fraysexual (someone only experiences sexual attraction towards those that they are not deeply connected with and lose that attraction as they get to know the person) = considering asexual generally means lack of sexual attraction, I don't see how this should be an identity

inactsexual (when one experiences sexual attraction and desires a sexual relationship despite being sex-repulsed) = have no idea how you can be repulsed by sex but still want it, could be similar to comphet but I doubt it

lithosexual (may experience sexual attraction but does not want it reciprocated) = again, how is this an asexual identity

reciprosexual (someone who does not experience sexual attraction unless they know that the other person is sexually attracted to them first) = so you just want to make sure the feeling's mutual before so you don't get your heart broken, how is this why is this

aceflux/acespike (someone whose sexual orientation fluctuates but generally stays on the asexual spectrum) = seems like the only valid one. Again, please make sure you're not just an ally or an allosexual member of lgb that has internalized homophobia or something. Additionally, make sure your lower sex drive isn't an effect of medication or the like.

In conclusion, the ace spectrum just seems like where "orientations" go when there's not really a category for them (that post saying most things on the lgbtq wiki were based on random tumblr posts definitely seems accurate rn). The only identity I was supporting when writing the crossed out above section was aceflux/acespike. My stance on this is definitely still iffy considering I haven't heard of an agreed upon definition of the amount of sexual attraction one experiences normally.

4. R*pe is something everyone experiences, not just asexuals

The difference is that this is corrective r*pe, i.e. it was done because of sexuality and the want of heteronormativity.

5. The split attraction model is harmful.

This one is actually pretty interesting. The main arguments seem to be misleading people with internalized homophobia and sexualizing identities too much. I'd agree that it probably does hurt some people. However, lgb talks a lot about internalized homophobia and how to deal with it, especially when just joining the community. Plus, many people don't even know about the split attraction model what with so little people being ace or aro and it does a lot more good than harm by allowing people to set further requirements they're comfortable with. As for the latter point, I don't see how saying ace bi or bi ace is so different from saying biromantic asexual. It means the same thing. Just like how if you only say you're bisexual, people are going to assume you mean biromantic bisexual.

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samnyangie · 3 years

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Personal reviews on RSL filmography

Rsl, iI thought it’d be a good idea to record my thought on each films rsl was in, it was something I always wanted to do...

Rsl in total, was starred in (excluding tv series etc) 27-ish films, to be honest, considering his years as an actor(approximately more than 30 years) he wasn’t starred in that many. We all know why lol

Just saying I’m not a film expert, therefore the list is very subjective.

The reviews with trigger warning (r*pe, g*re etc): Tape, Killer: Journal of Murder, A glimpse of hell. Tho in the writing I’ve censored them with * since I don’t feel comfortable saying them here

There isn’t particular spoilers except for dps, tape, and ground control

The favourites (literally my life time films)

Dead Poets Society

I assume many would agree, and as many would have, it was my first ever rsl film, like I was on the plane and it was one of the films they offered, and I was like, oh I think i heard of this, so I watched and instantly loved it. The message is very relevant to this day, the cinematography is very beautiful and somehow nostalgic. I was horrified with Neil’s death. Tbh now I’ve seen too many memes and all kind of things from the fandom (which I’m grateful for!) I thought the heartfelt I once had would deluded a bit, however when I watched it again last April with my family at the cinema and it still moved me very deeply.

The age of Innocence

Okay, unpopular opinion here, I love this so much. It’s my all time favourite rsl film. It even outruns dps tiny winy bit haha. Aside from how he had tiny winy screen time, appearing at the end but the fact that he played quite an important role and him being gorgeous in it just<33 I couldn’t help but smiling! It just the whole film was so much of my cup of tea? The melodrama and the hypocrisy hidden by elegance among the upper social classes in 19th century is just what I needed. The more I watch it, the more I understand the characters and their emotions, it’s one of those films you should keep visit to discover the things you weren’t aware of before. I watched it again this morning and i couldn’t stop thinking about it. However, I know some people find it boring and I understand why, my sister is one of them lol(except for a bit where rsl was in) but i think it’s more complex than what it appears to be at a first glance haha. In conclusion, it became one of my comfort film to watch time to time.

The ones I like<33

Swing kids

At first viewing, I didn’t expected much because it had underwhelming reviews but when I actually saw it, I thought it was quite decent and more and more I watched it, I felt like it was underrated. Yes, I think some directing choices were bit old fashioned and cheesy especially the ending, I’m not saying it was a perfect masterpiece but it deserves more recognition than it has now. Also in spite that there’re some parts being too simplified, it touched on something other films about ww2 normally don’t. It was interesting to see the German perspective on it than Jewish or the allies perspective like many of them does, but of course the latter perspectives matter, it could be argued that they more valid than the former, which partly was where sk criticised for, however, the portrayal of the varied reactions of the German people (in this one particular the teenagers) has its value in their on way. Anyway along side with it, the music and the dance scenes were great, without exaggeration, though Swing kids isn’t my fav, peter’s solo dance scene is my favourite scene in any movies I’ve ever watched. I mean that scene had both visuals and meaning as it demonstrated Peter’s determination as well as resentment with a hitch of unsureness. Rsl acting in that scene was just phenomenal, it’s not about showing off the dancing skills but he portrayed every mixed emotions peter has from his expression and the moves, I just can’t talk about this enough especially this scene was the reason I started fallen for him. lol

Much ado about nothing

Much ado is something I never seen anything like so it was a refreshing exprience. I barely watched Shakespeare on screen kind of thing. Though I felt there were some bits too cheesy for me but they are also the charms in the same time, and the cinematography was pretty also Claudio aka rsl, it was like an official announcement of declaring my worship on this man. Especially it was after SWING KIDSSSS so I couldn’t help it now everyone knows how I fallen for him but no one can blame meeeeee Anyway, it’s a really good film to watch when you want be relaxed with cup of tea maybe hehe

In the gloaming

I heard about it before I watched it, that it’s a heart wrenching, tearful piece, though I didn’t managed to cry, it’s just.... painful and in a way heartfelt. I liked that story telling was calm and collected rather than forcing you to join the sob party, just showing the characters to carry on. And thanks to the great acting from the cast, the characters could be emphasised and understood, personally the older sister was the most relatable character for me, well, eldest complex lol. In short I liked it but it’s not something I would watch it often.

Last days of Disco

As a person who looks at aesthetic in films, I simply enjoyed this for that tbh. I don’t know, I just liked the feeling. But I don’t think it’d be everyone’s cup of tea. I love the day time clothes the girls wore in the film. Tbh I love the music too, I think I love all the films of rsl with music in it. Speaking about rsl, oh rsl, he’s.... His character might be bit unlikable but he was just.... This is why I can’t unlove his characters even the debatable ones<33

They were decent! (I would recommend it)

Married to it

This is the first and last ever attempt of rsl of romcomssss The film itself is cliche to be frank it’s like love actually but it’s about marriage life + it’s not christmas but I like heartfelt cliche stories like this, if anyone also loves this type of story, it’s really worth watching, it’s one of my comfort films, also, rsl is so pretty I mean he always is but to see him being a office man with a baby face made me go awww my baby grew up heheh I wish he did another romcom like this or more preferably, melodramatic romance, I’d have made a shrine of it and worship it every morning lol

The boys next door

I kind of smiled while watching it throughout, if you want something that is heartfelt and touch on some serious topic about social workers and the people with mental disorder, Rsl plays a character who has (I think it was) Schizophrenia and troubled relationship with his father(Deja vu I know) but general atmosphere tend to be quite humourous. I don’t get me wrong, though it’s light hearted, it doesn’t mean they treat the topic in the same way. There’s a scene where the protagonist imagining the one of the characters with the disorder talking eloquently and honourably at the court on the rights and the dignity of the people with mental disorders deserve to/should have and they’re just the same people as the people without mental disorders. It was a powerful scene.

My two loves

Rsl’s first ever screen debut film! Hehe it’s about a woman who is discovering her sexual identity and the conflicts within I personally thought it was fairly sensible depiction but I can’t say for sure whether it was accurate or else, since I don’t think it’s my place to say it:) But if you’re interested, it’s on YouTube, you can just search for it or go to this post I made. Fun fact: since it was his debut film, it credits him as he’s real name, Robert L. Leonard, I just find it amusing haha

Tape

It’s another type of film I don’t encounter that often, I enjoyed it, especially with Neil and Todd’s reunion lol. Rsl mentioned how he enjoyed it because it felt like doing a play, my first impression was that the structure is like a play, though the camera work made me quite dizzy haha. But the dialogues, the acting, I think it was quite spot on. Especially the human contradictions and hypocrisy side of it. The most people assume the baddie in the film is Jon the character rsl played and has a distaste for him. I mean how can anyone love a character who is accused of r*pe but to be honest, Vincent for me seemed just as problematic, both of them are hypocrites for sure in their own different ways but in the end we can’t be sure what’s really the truth or not. It’s about the vagueness, and phychology and the uncertainty from the audience on who to believe(well, myself included, most would trust on Amy’s claims since she’s the victim in the accusation, but by her denying the claims, making everything way unclear,) so I don’t know. I don’t really have an opinion haha tho I don’t believe nothing happened because Amy denied so, even Umma Thurman who played her, said that her interpretation was that Amy lied. I felt it’s endless rabbit hole this film. Sorry I couldn’t worded it better.

My best friend is a Vampire

It’s cringey and weird but there’re odd charm to it. Vampire rsl’s so cute as well.... and I think it’s the only film, he acted kind of flirty ? So for that itself I’d like to appreciate itttt And it’s so 80s/90s, like it has general odd nostalgia like all films from that age has. I saw a Korean blog about rsl films and this was mentioned, that- they said- it’s a bible of rsl’s adorableness and I think that sum up the film perfectly.

Mr&Mrs Bridge

Before this was in ‘I mean it was fine” category, but I watched it again and now I want to retract my statement lol Still isn’t my fav but I noticed how delicately depicted each characters are, Mr and Mrs Bridge in particular. This film is alternatively about the changes in the young generation regarding liberty, feminism, free expression especially on sex. It’s in the perspective of the bridges, the mother and father who is old fashioned and conservative (as it was normal in their previous generation) and the children who are the young generation, and the misunderstanding and conflicts between them. After all it all happened not only because of the difference but also the lack of communication, which rsl emphasised in his interviews. I found it interesting that they made it seems like the Bridges truly existed with the video footage and (with the ending) describing what happened to each family member in text with photos. When I watched it at first I was really confused if it was based on a real life. I think what they wanted to suggest was that the Bridges every typical American family at the time. It was something everyone was going through. I said previously I didn’t get why Rsl’s character (the youngest in the Bridges) treated his mother so coldly. Honestly I do get why, but I guess I felt so bad so the mother haha

I mean it was fine

The safe passage

It was okay but to be honest it didn’t stood out to me. It was okay. The story, the characters weren’t that interesting. I wish they extended it longer to go depth with their family relationship or something.

A painted house

I find it likeable, it has a chill, old folk story vibe, but same as previous one. it didn’t really stand out except for shirtless rsl, do close ups you cowards

Bluffing it

I was really fond of the premise of this film and I think it has great intention. It was specifically made to promote the awareness of illiteracy and how to get support. However, I don’t get the reason of Jack the protagonist’s illiteracy. Unless, it was common occurrence in America at the time, I feel like it’d have been more convincing if he was in poor family hood, so there was no time to learn at school due to working at young age...? I mean, just finding it hard to believe he passed the high school just like that, I mean the teachers or anyone should have noticed it, maybe I’m missing something here but it seemed unlikely to me.

Ground control

Again, I liked the message, as it depicted how frightening and difficult job the ground controller is, by one mistake could take away the lives of hundreds, especially as someone who goes on planes a lot... But it was quite cliche throughout, I just couldn’t get engaged to it. But I do admit at the end when the protagonist runs off to the landing zone see the pilot who he had just saved, they acknowledged each other and have eye contacts was truly wholesome. Rsl as cocky, bad boy was such a icing on the cake, I loved it so much. Chewing gum in every scene lol I hope he plays these sort of characters more often. I saw someone criticising him saying he has narrow spectrum of just playing nice boy roles like Neil but I really wanted to debunk the narrative and this could be one of the examples!

Chelsea walls

I knew that this has split reviews but nonetheless I think worth to watch it, 1. Ethan and rsl re union, 2. Ethan is the directer of the film and rsl sing in it. But I have to say, it’s one of those hard to follow art indie film so I couldn’t finish it on one go. I feel like I have to devour it over and over again. Maybe later on I grow fond of it more lol But his character, I loved him so much. He’s just has everyone don’t touch me, I’m a cocky artist vibe, there’s a scene where his annoying friend annoying him and he looks up and says: ‘Fck off’. Absolute golddddd not to mention he sings and plays guitar so beautifully<333

Well... it’s not my cup of tea

The Manhattan project

I don’t think the film it self was that bad, it’s about high school boy who find out the existence of some nuclear energy research lab and stole the energy to make his own nuclear bomb. I just don’t get the thinking process of the protagonist. It really frustrated me. He seemed apathetic and unlikable I disliked him throughout and that’s why I didn’t really enjoyed it. I mean it has humour and ridiculous storyline might be humorous to some. But more importantly there was such little screen time for rsl!! LIKE WHY? WHY PEOPLE?? HE LOOKS LIKE A FRESH HUMAN MOCHI!!! It makes me soooo mad to think about it

Killer: Journal of Murder

Well, first of all, it had a lot of graphic things than I imagined, brutally murd*red bodies, execution, and r*pe scene, gosh I was strucken by it when I saw that, I had to skipped that scene. It’s based on a real event and a real criminal called Carl Panzram, so if you’re aware of it, it might be more intriguiging to see. But personally for me... meh, I don’t think directing was good as it failed to portray it enough for me to comprehend fully.

A Glimpse of Hell

This is also based on a true event of a tragic accident in the us battleship in Iowa in 1989. They shows tragedy lin a blunt, brutal way by showing horribly damaged bodies of the soldiers torn into pieces, all the horrid things directly so be warned about that. I was quite alarmed because i didn’t expect to see it haha there’s no much to say. The film quality was so so for me. I feel their approach wasn’t appropriate, they were clearly trying to make it dramatic which is fine but in a melodramatic emotional way. It didn’t work because first, there aren’t enough portrayal of the characters for me to get attached, secondly it added the unnecessary exaggeration it prevented me from being emotionally involved or even to think about it. In my opinion, I think it’d have been better if they made it more restrained, dry, focus on the accuracy. For example like 1987 or Zodiac, I mean both of them has dramatic elements since they’re not a documentary but they were not overdone, in a contrary added emphasis to their message/conclusion. I know it’s easier said than done but it was something I consistently felt during it.

Sir.... I’m sorry but-

Standoff

Haha... it’s very peculiar... the directing is off and it just weird. I knew it was bad already but I watched it because rsl as a cop with gunssssssss just... so rare and just.... something else. There’s no way of me missing that seriously. Tbh him doing an action stunt isn’t what I imagine when it comes to him and there’s really any actions scenes anyway but it really was something. Like the character he played here really became my soft spot Hehehehe he was pretty and plus, tbh it’s kind of film I’d make fun of while watching so everything was (alomst) forgivable. There is a recent thing I think about, since this is about a cult, I kind of hope he’d at some day play a role like Eli Sunday from There will be blood: a manipulative, deceitful and maddened priest with twisted faith. Though Paul Dano did a grand job, the idea was in my head the whole time. Well, it’s a shame he wasn’t any of those here lol

Driven

From what I seen, the majority of people seem to unanimously hate this film, and after watching it I became one of those ppl. At least Standoff could be make fun of and rsl held gunssss but this...... I want to say so many things... I feel like they should have chose either fancy, fast paced, thrilling racing film or detailed depiction of emotions/relationships with the racers and people involved in it, I know both can be done, but I think that was outside of their ability, but since they tried to do that at once, it became a mess that doesn’t go either way. And the characters, any of them, including rsl’s are narrow or impossible to understand. I mean rsl did great himself, it was not about acting, the problem lies on the script and editing in my opinion. Also there were so many unnecessary characters made me question of their existence. Luckily rsl’s character isn’t one of them, however because of them, he had to squeeze in and unable to elaborate, which is a shame as he was an interesting character and someone rsl rarely plays; a arrogant and opportunist agent/brother of the protagonist, who would do anything for success... ha.... whyyyyy

This is it. If I watch other stuff I might add to it in the future. Overall, I know I’m biased but I do like His filmography, I do have appreciations in every one of them in different way to the good ones to bad. He may have disagree, but I love his acting on screen, well, I barely seen him on stage (crying)

Edit: as some of you could see, I’ve edited this over and over again haha elaborating on thing or the contrary. I can say with a glimpse of hell I practically managed to watch every rsl films out there lol except for the i inside and the short film he did called a dog race in Alaska. But with the former I’m not interested and already know the storyline, and the latter is just impossible to find, trust me I did my best;;

So to sum up: I HAVE MASTERED THE RSL FILMOGRAPHY!

#robert sean leonard #rsl #films #filmography #personal #thoughts

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inventors-fair · 3 years

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Two guilds, one cause group commentary

Super sorry for being super super late. Here’s the commentary about the guild colab cards.

@dumbellsndragons First of quite a lot split/aftermath cards for this contest! I was quite surprised! Beast is not much but it’s an honest spell. The real deal is Breakfast! It essentially doubles the power of your board, by splitting it to 2/2 bodies that can in turn trigger various etb effects. Temporary buffs, (bloodrush anyone?) can play a huge roll on how many tokens you can make!

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes Misjudged this one, took it for an Izzet Simic spell, while it’s actually an Izzet Gruul one that plays into the destroy to create mentality of the two guilds. While witty and creative, this spell feels a little too specific. It definitely has a fun side but I fear people would use it more as a combo piece.

@abzanhero Sel-gari was a very popular combination and Rotweaver is a very nice example on how those two guilds could interact. It fills the graveyard, cares about the graveyard and has the potential to make HUGE tokens for you to populate. All that in the expense of immediate impact on the board, but I asked for kitchen table EDH cards, and this fits the category very well.

@helloijustreadyourpost I love the throwback to popular EDH cards like Savra and the first print of Teysa that care about the color of creatures you control. That said, I am not a fun of the limitations on the card, as I view more like a Yu-gi-oh design than an mtg card, where usually the only limitation is the cost of the card.

@bioodprice Great control card but the two triggers feel conflicted as the one taps a creature, and the other punishes the players for having untapped creatures. Either way, it has good pillowfort potential as it can hinder both voltron strategies and punish token based decks.

@dimestoretajic Great tempo card, would do wonders in limited enviroments. Lorewise, it’s sad to see that guilds consume their messengers. If this trend continues, Vivien will surely pay Ravnica a visit XD

@ghoulcaclulator64 First of all, congratulations for going the extra mile and made your own artwork for the card! It’s really cool!

On to the ability of the card, its very well stated and it has great combo potential with all the copy effects of blue and red that can help you create an army of deadly blasters. I am not sure whether you wanted the trigger to work with spells any player controls or not, but all in all I find Whip-Walker an interesting design!

@kytheon4-4 Great flavor text that fits the theme of the design challenge 150%! Also a quite impactful card on a tri colored creature deck of all shapes and sizes. If mentor returns, it could definitely appear on Green creatures, or creatures of any color, like Exalted

@hypexion When you’re a Gorgon with a Biology major, there’s no need to stay in the undercity XD In general I like the use of ability counters, and this applies here as well. The +1/+1 counter would serve as a reminder for the deathtouch counter, though I must complain that Mila herself doesn’t have deathtouch but has to work for it like a guildless peasant.

@yourrightfulking For GGUURR you get two cards and at least a 2/2 body plus 2 damage wherever you want. This is an insanely good deal, and this being an instant means that you can also mess up combat big time. I wouldn’t call the card broken in any way but I feel there should be some moderation, maybe the damage affect players and planeswalkers? But that’s me nitpicking, all in all pursuit of perfection was a very nice entry for the contest.

@nine-effing-hells In a similar vein, from a mechanical standpoint, chorus of battle offers +4/+4 , with the additional trample and lifelink. Comparison with Titanic Ultimatum is inevitable, and it offers a lot more for an additional mana. I think here it should be safer if the play was asked to offer a single R and W to get the bonus and not the double colors which add a lot of weight to the card without clear benefit.

@misterstingyjack The design challenge was meant for you to design tri colored cards. There were a few color matters submissions, but this is the best “rulebreaker” and who’s a better rulebreaker than a goblin gang that pays homage to Shattergang Brothers A really cute card whose effects are relevant in an EDH game, especially the green one. Death to the mana rocks!

@grornt Great revisiting of Graft and I love the fact that with haste, the total damage you can do to the opponent doesn’t change as you pass around your counters! Interestingly, Riot and Bloodthirst also operate with +1/+1 counters so this beasty truly unites Simic and Gruul!

@hiygamer If there’s one thing “cannon” in this challenge, it’s that the Selesnya and the Golgari will rebuild Vitu-Ghazi! The abilities and the overall flavor of the card are super sweet, but I think we should be wary of lands with the potential to generate tons of mana. For example, as much as I love symmetry in design, the graveyard matters part of the card shouldn’t be on equal ground with the other ability as it’s easier to produce more mana with mill shenanigans.

@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion This pricey enchantment is so splashy, Kiora would probably try to steal it. Good thing you considered planewalkers on the second ability, because then you would have certainly crossed the line. I don’t know what kind of deck is the true home for this card, but even one turn with this card on the battlefield will decide the course of the game.

@dabudder For 2WUG, you get a 5/5 flyer and you draw one card. It’s not much, in EDH at least, but it’s definitely an honest play. Again, the fate of Vitu-Ghazi is on the spotlight, and here we see the Azorius care about it! Who knew Ravnicans love Selesnya that much?

@koth-of-the-hammerpants Scavenge 6 for merely two mana is a tremendous deal. The Second activated ability takes an A for creativity and flavor, as we see the pinnacle of recycling in this combined Simic Golgari project. I feel a few balance tweaks are required here and there but the idea of a creature “reforming” itself through +1/+1 counters is damn cool.

@narkis24 Puns and memes are always appreciated but the abilities, while interesting, they have me wondering whether this is too oppressive for your opponent. The free treasure token every now and then is pretty innocent and it may be the token of an unofficial alliance made on the kitchen table. However, the potential of multiple counterspells with little investment seems a bit scary. I would rather it somehow required self sacrifice in the ability so people don’t gang up on you.

@thedirtside I love the name and its connection with the bouncing nature of the card. While overall this spell feels weak or requires a lot of mana, I feel there are decks out there that would appreciate the utility this card offers.

@bread-into-toast Selesnya and Orzhov is a wild combination from every perspective but as the flavor text suggests, all woodshapers are welcome XD

The 5 toughness guarantees that you will make a good number of tokens before this thrull enters the soil, and it might deter a couple attacks while on the battlefield because it can potentially make 10 or more tokens with a good block. An Abzan token deck will have dozens of ways to utilize this small army, and the deat trigger gives you yet another one if there are not any available at that time. All in all, a stellar design. I didn’t do a runners up post this time, but this could be easily included.

@gollumni A solid utility 4 drop that shines more at late game than on curve because as the challenge suggests we’re playing kitchen table edh. For the full colored cost you disable three potential blockers. I love the tiny detail that unlike other creatures in the original ravnica that cared about different colors of mana when you cast them, Enlisted Banisher represents all three colors for the sake of devotion and color matters cards, like the beloved Knight of New Alara.

@shakeszx A very unique design that encourages different tribal strategies in an attempt to unite everything under its glorious pincers during combat. I feel a deck with Gedj as a commander would be both fun and challenging to build. I suppose it would contain a lot of Slivers and Allies. If anybody makes this deck please let us know!

@wolkemesser A wild project uniting Gruul and Izzet. This is probably the most intricate design I’ve seen in a while, utilizing XYZ, three colors, two kinds of tokens. But what about the kitchen table? The options this card offers are insanely good, so much that I think it’s undercosted. The red ability, essentially lets you save up mana, and treasures can also help you generate mana for the other two options of the card.

And while the power level is definitely high, I have to commend you for considering when the player is allowed to do these crazy mana sink shenanigans. Having a specific time window is important and setting it on main phase 2 means that you give both yourself and you opponents time to figure things out.

@teaxch Excellent build around potential and I like that the optional copying trigger as you can utilize a deck with both buffs and single target removals. The spiciest thing about this card is that it has the highest cannon potential because actually Izzet and Boros collaborate to create advanced soldiers. It’s Captain Amrica all over again :P They even got the right colors

@masternexeon I love the irony of a card that obstructs your opponents playing cards during your turn has flash itself. It’s a real solid hate bear. The haste hating is more of a trinket text than a relevant ability, but it’s better to have a rare ability than not having it.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff I don’t know why this doesn’t have a straightforward adapt X ability, let’s move past that. Any numbers of counters are always welcome, but in this design it’s easier to get a good amount of counters early game, for example going for 4 on turn 4 is a really nice play and you can swing for 7, which will have a long and memorable impact on the kitchen table. On the other hand, if you topdeck this late game, there’s a chance you won’t be able to pay 11 for the 11 creatures you might have in the graveyard.

@davriel-canes-tea-supplier Another aftermath card. You surprised me there! Get down is a slightly more expensive freeze two spell, but that’s customary for dual purpose cards like this. On to business, we got a selective wrath effect. It’s more disruptive than an actual sweeper because odds are the opponent sees it coming (except if you discard it on purpose to head straight to business) Overall I feel the whole card could be a bit cheaper but I appreciate the impact it can have in the game, and it also helps me create an image of the Ravnican lobby that’s in the hands of Orzhov with the assistance of the Azorius

@reaperfromtheabyss Ending, with a flashy comeback of Fuse! Both halves are great cards in their own right, Body is a tad better than life’s legacy because it also gives life at the price of one black mana instead of any mana, and Soul can produce a respectable amount of flying tokens while wiping a player’s graveyard. The combined effect isn’t as explosive as other fuse spells, but the utility it offers is much appreciated. And while the card frame for fuse isn’t flavor text friendly, I really like the story it tells, about how the two guilds care about death and how they utilize it for their advantage.

#Two guilds one cause #mtg #magic the gathering #custom Magic card #Ravnica #group commentary

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Are You Poe-ndering What I’m Poe-ndering? — Thoughts on: Warnings at Waverly Academy (WAC)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas (or not links, as tumblr is freaking out with links).

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: WAC, mention of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (the OG live-action show not the horrible CW monstrosity); discussion of the Poe short stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Black Cat”.

The Intro:

It’s time to go to school, y’all — and not just any school; a rich, elite, all-girls school. Welcome to the jungle.

Warnings at Waverly Academy is one of two games that I don’t sort into a category (like “Expanded” “Jetsetting” or “Odd”), the other being the game that follows it (TOT). There are a few reasons for this — the next category really doesn’t apply, but neither does the previous category, WAC and TOT both feature a gradual shift in tone and approach to the games, etc. If I really had to pick a designation, I’d say that these are the “Growing Pains” games, where the world gets a little bit more open — but not all at once, the characters get a little more fleshed out — but not by much, and a few new things are tried with our character rolls — to varying degrees of success.

On the whole, WAC tackles its efforts far better than TOT does, but it does make for a slightly less interesting meta if one was just to focus on what WAC does wrong and what it does right. Instead, we’re going to take a look at how brilliant WAC is tonally and thematically, and how its source material — not kept secret in the game — builds it up and makes it better and better upon replays.

Before I begin, it’s fair to warn you all that my thesis was done on Poe and adaptation theory (and its relevance towards detective novels but I won’t touch much on that part of it), so I might get a bit nerdy. Hopefully it’s still exciting and relatable enough to the game that it’ll make for interesting, rather than academic, reading.

WAC uses Poe’s stories — specifically “The Black Cat” (obviously) and “The Imp of the Perverse” (in my slightly expert opinion) — as thematic (what the game means) and tonal (how the game feels) touchstones, not to mention their inclusion for some of the events in the plot. A brief summary of both is probably important when looking at how they relate to WAC.

“The Imp of the Perverse” is an essay-like short story by Poe that basically states that inside of every person is the desire to do something wrong or incorrect simply because it is wrong or incorrect (not morally, but in terms of self-interest).

In the story, a man commits a clever murder and gets away with it, receiving the inheritance that he wanted from the dead man. The man cannot be caught — there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, let alone any that points to him — unless he confesses. The idea of confessing — not out of guilt, but just because it would be the wrong thing to do — plays on his mind until, driven half-mad with his preoccupation, he confesses and is imprisoned and executed. The titular “imp” is basically a devil on the shoulder who wants what would be worst for our own self-interest, simply because it is the worst.

MENTIONS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY FOR THE STORY OF THE BLACK CAT. PLEASE SKIP IF THIS BOTHERS YOU.

“The Black Cat” on the other hand is pretty much a proto-“Tell-Tale Heart” — an alcoholic man becomes emotionally distant from his cat (a rare sentence, I know) because he things the cat is judging him for being a drunk; one night in a drunken rage, he cuts out its eye and kills it. A fire catches his home, leaving an imprint of the hanged cat upon the only standing wall.

END OF DIRECT MENTIONS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY.

The man and his wife move, and he, after a period of guilt, makes friends with another cat — a cat nigh-identical to the first one, even missing an eye. When he (drunk, as per usual) and his wife are walking down the cellar stairs, however, he nearly trips over the cat and becomes enraged, trying to kill the cat, only to be stopped by his wife. He instead kills his wife, burying her behind the wall of the cellar and bricking up the hole.

When the police come by they find nothing, and the cat has disappeared, so the man feels safe. The police come back to investigate the cellar, the man taps on the wall to boast of how well the house is made — only to have horrific screeching start up behind the wall. The police break the wall down and find not only his wife’s body, but the black cat sitting on it as well. The man breaks down, overwhelmed by his own guilt, and the story ends.

END OF BLACK CAT STORY SYNOPSIS.

It’s pretty clear what influence “The Black Cat” had on WAC — not only does the villain name herself after the titular cat, but WAC is also a story of guilt, hidden crimes, and personal weaknesses that manifest in rage towards other innocents.

It’s actually really interesting that Corine takes the mantle of “The Black Cat” up when she begins targeting other valedictorian candidates; the black cat in the story is sort of a symbol of the man’s sin — a reaction to his sins and misdeeds, and sort of a catalyst of justice. This ties into how Corine sees herself — someone rejected and mistreated by those who are “filthy” themselves, and who must then show others the things they hate about themselves.

It’s Corine’s self-identification as a victim that starts all this, and it causes her to victimize others in potentially fatal ways. The black cat stands for guilt, for the sins of others, and yet it leads Corine further and further away from any justness herself.

The story of “The Imp of the Perverse” has a little bit of a more subtle tie-in to the game; in a way, each suspect does exactly what they know they shouldn’t.

Rachel and Kim are obvious — they really shouldn’t switch back and forth so regularly, nor should they be so sloppy at informing the other as to what they did and who they met that day. Leela, who should be studying if she wants to keep her spot in the race, instead passes the time by playing sports. Mel knows that the cloak-and-dagger meetings are to be an absolute secret, yet wears hair bows that she constantly loses to one. Izzy has her future meticulously planned out, yet refuses to back up an incredibly important paper (and also relies on being popular, yet pursues other girls’ boyfriends).

Even Corine falls under this; by targeting Nancy, she’s ensuring that suspicion will fall on her, as 2/3rds of the victims would then be her roommates. She’s also cutting her chances of being valedictorian by not working hard for it and instead relying on other, riskier methods. Every move she makes leads to it being more and more obvious that she’s behind them — and yet, she continues anyway, just like the man in “The Imp of the Perverse” — leading from a few small incidents to attempted murder.

Ignoring WAC’s ties to Poe renders it as a good, solid mystery without anything remarkable about it (other than the pendulum, of course). Exploring its ties to Poe not only helps set up exactly who the villain is, but also sets the tone for the mystery. This isn’t a mystery of Nancy foiling a villain through her smarts; instead, it’s a story about how guilt and a perverse desire for self-destruction leads a once-promising valedictorian candidate to more and more severe crimes, culminating in the exact opposite of what she was working for.

The Title:

It’s pretty awesome, full stop.

Warnings at Waverly Academy is honestly a great title for a Nancy Drew mystery; it gives us location, a sense of the world we’re in (scholastic), and a vague yet not too vague sense of what’s going on. The alliteration is good, the abbreviation amuses me — it’s just solid all the way around.

There’s not much else to say; sure, you could strengthen it by finding a punchier “w” word to begin with, but that’s just quibbling. It’s great, I love it, let’s move on to the Happenings at Waverly Academy (which, by the way, would have been a terrible name for the game).

The Mystery:

Called in as a professional undercover detective, Nancy’s just young enough to hide in plain sight at Waverly Academy, an upper-crust private school for those girls fortunate enough to be both rich and smart (aside from a few scholarship students, who are simply smart). Nancy’s called in due to a few near-death experiences by students, punctuated always by notes simply signed “The Black Cat”. It’s only a few days until break ends, so Nancy must work quickly to stop the sabotage, find the Black Cat, and solve the mystery before anyone dies.

Nancy, as always, finds quickly that not everything is so cut-and-dried. Each valedictorian candidate has the motive, means, and opportunity to get the other girls out of their way, and all have something to lose. Add in a secret society, the threat of demerits from an overly zealous RA, and the sneaking feeling that there might be a greater mystery behind all of these incidents, and you get a case mostly unlike any that Nancy’s had to crack before.

Oh, and Ned is on the phone, serving the player up with the single punch of testosterone in the game (aside from the hunky Mr. Harris, of course).

As a mystery, WAC is honestly super solid. Lots of characters, lots of clues, lots of red herrings, lots of mini-mysteries going on inside of the larger mystery…it’s everything you want from a Nancy Drew game, and it doesn’t really drop any of the balls it juggles. Sure, the pendulum might be a bit much for you if you’re not up on your Poe, but I think it’s a lot of fun, and for sure a very different type of ending puzzle — not drowning or running out of air or any other ending that Nancy Drew games likes to do.

Let’s go to the movers and shakers behind this mystery, then, shall we?

The Suspects:

Mel Corbalis is the fan-favorite character, so let’s start with her in this huge, estrogen-laden cast. Distinctly of the goth persuasion, Mel is a fantastically talented cello player and a Waverly Legacy, despite the fact that no one at school wants to be caught dead near her. She’s not an outcast the way that Corine is, however, because of her simple insistence on being exactly who she is, and not trying to hide or apologize for it.

Go Mel.

As a suspect, Mel is slightly more suspicious than most other girls, on account of Megan being her roommate, but otherwise sits on fairly equal standing with them all. She’s by far the most outwardly aggressive, but also comes across as simply no-nonsense (a welcome thing in any girl’s academy, believe me). She also has the least of Poe about her, despite her taste in fashion, and is in general a breath of fresh wind.

Next up is Leela Yadav, athlete extraordinaire. She sure can bounce that ball, at least. Izzy’s roommate and just as much a social climber (though in less in-your-face ways), Leela wants it all — popular, athletic, and valedictorian. It’s a lot for any girl to handle, much less one who can’t seem to keep it all together.

As a suspect, Leela’s not bad — she’s as even as (most) anyone else throughout the first half of the game, but falls off a bit when Izzy isn’t specifically targeted by the Black Cat (as most of her gripes are against Izzy, particularly). Leela’s more there to increase the number of students and throw suspicion around, but she does a darn fine job of it, and is well-rounded enough to be genuinely enjoyable.

We’d be remiss not to mention the queen bee (and my personal favorite suspect) at Waverly Academy, Izzy Romero. Snobbish, arrogant, and with apparently the smarts and people skills to back it up, Izzy is the first Waverly girl that Nancy (as Becca) meets, and boy does she set the player up for what Waverly is really like. Izzy’s smart enough to know when she should put in the effort and clever enough to delegate it when she can, and that alone endears her to me, even leaving aside her hilarious dialogue and general vibes.

As a suspect, Izzy is the sole girl who really isn’t set up to be much other than what she is — a girl with more than enough smarts to get power, and enough power to pretty much do what she wants to do. Sure, Nancy can catch Izzy doing stuff she shouldn’t do, but she’s never really a heavy-hitter when it comes to the Black Cat stuff. I love her for that, too. She’s a lot like Libby from the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch show; a bit nasty, but hilarious and effectively harmless — and I’ve always liked Libby-style characters.

And her stint in the Blackwood Society is aces too. Man, this girl does not quit.

Rachel Hubbard, is, of course, actually Rachel and Kim Hubbard, and they are the plot point that WAC is most known for. They actually have marginally separate personalities too, with one being far snappier than the other, and having strengths in different subjects.

Part of the reason I love the Hubbard twins so much is that their presence is so...Poeian. Poe was all about duplicity and mirrors, and the Hubbard twins show off both themes. It’s just a wonderful little bit of a nod to the source material (thematically speaking) of the game, and I adore it.

As suspects, the Hubbards aren’t bad at all; they’re lying, sneaking around, and blatantly “forget” what they’ve said to people, all of which adds up to be very untrustworthy. Were it not for Nancy (and Corine) sneaking around, they might have gotten through their Waverly experience without anyone figuring it out — and that’s something to respect, even if it does make them prime targets for blackmail. And speaking of blackmail…

Corine Meyers is both Nancy’s roommate and 100% our villain this time around. Obsessed with becoming valedictorian and knowing she probably won’t get it, Corine basically puts out self-assigned hits on each of her fellow candidates, attempting to get the title by violence rather than by being worthy. She’s even cunning enough to blackmail the Hubbard twins into doing some of her dirty work, throwing people off her scent. Sure, Corine is a rather pathetic (in the non-sympathetic sense) person who I have little respect for, but she does make a good villain in a Poe-ish story.

As a suspect, the game actually makes a pretty good go at not assigning the blame too quickly to anyone, so Corine does manage to hide out in the shadows. Sure, one of the girls who went home was her roommate, but the other was Mel’s, so suspicion isn’t centered right on her. I also love that she’s actually punished for what she does — no amount of sad pictures at the end of the game changes that. Corine actually has the cleverness that CUR tries (but doesn’t succeed) to give Jane, and I think it’s wonderful.

I’m not going to give Megan Vargas or Danielle Hayes their individual chunks, but they are present here as well, standing in as victims so we know that this teenaged effery very nearly had a body count. They really help to give a sense of…well, purposeful disconnection to the game, where the setting and the snow and the fact that these are high school girls doesn’t stop the crimes from being deadly.

The Favorite:

The first thing that I have to say is that I love how the tone and crimes of this game contrast so well with a lot of the games (especially, sorry, CUR). This takes place at a school, your suspects are all teenaged girls…and yet the game doesn’t shy away from how horrific things really are to get Nancy called in. Two girls have nearly died in quick succession from one another, and the girls are going on chasing acclaim. It’s a messed up situation, and the game doesn’t shy away from pointing that out.

These crimes are treated with severity, and the culprit, despite things that might have softened her ending under lesser writers, is punished with total removal. WAC in some ways is a spiritual successor to SCK, in that it takes place at a school, lives are endangered, Nancy is (mostly) undercover, and the culprit is not above killing Nancy messily solely for personal gain. The difference, of course, is that SCK is not done well, and WAC, on the whole, is.

As mentioned above, I have a soft spot for Poeian detective stories, and so I enjoy WAC probably more than I would had they modeled it after, say, Holmesian detective stories instead. The ideas of duplicity, mirrors, guilt, the Imp of the Perverse — the self-destructive tendency to do what we should not simply because we should not do it — these are all present and accounted for in WAC from different girls and facets of the plot (Corine and the secret society both represent duplicity, the Hubbard girls are mirrors, Waverly’s own guilt towards the students it failed, etc.).

My favorite puzzle has to be WAC’s resident cooking minigame, where Nancy prepares hot lettuce sandwiches and definitely underdone cookies to the delight of the gossiping horde. It’s like TRN’s cheeseburger minigame writ large, and every second of it is wonderful — the gossip, the food-making, the unexpected panic of a teacher order — everything. It also helps Nancy keep her head above water, should she be caught sneaking around after hours, and I think that’s great as well.

My favorite moment of the game is when Nancy comes out of the wall in Mel’s room and Mel isn’t having even one iota of her excuses to cut and run. It’s not often that a non-villain will press Nancy so intently when Nancy does something Inherently Untrustworthy, and I think it’s great that a 17 year old girl behaves exactly as one would, demanding an explanation and not letting Nancy wiggle her way out of it. Sheer perfection and the moment, I would guess, that Mel became a lot of people’s favorite WAC character.

I also love everything to do with the Blackwood Society. Nancy goes so…metal there and we really don’t get enough of Metal Nancy. It features one of the few moments of absolutely, unequivocally brilliant voice acting that Lani stumbles upon (the conversation about the bow), and it’s a wonder to behold.

The Un-Favorite:

While WAC certainly has great things about it, it’s not by any means a perfect game. It wouldn’t sit in my top 10, and possibly not even in my top 15, though it would depend on the day. The reasons for this?

A big one is my least favorite puzzle: taking the pictures. It’s a good idea — a gofer quest to help Nancy get to meet each student, talk to them, etc. and make sure no one gets lost in the shuffle (like with what usually happens with Guadalupe in ICE, for example) — and is also great for acquainting Nancy with the Hubbard(s). However, in practice, the interface makes it incredibly obnoxious to do, what with having to retake pictures because the pan or zoom is slightly off, and having to jump around from place to place. It’s a good idea, but could have been implemented far, far more smoothly than it actually was.

My least favorite moment in the game is actually the whole deal with Izzy’s paper being deleted. It’s a dick move — and I have no problem with that, honestly, but the fact that she has no backup is just like…girl, what on earth are you doing where you don’t back up your work.

Adding to that is the fact that even in the far-off yesteryear of 2009, Word autosaves (as did many, if not all, word processors) and a copy definitely would have still been retrievable on her computer, and that the teacher would almost definitely have a previous rough draft or at least outline…it’s a pretty shaky thing to have happen (the not-having, not the deleting), and it does break the game down a bit. I know it’s not that big a deal to most people, but it seriously hampers my ability to stay within the world of WAC and to take the mystery seriously.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Warnings at Waverly Academy?

There’s honestly not too much to do; while not a perfect game, WAC is perfectly solid, accomplishing what it needs to do properly and well, without too many little flaws to mar its reputation.

In other words, it’s a bit like an unsuccessful valedictorian candidate; well-rounded, but not a standout when compared to others that burn a little brighter.

I would, however, re-work the picture task; I’m not sure how you could make it less clunky, mechanically speaking, but it definitely needs it, along with a way to know if it’s a good picture or not before you go through all the effort of going to the library and plugging in the camera. I love the idea — just make the idea work better.

I’d also change the “deleted paper” storyline and go a little more destructive — give the computer an awful virus instead. Sure, her paper is backed up (in 2009, probably on a USB drive, or saved to her email or something), and she has her stuff, but that locks away all personalized notes, study sheets, etc. It’s something that would be pretty damning for a Valedictorian candidate, while also still being firmly in the realm of believability.

And on a smaller note, remove the ability to call Bess in this game. It always goes to voicemail and serves no purpose. Why even include it?

Where WAC really shines is its individualistic approach to each girl and in its permeation of Poeian themes; that’s what makes it special as a game, rather than any of its individual parts. Sometimes, you need to take a break from haunted mansions and carousels and museum thefts and marriage troubles and friends who are always in need of help – and you just need to play a game with gossip galore, hot lettuce bagels, and an actual death-bringing pendulum to round it out.

#nancy drew #clue crew #warnings at waverly academy #nancy drew games #WAC #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta #video games

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dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram · 3 years

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Good morning Ralph! I’m an attorney in the US and I saw your anon asking about the legality of vaccine requirements set by artists. I can shed some light, though probably not much and I’m going to do that annoying thing that lawyers do where we say “well it depends!” and refuse to give anyone any solid answers. But that’s really, truly, honestly, cross my heart hope to die, because in the case of the legality of vaccine requirements it does depend on a lot of different factors and we don’t have very many solid answers. This is not something anyone has ever really had to deal with before, the legal system looks to past precedent when deciding how to handle current issues, and there just isn’t much of that here. As a kind of general rule, though, the baseline we start from is the idea that private entities are free to require basically whatever they want as a prerequisite to service, and consumers are free to choose not to patronize those entities if they don’t like the requirements. An important thing to remember, that I think a lot of people tend to forget - all those handy rights the US constitution affords its citizens only apply to the government. There are limited exceptions - the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act are two of the biggest examples. But, so long as they’re complying with the guidelines provided by those limited exceptions, private entities can and always have been able to do pretty much whatever they want.

Now, vaccines are an interesting question because you start to get cross over into other issues - the right to privacy, bodily autonomy, “compulsory” disclosure of personal medical information, etc. If the question was “can an artist require me to wear a mask at his concert even though wearing a mask wasn’t required at the time I bought my ticket” the answer would unequivocally be yes. Artists and venues can (and do!) require all sorts of things for entry - you have to have a ticket, you have to submit to a bag search and go through a metal detector, you’re generally required to be wearing shoes and pants and a shirt. Masks absolutely can be added as a requirement, at any time, and whether or not it was a requirement that you reasonably could have anticipated when you bought the ticket doesn’t matter. But vaccines feel a little different, and admittedly they are. A mask is, in essence, a piece of clothing for your face. You wear it for a few hours, you take it off, you go about your life. It’s a temporary measure. Vaccines are not. A vaccine is a medical treatment, once you’ve gotten it you can’t “take it off” or decide you don’t want it anymore. It just feels like there should be a higher level of scrutiny than just “if you don’t like the requirement don’t support the entity.” But there really isn’t. That old idea that a private entity can set pretty much whatever rules and restrictions for access to and use of their private property stands. That tenant is arguably strengthened when the issue involves public health risks, because an employer has a duty to protect their employees and customers.

The EEOC ruled in May that companies can legally require their employees to be vaccinated. There are no federal laws preventing an employer from requiring employees to provide proof of vaccination, that information just has to be kept confidential. If there is a disability or sincerely held religious belief preventing an employee from being vaccinated they are entitled to a “reasonable accommodation” that does not pose an “undue burden” on the business. This isn’t a 1:1 comparison to your anon’s question about whether or not artists can require vaccination of concert attendees, but it is really useful guidance, because it’s a statement about what is and isn’t appropriate re: vaccine requirements straight from the mouth of one of the biggest federal players in the game. If, for example, a bunch of maroon five fans decided to sue the ban for their vaccine requirements, the EEOC decision is something judges and lawyers would look at in evaluating the suit.

HIPAA is the big one that a lot of people like to cite as protecting them from being asked about vaccination status by businesses or employers, but that’s just entirely untrue. HIPAA prevents a specific list of entities - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. - from disclosing medical data about a patient in their care. Event venues, artists, employers - none of them fall into the category of a “covered entity” that has to abide by HIPAA requirements. And even then, there’s an argument to be made that HIPAA still wouldn’t prevent them from asking if you’re vaccinated and refusing you entry if you’re not, just that they can’t turn around and tell someone else what your vaccination status is.

So on a high level the answer is yes, artists can absolutely require vaccination of concert attendees. Full stop.

But that’s only taking into account federal laws. There are state laws at play too, and those are absolute mess. It feels like each state is handling their approach to vaccine requirements differently, and a lot of them conflict with the federal laws at play. While in theory federal laws should trump state laws, that’s not really true in practice, and a lot of people who are much smarter than me are still struggling with how to navigate that maze, so I’m not going to bother adding my two cents about how I think it should go. From a fact based standpoint, though, know that state laws are an issue and add even more “it depends on ____” factors to our already uncertain analysis. Texas, Arkansas, and Florida, for example, all have laws prohibiting businesses and governmental entities from requiring digital proof of vaccination. Whether or not these laws will withstand judicial scrutiny in the places they conflict with federal law remains tbd, but as it stands now an artist playing a show in Texas couldn’t require vaccines for entry to that show. But if their tour stop is, say, Indiana, they could require vaccines there, because Indiana state law only prevents governmental and quasi-governmental entities (schools) from requiring vaccines. Private entities can do whatever they want.

The final thing I want to touch on is your anon’s concern that the vaccine requirement wasn’t in place when the tickets were originally bought. It doesn’t matter. If the question is “can an artist require vaccines” the answer is “yes” and whether or not that requirement was in place when you bought your ticket doesn’t matter. BUT! As with everything else, there are exceptions. There might be an argument that adding a vaccine requirement is a contractual violation, if we were to imagine the exchange of ticket purchase for entertainment a contract between the buyer and the artist. There’s maybe an argument that you paid for a service you’re no longer getting because the circumstances under which the service will be provided has changed so drastically. These are issues that if someone wanted answers to they’d have to hire an attorney to file a civil suit against the artist, and then see the litigation through to get a ruling from a judge. To the best of my knowledge that hasn’t been done. But even if it is is done in the future, the answer to the overarching question “can an artist require vaccines” won’t change. All that will change is the artist will be required to come up with some sort of refund scheme for those who choose not to be vaccinated.

Anyway! I didn’t mean to write an entire treatise in your inbox. I saw the anon’s question and immediately went “oh interesting! I know a little bit about that” and, as per usual, a little bit has turned into a rambling lecture that I’m not actually sure anyone will even learn anything from. At the very least it might entertain you.

Xoxo, a US attorney who really needs to go do work someone will pay her for and stop theorizing about the interplay of federal vs state laws.

Thanks anon! That's all very interesting and relevant information. It gives a really good sense of how complex the situation is and the relevant dynamics in play. And also a good sense of what the law does and doesn't cover - because there's a whole practical side of this that is largely

I'll throw in one more thought. One of my concerns about vaccine passports are the equity issues. Existing issues of access to healthcare have played out in vaccine rates and that's true of both race and class everywhere that I have looked at. I don't think vaccines can be considered meaningfullly accessible if poor people and black people aren't accessing them. In general, the best answers to that will be resourcing to take vaccines to where people are and (and the situation for native americans really undscores this) and paid sick leave. But while vaccination rates are lowest for those who face most marginalisation, restricting access to society on the basis of a vaccination is discriminatory in a serious way.

#I can be persuaded on vaccine requirements #in specific contexts #But I do take the privacy and equity issues seriously #which is why I think any justification has to be full and accurate about risk #but also I am not the US legal system

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nathjonesey-75 · 3 years

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ALL DAY HE DREAMS: A WORK IN PROGRESS

At a time of social bewilderment, where “normality” is a type of social holy grail, or at least – an unfamiliar place in 2021 – it would be a completely understandable idea for people to reconsider their lives’ paths. Eighteen months of standstill, stops and starts, redundancies, insecurities, questions and of course – deaths, it’s been a surreal time at best; a succubus of personal security and life, at worst.

It has, for me in many ways been an awakening. Not in any way a thrifty time, but as time can be cruel, it can also heal and return losses somewhat. So (if anyone did pick up on the title’s play on words), when I was diagnosed with ADHD in June; after many years of dealing, coping with mental health challenges, plus the old thing of getting older – it was not a shock, but almost a relief at first. A lifetime of questions – within myself, about myself and my own psyche, could possibly have relevant answers. Finally.

When I was referred in 2013 to a quack in Melbourne, from my own request – I then wanted to know if I had any Attention Deficit Disorder. I’ve never been a hyperactive person, but until recently, the public at large would instantly tie ADHD with a hyperactive personality. Not so. Having to accept that I suffered from depression from that diagnosis eight years ago was a learning curve, but also an aid to understanding so much about mental health. Until late last year, my wife was sent a link to newer findings about the condition. Findings more specific and more explanatory about traits in those with the condition – and of course, the rundown of those traits meant that – yes, you’ve guessed it – yours truly ticked all of those boxes.

Those questions about myself – harking back as far as early teenage, how I managed to go from expected A student to “you’ll never amount to anything” in the space of a year or two (that was my old form tutor, the quirky Miss Hutchins who told me the latter) – struggling to find any interest in anything at school is a very common teenage characteristic, so it was typically pinned to me being a disruptive little hormonal bugger.

Yet even my only interest at school – sport, or particularly football and rugby – I never really enjoyed the physical training part, just the playing part. This became more prevalent as I aged. But back then, no-one knew. Or even in my twenties when I wanted to do nothing more than get lost in partying but had no clue how to deal with my emotions, instincts and feelings which I tried incredibly hard to comprehend.

What this diagnosis this year did – was open up a whole new hormonal can of worms. At the age of forty-six, even after years and stints of counselling, the process of being examined was a completely unexpected mental probe. I’ve opened up to three or four counsellors in the last eight years in Melbourne and London. Yet, having to revisit dark patches of memory and having to ask my parents (who naturally were defensive and sceptical of me having ADHD) – was like having a vivid, randomly repeating slideshow of my whole life. The highs, the lows, the places, the people. Everything. Most surprisingly, during my consultation in June, the doctor informed me – only a few minutes into the interview that he would likely diagnose me with ADHD. The consultation was to check if I had any other conditions. At the end, there was “no hesitation” in my diagnosis. The difficulty since has been buried memories – chunks of mind which need not have been summoned, returning during a busy changing time in my life.

Another big, surprising element which emanates from me being a big bag of bizarre, mixed ingredients is what the doctors call a “superpower”. This is a comforting verb, so just humour me – I may be messed up, but I’m hopefully not nasty messed up! While I find paying attention for prolonged periods difficult or off-putting, the flip side is that I can “hyperfocus” on things which I like to focus upon. Music and DJing makes that category. While I recovered from a near-death accident due to partying on my twenty-second birthday, I taught myself to DJ. For many years I was a sucker for the party side of DJing, until sacrificing that whole part of my life for the wrong reasons and becoming a primary school teacher. However, as the old adage says, “ if you love something – set it free.”

In re-finding my way over the last decade – my passion and love returned. Yet this time, added ingredients came along – belief and purpose. One huge negative side of ADHD is that it can strip people of self-confidence. I was never ready to professionally DJ, twenty years ago when I became a full-time DJ. No street savvy, I was too anxious and scared of failure to take big steps. Plenty of ideas and ability, but never could let them flourish – along with growing through the age that DJing was still not widely accepted as a career. But the hyperfocus gives me special tricks which would probably annoy the living bejesus out of most. Like being able to listen to techno, or high-tempo music at any time of day. I know that because it happens at home now.

The fact I did get to finals of DJ competitions and play to large dancefloors back then in the early 2000s – when I wasn’t that switched on has to hold some significance for me. The fact I’ve always been a late starter in life is something has always been accepted. The fact that lockdown has given people time to consider their own paths is something I have grabbed with both arms and embraced. The fact I told my mother at the age of four – when my grandmother used to buy me singles – that I wanted to be a DJ when I became grown-up (when that growing up part happens - is still undisclosed) is a nice thought, along with the fact that my birth certificate was verified by one D.J. Dance (not a lie!). All the years of dark thoughts, feelings of uselessness, no worth or reasons for existing can be overturned. While I certainly don’t forecast I’ll be headlining festivals or club nights with big DJ names in the next twelve months (more so with the tenuous nature of the industry this year) – I also embrace the DIY nature of music and creativity. What you put in; you get back. In the past eighteen months, I’ve spoken to - and interviewed a handful of very globally respected DJs and producers, who all work jobs and would love to live comfortably as full-time performers, but cannot. This is the state of play in 2021.

So, the daydreaming I’ve always been guilty of – could now be turned to ideas. Work in progress. For someone who has held so many different jobs but not one ideal paid position – this one may be taking forever, but like good wine or whisky – becomes more valuable with age. As I mentioned in jest to one of my industry heroes on Facebook a few months ago – Steve Parry (whose skills I’ll be dancing to next weekend, incidentally), while he posted about never being too old to succeed – I joked that my first album of remixes would arrive when I am sixty. Maybe there was more substance in that statement, than I first realised.

#adhd #attention deficit hyperactivity disorder #mental health #depression #anxiety #suicide #suicide prevention #DJ #DJ Life #creativity #work #music #Mixing #ADHD Awareness Month #ADHD Brain #ADHD UK #Neurodiversity #Live Music

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sojourner-between-worlds · 3 years

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Why the Idea of Disabled Jesus is Heretical

(Or, at best, a gross misinterpretation of Scripture. But really, it's heresy.)

@aspiringautistic asked on this post from my side blog: "what would be so harmful if there were people who perceived jesus as disabled?" and I am happy to oblige in expanding on those thoughts (though since the answer has little to do with autism and everything to do with Christianity in general, I thought it more appropriate to answer here on main). In case you hadn't prior seen the linked post and don't feel like clicking through, the short of it is this: the Gospel Coalition recently published an article in which the author, Andrew Abernethy, argued that Jesus was disabled. I'm here to tell you where he went wrong.

Hold on to your hats, folks. This is a long post.

(All Scripture quotations taken from the ESV translation.)

1. Disabilities are a result of the Fall. Before I get into anything else, I need to make this point abundantly clear. While being disabled does not dictate worth and it is not an indication of personal sin, it is still not how we are meant to be. Adam and Eve were created in the likeness of God, and were, therefore, created without sin or any of the things that came with sin. They were perfect -- at least until they disobeyed (Genesis 2-3). Sometimes people ask "if there is a God, why do bad things happen?" and the answer is because we live in a sin-cursed world. Disabilities, illness, and death itself exist because Adam and Eve sinned. (Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.")

2. Old Testament laws regarding sacrifices. The Old Testament Law is very specific when talking about what makes an acceptable sacrifice. There are a lot of different types (everything from bulls to grain), but the relevant ones to this discussion are sacrifices made for the atonement of sins.

There are two categories of sacrifices made for sin: sin offerings made for unintentional sins, and burnt offerings made for sin in general. Burnt offerings and sin offerings both ranged from bulls to doves (or flour for the latter, if nothing else could be afforded) and sin offerings varied depending on both the person and the sin as well (Leviticus 1, 4-5). But all of the animals sacrificed had two instructions about them in common: that they be "without blemish", and that the sinner must place their hand on the head of the animal. The difference between the two was that a sin offering was required as an act of repentance and a burnt offering was voluntary. In the case of burnt offerings, the requirements for bulls and sheep or goats are laid out very plainly: "a male without blemish" (1:3, 10).

In addition to all of this, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, one bull and two male goats would be sacrificed for the people to remove their sins (Leviticus 16; only one goat was killed; the other was sent away, symbolizing the removal of sin). Again, these animals had to be without blemish, just as all the others. The person offering the sacrifice was to place their hand on the head of the animal. The action of placing their hand was symbolic: it was a way of showing that the person's sin was being "transferred" to the animal so that the animal could take the person's place and receive the punishment for sin instead. "Without blemish" meant that it couldn't be sickly or diseased or crippled in any way. It had to be as close to perfect as was possible in a sin-cursed world because anything less than perfect had to die for its own imperfections.

Because these sacrifices could never be truly perfect, they had to be repeated, but all of this was pointing to the time when Jesus would come as the final sacrifice made for the sins of the world.

3. Jesus as the final sacrifice. If you know anything about the Christian faith, you know that this is at the heart of everything we believe. Without Jesus, there is no gospel. So here's why that matters to this discussion:

"But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:11-14, emphasis mine).

This passage in Hebrews (as well as verses preceding and following) are all about how Christ made atonement for us with His death, and how His voluntary sacrifice of Himself is superior to the OT sacrifices.

So allow me to direct your attention to the bolded phrase above: “offered himself without blemish”. If this sounds familiar, it should, since I talked extensively about this in the point above. “Without blemish” in Leviticus meant to be not crippled or disfigured or ill in any way. If this same phrase is also applied to Christ, then the same must be true. If the OT sacrifices were required to be so, why would the same not apply to the Final Sacrifice that ended the need for sacrifices to be made? It wouldn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. Not when the OT sacrifices were pointing towards Jesus; not when we have a God Who created order and purpose. Jesus had to be perfect to take our places -- and that includes being free of deformities that are a result of a sin-cursed world.

4. Isaiah 53, misinterpreted at best. This was one of Mr Abernethy’s main points, and it’s one he got disastrously wrong by reading what he wanted into Scripture (eisegesis) rather than letting Scripture say what it says (exegesis). See, the thing about interpreting prophecy is that you have to be careful how you do it, and, just like all Scripture, make sure it’s within the proper context.

In the case of this chapter of Isaiah, the wider context is that it’s a prediction of Jesus’ suffering on earth and His death. One of the verses he tries to pass off about Jesus being ugly or deformed is the second part of verse 3: “and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” The problem is, this verse and one directly after it are not about his physical appearance at all. They are about emotions and grief: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted” (vs. 3-4, emphasis mine). This is about Him bearing our burdens and our rejection of Him anyway. This is a parallel that continues as the chapter moves forward.

There is only one physical description in this passage that is not related to His death, and it’s the second part of verse 2: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” And this is the only point that Mr Abernethy got correct: Jesus wasn’t the Hollywood definition of drop-dead gorgeous. He looked like your average Joe. In order to not be conventionally beautiful/handsome, that does not dictate that a person must be deformed or “ugly” in any way. The only thing this verse means is that he didn’t stand out from the crowd with His looks. He didn’t look the way they thought their Savior should. That’s it. That’s all it means.

5. Tradition isn't truth (no matter how much anyone wants it to be). I have to admit, adding in a section about a so-called “tradition” that’s nigh on impossible to find anything about was brilliant. The average person wouldn’t even bother looking in the first place, and most people who would look, would give up after five or ten minutes of searching. I spent an hour and found exactly nothing on this “tradition” of Jesus being a leper. So you just... have to take Abernethy’s word for it.

Aside from not being able to find anything on it myself, the argument he uses is faulty anyway. Because tradition doesn’t equal truth, in the first place, especially a tradition that didn’t pop up until the 16th century. There’s no basis for something that apparently wasn’t known until 1400 years after His death.

Aside from that, he calls on Jerome’s Latin translation of Isaiah 53:4 that translates a phrase as “he was like a leper.” First of all, “like a leper” does not mean He actually was a leper. C’mon, man. Any fifth grader in America could tell you that similes are used for comparisons and aren’t literal.

Second of all, if you’d like to make a point, it’s a much better idea to go back to the Hebrew manuscripts rather than to any one translation. Now, I don’t know Hebrew myself, but I do have access to a little thing called the Internet, where you can find a plethora of commentaries from people who do know Hebrew. For this particular problem, I went to Albert Barne’s Notes on the Whole Bible. I’m not going to put his whole notes here (because there’s a lot), but if you’d like to read all of his notes, you can search the verse on studylight.org and use the ‘jump to’ feature under the verse to find him, but the bottom line of his notes on it are this: Jesus wasn’t literally being rightfully punished like the Jews would incorrectly think; leprosy was used here as an example because it was seen as a divine punishment for sin. It has nothing to do with literal leprosy at all.

And to top off this cake of incorrectness... well, has he even read the New Testament? If Jesus had had leprosy, He: a. wouldn’t have been allowed in temples or synagogues, b. wouldn’t have been allowed in towns period, and c. wouldn’t have been nailed to a cross because no one would have risked touching Him in order to do so. Abernethy shouldn’t have even brought this up in his argument, it’s so far off base, and no artist in the 16th century should have painted a painting of a leprous Jesus nailed to the cross because, quite simply, it never would have happened.

6. Jesus relates to us -- but not in the ways Mr Abernethy says. While he never cites any Scripture on this, I’m pretty sure I know where this idea came from. In his article, he states that in order for Jesus to have related to the disabled, He had to be disabled Himself. Since He relates to us, then He must have been disabled.

First of all, the logical fallacy of this statement is this: if He must be disabled to relate to the disabled, then can the abled still relate to Him? The answer to that, of course, would be no, because if He wasn’t abled then He can’t relate to the abled in the same way that Abernethy asserts that He can’t relate to the disabled without being disabled. It’s one of those things where you can’t have it both ways. Another example of how this logic falls short is pregnancy. Can Jesus not relate to pregnant people because He Himself was never in such a state? And the rabbit hole just gets deeper from there: Can He relate specifically to the blind when He was never blind? How about the deaf or hard of hearing? Or people missing limbs, either from birth or through amputation? All disabilities are different, and experiencing one doesn’t mean you understand them all, so by Abernethy’s logic, Jesus had to experience all of them. Do you see how ridiculous Abernethy’s logic here is yet?

Second of all, Abernethy is, once again, taking Scripture entirely out of context -- if, indeed, he got this idea from Scripture at all. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” The problem with trying to use this verse as proof is, obviously, that it’s talking about temptations (Matthew 4:1-11), not lived experiences. If he was, again, referencing Isaiah 53 -- well, that doesn’t work either, because, again, that is in reference to His death and the sins He bore for us on the cross. The fact of the matter is, there are no Scriptures to back up the idea that He had to personally experience everything we do in order for Him to understand our pain and suffering.

The source of this heresy is the same as many heresies, actually: People want to make Jesus into something He's not. I listened to a podcast recently where the host was talking about a couple of heretics, and while I don't remember the heretic's name, he said that to him, Jesus was Latinx because he himself is Latinx. Except that, ya know, Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew. It's the same fallacy to say that Jesus was disabled. Everyone wants Jesus -- and God, for that matter -- to be something He's not, rather than for Him to be what Scripture tells us He is, but you can't force God into the box you've carved for Him. He is who He is, no matter how much you want Him to be something different.

There's no getting around it: to make Him out to be anything other than what Scripture tells us He is -- especially when it contradicts Scripture, is heresy.

#christianity #for the record please ask questions #I'm happy to clarify #also don't just take MY word for any of this either #I am but a fallible human myself #and it's good to question what other people say #sorry this answer took so long #I wanted to be thorough

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philologer-mosaic · 4 years

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Hey! Fellow writer here! I was curious as to how you learn to write characters and /keep/ them in character without it being overly stereotypical or stiff? I've read your work and I'd love to learn from you ;^;

Hi! Glad to meet you, and wow, I am so flattered to be asked this. Happy to help out a fellow writer, and I’m always down for rambling about writing-related stuff! I’m not sure how helpful some of this will turn out to be, but here goes.

I’m not sure if you’re asking about characterisation in general including crafting OCs or specifically about writing canon characters, and a lot of this advice will be relevant to both, but I will say this straight off: I’ve seen a fair amount of quibbling about how fanfiction won’t teach you how to worldbuild and maybe that’s true, but there is nothing like writing fanfiction for teaching yourself how to craft character voices. Especially when your source material is a movie/ TV show/ whatever definition RWBY falls under. So: rewatch! Pay attention to all the little details. What turns of phrase do they use? How do they stand, how do they move? What’s their usual emotional range? Pick a line they speak, think about what descriptors you’d use to get across their tone of voice or their emotional state if you were writing the scene in a fic. When you’re writing new dialogue for them, try to hear it in the actor’s voice (if that’s a way your imagination works; some people don’t have great auditory imaginations. Mine can be kind of hit and miss!).

Rest of this advice is going under a cut, because this got looong!

With canon characters: start from what you know, then extrapolate. Especially with characters we don’t see all that much of, boil them down to a handful of personality traits/ ways-they-present-themself first, then consider what might underly them. And in reverse: take the things we know about their status and backstory, consider what that implies about them as a person.

So, Clover: I think I boiled him down to ‘confident, friendly, professional’, and what’s underlying ‘confidence’ is really obviously his semblance: he’s never had to hesitate about anything, he always knows he can rely on himself. So in his internal monologue, he’s not going to second-guess his decisions. He calls Qrow out on deflecting compliments, so he’s good at reading people and also wants to help them; I assume that applies more broadly than just to Qrow. He’s leader of Ironwood’s flagship team of Specialists, and semblance or not I made the assumption he didn’t get there without working for it [that is an assumption, though! People less inclined to think well of Clover will make a different assumption, in-universe as well as out, and how he responds to that is also something to consider], so he’s got to be smart, dedicated, a good tactician, a good leader. And building from that: he’s smart and perceptive but we know he’s also loyal to the bitter end (very bitter); what sort of personality can we project that reconciles those two, what sort of person would respond like that? What I went with is that he trusts the system because he understands enough pieces of how/why it works that he trusts the bits he doesn’t understand are also created with the best interests of the people at heart. (Even when that’s really not true.) So then that’s a consistent philosophy-like thing that underlies a lot of how I write him: he understands the reasons for a lot of why things are how they are and then assumes the best of all the rest.

– This looks like a lot, now I’ve written it out. I thought all this out while working on the early chapters but I never put it some of it into words really. In coming up with the plot or story idea you’ll have made plenty of these assumptions and extrapolations already. Take a second look at them; take them further, find places to link them together or pit them against each other.

And remember, these are your interpretations. There’s not a right or wrong way to flesh these out. Work with semi-canon stuff like the mangas or discard it as you wish; follow fanon or argue with it or throw it out entirely. I interpreted Yang as ‘normal outgoing teenage girl in a non-homophobic world’ and wrote her as having dated people from Signal before she got to Beacon; the other day I came across a tumblr post interpreting her as “a rural lesbian”, by which standard she definitely didn’t have any romantic experience before canon; they’re both entirely plausible takes! Where we don’t know stuff for sure, slot in whatever your story needs, or whatever you think seems interesting. I settled on Clover’s backstory for Soldier, Spy mostly by going ‘ok, what’s an interesting way to contrast him with Qrow?’ And in some of my other fic ideas, he’s different.

Limited third person perspective (or first person, if you can pull if off) is the best for dropping in characterisation smoothly. Though I’m probably biased because I love it so much. Omniscient third person POV is when the narration’s impartial and uninvolved, and skips between person A’s thoughts and person B’s thoughts and pure description of what’s happening, objectively speaking; limited third person is – when the camera’s always over one person’s shoulder in a given scene. It’s less close in than first person, but we get the POV character’s thoughts and no others, we only see/notice what they notice and pay attention to, descriptions are coloured by the way the POV character thinks about the world. I don’t want to be setting you homework, but, a neat writing exercise, if you want it: pick an object, place or person, and consider how two different characters would see it differently. Write those two descriptions. For fun, pick something that at least one of the characters is going to really look down on or dislike parts of! (Qrow’s snark is so much fun.)

This is cynical, but: people lie to themselves a lot. When you put yourself into a character’s head, they’re going to be telling themself a narrative in which what they’re doing is the best thing to do and makes them a good person. (With a few exceptions, the big ones being depression- and anxiety-brain, which instead do their best to convince you you’re the worst.) Get your characters to justify themselves to you.

Goals, motivations, priorities. It feels like a massive oversight to write about how to characters and leave that one out, but honestly I can’t think of anything I can say here that hasn’t been covered better by tons of other writing advice. [Incidentally: https://www.writersdigest.com/ . Subscribe to their email newsletter, it’s free, they will try to get you to buy their how-to courses but there’s no need to, the website has all kinds of articles about the craft and details of writing and the newsletter will send you all the new ones plus curated picks of what’s already there. And also: https://springhole.net/writing/index.html . There’s some stuff specific to fanfic in there, and also general writing advice.] Just: keep it in mind.

Related to that, but a separate thing and one that I haven’t seen other writing advice talk about so much: how does the character try to achieve their goals? What are their skills and resources? And more than that, what’s their preferred approach? In the simplest terms. It’s a matter of mindset, and what options they see as available to them. So the things I would keep in mind for this are: Who’s got social skills/ is good at thinking in social terms, and who isn’t/doesn’t? (Not just interpersonally speaking. James “not really concerned about my reputation” Ironwood is a good example of a character who always thinks in terms of hard power over soft power; even when public opinion is an important strategic consideration he only thinks about it in the broadest and most simplified strokes.) Who would rather work within the system, and who prefers to do an end-run around it? (That doesn’t have to correlate with who’s actually got power, though obviously there are trends. I’m writing Clover as tending to take charge even when he officially shouldn’t because he’s more concerned with solving the problem than with rank, and that’s a case of circumventing the system, it’s one of the things he’s got in common with Qrow.) Who’s more analytical about their approach and what they’re trying to do (which means their failure mode is overthinking and decision paralysis) and who reacts with their gut instinct (which means their failure mode is getting in over their head)?

… I could talk about this one at length. There’s a whole framework I use to categorise characters in this way (I came across it in, of all things, the flavourtext of a supplement to an RPG no one’s ever heard of and it just stuck with me, and I’ve made it my own in the years since) and I could go into all sorts of detail about how it works/ what it means. But I think this is enough to be getting on with, on that topic. If you want to know more, send me another ask? But no one else talks about this thing in writing advice, it might be completely orthogonal to the writing process of anyone but me.

So! Related to the topic of characters’ skillsets, a really great tip I can’t remember where I picked up: how do you write someone who’s smarter/wittier/better at tactics than you? Spend minutes or hours turning something over in your head that the character is going to come up with in seconds. The great advantage of writing: it’s so much easier to be eloquent when you’ve got time to think. [If you had asked me this question in person you would have got ‘i don’t know?’ and then half an hour later I would have thought of half of this stuff and kicked myself. A week and change later, you’re getting the other half too :p ]

And lastly: you said you were worried about your writing getting “overly stereotypical”. And my immediate response to that was stereotypes bad, yes, but archetypes great. The difference being: stereotypes are lazy and offensive writing that let ‘membership of a social category’ stand in for ‘actual characterisation’ and if you’re asking for advice on characterisation you’re obviously too thoughtful to commit them; archetypes are pre-made sketched-out personalities that you can take as your own and flesh out into your own thing. Tropes are tools. No one ever said ‘They were roommates? Ugh, how unoriginal’. By the same token, ‘lone wolf who pretends he’s fine and doesn’t dare trust anyone no matter how much he secretly wants to’ is a fantastic trope that exists for good reason, the CRWBY used it for good reason, and when we found out Qrow’s semblance I went yes please I will have some of all that angst and then laughed at myself because when it comes to fictional characters I have A Type. I’m pretty sure I’ve never written the exact scenario ‘pushes themself way too hard and passes out, wakes up in unexpected safety and immediately condemns themself for not sticking it out longer’ before the opening of Soldier, Spy, but I know I’ve come up with plenty of things that were like it, and if they’d made it to a state of publication you’d be able to see that.

It’s like artists using references. Just because they looked up how to draw that hand and that pose doesn’t mean the final product’s not their own. There’s no reason not to start with your ideas of the character (no matter how ‘stereotypical’ they feel) or a collection of traits you’ve grabbed from other characters that seem like they’d fit – or, for OCs, an MBTI type or a roleplaying class/background combo or one of these or some other personality type you feel like you can find your way around the basics of – and just take it from there. When you start writing/outlining/daydreaming-about-ideas you’ll run into scenarios/setups you can’t copy across from but you can see what responses might come up, and that’s how the template becomes your own unique iteration of it.

… Because really all writing advice does come down to: just write. In your head or on the page, try things out, see what works, see how it goes. I’ve been doing this a long time; most of it never made it to words on a page, let alone to the internet at large. Read across genres, read things people write about themselves and how they live and think and feel, and just – go for it.

I hope this helps! Once again, I was really glad to be asked; feel free to ask me to elaborate on any of this, or about anything else you want advice about. I wish you all the best in your future writing!

#writing #my thoughts #posting into a void

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maxsmusicmacrology · 4 years

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Album Analysis: Best of Crush 40

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

Children’s media! I’m of the opinion that there are two main categories that children’s media can fall into: there’s media that is specifically made for children, like Blue’s Clues or Peppa Pig or those licensed Sesame Street games. Then there’s kid-friendly media that, while made for and marketed towards children, can still appeal to adults. This would be most Pixar movies, shows like Phineas and Ferb, and the object of today’s article, the Sonic franchise.

While there’s some pretty huge differences between children’s media and kid-friendly media, one thing they both have in common is the goal of teaching children a moral lesson. With varying degrees of success. This can be something simple like “stealing is bad”, but oftentimes there’s some greater nuance, like how the protagonist of Inside Out learns to value sadness and other “negative” emotions. But when working with hardware that has some intense limitations, like the NES or Sega Genesis, telling a complex story isn’t easy, which is why Save the Princess plots (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, the opening to Final Fantasy) were so common: it allowed for a moral hero without requiring any deeper discussion. Sonic the Hedgehog went with a bit more of an environmentalist message- saving animals from an evil scientist- which was easy enough to portray in only 16 bits.

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I’m going to review this album out of order. This is a “Best of” album, so rather than being a picture of the band’s musical vision at any given time, it contains some of their best work from over a decade-long span. What I’m especially interested in is how the music interacts with its respective game and how it evolves with the franchise, so let’s take a look at song #15 first.

Open Your Heart kicks off Sonic Adventure with a bang. It’s the first thing you hear when you boot the game up and it accompanies the final battle. Well, most of it, anyway- part 1 of the battle gets Open Your Heart and part 2 gets generic “tense orchestral music”, which is a flat-out awful decision, but I digress. Tonally, it’s perfect- it starts out tense, preparing you for the fight ahead, and then the guitars kick in to pull you forward. But more importantly… this is why I brought up the moral conflict earlier. The story is simple, so the game leans on the song to deliver its message.

Much of the lyrics are as relevant today as they probably were for most of human history: the quieter intro bit describes various catastrophes, and describes the fear and confusion that follows (much like the one we’ve been living in for the past few months). The song’s chorus is built around a dialectic: Can’t hold on much longer/but I will never let go, but then ends with Open your heart, it’s gonna be alright. Together, these components combine the fear of catastrophe with the innate desire to make things better. It instills the idea that it’s okay to have conflicting feelings about a course of action, then promises that your heart will make the right choice.

Live and Learn is the main theme of the direct sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, and fills the same roles as Open Your Heart. The opening riff plays when the game is launched, the full song plays over the final battle, and it delivers the moral lesson of the game. If Open Your Heart introduces a lesson about conflict, then Live and Learn teaches you what to do when you’ve made the wrong choice. What happens if you trust the wrong people, stay when you should’ve run or run when you should’ve stayed, let something important fall into the wrong hands?

The very title of the song hints at its message- you learn from your mistakes and do better- but to me the line that really hits comes in the second verse. But you can’t save your sorrows/you’ve paid in trade. It recontextualizes all the regret someone feels from a mistake as a sort of currency: it’s not to be saved, kept in your mind and dwelled on- you’ve exchanged it, traded it for valuable life experience. If you focus on the mistake instead of the lesson, you’ll never grow, and it’ll all have been a waste. Not only is it a natural progression from the last song, it’s an absolute banger of a track.

Next up is Sonic Heroes, the intro track to… Sonic Heroes. That won’t be confusing. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, it’s not the big moral apex of the game and it’s much more of a title theme than the song the game wants you to walk away from. It’s goofy as hell to listen to, but it always puts a smile on my face.

What I’m Made of is the final battle theme to Sonic Heroes and is, in my opinion, the finale of the Open Your Heart trilogy. Looking at the three songs is a sort of rudimentary 3-act structure: you have the introduction and first conflict, the dark part at the end of act 2, and the triumphant closer. The protagonist takes the lesson they learned through the story and uses it to defeat their opponent. What I have in my two hands is enough to set me free. Use the lessons you’ve learned through hardship to better yourself. The songs form a very nice trilogy when viewed like this that parallels the games quite nicely, and I’m confused as to why they’re all out of order on the album.

That finishes off the Adventure and Heroes saga, and now onto… Shadow the Hedgehog… god. I Am… All of Me is the opening track to the game and also the first song on the album, and it’s so goofy. It tries to be all dark and intimidating because Shadow is the dark and edgy character, who has guns and says “damn” because he has a tragic backstory, and the character isn’t edgy because he’s a cartoon hedgehog and and the song isn’t edgy because it’s a song about a cartoon hedgehog.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, mind you. I enjoy it, and in a way it’s a perfect fit for the game. It’s like a kid wearing a vampire costume on halloween: they can try to scare you all they want, but the worst they can do is make you smile.

All Hail Shadow is the next Shadow the Hedgehog piece. This one was originally by a group called Magna-Fi, and was covered by Crush 40 for use in later games when the band broke up. Shadow the Hedgehog features multiple paths and multiple endings, and this is the “true hero” ending when the player makes all the heroic choices. This song does a good job painting Shadow as Sonic’s foil: both of them are heroes from this point forward, but while Sonic is more of a classical hero, Shadow is an anti-hero. Somewhere in chaos we all find ourselves/this destruction is the only tale we tell. The game features Shadow trying to recover his memories and find his true self, figure out who he really is, and this is the song that has him rediscover himself as a hero.

Finally, Never Turn Back is the true ending theme for the game, and the last Shadow the Hedgehog song in the album. This is the “moral lesson” song I’ve been on about so much, and it’s a damn good one. It starts with a slow cover that samples I am… All of Me, then it gets a powerful kick that rings in the rest of the song. The message in the song is similar to Live and Learn about not repeating mistakes, but Never Turn Back gives a sense of a much more arduous period in one’s life. If Live and Learn is about recovering from a mistake, Never Turn Back is about recovering from a long series of them. It’s been a long rough road but I’m finally here/Move an inch forward, feels like a year. It’s very much about cutting yourself free of a bad period in your life and how difficult it can be to even stay put, but the positive vibe of the song reminds us to celebrate the small victories. It’s a bit more mature of a message for a game that… at least tried to be more mature.

I haven’t talked a whole lot about how the music interacts with the events of the game partially because this is a music review, but partially because it’s gone perfectly hand and hand with the music so far. There hasn’t been much dissonance between “rock music that gives life advice” and “young-ish hedgehog learning how to live life”. That’s about to change, though, because it’s time for Sonic 06. At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic declared that he was no one special, “just a guy who loves adventure”. This is when that ceased to be true.

The first three songs we discussed weren’t about Sonic. The singer was a nameless narrator occasionally fighting a nameless opponent. They were relevant to the series, but they could be about anyone. That’s what made them so versatile. His World is the main theme of Sonic 06, and where the other 2 versions of the song existed more to hype up Sonic as a character, the Crush 40 cover was more about the events of the game. As a song, it’s pretty good: it’s a more intense version of the original song, and it’s got a slower but steadier pace to it. But here’s what sets it apart from the other main themes: it’s about Sonic. It’s not a lesson about facing conflict and overcoming adversity wrapped up in an upbeat rock song, it’s about the events of the game and how awesome Sonic is. He isn’t the everyman anymore, he’s an important figure, a chosen one to save the world from this point forward. The music reflects that.

To really drive home this new direction they were going, Sega released two games for the Wii called “Sonic Storybook” games, where Sonic would become the main character of two classic stories: Arabian Nights and the legend of King Arthur. They’re both terrible in… just about every aspect, but the first entry Sonic and the Secret Rings is godawful. The main theme Seven Rings in Hand wasn’t written or originally performed by Crush 40, but for some reason they decided to cover it for their album, so I have to talk about it: it’s trash. It’s a bunch of empty lyrics about nothing with some pretty subpar mixing.

While Sonic and the Black Knight isn’t much better, it at least has a killer main theme. Knight of the Wind as a song is pretty badass, but it suffers the same issues as His World. There’s no more important meaning, it’s just about Sonic being a knight and saving people. It has a few familiar “never give up” themes, but it doesn’t do anything as well as Open Your Heart or Live and Learn. It falls into the Sonic Heroes mold where it’s fun to listen to and less fun to really take apart and analyze. The ending theme (which strangely precedes Knight of the Wind) Live Life samples Knight of the Wind, but that’s pretty much the coolest thing it does. It’s slow and pensive, making a sense of faux-thoughtfulness to cover mostly shallow lyrics.

With Me (Massive Power Mix) is the last Sonic and the Black Knight theme here, and was originally written by Crush 40 and performed by singers from the band “All Ends”. The album features a version performed by the band itself, and the song is unique in that it’s sung from the POV of the game’s villain. As a result, it features a look into a character who walked a “dark path”, weighed down by the mistakes they made. Don’t blame [me] for what I have become. It’s an ideological clash against the values in the other songs, arguing that anyone can be tempted to become evil. It’s deeper than anything in the game, but it’s shockingly good considering its source material.

That does it for the main series themes, but there’s a few others on here- a couple tracks for the racing games, an oddly placed cover of Fire Woman, and a too-slow ballad-sounding original song called Is It You. However, I think I’ve gone on long enough, and I’ve discussed everything I wanted to: how the songs showcased on this album elevate the messages given in the games.

Ultimately, all these songs are mirrors of the game they’re in, for better or worse. For that, I have to applaud the band’s versatility- even if most of the songs are the same genre, they cover a wide range of moods and messages depending on what the game demands. They can write a kick-ass guide to getting over failure or a fun little romp to introduce a game. Even divorced from their source material, many of the songs stand well on their own, and there’s a very good reason why fans of the franchise want Crush 40 to return for future installments.

Videos cited:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYxYzxFyZw Peppa Pig - Caddicarus (warning: weird shit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWYDUYqhlc&list=PL5F29F0909BF08B56&index=15 - Best of Crush 40 Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voI-9TdS0Jw - Seven Rings in Hand (Crush 40 Ver)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HrOjyltyEM - With Me (Massive Power Mix)

#children's media #sonic the hedgehog #crush 40 #album review #coming of age #rock music #upbeat music

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architectuul · 4 years

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The Winner Of This Turbulent Time Will Be The City

With Mladen Jadrić, an architect teaching and practicing in Vienna, we discussed about influences behind his practice, needs for continuous experimentation and the importance of understanding the city as a collective project.

WHA Welingergasse in Vienna by Jadric Architektur. | Photo: Pez Hejduk

You conduct planning, teaching and design activity with colleagues, students and clients from around the world. Considering that you studied and practiced architecture in Vienna since the early 1990s, would you say that the Viennese historical commitment to the development of affordable social housing influenced your worldview and your view of the architect’s role in the process of city-making?

Definitely, Glenn Murcutt was born in London but later became an Australian architect. He said once that you have to live somewhere for a long time before you are able to plan and design there. I would like to add that planning requires you to internalize and spiritually bond with certain things. What was different in the Viennese approach to planning than elsewhere in Europe? Despite many influential figures, in the last century Vienna was less a product of individual and more a product of collective design and collective spirit. The planning of the city is also a long-term democratic and transparent process that pursues long-term goals. Strategic decisions remain the responsibility of the city. The status of housing is seen as a basic human need and cannot only be regulated by the free market. The same is applies to water supply, public transportation, and public space. Today, the city with the highest quality of life worldwide largely owes its success to 100 years of continuity in designing and implementing affordable housing.

Last year, TU Vienna’s Academic Press published “At Home in Vienna: Studies of Exemplary Affordable Housing”, which you co-edited together with Dijana Alić, and in which your students have brought together a comparative analysis of 35 Viennese social housing projects built over a period of almost 100 years. The book is a great resource for anyone interested in the history of social housing. If you could choose one lesson a reader takes away from it, what would it be?

I think it would be Josef Frank and his spirit embodied by the Werkbund Housing Complex, where he broke with the idea of white modernism and advocated new pluralism in design. In his essay titled Accidentism, published 1958 in the Swedish Form Journal, he explained his perennial problem with proponents of mainstream architecture, beginning with Jugendstil and later with Modernism and the idea of the Universal Style.

Werkbund Housing (1932) by Frank was a model housing scheme in Vienna.

“What we need is variety and not stereotyped monumentality. None of us feels comfortable in an order that has been forced upon us, even if it has been doused in a sauce of beauty.” – Josef Frank, “Accidentism”, originally published in Swedish in Form 54 (1958). | Photo via Svenskt Tenn

Instead of dogmatically following the rules, he proposed that “we should design our surroundings as if they originated by chance.” He refused to use the categories like beauty or style; the living room to him was rather a product of coincidence than of beauty or harmony. His criticism, including lamenting the absence of humor in architecture, can be read not only like his rejection of exclusivity of certain esthetic values but of all elements of totalitarian societies. His credo evolution, rather than revolution, is more relevant than ever.

In your introduction to “At Home in Vienna”, I found it especially interesting that you emphasized the importance of fruitful cooperation that existed between architects and housing cooperatives in the early days of Vienna’s social housing development, at the beginning of the XX century. What do you think about architects’ involvement with the communities they design for – or design with – today?

Particularly the Involvement of architects like Adolf Loos in the Settlement Movement (Siedlerbewegung) is highly interesting because of cooperation based on three elements: the settlers, who are the laborers at the same time; the City of Vienna that provides necessary construction material and enables the whole process through its very pragmatic approach to the Movement; and architects who provide their know-how. Today, architects and their know-how are again part of the complex planning process of self-participation projects and very popular independent housing cooperatives (so called “Baugruppen”). The preparation and planning processes take much longer than the usual housing projects and mediation is essential. Involvement of architects is welcome and encouraged, whenever possible. Many communities not only in Vienna but also in smaller towns across Austria, would welcome a common platform where architects would be active as consultants and advisors, if possible. The Austrian Chamber of Architects is currently trying to install such formal and informal platforms all around Austria.

Heuberg residential area was in 1920s built in cooperation between the settlers, the City of Vienna and architects. “As members of cooperatives, settlers committed themselves to work on the construction site and workshops for brick and window production for a certain number of hours. Architects like Loos, who was also Chief Architect of the city’s settlement commission, and Frank made an important cultural contribution to ensuring the success and quality of these quarters.” | Photo via At Home in Vienna

How do teaching and planning activities feed into each other in your practice?

Teaching means permanent learning – it is essential for my work and permanent education. Interaction with my students is about ongoing sharing of knowledge, experiences, and ideas. It is common for my design studios to be organized like ideas factories, where brainstorming generates many new ideas. In the past two decades, we have created an interesting network not only in Europe, but also in Asia, Australia and South America. Recently, I initiated collaboration on a new book with experts from four continents.

In one of your interviews, you said how students must “learn to learn from reality”. What is the reality young architects are facing today? What are the most important questions they should try to answer?

We are living in the world of contradictory realities. At present, we are facing one of the biggest challenges after World War II, a pandemic we haven’t witnessed since 1918. I just came back from Australia and wrote an article about a conflict between science and politics preceding the recent bushfires. Too much precious time for decisive and extensive action had been wasted because of political inertia and slow response to the climate change. We saw a similar mindset and patterns emerging in our countries before coronavirus hit Europe like a tsunami. Some strange attitudes to the crisis, to put it mildly. We in Austria can consider ourselves lucky but we are not alone in Europe. At the end of the day, solidarity and courage must prevail over selfishness and fear.

“Teaching means permanent learning”. | Photo via Jadric Architektur

Vienna is getting ready for the International Building Exhibition 2022. What do you see as the main advantage or disadvantage in searching for new social housing models through this format?

Measured on a global scale, IBA is a very solid platform for housing projects. But, and that has little to do with sentimentality, in the 1990s people dared to do more. IBA was actually a platform for avantgarde innovation in residential construction. People were not afraid of experimenting. I’m missing the intensity of architectural discourses that were taking place in Europe at the time. I’m missing the freshness of platforms like EUROPAN, which was overrun by new pragmatism. Maybe the time is right for a new start?

Hangzhou from plans to construction. | Photo via Jadric Architektur

In recent years you have been doing extensive work in Asia, which you presented at the exhibition “OPUS ASIAE: Contributions to contemporary architecture in Asia.” How did the experience of working in Asian cities influence your architecture?

Our office has developed projects ranging from visions for new urban areas to strategic planning for community building through social housing, locations for art, public space, infrastructure projects, and exhibitions. Most of the designs are the result of open competitions. In our projects for Chinese, Korean and Japanese cities, we delivered many ideas for far-reaching changes in many Asian urban and rural areas. Cities are currently growing and provoking global urban, social and political changes. The final winner of this turbulent time will be the city again, in the end. It sounds like a provocative vision of the future, but based on all available data, the world will be dominated by megacities. In this context, the planning of socially just, environmentally friendly, and smart cities is becoming an increasingly complex goal.

Room Vertical District from the OPUS ASIAE exhibition in Polo Museale del Lazio (2019). With the accompanying book, it is a collection of projects made for Asian cities in the last five years. | Photo via Jadric Architektur

Jadric Architektur and their Korean Partner “1990uao” (Yoon Geun Ju) are chosen to realize the Seoul Photographic Art Museum after winning an international Design Competition. | Photo via Jadric Architektur Towards the end of 2019, Jadric Architektur won an international Design Competition for the Seoul Photographic Art Museum – congratulations! Apart from working on this realization, what else is your practice currently preparing?

At the present, we are like many companies around the globe affected by the current pandemic. Surprisingly, we are working rather efficiently from home offices. However, we have had to put plans for workshops and exhibitions on hold. The most important thing right now for all of us is to survive these difficult times in terms of health and economy. I also have to congratulate my colleagues in our professional association, the Chamber of Architects and Engineers, for their unselfish daily voluntary assistance to other colleagues. This is very motivating and encouraging.

Mladen Jadric is the founder and principal of Jadric Architektur. He has been teaching at the TU Wien - Faculty of Architecture and Planning and has gained extensive experience as a visiting professor in Europe, USA, Asia, Australia, and South America. His works were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, M.I.T. Cooper Union and Roger Williams University, Alvar Aalto University in Helsinki, Architectural Biennale in Venice, the World Architectural Triennial in Tokyo, Museum of the 20th Century in Berlin, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urban Planning and Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan. He has been awarded with the State Prize for Experimental Architecture, Karl Scheffel Prize and Schorsch Prize for housing by the City of Vienna as well as with the Grand Prize by the Mayor of Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea. He is chairman of the architectural section in “Künstlerhaus”, the oldest association of artists and architects in Austria and a deputy chairman of the architectural section with the Chamber of Civil Engineers of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland. --- by Sonja Dragovic

#interview

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discyours · 5 years

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Could you make a list of ur opinions?

I can try, but I never really learned how tumblr works so I don’t know how to make this an actual page on my blog. Once I do figure out how I’ll definitely link to this. I’ll go off the top of my head for most frequently asked/what I think is most relevant, but if there’s anything you’re missing feel free to ask.

Gender:

Gender is, in short, the roles that are ascribed to sex. This includes the idea that anyone who is born female is bound to be docile, caring, or even just more likely to like pink. But gender identity also falls under this. Defining a woman as someone who wants to be female is referring to something - an action, a personality trait, a feeling, a thought - beyond sex as what “makes” a woman. Gender is not fake, but it is a social construct and in my opinion it’s a harmful one. Whether deliberately created to oppress women (like is the case with women being expected to be submissive) or originated as a relative accident like with certain fashion trends, gender roles end up restricting women’s freedom. Believing in female liberation means being against, or at least critical of that.

Gender identity:

Again, falls under gender but I think it deserves its own answer. I don’t think gender identity is necessarily “fake” either. When people say that they “feel like” a woman rather than a man I don’t think that they’re lying. I may take issue with the wording just like I may expect people to be critical of their own reasoning when they explain that their gender identity is male because the idea of being a man feels right to them whereas being a woman doesn’t, but I do understand how they feel. I relate to the feeling myself and I do think that the average trans man feels differently about this than the average cis (meaning non-trans) woman, however I’m not convinced that this feeling is rigid or innate.

So I don’t think gender identity is “fake” or complete nonsense, but I don’t think it’s a particularly useful category either. There’s no reason I should be sharing bathrooms with people who have an internal sense that they should be male rather than female over people who lack the ability to use urinals and require trash cans to dispose of menstrual products. There’s no reason for me to share changing rooms with people with similar genderfeels rather than people who have similar bodies to mine and are statistically far less likely to sexually assault me than people with a different type of body.

In the context of feminism we need to recognise that sex is the category in which women are being oppressed when they suffer FGM, when they’re put into menstrual huts, when they’re denied reproductive freedom, when they’re kept out of government positions because of their unreliable, hormone driven female emotions, when they’re missing out on jobs that an equally qualified man would be accepted for because their employer doesn’t want to risk having to deal with them getting pregnant. Sex, not gender identity.

Egalitarianism:

I actually don’t get asked about this much which is a shame because I know that people are thinking it; if it’s just about wanting women to have rights then why not be an egalitarian? Why, unless you hate men and want them to be below women rather than being equal?

There’s multiple reasons. For one, feminism started as a women’s rights movement and women do not owe it to men to change that as soon as they decided they were done fully opposing it. There would be something inherently disgusting to me about denying women their own movement for their own issues regardless of where I stand on egalitarianism.

But beyond that, I oppose the idea that we just draw a line at men’s current quality of life and decide that that’s the standard women must be judged against. The idea of it is misogynistic but in practice it’s harmful too; we’ve all seen those “if you want equality then women need to join the draft” and “if we’re equal then can I punch you in the face?” statements. This form of “equality” is still just letting men control the standard for women’s lives. Is still forcing women to fit into a system built by men.

A lot of egalitarians seem hypocritically focused on equal outcome which I also disagree with. The ratio of men to women that die during physically taxing jobs is hardly any more of an issue than the ratio of men to women that die during child birth. There are biological reasons for these discrepancies (one moreso than the other, but there’s still never going to be an effective way to have a 50/50 sex split in every single job) and compensating for them for the sake of some vague concept of “equality” is pointless. The inadequacies in female-specific healthcare are a big reason to have a movement specifically for women’s rights, to have a movement that can advocate for improvement. Likewise if a lack of health and safety regulations in manual labour disproportionately affects men, that’s a good reason for a men’s rights movement to advocate for improvement (not that either of these can replace non-sexspecific advocacy groups which are also very important). I just don’t believe that women have any responsibility to merge with or be involved in men’s rights movements, considering women have historically always been oppressed by men and men still hold the majority of political as well as financial power.

Liberal feminism:

Liberal feminism is often what people refer to as mainstream feminism, but I don’t think it’s right to write off liberal feminism as a whole just because I disagree with the direction that mainstream feminism has gone. In simple terms liberal feminism is just feminism which seeks more individual freedom for women within the current system, whereas radical feminism is focused on class freedom and radically changing the system if not creating a new one altogether. I don’t fully disagree with liberal feminism and in fact I don’t believe any form of feminism that doesn’t at times utilise more liberal solutions has any way of succeeding. Getting more women into our current government without actually overhauling our political system and changing the reasons that women are kept out of government positions is liberal; I still only vote for women when I can, and encourage other people to do the same because when we’re unable to change things completely, it’s better than nothing.

The reason I lean more towards radical feminism is because I ultimately don’t find liberal solutions to be good enough. I don’t want to regulate the porn industry, I want to abolish it. I don’t believe any amount of regulation or “reclamation” can ever make the sex industry ethical and while completely eradicating it is never going to happen, having that as the end goal at least means that you never stop pushing. The same thing goes for just about all other systems which oppress women; I fundamentally disagree with liberal feminists that giving individual women more individual freedom about whether or not to participate in these systems is ever going to be good enough.

Sex work:

I don’t believe that consuming or procuring sex work (ie being a john or a pimp) can ever be ethical as I don’t believe that consent can be bought. If somebody would not have sex with you without being paid, I don’t see that as true consent. There is something inherently coercive about having to choose between not having the money you need or having sex with someone. Coerced sex is not consensual and we all know what non-consensual sex is.

There may be some people who don’t need the money but do it regardless because they enjoy it/want extra cash, especially in “milder” forms of sex work like camming or stripping. But the reality is that the vast majority of people (90% of prostitutes) who do “sex work” do not want to and would be doing something else if they had the option. Their suffering is more important to me than the enjoyment of the select few who do want to be “sex workers”, and that of the johns they “service”.

That being said, I support the Nordic model which criminalises the consumption and procurement of sex work but decriminalises actually being a sex worker. This model has been shown to reduces trafficking as it reduces demand, and it doesn’t harm sex workers (who are the ones we’re trying to protect). Sidenote, I hate the term “sex work” as it already goes along with the idea that sex can ever be a job and should be held to the same standards as one when it comes to the ethics of being indirectly coerced by a need for money - however I’ll use it when I need to to explain my stance to people who do use the term.

Surrogacy:

I view surrogacy similarly to sex work; as an unethical and unnecessary commodification of women’s bodies which puts their health and safety at risk, and is often indirectly coerced through financial needs. Viewing parenthood as being primarily about who “claims” a newborn rather than who actually carried and gave life to it is inherently patriarchal and sets a terrifying precedent. Pregnancy puts a huge strain on women’s physical as well as mental health, and ending the process with a cheque or a sincere thank you rather than a baby can be mentally devastating, even if you knew from the start that you wouldn’t keep it. It is morally inconsistent that surrogacy is often legal in places where it’s illegal to receive money for giving away an organ or your blood; policies that are in place to avoid turning the poor into a class of kidney-suppliers. The idea of consent magically justifying everything falls way short when the same concept hasn’t been applied to blood donations for aforementioned reasons, and when you’re stuck to a contract. If we’ve agreed that consent to sex does not count if it’s irrevocable, why is surrogacy treated differently?

Much like with sex work, the demand always far outweighs the supply which means that the few women who sincerely and genuinely want to do this don’t just justify the whole thing. I believe a system similar to the Nordic model should be in place, where there’s no legal repercussions to being a surrogate but where attempting to recruit one is illegal.

Communism:

I’m definitely a leftist and radical feminism itself has marxist roots. I recognise that capitalism plays quite a big role in women’s oppression through the barriers that women experience to enter many forms of paid labour, and the unpaid labour that is expected of them. Capitalism also leads to the commodification of women’s bodies through sex work or surrogacy. That being said, the inherently authoritarian nature of communism simply can’t be justified in my opinion. People who are corrupted by power exist under every system, which is why authoritarianism can never be safe regardless of the ideology it’s attached to. Even a “benevolent dictator” will die eventually if they don’t get overthrown first.

Transmedicalism:

I view transmedicalism as a harmful ideology. The brain sex studies transmedicalists often link are extremely flawed; incredibly small sample sizes used to draw overreaching conclusions, and a failure to account for neuroplasticity (the fact that your brain’s structure can change over time). Their insistence that transition is the only option for dysphoric people is harmful to all dysphoric/trans people, and often worsens dysphoria while also discouraging the development of alternative treatments. Their claims that all detransitioners were never really trans in the first place and every person who transitioned must’ve secretly been dysphoric regardless of their insistence otherwise are based on no actual fact, just a need for their ideology to make sense.

#anon #my opinions #radfem #gender critical #anti sex work #anti surrogacy #I swear I'm gonna edit this later on bc the last two answers seem kinda half assed #but if I leave this in my drafts any longer it's gonna stay there forever

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