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number5theboy · 4 years

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Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger, @waywardd1 and @margarita-umbrella also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

#thanks for the ask again #TUA #The Umbrella Academy #Five Hargreeves #tua s2 spoilers #my meta #i guess #Replies #Anonymous

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dweetwise · 3 years

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i can’t stop writing them, send help. this was based on an idea from @gooobert, hope i could do it justice! ship: ace x felix word count: 1330

More than a thousand words

Meg was sitting by the campfire and busying herself with changing the shoelaces of her sneakers. The new ones were a different color and only marginally cleaner, and the whole thing was mostly a pointless attempt at any sort of change. It was kind of pathetic that the eyesore of the once-blue laces clashing with Meg’s red running shoes was the most interesting thing she'd seen in weeks.

The Entity's world was a lot of things. It was Meg's worst nightmare, a living hell, a home of unspeakable horrors that drained every last bit of hope from her piece by piece—

But in between those moments, it was indescribably boring.

Had anyone told Meg five years ago that she'd get used to being brutally murdered on a regular basis, she wouldn't have hesitated to give them a piece of her mind and maybe even her fist. But disturbing as it may be, after all this time it had become the new normal. The trials weren’t pleasant but at least they were something to keep her mind occupied and her reflexes sharp.

Between trials she was stuck at the campfire, which offered nothing in the way of entertainment save for Kate's guitar, Ace's playing cards and Bill's perpetually half-empty pack of cigarettes. Meg’s companions were both a blessing and a curse; some of them she was happy to call her friends and others she'd rather avoid. She had never been much of a people person and while it was nice to have the option to talk to someone if she wanted to, more often than not she just wanted to shove a sock in people's mouths when they just wouldn't shut up.

Hearing a familiar laugh, Meg's nose scrunched on instinct as she looked up to see one of those very people walk up to the fire. Ace sauntered up to a small group tending to the flames, earning a few words from Jeff and a smile from Kate, all the while running his mouth at a way louder volume than necessary.

Then, Ace proceeded to walk up to Felix.

Meg hadn't even noticed Felix return from his latest trial. She didn't know the man very well but he was one of the few who rarely got on her nerves, pulling his weight in trials and staying blissfully quiet at camp. She'd even go as far as to say she kind of liked the guy.

Of course, that respect flew out the window every time Felix spent time with Ace.

"Hiya, Pumpkin!" Ace chirped obnoxiously to the architect, effectively proving Meg's point. "Whatcha doing?"

Ace sat down next to Felix and Meg glared daggers at the gambler's smug face. So much for the blissful silence of the campfire.

"Ah, neat," Ace suddenly continued. "That looks like fun!"

Meg frowned; she hadn't even heard Felix say anything. Why was Ace talking to himself?

"How are you holding up after what happened back there?" Ace asked.

Felix still didn't reply, but this time Meg saw him give a pointed stare to Ace.

"I was going to heal myself so I could go for the rescue!” Ace protested. “That’s why I was in the basement, looking for a medkit—”

Felix huffed out a pointed breath.

"Or a map!" Ace continued. "I know you like to bring one into trials, and I thought it'd make a nice gift!"

Felix only raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, alright!" Ace relented, holding his hands up in surrender. "I was looking for a key so we could bail through the hatch once Yui and David died."

"Hmm," Felix replied.

It was a quiet sound that—combined with Felix's resting bitch face—gave absolutely nothing away.

"You're not mad, right babe?" Ace asked, casting a sickly-sweet pleading look at the German.

Again, Felix neither did or said anything, but soon Ace was breaking into a relieved laugh anyway.

"I knew you had a soft spot for me," Ace grinned.

“M-hm,” Felix commented.

“I know, I know—don’t make a habit of it,” Ace said.

The more Meg listened to the one-sided conversation, the more confused she got. There was no way Ace was able to decipher any of Felix’s weird sounds or barely-there facial expressions. It had to be some kind of joke.

She glanced around the campsite, but nobody else seemed to be paying the duo any attention. Jane was sitting on the log next to Meg’s, so she scooted over to the woman and leaned closer.

“Are you seeing this shit?” Meg whispered, getting Jane’s attention.

“What?”

“Those two!” Meg said, pointing to the offending pair.

“You think the Entity will throw another party for us before Halloween?” Ace asked Felix, still running his mouth and oblivious to Meg’s staring.

Felix hummed again; in agreement or in thought was anybody’s guess.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ace concluded despite this. “She’s gotten lazy. Wouldn’t surprise me if she even forgot Christmas this year.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Jane said.

“Really?” Meg asked. “You don’t see anything wrong with…”

Felix huffed, and Ace gasped in mock offense.

“Excuse you, my Christmas sweater is fabulous,” Ace said.

Felix’s mouth quirked up in a smirk.

“That was one time, and I only borrowed yours because it looked comfy!” Ace protested.

“...That?” Meg asked Jane, gesturing in the couple’s general direction.

“Not really,” Jane said, infuriatingly unbothered by the display. “I know Felix’s family situation isn’t ideal, but as long as they’re happy, I don’t think it’s our place to judge.”

Wait… what?

“Huh?” Meg asked.

“I can’t really fault someone for finding joy in a place like this,” Jane said. “I know Ace sometimes gets on all our nerves, but Felix seems happy with him.”

What the hell was she—oh. Oh.

“Oh god no,” Meg said with a grimace. “I don’t care that they’re together or—whatever.”

Jane looked at her, frowning in confusion.

“I’m just weirded out that Ace is always just, like, talking to himself,” Meg explained. “Felix barely gets a word in.”

“Ah, I see! My bad,” Jane apologized. “Still, I don’t really see anything weird in it; Felix is a quiet person and Ace is good at reading people. I think it’s natural they communicate in their own ways.”

“You’re shitting me,” Meg deadpanned. “You really think Ace understands all those weird ‘aah’s and ‘hmm’s?”

“Body language is easier to read than you’d think,” Jane said. “Take Jake for example; he doesn’t talk a lot, but you always know what he means, right?”

“Yeah, because Jake only has two moods; ‘I’m listening’ and ‘fuck off’!” Meg protested. “It’s not like he’s telling his goddamn life story in that death glare.”

“Maybe you’re not listening,” Jane said, giving her a cryptic smile. “Either way, I think it’s sweet when people know each other well enough to not need words.”

“—I’m serious! You should have seen the look on his face!” Ace exclaimed to his companion way louder than necessary.

“...Though maybe I’d like it more if the roles were reversed,” Jane sighed, rubbing her ear.

“I hear you,” Meg snorted.

She looked back at Ace and Felix, who were still engrossed in their weird conversation. Felix had leaned closer to his boyfriend, listening raptly and offering acknowledging sounds every now and then as Ace recounted one of his trials. For some reason, the German seemed to enjoy Ace’s incessant babbling, and who was Meg to stop him?

She watched as Felix reached over and grabbed Ace’s hand, making the gambler pause mid-sentence. Slowly, Ace’s shit-eating grin changed into a soft smile.

He clasped Felix’s hand and lifted it to his mouth, giving the knuckles a quick kiss and in response, Felix lowered his head and returned the smile.

"I love you too," Ace murmured.

Meg rolled her eyes and grabbed another pair of sneakers to continue her project. She’d never understand those two, but maybe that was for the better.

And maybe she should give Jake’s death glare another shot.

#riconti #meg thomas #ace visconti #felix richter #dweetwrites #dbd #dead by daylight #dbd fanfic

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the-kazoo-kid · 5 years

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The Two Types of Goblincore

I’ll begin by saying that I’m a Jewish archaeologist, and one of my main areas of study is the pogroms of Eastern Europe during the beginning of the 20th century. This affects the way I think of goblincore in two major ways:

Goblins were used as a negative caricature of Jews to tother them and incite negative feelings and violence among non-news

I have been accused of only wanting to be an archaeologist so that I can dig up and hoard shiny things

I spend a lot of my time looking at images like this one. It’s an antisemetic political cartoon from 1898.

Look at the crown, the long, hooked nose, and most importantly the clawed, webbed hands. His hands envelope the world, symbolizing the perceived universal greed of the Jew.

This stereotype of the greedy Jew didn’t originate in the 19th century either. It goes all the way back to the Middle Ages when Jews in Europe were banned from occupations other than banking.

So now let’s talk about goblins in popular culture. First and foremost in my mind are J.K Rowling’s goblins who are portrayed as greedy, hoarding and-- you guessed it-- in charge of the money and treasure.

There are even physical similarities between J.K. Rowling’s goblins and the political cartoon above. Note the hooked nose and the hands.

I was about eight when I read the first Harry Potter book. I remember bringing it to a synagogue event where one of the adults remarked about how uncomfortable the goblins made them. Before I was allowed to watch the movie my mother sat me down and explained what was problematic with those goblins and why.

Next up: LOTR

He has the crown and the hands, although not the nose, and while he bares less direct resemblance to that cartoon, this is still an example of antisemitism. This is a placeholder character for a Jew that is disgusting, hoarding wealth, and a direct antagonist to the main characters.

Everquest 2:

(I found another image where this character was specifically labeled The Goblin Banker but tumblr wouldn’t allow me to upload it for whatever reason.) This goblin is so other that it’s not even recognizable as a person, and in fact in the game they’re classed as a Mob Race. Yikes. Additionally, Wikipedia describes them as “attempting to - unsuccessfully - forge gold coins, and yet they have no intention spending any of this money, they simply wish to 'have' it.” This goes along with a lot of the greed aspect of goblins and their obsession with hoarding.

So what do we do?

First, I want to say that just because these pieces of media (or any others) have these problematic aspects doesn’t mean that you have to stop consuming and enjoying them. If we never read books or watched movies or played games that were problematic we would back ourselves into a corner where nothing was permitted.

The important thing is to educate yourself to the point where you can recognize the negative caricature/stereotype in something that you come across, and to not create any new media containing the stereotype.

But what if you really like goblins?

The good news is that this is the first, older kind of goblincore, but it’s not the only one out there. There’s a new wave happening that emphasizes the positive things without including the negative ones. These next examples are technically called trolls in their respective universes, but they really get the vibe that I’m going for.

Boxtrolls:

See? Shiny treasure thing, delight, and no malice. Admittedly the trolls in this movie are some funny looking creatures, but they don’t come across as perpetuating the negative Jewish stereotype to me.

Frozen:

Cute little guys made of stone and moss. They live peacefully, and when they encounter the protagonists they have a nice musical number and then dispense some wise advice. No greed, no bad intentions. Good for them.

(Again, these examples are both technically trolls but I think the idea comes through, especially since they’re so far from the large, lumbering brutes that are trolls in say... Harry Potter or LOTR.)

Now I’m going to hand this conversation over to @goblinblogging who is a Jew working on reclaiming and reworking the idea of what a goblin is and what a goblin does.

-Reid

Now, I know learning that something you’re doing could be problematic is scary! I also know that a ton of people have abandoned goblincore just because they learned of these stereotypes.

However, you don’t have to abandon something you love! What you need to do is educate yourself and learn about why these things are harmful and learn what you can do to make sure you aren’t doing something harmful yourself!

Let's start off with how this stereotype came around (Or at least, one way it originated.) In the book Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts: Immigrant Folklore in the Western Mines, the author goes into detail about how European origins say the goblins of the mines were the ghosts of dead Jews, sentenced (in properly medieval anti-Jewish fashion) to perpetual restlessness for their supposed role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Which is where the “Goblins live in caves and mines” came from!

So this explains that the ghosts of Jews became goblins because they were being punished for killing jesus. Already a pretty rough start! Now for common goblin appearances that are nothing but antisemitism in disguise. First, and most obvious, large, hooked, warted noses. I don’t really feel like I have to go into much detail about this one. Anyone who took history class in middle and high school should know about Hitler’s propaganda against jews and the depictions of their bulbous noses, often covered in warts. This caricature directly translates over to goblins having their predominant warted noses. Second, Let’s have a look at green skin. Hitler in particular loved to depict jews with green skin, or at the very least, in very green light so it turned their skin green.

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Notice the green tint, the evil sneer, hooked nose, and pointed ears in this one! All very reminiscent of traits we commonly see in goblins.

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This last one is a movie poster “Suss the Jew” produced by Terra Film at the behest of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time. Notice the green skin!

Next is horns and teeth. Hitler in particular would depict jews with devil’s horns hidden under their Kippah (also referred to in Yiddish as a yarmulke, or less frequently as a koppel.) He’d also just depict them outright as demons.

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This one is Ukranian. Translated means “Satan has taken off his mask” Notice how “satan” has huge teeth and horns, red skin, with the star of David carved into his forehead. Also notice how his jewish mask has a large nose.

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This one is from Russia (1919), a caricature of Leon Trotsky, who was viewed as a symbol of Jewish Bolshevism. Notice the red skin and pointed ears. Also notice how he’s sitting above the people down below (who are sitting on skeletons and bones) symbolizing the Jew’s greed, which we’ll get into later.

And then there’s this one, where you can see (white) people inside of the Jew’s mouth, you can also see horrendously sharp teeth crushing them. Also pay attention to the large nose and pointed ears. I just remembered that I forgot to cover another very important anti-jewish facial feature, which is that many jews in propaganda have dark beady eyes and drooping eyelids. These are things you can see for yourself in the images above!

Next, we’re moving on to greed. This one in particular hits me close to home. I’ve heard the phrase “Jewing me out of my money” too many times to count. Or alternately, “Don’t be a Jew” when the other person doesn’t think that I’m giving them enough of what they want. (Could be money, could even be sweets. The first time I heard this phrase I was a little kid and I had a bag of skittles. I wanted to share with everyone but I still wanted to have enough for me to eat myself. I was passing out handfuls when my friend’s older brother (he was a teen) didn’t like how much I gave him. He said to me, “Come on, don’t be a Jew, give me some more skittles”. I didn’t understand and when I asked my mom what it meant later she was horrified.) Jews, and their caricatures, have almost always been viewed as greedy and power hungry. As @whalefromwales said above me, Jews in Europe used to be banned from any job besides banking.

We also have images like this from WWII:

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Anyone who has taken any class where the Holocaust was talked about should be able to recognize this image, The Eternal Jew. He has money in one hand, which is reached out to demand more - he’s also looking at the money, and a whip in his other hand. In his arm, he holds the whole country of Germany.

Image source

There is also this one. A jew, tinged with red, weighs a man’s life against a large pile of money. Notice also how he’s looking at the money - not the man.

And this one should also be easy to recognize. It reads “The Jews - A People of Contagion!” A city burns in the background as a jewish man sits atop a pile of bones counting his money. Notice the bulbous, hooked, nose, black eyes with drooping eyelids, and large hands! Hitler depicted jews this way (and as goblins) in order to segregate us. “Us VS Them”. “We are the Good Human Beings and Jews are monsters!” in order to make it easy for him to begin committing the atrocities that he did! It never happened overnight, there were key stepping stones that built up to concentration camps. One of those was “Jews aren’t really people, so it’s okay that we’re doing this to them. We’re doing it to save us, the Good Christian Germans.”

So what does all of this mean? Well, first and foremost, it means that you have to be careful how you depict your goblins. How? When drawing your goblinsonas or goblin ocs, stay away from drawing them with huge, hooked, and warted noses, don’t make their skin green or red (personally, I prefer grey skin for goblins.) If your goblin has sharp teeth, don’t make them huge and obvious. Because modern goblins are fair folk, it’s difficult to depict them without pointed ears, but try not to exaggerate the proportions.

Behavior: Stop with the “greedy little goblin” thing. That DIRECTLY comes from jewish stereotypes. Your Goblins are allowed to collect shiny things they find, but don’t make them greedy about it! Have your goblin share what they collect, make it a community effort. Sharing the things you love is way better than being miserly anyhow, and sharing more represents what we as goblins should want in our community! Also, be careful with your goblins being terrors. Yes, there are usually evil beings in every single race (whether mythological or real) but just be really really careful. Hitler loved to depict jews eating the Good Germans(™) or terrorizing communities. So even if your goblin is an evil one, be really really careful and be sure to educate yourself first so you’re not just perpetuating the same tired shit that Hitler did.Collecting coins.

Now, this has been a huge topic of discourse lately. Coins are shiney! I understand why people would want to collect them. Hell, I have some awesome 50 cent pieces and gold dollars in my collection. You just can't depict yourself or your goblin character collecting only coins and being very greedy with them. That’s literally doing nothing but echoing the same propaganda that Hitler used against us. Collect them all you want, but if I see “Greedy little goblin hoarding coins all for themselves” I swear I’m gonna hit the fan. To clarify, you can absolutely show off you coin collection in the goblin tags, just be careful how you frame it. “I’m really interested in history, so I collect old coins because I think they’re neat” is waaaaaay different then “Horrible littel crecher is greedy for shiney monies” (That last quote is something I’ve SEEN in the tags, luckily op was just completely unaware of why that was so wrong and they removed the caption after they were educated.)

So please, enjoy being into goblincore. Enjoy the culture and the fantasy. Goblincore is about appreciating the things about us that may be depicted as “weird” or “ugly”. Goblincore is a safe haven for neurodivergent people (I’m Autistic!) and also Trans and other LGBTQIA+ people! It’s a culture for appreciating nature, collecting things that may not be seen as normal, and sharing these things with other people. It’s a culture where you shouldn’t be ashamed to be who you are or afraid to get dirty. Goblincore is a support network for the weirder folks where we strive to uplift one another. Goblincore is wonderful and I’ve been so impressed at how welcoming everyone is! Especially on tumblr! Before the discourse happened, I was sure that goblincore was one of the kindest communities on tumblr. However, I understand why the discourse happened, and goyim in the goblincore tag really did need to be educated, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave! So be sure to educate yourself and be aware of how your actions could negatively affect folks. Listen to other Jewish people and be mindful of what they say. Some Jews are very uncomfortable with goblincore, and for very good reason! And I do not claim to speak for all Jews with this post.

I am trying to reclaim the word goblin for use by any person who wants the label. I no longer want these fantasy creatures associated with such a beautiful and vibrant culture of people. Goblins are very interesting as a fantasy race, but the negative stereotypes do nothing but hurt real life Jewish people. Which is why I’m hoping that folks will read this post and realize what behaviors and depictions of goblins are wrong and harmful. Also, tag your goblincore appropriately! Again, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with goblincore because of antisemitism that has happened in their past. I’ve been compared to a goblin many times! So keep your goblincore in just the goblincore tags. There are many overlaps between goblincore and other micro communities on tumblr (Such as crowcore, cottagecore, naturecore, and vulture culture) but be mindful of what you’re putting in those tags. Most vulture culture people hate us goblins cuz we put pictures of dirt or “I’m just a smol crecher” in their tags, and I don’t blame them! Vulture culture is only for the remains of dead animals, and dead animal remains should be the only things added to those tags. So fellow goblins, I’m going to end this post with a sincere thank you for reading, be mindful of your actions, and most of all, HAVE FUN with goblincore!

Here is where you should be able to read Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts for free if you want.

TLDR: This is what we, as Jewish people, mean when we say that goblins are based off of negative stereotypes of jews. This is also why some jews get really upset at goblincore, however, there are many ways to participate in goblincore without using harmful stereotypes! So please, use this post to educate yourself so you can both be good goblins and good Jewish allies.

- @goblinblogging

#goblin core #goblincore #goblins #political cartoon #antisemitism #tw antisemitism #antisemitism in the middle ages #harry potter goblins #gringotts #lotr goblins #lotr goblin king #everquest 2 goblins #boxtrolls #frozen #disney frozen

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wehavethoughts · 3 years

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Jingle Jangle Review!

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey David E. Talbert (2020) Netflix Original Movie Fantasy, Holiday, Musical, Children’s Movie

Rating: 5/5 Waves

“I think it’s time for a new story.” – Journey

This review CONTAINS spoilers for Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Summary: Jeronicus Jangle is a genius toymaker who has everything he’s ever wanted until betrayal and tragedy strike and rip away his magic and inspiration. Jingle Jangle follows his journey with his bright, spunky granddaughter to finding his way out of darkness and towards family, love and inspiration.

No content warnings apply for Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Last year was a mess and 2021 is already on thin ice, but one of the best things to happen to me this season was my girlfriend sitting me down and convincing me to watch Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. While the trailer looked fun, especially since it was a musical Christmas story featuring a primarily black cast, I hadn’t prioritized watching it. I tend to feel that everything has already been made when it comes to Christmas movies and I don’t want or need another retelling of the same stories. If I need a bump of Christmas spirit around the holidays, I indulge in a classic and move on. Fortunately for me, she wanted to watch it and we needed a Christmas Eve movie.

I loved so much about this movie that I could write tens of thousands of words singing its praises, but I wouldn’t do that to you, so I will narrow my praises to the most important parts of this movie to me. At the top of the list is just how good this movie looks.

Jingle Jangle is one of the most visually appealing movies I’ve ever seen. From the set to the costumes to the choreography, every single shot of this movie was pleasing to the eye. The clothing was sharp and colorful in a way that I expected to get on my nerves, but it ended up stunning. Costume designer Michael Wilkinson described the fashion as “Afro Victorian”. The characters’ hairstyles are another part of the costuming that stood out. They were creative and fun while also adding dimension to the characters’ looks. And let me just take a minute to personally thank the creators of Jingle Jangle for allowing all of these black characters to have natural hair. I have never seen that in a movie and it almost made me cry. Both the clothing and the hairstyles mirrored the characters’ arcs and added depth to the narrative.

The beauty of this movie can mostly be attributed to its fabulous designers, but I also want to point out that everything looked and felt fabulously expensive. I could not find the budget of Jingle Jangle in USD, but with every set piece, CGI shot, song and outfit you could tell that someone who loved this project spent a whole lot of money on it. It is refreshing to see a story like this getting the financial backing to do it properly.

The visuals were so stunning, in fact, that even if the actual story had been terrible, I would still have been happy to just sit and watch it on mute. Fortunately, Jingle Jangle’s story was phenomenal; heartwarming and inspiring with just enough humor to keep it light without feeling overly juvenile. It also had such meaningful emotional themes that I cried at least three times (in a good way).

The emotional core of this movie is the relationship between Jeronicus and his granddaughter Journey. Jeronicus is a grumpy, disillusioned inventor who abandoned his aspirations after achieving his dreams lead to nothing but betrayal and heartache. Journey is a bright, talented child who wants to learn from her brilliant grandfather, but she realizes she has to reignite his belief in himself first. The story centers around belief in the impossible, like most Christmas stories, but instead of asking the audience to believe in something like Santa Claus, Jingle Jangle reminds the audience to believe in themselves and their own abilities. Personally, I’ve never felt more inspired than when a small child belted about how “The square root of impossible is me!” The story digs into how depression can destroy a person’s creativity and inspiration and sometimes what we need is other people believing in us so we can be reminded to believe in ourselves.

My whole deal is reviewing fantasy though, so I feel like I should mention magic. Like most things in the movie it is very pretty to look at. When Jeronicus and Journey use their magic it is glittery, dazzling and very obviously a metaphor for imagination and creativity. Personally, these characters could have probably just have been very smart, but having a visual to see them thinking in new and exciting ways was nice. Math-but-its-glowing as a magic system is not something I’ve seen much of recently, but I know just enough math words to delight in what is coming out of these character’s mouths when they talk about their inventions. This might be a difficult movie for haters of math or people who study it for a living. If hearing characters say things like, “Belief! It collapsed the wave function.” and “Take the circumference of spectacular, divided by the second derivative of sensational…” is a deal breaker for you, then maybe skip this movie.

Also, I should note that this movie is a musical. This came as a surprise to us the first time we watched it, but luckily we love musicals. The first time the music swelled and Jeronicus started singing we were swept away by the magic of the moment, delightfully surprised and in awe of the musical talent. Every single song in this movie is energetic, fun and refreshingly Black. Director David E. Talbert said that he was inspired by southern soul and gospel music as well as Afrobeat and other primarily black genres. The mix of inspiration creates joyful and fresh new songs for the holiday season.

As a whole this movie got my highest rating because the things I love about it outweigh the flaws. That being said, there are a couple pieces of the story that either didn’t make sense or it feels like they did not think all the way through. First of all, the main conflict revolves around the villain Don Juan, a toy matador who has been given sentience through Jeronicus’s miraculous inventions, not wanting to be mass produced. While the story tries to convince us that the conflict revolves around Don Juan’s narcissism, if you think about this plot point too hard you realize that our protagonist plans to mass produce and sell his creations that are clearly alive and intelligent. Obviously the movie doesn’t dig into the ethics of this, since Don Juan is more concerned about not being one-of-a-kind rather than worried that he is going to be bought and sold as a commodity, but it is a concerning angle that implies some very uncomfortable things about this universe.

Another piece that I found falls apart when you think about it too hard is the framing of the story within a story. Jingle Jangle is told a bedtime story being read by a grandmother to her grandchild (similar to the Princess Bride). The first scenes introduce us to a couple of cute kids who ask their grandmother for a Christmas story and in opening the book we get some spectacular CGI and animation to introduce us to Jeronicus’s world. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this method of storytelling, I found it to be unnecessary since the children listening to the story and the grandmother don’t add much as independent characters. Unfortunately, the story seemed to feel the need to justify these characters’ existence and so in a big reveal at the end we discover that the grandmother is Journey, Jeronicus’s granddaughter.

While seeing Journey with her grandchildren is cute, it leads to questions that I personally did not need to have at the end of this otherwise tied up narrative. For example, the children seem to have never heard of Jeronicus Jangle, Don Juan or Buddy 3000 (another important toy character), yet we are meant to believe that Jeronicus’s story happened in the universe that the children live in? Why wouldn’t they know stories about their rich and famous great-great-grandfather? Why had they never heard of Jeronicus Jangle when it is implied that the toys they have grown up with would have been his or his family’s inventions? By making the children related to the people in the story, the writers distracted me from Jeronicus and Journey whose story is much more interesting and heartwarming. Jingle Jangle is a movie that asks me to think and reflect, so I don’t feel bad poking holes in the story, but I don’t love that they left me hanging with all these questions.

Additionally, there are also some things that I wish the writers hadn’t included in the movie at all. For example, they fridged Jeronicus’s wife almost immediately which was completely unnecessary and I hated to see that in a movie that got so many other things right. Also, having the only obviously Hispanic character (Don Juan Diego) be the villain in such a cartoon-y way left a bad taste in my mouth.

But Jingle Jangle still got my highest rating because as the sum of its parts, it was a fantastic story and I am so glad I got the chance to watch it. My very favorite part of this movie that has stuck with me even weeks after my first viewing is the relationship between Jeronicus and his family. There are sections of this movie where Jeronicus falls into the stereotypical absentee black father trope, but this story allows his character space to talk about what he did wrong, how he is hurting and Jeronicus learns to do better which is so important. I love the current trend in movies where parents apologize to their children because that can be such a healing experience and Jingle Jangle gives us that, but additionally, it makes the parent work for it and prove to their child that they are healing themselves. It offers hope to children struggling through painful situations like this and give parents an example of how they might be able to fix what they broke.

Overall, Jingle Jangle left me with a feeling of joy and contentment while inspiring me to remember what I used to love and rethink my self-imposed limits. The core message of this movie is a reminder that sometimes our lack of belief in our own skills is enough to stop us from achieving our dreams. Jingle Jangle reminds us to believe in our own capacity and lift each other up even when times are difficult. I don’t know if this movie will become a classic in the general consciousness, but it will certainly become a tradition in my family.

~TideMod

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let-it-raines · 4 years

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Yellow Flowers In Your Hair (2/3)

Emma Nolan has been raised in a privileged household and has never wanted for anything other than freedom to live her life on her own terms. Her parents want that for her as well, at least to a certain extent, but when her father unexpectedly passes, Emma is left with two options: marry a man she doesn't love or lose the home filled with memories of her beloved father as well as memories of her first love, a man with blue eyes and a kind smile who left for the Navy years ago and hasn’t been home since.

But what if her first love were to come back?

Rating: Mature (mostly the next chapter)

a/n: For @shardminds as part of my fic giveaway contest! I’m so happy that you enjoyed the first part and hope you enjoy the second as well ❤️

AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Tag list: @snowbellewells @captainsjedi @wellhellotragic @galaxyzxstark @thejollyroger-writer @kmomof4 @tiganasummertree@xellewoods @idristardis @karenfrommisthaven @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @a-faekindagirl @ultimiflos @jamif @dreameronarooftop15 @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @superchocovian @ultraluckycatnd @cs-forlife @andiirivera @qualitycoffeethings @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81 @stahlop @spartanguard

-/-

“Why, it is apparently your wedding day, my love.”

If it were possible for a heart to shatter and still pump blood through a body, that is exactly what Killian would be experiencing right now. For there is no way that he has died even if an angel is standing in front of him in a white gown that flows off of her arms and golden hair that creates a flowery halo around her head with the sun shining down on it.

Emma.

Emma with yellow flowers tucked into her hair.

(He used to pick her yellow weeds, and she’d tuck them behind her ear and into her plaits. He’d often find the broken petals of them in his own clothes after they’d spent a day together.)

Emma has never looked more beautiful than she does right now, and Killian is very much convinced that it is an impossibility for her to not look beautiful. In his twenty-six years of life, she is the most stunning woman he has ever laid his eyes upon as well as the most intelligent, witty, and kind even if she does have a propensity for teasing him in her harsh, yet weirdly affectionate ways.

She’s never been one to be proper, and he always loved the dirtiness of some of her quips even if they were not always entirely correct. Those might have been the most charming as he taught her the correct usage of certain terms and phrases over their time together.

He has not seen her in nearly seven years now, and while she was a girl when he left for the Navy and he only one day past becoming a man, she is very much a woman now. He believes she should be nearly twenty-four now. Her face has matured, the sharp lines filling into softer ones, and simply from their embrace, he can tell that the same has happened with her body. It’s odd to look at someone who he once knew better than himself and to see all of the differences there, and a part of him wonders if he would have noticed all of these changes had he been around to see them happen in person.

Of course he would have.

Of course, of course, of course.

But he wasn’t here to see the changes, to go through them with her, and in the depths of his soul he wonders just how much she’s had to grow in the past few months of grieving the death of her father.

His poor love. How he wishes that he could have held her through that moment and all of the moments that he has missed while he’s been away from her.

Even if he did not mourn the death of his own father, the drunk who never cared about he and Liam unless it was to help work around the Nolan estate so that they could earn money for him to gamble away, Killian knows how close of a bond Emma had with David. She looked at him like he created the skies above and believed that he could, and for him to no longer be around is a tragedy that words cannot encapsulate.

Now David does reside in the stars in the sky, and as little comfort as that likely brings, Killian wishes that it does provide some sense of help to the Nolan women who are the fiercest women he’s ever had the pleasure of knowing.

If Killian could go back, if he could not enlist in the Royal Navy so that he could stay as a groundskeeper for the Nolan estate, he might. If it meant being able to spend more time with Emma and possibly to prevent David from getting in the carriage that caused his accident, Killian would do it. He would do it even if it meant that he never made anything of himself, if it meant that he was never able to raise his status from poor man to a Naval lieutenant with a good job lined up ahead of him.

Even if it meant that he could never marry Emma. He would save David every time.

For Emma.

The only reason he ever joined the Navy was to prove to Emma’s parents that he could be worthy of her hand in marriage, and yet it seems that it was all for naught.

She has fallen for another man, one who was likely around to court her and make her blush with happiness, and how could he ever fault her for finding that little bit of happiness when that is all he has wished for her over these years where he has waited for her and waited for his chance to come home?

If Emma is happy, he will be happy for her. It is the very least he can do despite the shattering of his heart that he swears he can feel within every inch of him.

His body and soul have been captivated by her, and that shall never change.

Bloody hell. He’s a damn liar, but he has to keep telling himself these things to remain sane.

“W-what?” Emma stutters out, that adorable little smile that she used to smile whenever he would tell her a dirty joke that was anything but proper.

(His tended to be more accurate than she was, but they both learned along the way in the tall grass out by the lake. Her skin glistened in the sunlight, and her laugh was as beautiful as the songs of the birds.)

“Your dress,” he continues, swallowing his emotions as his hands gesture to the pure white of her gown and the veil mixed into her hair with orange and yellow flowers. “You are getting married today, aren’t you? Or is this dress simply your casual attire now?”

Emma’s painted lips form a perfectly shaped “O” and if he didn’t feel close to death, he would find it adorable.

This may very well be the hardest day or his life even when his story used to be chapter after chapter of hardships sloppily penned on tattered pages that would eventually burn down to ashes.

“I am.”

Her voice sounds somber, but Killian convinces himself that it is all in his imagination. It must be. Why would she not be happy to be married? The Nolans set such a good example of love for Emma, for him too, and he imagines the man waiting for Emma in his nicest morning suit is likely the love of her life who treats her well – like an equal partner in their decisions and affections – and makes her smile more than anything else. He doesn’t see Emma getting married any other way as she’s never been one for status even if her parents were.

Love. Emma would only ever marry for love. Mary Margaret would want it to be a man of a particular station, but love would be involved.

God, Killian loves her still.

“Best wishes then,” Killian sighs, taking a step back from her so that he can attempt to breathe, but all that does is give him a fuller view of Emma in her dress. In his nights alone imagining himself back home in England, he’d often imagine his life with Emma. Her wearing a white dress, one likely simpler than this, was a common dream, and the reality is no less breathtaking. She is breathtaking. “You are stunning, Ms. Nolan.”

Emma’s lips press together, her brows furrowing with her forehead pinching to cause that little line in the middle of her face that he always enjoyed even if it meant that she was frustrated.

Why would she be frustrated?

It must be his imagination again.

(He used to love frustrating her.)

(“You frustrate the hell out of me, Killian Jones,” she’d say, shoving his shoulder.)

(“Well, there are ways we could work out those frustrations,” he’d tease back before gently cupping her cheeks and kissing her.)

“I – ” she starts.

“Emma,” Mary Margaret calls, stepping out of the carriage to walk toward the two of them in a pretty green dress. She looks so much like Emma but with all of the wrong coloring, and he swears that she hasn’t aged a day. “Have you gotten enough air? We really have to be – oh,” she sighs, stopping when she sees him, mouth agape. “Killian Jones, is that you?”

“Aye, ma’am,” he smiles, stepping up to her with a genuine smile on his face before taking her hand to brush his lips over her knuckles. “It’s nice to see you. My regrets for Mr. Nolan. He was a good man.”

“He was the best man,” Mary Margaret corrects, a bit of a wry smile on her face. Emma has always thought that her mother was too demure, but underneath the perfectly proper façade is a bit of a rebel. He can tell even if she has obviously worked hard to bury it underneath her dresses and jewels. Those who were raised outside of society never quite fit in the way they want to, no matter how much they try. “How are you doing? How is your brother?”

“Liam’s just been married,” he sighs. “I wasn’t able to take leave for the ceremony. Were the two of you not invited? I’ll have to get onto him about that. I’m sure he’d have loved for you to be there.”

Mary Margaret laughs, her green eyes squinting in a way that is an exact replica of Emma when she laughs a genuine laugh, and it makes his heart ache for her even if she is standing right behind him.

How is he missing her more now when he was once an ocean away from her?

There were nights in his bunk on the ship where the ache of missing her was so great that his heart convulsed, that he wondered if he’d ever be able to recover. There were days in his stations, in his travels across the globe where he’d see a flash of long blonde hair and think it was her. He’d wish and hope and pray. And on the rare nights where he had a room to himself, when his mates had wandered to find the company of another woman, he’d take himself in hand and imagine it were her, imagine that the soft sighs came from her lips. They weren’t his proudest moments, but they happened all the same.

(He could punch Emma’s betrothed, whoever he is, for loving her, but Killian knows that isn’t right.)

“It’s perfectly okay. I’m afraid we didn’t send he and his new bride an invitation to Emma’s wedding, which we really must be leaving for now. Emma, dear, we cannot leave the Cassidy’s waiting.”

The name Cassidy sets his blood aflame as he pieces together who Emma’s groom is, but this is not Killian’s place. It has never been his place, and it most definitely is not now. He must not voice his distaste for the senior Mr. Cassidy nor the junior, for the way that they are known to treat their tenants and those under their employ as well as the junior Mr. Cassidy’s penchant for brothels, so he bites his tongue until the taste of iron fills his mouth.

Emma is no longer his. That’s something he must accept.

His throat constricts, and Killian tries to swallow all of it down while his vision blurs.

“Well, I’m afraid I must let you go then.”

“Why don’t you join us?” Mrs. Nolan offers, her eyes glancing past his shoulder when she presumably hears Emma’s intake of breath.

“Mummy,” Emma scolds, and his heart drops a little further in his chest at her tone. “I don’t think Killian wants to come with us. He likely has other things to do to bide his time.”

He doesn’t. All he planned on doing today was to pay his respects for the late Mr. Nolan and to see if Emma would be willing to have a cup of tea with him so that they may get to know each other again. All he planned to do today was tell her how very much he stills loves her, but now he knows that he will never be able to utter those words again.

Never one for conventions, even he knows that it would not be the gentlemanly thing to do to express his love for a taken woman.

This is what Killian must accept.

And yet he very obviously despises himself for what he does next.

“I could never deny your invitation, Lady Nolan. I would love to accompany the two of you to the church.”

“Perfect,” Mary Margaret sighs, motioning back to the carriage. “I’m afraid we must go now. We’re running late.”

Killian nods his head, forces a smile onto his face, and then quickly walks toward the carriage door to hold it open and help the women inside. When Emma’s hand touches his, he feels a spark that burns him instead of exciting him, and the drumline playing in his chest increases in sound until she’s settled down on a cushioned seat and he across from her. She won’t look at him. He’s sitting directly across from him, and she won’t look at him. Her eyes evade his, her gaze consistently trained to the empty seat beside him, and if it wasn’t for her mum sitting next to her, Killian would lose his control and ask what exactly is happening.

How is it that the day that he has returned to Emma that she is leaving him?

If he had come the day before, if he had not spent his day with Liam and Elsa celebrating them and their new marriage, would he have been able to stop this wedding?

No, he can’t. Those are thoughts he can’t have even if his mind is full of them.

Fuck.

While he hoped that the church was further away, that he would have more time to accept this – not that he ever could – the church is near enough for them to arrive in under fifteen minutes. They are both the quickest and longest fifteen minutes of Killian’s life.

When the horses halt, the carriage juts forward, causing Emma to lose her stable seating and fall forward into him, her hands pressing against his thighs. All sounds seem to stop then, all sensations focusing on her touch, and when he glances away from her dainty fingers, all he can see is the watery green of her eyes under her black painted lashes.

Has she been crying?

“I-I apologize,” Emma stutters out, her voice a shell of herself, before snatching her hands away and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in her gown. “I seem to have lost my seating.”

“No need to apologize, love.”

She’s no longer looking at him, their brief eye contact disappearing, and Killian takes it as an unspoken demand for him to get out of the carriage. He listens, moving to open the door, and steps outside and down the steps, waiting there to help the women down. No more words are spoken, and he wonders if he’ll ever speak to Emma again. He thought that for years, but with her right in front of him, he thought…he thought he had a chance.

She’s moved on, Killian reminds himself. This is not about you, you bastard.

There are unfamiliar ladies waiting on the Nolans that he suspects are from the Cassidy household, and Emma and Mary Margaret are shuffled off with them inside of a side door to the church while he’s left standing there watching the imprints of Emma’s shoes in the ground and wondering if her feet are still so sensitive to touch that she laughs whenever fingers run across them.

The light that shone brightly enough to bring him back home is getting married, and he’s about to witness it.

No.

He cannot. He damn well cannot.

As much as he says that he’s always wanted Emma’s happiness, as much as he does actually want Emma’s happiness, Killian’s not sure that his heart can take this. It is one thing to know that she is marrying Neal Cassidy, and it is another to witness it. He cannot possibly witness this. Every time he closes his eyes, his mind is already going to remember the way that she looks in her wedding dress, and that is enough of a painful memory for him. He does not need to watch her join her life to someone else who isn’t him.

Would she honestly even realize that he’s not in the church?

Selfishness is running through him, but he’d be a damn fool to wait around and watch this when he’s been a damn fool to wait around this entire time.

Swallowing all of his emotions, the ones that he cannot show, Killian turns on his heel and starts walking away from the church only to see Ruby Lucas walk in front of him. She looks just the same as well, if not a bit more wild with painted streaks of red in her raven hair, and the grin that’s painted on her face when she sees him makes his heart ache the slightest bit less. She was always willing to turn a blind eye, to look away from he and Emma spending time together in the kitchen, and Killian considered her a close friend.

Emma did too.

It’s nice that she’ll be here for the wedding.

“As I live and breathe,” Ruby huffs out, placing her hands on her hips while looking up at him with a sparkle in her eyes, “it’s Killian Jones.”

“Ms. Lucas.”

“Absolutely not,” she scoffs before pressing forward to wrap him in a brief hug. “You know how much I despise being called that.”

“That’s exactly why it’s what I called you, lass.”

“You’re still a tease. What on earth are you doing here?”

The momentary distraction of seeing Ruby dissipates, and he’s reaching up to scratch behind his ear, wondering how the hell he’s still alive to survive this when he could lose his lunch any minute now.

“Ah, well,” Killian starts, “I was on my way to the Nolan estate to give my condolences for Mr. Nolan’s passing, as well as to – ”

He stops his speech, not sure how much to tell, but the way that Ruby’s eyes stare up at him full of pity lets him know that he doesn’t need to. She knows. Of course she does. But he doesn’t want pity. He has been looked at with pity all of his life, and now, even if he’d pity someone in the same situation as him, Killian doesn’t want it.

“I’m sorry, Ruby,” he chokes out, stepping away from her and down the path that will lead him back into the main part of town. “I’m afraid I must take my leave.”

Not bothering to look behind him, Killian officially starts walking away, knowing that it’s the most difficult walk he’s ever had to take. The first was leaving Emma seven years ago with tears staining her cheeks and a tremble in her lips. He’ll always remember how she looked that day just as he will remember how she looked today.

“If” does not exist in life, what happens being inked in the pages of everyone’s stories, but Killian will always wonder “what if?”

What if it was him waiting inside of that church for Emma instead?

What if he had never had to leave to raise his status so that he could marry her?

What if he had been born into a more noble family, one with money and land and everything that Emma deserves?

What if she still loved him the way that he loves her?

“She doesn’t love him, you know.”

Pebbles move beneath his feet when Killian’s steps come to a halt, his toes nearly causing him to fall forward and down to the ground while his heart beats wildly in his chest like there is a pack of horses running inside instead of an organ vital for life.

She doesn’t love who? She doesn’t love Neal?

He dare not hope. No, he cannot.

“What?” Killian questions, swallowing his breath and his pride but never turning to look at Ruby as she speaks.

“Emma doesn’t love Mr. Cassidy, Killian. She’s not marrying him for love.”

No.

Never.

Emma would never marry someone if it wasn’t for love. The Nolans may be a family of status who are concerned with etiquette and keeping up appearances, but they would never allow Emma to marry someone who she didn’t love or who wouldn’t treat her as the true force of nature that she is. They simply wouldn’t.

Mary Margaret wouldn’t, especially after losing the love of her life at such a premature age.

No.

Killian’s fingers curl into his palm, nails leaving crescent moon marks in his skin, and it takes the strength of every muscle in his body to turn around to look at Ruby so that he can see her as she speaks. His uniform feels constricting at the moment, like it is going to suffocate him, but maybe just maybe he’s about to start being able to breathe again.

Hope rises quickly and yet he knows that it can be squashed just the same.

“She doesn’t love him, Killian,” Ruby repeats, stepping closer to him so that the people around them cannot hear. “She hasn’t loved anyone in all of the time that you’ve been gone. Her parents tried. Suitor after suitor would come to the house, but after they left, Emma would always compare them to you. I don’t think she even realized that she did it, but she did.”

The scowl that’s been plastered on his lips twitches a bit, a smile trying to break through, but Emma is still inside about to get married to a man that she does not love. There is nothing about that which makes him smile.

“Then why is she marrying that bastard?”

“Because society is corrupt and does not allow women to keep what is theirs.”

Killian arches a brow, confusion coursing through him. “Pardon?”

“Without Mr. Nolan,” Ruby explains, fidgeting with the sleeves on her dress, “Emma and Mary Margaret aren’t allowed to keep the estate because they are women. Mary Margaret was going to marry someone else, some man she didn’t know but who was willing to take a widowed woman, and Emma refused, saying that she had just lost her husband and that no one could ever replace him. That’s why she’s marrying Neal. It’s to save the house and all of the memories that reside there. It’s not for love.”

Every word Ruby speaks is a brick pressing down on his shoulders before they are lifted as his mind takes it all in. How did he not even consider this? In the back of his mind, Killian recalls hearing that abominable law and seeing it happen to others before, but it did not once cross his mind when he heard of David’s accident and passing.

Everything about this day is a tragedy even if Emma is trying to be the savior of her family.

Saviors deserve happiness too.

“It’s a business transaction then?” Killian questions before brushing his hair off of his forehead, a small laugh escaping his lips. “It’s not for love?”

“Not at all.”

“And, um,” he stutters as excitement inches over his body and his toes start to bounce off of the ground, ready to run into the church, “this law that prevents Emma from keeping the house and their livelihood…she can marry any man, correct? It doesn’t have to be one of a particularly high nobility?”

“I think so, but why does it – ” Ruby stops her words, an effervescent grin breaking out onto her face, and she reaches forward to tug on his hand. “Come on, let’s go inside and stop this wedding.”

The two of them run inside like they are mad. Maybe they are. Ruby leads him through the back doorway to where Emma is apparently waiting while the rest of the guests arrive. His heart is beating so quickly that he cannot feel it anymore, the ringing sound in his head blocking everything out, and when Ruby opens a wooden door in the back of the church to show Emma sitting alone in a room, he nearly falls to the ground.

“Killian,” she gasps, wiping away at her eyes from where tears have obviously been falling, “what are you doing back here?”

He takes seven steps forward until he is right in front of her, the boots of his uniform nearly brushing against her dress before he kneels to the ground and places his hands on hers, holding her how he’s wished to for so long.

“Marry me, Emma.”

#yellow flowers in your hair #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan ff #captain swan

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lovelylogans · 4 years

Text

recurring dream

the odd thing about recurring dreams is that, no matter how many times you dream the same thing, it always takes you by surprise.

—david small

part of the wyliwf verse.

the sideshire files | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: mentions of a pregnancy scare, food mentions

pairings: moxiety

words: 2,435

notes: based super heavily on the s3 opener of gilmore girls, but this takes place when patton’s about nineteen/twenty. references a flashback in chapter nine of wyliwf.

brIIIIIIIIIIIIIING—

patton groans, barely bothering to lift his head from the pillow, and moves to smash his hand against the alarm clock again, and again, and again, until finally he manages to bop it against the right one that would allow him to return to that blissful, wonderful, thoughtless, quiet haze of sleep.

he sighs as he adjusts slightly, getting comfortable again. nice. silent. peaceful.

BWAHHH, BWAHHH, BWAHH, BWAHHH, BWAHH, BWAHH and DING DING DING and EH-EH-EH-EH-EH and even a cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! and patton groans as loudly as he can over the true, chaotic cacophony, barely catching a blurry glimpse of the halo of alarm clocks surrounding his bedside before he briefly attempts silencing via pillow suffocation.

it doesn’t work. stupid alarm clocks. stupid consciousness.

so patton has to get to his feet and shut off the eighteen—eighteen!—alarm clocks that have been stashed around his room. there’s some on his nightstand, and some on the other one, and some on the dresser, and some in the closet, and even a couple in the bathroom. there’s one in the shower, for goodness’ sake, and patton huffs irritably as he shuts it off.

that better be the last one. how did they even have that many clocks with timers on them???

he stomps down the stairs, grumpily ignoring his beautiful little house, the slanting, golden light of summer illuminating the yellow walls, sending everything into a soft, dreamy glow, glancing off picture frames and bringing out the colors in his knitted blankets thrown along the couches and armchairs and that one rocking chair in the corner. he’s talking even before he enters the kitchen.

“okay, see, when i say tomorrow, no matter what, make sure i get up at seven, what i mean is, tomorrow, no matter what, make sure i have the option of getting up at seven, perhaps waking me up, oh, i don’t know, with a shake of the shoulder, a poke—“

“papa!” logan says, wiggling, and patton quickly takes him into his arms before he can squirm right onto the ground, continuing to talk even after a quick kiss pressed to logan’s chubby little two, nearly-three-year-old cheek.

“—because making loud noises when people are trying to rest is rude, isn’t it, logan?” patton says, and logan nods vociferously.

“yeah, you’re asking the toddler,” virgil says, amused, now that his arms are free from holding logan he’s fully able to move to scramble the eggs, and patton pulls a face at him, adjusting logan in his arms.

“logan hasn’t woken me up with noisy noises since he was very little, and he gets a pass because he was a baby then,” patton says.

“m’not a baby anymore,” logan says. “i’m a big boy.”

“that you are,” patton agrees, moving to deposit logan in his booster seat at the table before he digs out the ceramic pot that he keeps coffee grounds in and takes in an appreciative inhale and—

he narrows his eyes at virgil, suspiciously. “this is decaf.”

“what are you talking about?” virgil says, brusque, but patton is onto him, he can tell that virgil’s trying to pretend he’s focusing more on the eggs when he’s actually trying to avoid patton’s stare.

“you switched my coffee,” patton says, already rattling around the kitchen to try and shift things out of the way to find it, “again.”

“i’m a busy man,” virgil scoffs, as patton peeks in the walnut cabinets, on his tiptoes because virgil will use his height against patton, and rattles open the silverware drawer, before he traverses to the next counter, and the next. “i’ve got a diner run, i have shipments to order, i have this breakfast to serve and will you stop that—?”

but he’s cut off by patton’s crow of victory, as he yanks out the ziplock bag full of grounds out from under the sink.

“ha ha!” patton cries. “under the sink, better than the freezer, clever, even, but not clever enough. you can’t stop the sniffer!”

“daddy found it,” logan says. “daddy wins!”

patton turns to gawk, jokingly, at virgil. “did you involve my son in this conspiracy?”

“hey, i’m trying to provide a good example,” virgil says defensively. “just one day without coffee. one!”

“daddy wins, daddy wins,” logan says. “told you!”

“told him what?” patton asks, as he scoops the right grounds into the machine.

“hide’n’seek,” logan says. “you’re the best.”

“guess so,” patton says, turning to see logan, hair illuminated by that same morning glow, “but i learned it from you, because you’re the best!”

“hey, one cup,” virgil says sternly, and patton sighs, theatrical, before he adjusts his grounds so that each of them will have one cup, and kicks on the machine, hearing it sputter to life.

“seriously,” virgil says. “i’m trying to pass this on to logan, he’s impressionable.”

“what’s immm-pressable mean?” logan asks.

“im-pres-sion-a-ble,” virgil sounds out. “it means your dad should set a better example so that you learn that too much caffeine is bad. can you say it with me? too much caffeine bad.”

“caffy bad,” logan parrots loyally, and patton jokingly smacks at virgil’s wrist.

“i am allowed one cup, you know,” patton says teasingly. “you’re being too protective here, papa bear.”

virgil sighs, hand briefly skittering over patton’s belly, like it’s practically a habit, making patton’s heart swell, before he passes over a plate and carts logan’s over to put in front of him directly before he checks the coffee machine.

“okay, so, you’re both up, you’re fed, i’ll probably get going,” virgil says, zipping up his hoodie and nudging down his sleeves from where they’d been pushed up, before pouring himself a thermos.

“oh, we need cotton balls!” patton says, as even the smell of coffee is starting to kick his brain on.

“cotton balls, right,” virgil says. “anything else?”

“um,” patton says, wracking his brains. “i think some am-jay, for Our Friend—“

—virgil looks amused, but really, logan’s picked up on how to spell jam, so he’s stuck with pig latin here—

“—q-tips, wouldn’t mind some world peace, if you can manage it.”

“i’ll give it my best shot. should be home early,” virgil says, and bends to kiss the top of logan’s head before he leans in and presses a kiss to patton’s mouth, before he murmurs, “bye, caffeine-crazy,” against patton’s lips and patton smiles against his mouth, tugging lightly at his lapel to tug him in for another one, hoping against hope—

“papa gross,” logan complains, and patton and virgil pull apart just enough, patton grinning up at him a little sheepishly.

“he learned it from raf, i think,” patton says. and really, expecting to get away with a second kiss after logan started doing that probably was a bit too much to hope for.

“serves us right, i guess,” virgil says, before he presses his hand against patton’s belly again, more deliberate, and gently skims his thumb against the ever-so-slight curve that patton swears is there, even if virgil tells him that he can’t really see it yet.

“bye, sid and nancy,” he tells the two little clumps of cells that will eventually grow into two little babies.

“mm, what do you think about fred and ginger?” patton says. “go really retro with it.”

virgil snorts, gathering his keys and wallet to stick into his pocket. “the nicknames are enough, in my family, no daughter of mine’s gonna be named ginger.”

“back to the drawing board it is,” patton quips. “logan, any new suggestions for your little siblings?”

logan considers the situation with all the gravity that it should bear, regardless of the bit of jam that he’s already got smeared across his cheek. really, patton’s never met a more serious toddler in his life. “monster truck.”

“just monster truck?”

“an’ microscope.”

“monster truck and microscope,” patton muses, looking back at virgil, feeling the corner of his lips threaten to let the laughter loose, and he can tell virgil’s biting the inside of his cheek for the same reason. “it’s got the alliteration thing going, i’ll tell you that.”

“boy’s a poet,” virgil says. “we’ll definitely take it under advisement, lo. pat, decaf, next time. and the rest of the day.”

“you’re a monster.”

“they’ll both have two heads if you don’t,” virgil says.

“more to love,” patton declares, and tugs him in for one last quick little kiss, just one more, letting his hands linger on him as long as they can as virgil walks away, grinning at him all the while, and he ruffles logan’s hair one last time and patton smiles as he goes, settling both his hands on his belly—

patton wakes up with a sharp intake of breath, sitting up in his bed.

his bed. his bed. in his poolhouse, not that actual house which can he even really use the word actual at all it was a dream and—

patton glances to the side, and yes, there’s logan, in his toddler bed parked right next to patton’s, sleeping soundly, fingers stuck in his mouth, barely illuminated by a sliver of moonlight peeking in through the window. asleep.

patton rests his hand on his belly. yeah. definitely not pregnant.

and he doesn’t want to be pregnant, he tells himself firmly. he probably just had this dream because he had that totally embarrassing freak-out on virgil about maybe being pregnant a couple days ago, that’s all.

“papa?” logan mumbles, blinking.

“oh, hey, honey,” patton says, in a soft whisper. “oh, sweetheart, i’m sorry, did i wake you up?”

“yeah,” logan admits, squinting up at him. “moon’s ‘wake.”

“yeah, it is.”

“why are you?” logan asks, and rubs at his eyes with a fist. “did’ja have a bad dream?”

“i—well, not really,” patton says. “i had a dream, yeah. but it was mostly just a really weird dream.”

“oh,” logan says, considering this. “s’it scary?”

patton considers. because—

well. no. it hadn’t been scary. even if the idea of being pregnant again makes his skin crawl to even think about it, and being pregnant with logan had been its own host of all sorts of difficult emotions, but being pregnant in the dream had been—

well. it had practically been a joy.

“nah,” patton decides.

“mkay,” logan says. “want cuddles anyway?”

well, patton’s not just gonna not take him up on that.

“yeah,” patton decides, shifting. “can i lift you up here?”

“mm-hm.”

so patton reaches down, and scoops logan into his bed, blankets and all, and sets him closer to the middle of the bed, so logan wouldn’t be at risk for falling off, and tosses a couple extra pillows over to the side for extra measure. that side of his bed’s against a wall, but really, better safe than sorry.

“weird?” logan asks.

“oh, just a little,” patton says, slinging his arm over logan, so he’s hugging him. “you were there.”

“was i weird?” logan asks, shifting so that they’re practically nose-to-nose.

patton considers. well. really, patton could see logan recommending the name of microscope, and he has been using pig latin around him lately to say crofters and jam and jelly, so.

“no,” he says. “you were perfectly fine.”

“mkay,” logan says. “was virgil there too?”

patton swallows, and he prides himself on not sounding too squeaky when he says, “yeah, virgil was there too.”

“okay,” logan decides, and apparently those are the only two things that really matter to him, because patton watches as logan’s eyes slip shut and he slips off with a kind of speed that patton envies, and now he’s left to sit—well, lie—alone with the dream still firmly stuck in his mind.

his brain’s just working through the pregnancy scare a bit late. that’s what this weird dream is, he tells himself. yeah. it’s probably just his head trying to help him move on in a healthy way, cushioning it so that it made him seem like barely even a blip in his head.

pregnant, because, well, pregnancy scare, that was the whole thing. patton in a house, because when he’d briefly even though about the possibility of it his brain had been rushing through bills and expenses and how to make space for a baby in the poolhouse, so him having a house was probably him, projecting, his wishes for the future, that’s normal, he thinks. and...

and virgil as the father of the babies because one, patton tells himself, virgil is his best friend, and two, he’d been the one who’d helped patton through the pregnancy scare in the first place, so it probably just crossed some wires in his brain, that’s all.

nope, patton thinks, trying not to flush as his brain rushes through the way virgil smiles at him, almost secretive and soft and a rarity, in public, so it always feels like patton’s on top of the world whenever he does get it, and his intense, deep brown eyes, and his lower arms, visible from how he pushes up his flannel’s sleeves sometimes, toned yet not super beefy with muscle and how patton knows the rest of him is he same way, the way virgil dotes on logan and the way his eyes light up whenever logan does something particularly clever and the way that virgil is just as enthralled watching logan learn something new as patton is, and virgil’s amazement at logan growing at that terrifyingly quick rate of his, and the way that virgil tells him he’s a good dad and means it and when it comes from him patton just about feels like he’s floating because a compliment from virgil always makes him feel like he’s practically floating, definitely no other reason why virgil would be my husband.

he’ll probably forget it by morning, he thinks to himself.

yeah, right. because patton’s luck would totally be that good.

he does forget it, a little, by the time he wakes up in the morning with a toddler half on top of him, making it a bit more difficult to breathe.

the hope of forgetting it fades a bit more after he has the same dream the next night.

it fades more the night after that. and more after that. and more after that.

because really, having a delightful picturesque perfect awkward recurring dream that his friend—definitely only his friend, patton thinks, even if he flushes after waking up and noticing new details, the ring on his finger, the reverent looks dream virgil had given him, the gentle, protective touches to his belly—was married to him and expecting twins with him? that’s more his kind of luck than anything.

#my fic #the sideshire files #sanders sides fanfiction #fanfic #my post #text

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amplesalty · 4 years

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) & Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)

One, two, Freddy’s coming for you...

I feel like I’ve mentioned Nightmare 2 a few times on here but it never had it’s own dedicated entry so I’ve had a rewatch of it on my mind for a while now. That was only hastened when I recently learned of ‘Scream, Queen!’, a documentary cantered around Mark Patton who plays the lead character Jesse in 2.

Amongst the less than favourable reviews Nightmare 2 has, it also has the reputation of the ‘gayest horror movie ever’ which lead to the typecasting of Patton and him walking away from his acting career. It’s not something I was immediately aware of on my initial viewing of it, certainly there are a lot of moments that with that in mind stand out upon rewatching and a few that are less than subtle, such as Jesse going to a gay bar in the middle of the night only to run into his gym teacher. Some of it seems a little too much like people trying to read into things that aren’t there, like it seems people point out an early scene where Jesse gets into a tussle with one of his classmates Grady during a softball game. Grady rips Jesse’s trousers and they have a bit of a roll around on the grass before being separated. There are doubtless hundreds of examples of kids getting into fights like that across TV and cinematic history that people wouldn’t point out as examples of homoeroticism. But when you couple that with moments like a later scene where Jesse runs away from his girlfriend as they’re about to have sex, only to seek solitude with Grady and they have this exchange:

“There’s something inside of me. And last night it made me go into my sister’s room. And tonight with Lisa in the cabana, it started happening again.” “I think you are seriously losing it, bro.” “I’m scared, Grady. Something is trying to get inside my body.” “Yeah, and she’s female, and she’s waiting for you in the cabana. And you wanna sleep with me.”

You can perhaps see why people might start drawing conclusions from other scenes.

That ‘something’ is Freddy who is seemingly manifesting himself through Jesse into the real world. Up until that point though, the lines have been very blurry as to whether or not Freddy is actually back or whether Jesse is just going crazy, caught up in the wild stories of this vengeful killer from beyond the grave and becoming some sort of copycat.

It’s that part of the movie that I really like, this gray area where you’re not sure exactly what’s happening. It’s something the Nightmare series is able to explore with its switching between the normal and dream worlds but it’s taken to another level here, rather than just use that to build suspense as to whether a character is in danger due to Freddy being present in the dream world, you can see Jesse descending into this madness and are left to wonder whether or not he’s the one actually the one committing these murders.

Things can be a little disorientating at times due to the editing which I’m not sure is intentional or due to them making cuts. I think there’s a couple of occasions where things will pick up in the morning with Jesse wearing one set of clothes, then jumping to lunch time at school or in the evening back home where he’s wearing different clothes, inplying a day or more has passed. I suppose it does add to the atmosphere in a way but it also comes off a bit weird to me.

The movie is pretty much entirely in the real world so it lacks the creative and unique kills that often arise when people slip into slumber and into Freddy’s realm. But it does feature a scene where Freddy finally emerges into the real world and terrorises a high school party. You don’t really get that widespread sense of panic elsewhere in the series, there’s often that sort of low level of ongoing dread once the group of kids realise what’s happening and fear the next time they fall asleep but Freddy often kills people when they’re alone so it’s a change to see dozens of kids trying to escape, trampiling each other as they try and break through a gate or climb a wall. Apparently Wes Craven didn’t like this scene as it made Freddy look silly by having him surrounded by a bunch of muscular jocks. I find that a little strange though since, yeah Freddy might not be the most imposing figure size wise but his body is pretty much one giant, oozing sore complete with knives for fingers so I’m pretty sure he’s going to come out on top in terms of intimidation. Not to mention all the supernatural shit he’s seemingly conjuring like turning the pool into a boiling pot and summoning up pillars of fire.

I feel like this is where things take a sharp downturn, having the manifestation of Freddy emerge kinda removes all doubt and also takes Jesse out of the movie until the very end. It just feels a little anti climatic to have this big final battle suddenly fought by Jesse’s girlfriend who falls back on the trope of ‘I know you’re still in there, I love you!’ as she implores Jesse to fight back and finally overcome Freddy. So much for that gay subtext if it’s hetro love that finally saves the day.

Going into this rewatch, I had this built up very highly in my head which I don’t think it was able to live up to. Possibly because this years Invisible Man has surpassed it in my head as the really good example of that ambigious horror I like so much. Like Elisabeth Moss in that film, Patton has a real good look to him here in getting across the anxiety that Jesse is going through.

And to draw comparison to another Universal horror, there’s something of a Jekyll and Hyde or Wolfman to Jesse, the way he worries about this transformation that he’s going through and about the thing inside him coming out. During that scene at Grady’s place, Freddy emerges from Jesse’s body almost like a butterfly breaking free of it’s cacoon. Maybe that’s what everyone is talking about when it comes to the gay themes, that sense of discovery taking place amongst young adults and the angst surrounding whether or not they really want to reveal their true selves to a world that, as we’re unfortunately discovering more and more these days, still isn’t ready to accept everyone even nearly 40 years after this movie came out.

So for the documentary – Scream, Queen is an appropriate name for more than just the play on the ‘scream queen’ moniker given to notable horror movie actresses like Jamie Lee Curtis, and the obvious double meaning with it being focused around Patton’s sexuality. There’s quite a few instances of him delivering screams during Nightmare 2 which is a little unusual for a male character in a horror movie, not least a lead like he was. Plus it’s a little unusual for a male to be the lead at all, ‘last girl’ and all that, especially in the Nightmare franchise, all the other ones I’ve seen so far are female led.

They talk about the negative reputation the movie has and highlight a lot of internet comments about the sexual themes, a lot of slurs in there and comments like ‘Jesse screams like a girl’. Well wouldn’t you if some burn victim grabbed you in your house, ran knived fingers across your face and then ripped the top of his head off to expose his brain? I don’t doubt for a second that there are scores of people out there who would write this off due to this, I would hope that those are just a minority and if people don’t like it that they have legitimate reasons for that.

It’s a very eye opening story because even after learning about all this ‘gay subtext’ surrounding the movie and Patton’s departure from acting, I hadn’t really thought about the wider reasons behind that. Like, you hear about him being typecast and you just think that he doesn’t want to be pigeon holed into just playing one type of character or that it was hard to find work in those roles because not many of them existed. But it’s much deeper and more disturbing than that, delving into the emergence of the disease into the wider public knowledge during the 1980’s and the panic surrounding that. They show archived headlines and TV clips, with one member of the public being interviewed on the news saying “what they’re doing is abnormal...they’re not fit, they’re not human beings”. It’s painted as a bit of a witchhunt, with tabloids trying to out any closeted Hollywood stars and Patton tells a story of being duped into divulging information on his own boyfriends illness. With blood tests implemented for any prospective actors and him being advised to look and act a certain way to be more palatable to casters, he’s being asked to deny who he truly is.

For as much as the movie looks at the darker period of his formative years and him walking away from Hollywood, it’s encouraging to see his re-emergence into the public eye and embracing the fandom surrounding the movie, taking part in conventions and screenings that shun the negativity and instead see the role as empowering, encouraging people going through similar situations and being something of a role model.

The film culminates in a sit down talk between Patton and Nightmare 2’s writer David Chaskin who he feels has thrown him under the bus whenever talk of the ‘gay subtext’ has come up, having long denied any such thing before slowly changing his story and claiming that it was the casting that ruined the movie. Just before this there is footage of Patton and Jack Sholder at a convention where Sholder comes across as a little condescending. He’s basically telling Patton that directing his ire at Chaskin is misplaced and that he should drop the whole thing given it’s been 30 years. There’s an element of truth to that but I think it’s understandable that Patton would feel that way, especially when he points out that it’s only recently that Chaskin has taken ownership of the subtext now that we’re living in a more understanding time where it’s perhaps viewed as a brave move to introduce this kind of element. It’s going to be hard to look past someone enabling more vitriol by pinning problems on you.

The talk between Chaskin and Patton is a little awkward and it comes across like they’re there for different purposes, Chaskin trying to lighten the mood periodically where Patton keeps a serious tone, challenging Chaskin on some of the comments he’s made.

There’s one in particular where Chaskin suggests that the movie could be played at conversion camps....yikes.

Patton openly saying beforehand that he’s looking for an apology but I don’t know if he exactly got that. Chaskin says he hopes Patton can forgive him and that there are previous comments he made that he regrets but it comes across a little laboured. Maybe there was more said whilst the cameras weren’t rolling or maybe Patton is just accepting what little he can get from the experience in order to bring some closure to the whole thing.

#A Nightmare on Elm Street #A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 #Freddy's Revenge #Scream Queen #My Nightmare on Elm Street

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sataniccapitalist · 4 years

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APRIL 09, 2020

It's All Over but the Shouting

Wafers-

A few months ago, David Masciotra, a free-lance writer and author of Against Traffic, among other works, approached The American Conservative with a proposal for an article, which would be a review of my American Empire trilogy. He subsequently submitted the article, and never heard back. Since I'm neither a conservative nor a progressive, but only a writer interested in Reality, it's possible that TAC got spooked by David's essay. (To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "Americans can't bear too much reality.") However, it's also possible that by that time the coronavirus was starting to make itself visible, and that TAC was thrown by that rather than anything ideological. I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt. In any case, David and I agreed that I should just post his essay on my blog, and accept the fact that no American publication was likely to run it (for whatever reason). Hence, here it is.

It’s All Over but the Shouting: Morris Berman’s Work on American Decline

“Stick a fork in their ass, and turn them over. They’re done,” Lou Reed dryly announces on his 1989 song about the American Empire, “The Last Great American Whale.” The rock and roll poet’s grim diagnosis of a culture gone awry makes for a fine lyric. If Reed were to have expanded his morbid one-liner into a 1,000-page trilogy of books, full of assiduous research, brilliant anecdotes, and despite the sad subject matter, immensely enjoyable, and often amusing, prose, he would have something resembling the series of books on American decline from cultural critic, historian, novelist, and poet, Morris Berman.

Berman, while a visiting professor in the belly of the beast at the Catholic University in Washington, DC, began writing the first installment in the late 1990s,The Twilight of American Culture, after observing the coalescence of several pathologies that are now beyond dispute as inflicting pain on American life: staggering rates of inequality, governmental dysfunction, an ever-expanding militarism, the fracturing of communal and civic life, and the dominance of anti-intellectualism, visible in everything from an increasingly shallow pop culture to misspelled words on public signs. There was also an aura of threat in the air, of the kind predicted by Don DeLillo in his 1985 novel, White Noise. Like the thick presence of humidity on a summer afternoon, Americans couldn’t see that their neighbors were becoming selfish, and often cruel, but they could feel it.

Having studied the downfall of other empires, Berman saw the window for American reform closing. He warned that if America did not drastically transform its public policies, ideology, and working conception of citizenship, its troubles would only intensify and calcify, bringing a once-promising civilization past the point of no return. In the two books that followed—

Dark Ages America

and

Why America Failed

—Berman meticulously demonstrated that America’s myopic focus on profit, at the expense of everything else, its zest for war – at home and abroad – and its lack of self-awareness and insight had escalated, making recovery virtually impossible.

Simultaneous with the development of Berman’s argument, the United States suffered the worst attack on its soil on September 11, 2001, and responded by launching not one, but two disastrous wars. Its housing market and financial system crashed, liquidating much of middle class wealth, and it reacted with giving away boondoggles to the very parties of greed that caused the crisis. Then, in 2016, as the citizenry began to stratify in ways more violent and intractable, Donald Trump became President-Elect. Berman, whom the New York Times and other mainstream outlets dismissed as cynical, cranky, and “anti-American,” looks more and more sterling.The left and right argue about nearly everything, making extreme accusations about each other. Maybe one camp is right on other issues, and the other is correct on some, but the larger possibility to consider is, what if they are all wrong on the main issue?

As Berman put it during a recent email exchange that I had with him:

Conservatives and progressives alike are patriots; like Trump, they seek to save America, or make it great again. What they are ignoring is the rhythm and record of history. All civilizations rise and fall; there are no exceptions to this rule, and America is not going to escape its fate. The great Southern historian, C. Vann Woodward, first suggested the inevitable decline of the nation in 1953. Andrew Hacker stated it clearly in The End of the American Era, 1970. Between that year and today, there have been a host of books—my trilogy on the American empire included—that have pointed out that civilizations come and go, and that now is our time. Yet on both the right and left, there is no recognition of this bedrock reality. If you do recognize the larger picture, you can't possibly care about impeachment, for example, or who wins these silly Democratic debates. All of that is theater, not reality.

The reality is ascertainable from the daily deluge of grim headlines—lead poisoning in the water causing irreversible brain damage in children, the rise of the “working poor,” near-daily mass shootings, America spending hundreds of billions on weapons of war while ignoring its crumbling infrastructure. Pundits and politicians have a tendency to treat all of these signs of pathology and dysfunction as isolated, but an unobstructed historical vantage point, which Berman’s work provides, suggests that all of America’s problems—from high rates of functional illiteracy to political corruption—are trees growing out of the same rotten roots.

Berman’s project becomes more excavation than analysis, demonstrating an affinity for radicalism, in the original sense of the term, which is identifying and criticizing an issue’s origin, rather than obtusely obsessing over its consequences. America, from its inception, was dedicated to commercial conquest, and equated “the pursuit of happiness” with the acquisition of wealth and property. The third book in Berman’s trilogy, Why America Failed, relies on assiduous research and sharp analysis to prove the case over its 400 pages. Meanwhile, the consistent papering over the more accurate story he tells, with red, white and blue advertisements, robs even many of the country’s leading dissidents of a holistic perspective. In his deployment of cultural criticism, Berman shows how, although his politics tend slightly toward the left, he is most in mourning over America’s destruction of tradition and refusal to balance its desires for commercial dominance with small scale, communal concerns:

Dating back 400 years—the continent was filled with individuals whose idea of the good life was goods, i.e. money and property. There were dissenting voices, such as Capt. John Smith and the Puritan divines, but these were increasingly pushed aside. The title of Richard Bushman's book, and the book itself, are good summaries of the process: From Puritan to Yankee. America was effectively born bourgeois; it had no feudal period. And while feudalism had its obvious drawbacks, it also had some serious advantages: community, craftsmanship, ties of friendship, meaningful work, noblesse oblige, and spiritual purpose, among other things. The American experiment was based, from the first, on hustling, opportunism; this is what the "pursuit of happiness" really meant in the eighteenth century—go out and get yours (which the Founding Fathers certainly did). "Virtue" originally meant putting the needs of society above one's own personal interests. By the late seventeenth century, the meaning had been inverted: it now meant personal success in an opportunistic environment. Blaming the corporate elite has its limits, because what virtually all Americans want is to join the upper 1 percent. Thus American spirituality, such as it is, can be summarized in a single word: More. More, more, I want more. Our leaders reflect our values, which is how America's consummate hustler, Donald Trump, wound up in the White House. In that sense, we have a genuine democracy.

In his seminal essay, “Democratic Vistas,” Walt Whitman worried that “genuine belief” had left American life. In the mad race for money and status, Americans were forgetting or neglecting the sociopolitical principles that could construct a spiritually strong society. For “genuine belief” to thrive, the believers must, in spite of their partisan or ideological disputes, maintain some adherence to tradition – a set of ideas, rites, and practices that form the foundation of their politics, behavior, and vision for the development of their culture.

Berman attempts to achieve a balance in his cultural and historical analysis by spotlighting societies where edifying traditions are steadfast, helping to anchor their respective cultures, and help inhabitants connect to each other with a shared sense of purpose. In Neurotic Beauty, Berman writes about Japan’s traditions of craft, family, and advantageous use of empty space in art and identity, and how those traditions are under siege by Japan’s own move to large scale, corporate capitalism. In Genio: The Story of Italian Genius, Berman examines the Italian gift of injecting space, movement, into static situations – the result of which is, arguably, the most significant creative legacy in the Western world.

It is not only through travel and study that Berman is able to contrast cultures that maintain some loyalty to their best traditions with the American fixation on commercial, technological, and militaristic “progress,” but also through his own experience. He asserts that the “best decision” of his life was moving to Mexico, and one of his worst decisions was waiting so long to do it. When I asked him about the “traditional society” of his Mexican home, as juxtaposed with his previous home in Washington, DC, he began with the caveat that “Mexico has been heavily Americanized, and traditional values—community, friendship, craftsmanship, spirituality—have accordingly been eroded in favor of hustling, individualism, alienation, and meaninglessness.”

Nevertheless, his move to Mexico was a “bet” on the lasting elements of tradition and communal life in Mexico, and it is one that has proven itself wise. Berman offers an anecdote to illustrate the camaraderie and generosity that often characterize his relationships and interactions in Mexico:

Something like this happens to me at least once a week, and it always wakes me up to the fact that I am not living in the US anymore. I live in an apartment building in Mexico City, one floor up. One day I was coming home from the supermarket, going up the stairs, carrying plastic bags full of groceries, and one of the bags broke. Contents spilled out all over the stairs and onto the ground: oranges, Diet Coke, whatever. At that point, at the top of the stairs, the door to the apartment there opened, and a 5-year-old girl peered out. Without saying a word, she came down the stairs and helped me put the spilled groceries back in the bags. When it was done, she went back upstairs and closed the door.

Berman would not argue that acts of kindness never take place in the United States, or that every single Mexican behaves according to an ethic of solidarity, but the rarity of friendly relations in America, and the breakdown of community, as documented at length by Robert Putnam, Sherry Turkle, and many other scholars, is not accidental.

“For one thing, girls are taught to fear men, in America (possibly with good reason),” Berman said, and added, “The sexes pretty much hate each other, or are at least wary of each other. But equally significant, Americans of all ages are taught to not help other people (we even arrest people who attempt to feed the homeless). Their problems are their problems, not yours. You are not your brother's keeper, and in general other people are rivals or enemies.”

America has failed to enact the social welfare policies of its democratic peers in Western Europe, but what Berman indicts goes to deeper to core of America’s character. America has also neglected to preserve its “bonds of voluntary association” that Alexis de Tocqueville believed were crucial to the health of the society. In that sense, Americans interested in conservatism might consider that their country is the least conservative in the world. It invests almost no effort in conserving anything, from the beauty of its natural environment to the social ties that are essential for a durable civilization.

The improvements of American life for blacks, women, gays, and workers were possible through the courageous social movements of the 20th century, and these are improvements that Berman admires. He cautions, however, that none of them address the central problem of American culture:

Those were certainly great successes, and they made a great difference for the people involved in those movements. Personally, I applaud them. The problem, however, is that all of them were bids to have a greater share in the American pie—bids to enter the dominant culture. None of them envisioned, a la Lewis Mumford, Henry David Thoreau, or Ernest Callenbach, a different type of society. They merely wanted a greater role in the society as is. The only group that stood for a completely different way of life was the Native Americans, and look what we did to them. The savagery of that genocide, of a people who dared to disagree with the American definition of "progress," is unbelievable.

When Martin Luther King turned more radical, expressing opposition to the “spiritual sickness” of America, rather than only its racist laws, the country turned on him. Similarly, Berman describes in his trilogy how most of the public mocked and ridiculed President Jimmy Carter for his televised "Spiritual Malaise" address, given in Annapolis in 1979—a speech that now appears prescient in its condemnation of uncontrolled consumerism, unabashed selfishness, and the stunning inability of the nation to observe its own behavior.

The candidates in the 2020 race for the presidency, including the president himself, routinely repeat the bromide that the election will determine the “direction” of the country. The "soul" of the nation is somehow always at stake, and yet regardless of who gets elected, things continue to spiral out of control. Morris Berman’s sobering assessment doubles as a “Dead End” sign, warning that the winner might influence the speed and comfort of travel, but that ultimately, we're headed for collapse.

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baconpal · 5 years

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talkin bout fire force

shit boys it’s been too long time for another unprompted juvenile rant about manga, click keep reading if you’re insane and keep scrolling if you aren’t

So Fire Force anime starts in just about a week and I decided to just read it all instead of waiting for any anime. It took a while to read all of it and now I just kind of have a lot to say about the manga, the anime, and the author. So here we go.

I actually have a lot of good things to talk about, but I’ll get the bad shit out of the way first:

THE WRITING

idk his name it doesn’t really matter since he’s made like 2 things he’s just the soul eater guy; his art style has always been charming and the action scenes keep improving but his actual narrative writing is real bad. I’ll talk about the characters themselves since I actually think FF’s characters are a ridiculous improvement from soul eater, and the setting/aesthetic are on point as well but the plot is just as bad if not worse than whatever soul eater was.

The story is riddled with what should obviously be throwaway characters that keep being brought back and doing something evil and unexpected because it’s a shounen manga and if you aren’t being betrayed then the plot isn’t moving forward, or someone introduced as an obviously villainous character just kind of agrees to be friends in a couple chapters. This is used as a constant cycle of introducing both a set of “evil” and “good” characters, then one of the old “good” sets of characters does something evil and the newest “evil” guys turn out to be good. It’s not interesting or shocking to have a character you can’t even remember come back and act like they’re important, especially if it’s repeated over and over.

FF pretends to have some kind of politic overtones where religions and businesses and such act as their own entities and betray each other and prey on the civilians, but you see absolutely none of the impact anybody’s actions have on the world despite ridiculous things constantly happening and world shaking truths being brought to light over and over, nothing happens. Villains will also have ridiculous unbeatable abilities but then just be ignored, such as making zombie apocalypses or controlling minds and such. This is also likely a concession of being a shounen manga, where you can’t expect readers to read every single chapter, and usually on a week to week basis, so every chapter needs to have its own big shit happening, even if there’s no plans to follow through on anything.

The worst part about the writing is how much stuff that the reader didn’t know about and has no idea what it is is passed of as some shocking twist when it’s introduced. This mostly happens with powers and with new factions. There’s a ridiculous amount of times where a new group steps in as the bad guy like mentioned earlier. But for the powers, there’s so many things layered on top of an actually acceptable power system that just seem to cause a DBZ type of escalation of power without the fight scenes actually becoming that much crazier at all. On top of the simple 2nd/3rd generation fire fighter powers, the main character is meant to utilize the adolla burst, the adolla link, the preacher’s divine protection, the okay hand emoji that makes you go fast, the breath of life, and superfire fighting. None of that means anything to anyone and are just used as “MC needs to be better at something but only temporarily” over and over. It’s similar to Maka and Soul’s deals with the devil in soul eater except much more common and with absolutely no downsides.

Also not the fault of the writer himself but there is not ANY good translation of this manga out there holy shit. There’s so many incredibly obvious puns and connections and choices of words to be made that are just entirely ignored, the typesetting is always awful, and no name for moves, characters, or even the title are ever agreed upon. It took until the official release titled “Fire Force” before people stopped trying to call the manga “Burning Firefighter Squad of Fire”.

THE ANIME

Just a bit more bad to say before I go into all the shit about this manga i actually like. The anime looks awful. A lot of anime does right now, very little of note has been coming out or seems to be coming in the future, which is usually the case but its not getting better and that sucks!

But specifically the fire force anime, following up after soul eater, has absolutely none of the visual charm translated from the manga to anime, the voice casting is absolutely abysmal, and there’s nothing to give me hope in it, not enough to even give it an episode most likely. People might try to defend David productions because woah man I love jojo!!! but they’re pretty fucking bad at animating anything. The choice of color is gross and the visual effects are bland, which is a bad place to start for a show that will contain tons of fire and other bombastic effects. Big shame.

OKAY ONTO THAT GOOD SHIT

CHARACTER DESIGN

The visual designs in soul eater were cool if a bit janky, and the actual concepts for characters were far from astounding, usually being able to fully describe characters in single words and not having much development outside of combat abilities. But Fire Force has some of the most tight characters I’ve seen in a while, they’re all simple and focused with strong thematic elements.

Ya’ll know me, hopefully. I really appreciate simple designs and simple characters. Complicated does not equal deep, and simple does not equal shallow. The characters in fire force will usually embody a concept, or a concept and its exact opposite, and be never waver from their design. I’ll talk about em for specific characters when I get to em but even lots of minor characters are very well focused and I appreciate it.

SHINRA

The main character, and while his grocery list of special abilities and “chosen one” kinda shit is annoying, he starts of as a very strong introspective of the weight of your actions vs the impression you give of in the eyes of society. The easiest way to describe it is through the very obvious identity struggle he goes through of wanting to be known as a “Hero” but instead being “The Devil”. All Shinra ever does is selflessly save peoples lives and put himself at extreme risk, he tells everyone and their grandma that they can call on him when they need a hero, and yet his visuals consist of a dark haired punk who constantly smiles a sharp toothy smile, his ability that he uses to fly in and do kamen rider kicks with spews fire from his feet in the shape of pointy wings, and this fire puts a heavy shadow over his face, giving him a monsterous siloutte. It’s not at all subtle that he just looks as evil and menacing as possible, and so his reputation is constantly negative no matter how kind he is. It’s not explored all that deeply but it is still a strong contrast.

ARTHUR

What a fucking idiot. What an absolute buffoon. This stupid fuck functions as a very simple gag character by being nearly too dumb to function and living in a made up reality as a fantasy knight, but is also able to exist as one of the strongest characters in combat. His ridiculous power is handled in a much more engaging way than Shinra’s. As instead of layering multiple chosen one abilities on him, he becomes weaker or stronger depending on his suspension of disbelief. The more in character as a powerful knight he becomes, the stronger he is. It’s a clean way to make a funny delusional characters struggle actually mean something to the people around them, instead of being left to his own devices or constantly told to fuck off. And while I said the plot isn’t very good, the smaller character beats can be very powerful. For example, It was already pretty easy to just accept Arthur as he was, but his family situation is explored late into the manga, and it’s shown that he began to live in fantasy to escape from his families arguments and poor living conditions. His parents take advantage of his disconnect and abandon their home with him in it, leaving all their responsibilities to him with a note saying he’s now the king and has inherited their castle. This pushes him to an even more absurd degree of fantasy in order to just live out his life knowing he was unloved and unwanted. It very understated how you can make a character that’s mostly used for jokes still be very easy to connect to and empathize.

TAMAKI

This one is likely to be the hottest take made from me here today, but this is the most interesting character in this series for a variety of reasons.

Visuals out of the way, the fire fighter outfits everyone wears already look cool as shit and big puffy coats just get me goin, this girl absolutely rocks it on top of having twintails and a cute face. That’s not objective in anyway this is just a character designed to bait specifically me and its fucking working, okay? The writing is the actually interesting part.

So something that’s usually not even worth talking about is fan service. Show of a girls titties cus its what dudes in their teens want to see, its free (You)s for shounen manga, and soul eater was full of it. It was pretty bad in soul eater and could come at jarring and unneeded times for characters that didn’t seem to exist for any sexual reasons. It was a very poor way to include fan service.

Fire Force also begins in a similar spot, the 3 main girls that are around in the beginning chapters are occasionally seen changing or in a bath or covered in water or whatever, with one particularly bad spread of them with the classic no nipple no vagina bodies all standing together in a shower. Its awkward and stiff and even as a fan of anime tiddie it just wasn’t worth having.

But then that wildman just does it. He creates one single character to put literally every single ounce of horny energy in to. A character who exists to fall over and get her tits pushed into someones face, but pushed to a cartoonish extreme. It sounds silly to try to pass off fanservice as funny, but it is. It’s so ridiculously intended and impossible and always varied that its actually fun to see her do something stupid and for something to happen. Sometimes its just her ass landing on a dudes face (god i wish that were me) or her body being exposed and drawn in pretty high detail. Sometimes instead they get an entire dude stuck in her shirt after just tripping in a way that is not not being sexual to the reader at all since you see absolutely no skin. She’s simply destined to be put into lewd situations in universe, not in regards to the manga itself. For an example, here she is just standing completely still, and suddenly becoming naked, drawn in a distant, goofy way:

It’s stupid. It’s definitely still fan service, but it’s just ridiculous. And that’s way more interesting than having every girl in your series randomly get naked at some point. Despite being insane it still works on boys, as Tamaki is the most popular girl in the series by far, ranked as the second most popular character consistently.

Tamaki also leads to the single best chapter of the manga where a horribly designed throw-away assassin who was beaten by her returns for revenge, but just ends up as a short, self contained, well paced comedic story of love.

And guess what, she’s still interesting outside of being funny and having fan service. Her cartoonish luck is essentially treated as her actual power, and her fire cat abilities aren’t explored too deeply during most of the series, but this is done for a greater purpose of essentially spitting in the face of high stakes. Tamaki easily witnesses the most deaths in the series, and most of them are cruel and unusual. She witnesses children being killed by a man who inspired her, she sees people she just met be beheaded in some gruesome shots that aren’t anywhere else in the series, and she gets involved in all sorts of life threatening situations. She still just falls over and gets naked. She’ll have fairly serious fights where she tries her hardest or the people around her are completely serious, and without bringing any direct attention to it she still ends up showing skin. There’s a point where every single character is at risk of dying at once to a trap set by the enemy, and Tamaki quietly laments over how she’ll be the only one to survive. She is completely aware of her ridiculous luck and her complete immunity to stakes, which is honestly just great.

Even beyond that, Tamaki is slowly being built up as more and more of an actual character, she has a short backstory section where her own hard work and effort is basically ignored by everyone around her, as if her success in life is only a result of her good luck, which is a feeling that hits very close to home to me (fuck you if you’ve ever discredited someones hard work because they’re “””””talented””””). And in the most recent couple of chapters, shes made an active effort to train alongside Shinra and Arthur, who both value the improvements they can make to themselves through hard work. No other characters in the cast make conscious efforts to improve from their status in the way Tamaki does. She moves up from a joke character to now trying to stand along side the main character as a useful and though out character. It’s a genuinely wonderful character to have been developed and the best thing I’ve gotten from this author.

VISUALS AND COMPOSITION

Okay enough about the characters, the last little thing I wanna touch on is just some of the absolutely bonkers kinds of compositions in this manga. One of the villains has an ability that is explained incredibly poorly. Pretty sure it’s just a time slowing ability that has nothing to do with fire but whatever. The pages where he uses the ability have this absolutely sick warped look to them that plays with the panels in a way that couldn’t be depicted in any other medium. Just look at this shit.

Every panel has a different background and yet still describes a single cut in time. It might not really mean anything, but that’s fucking sick dude.

Another pretty interesting one is this one kid named Nataku, who has an ability forced onto him by a maniac with a motif of stars for eyes, who dies immediately after. This event is shown to have absolutely traumatized him not because its directly said, but because this dead character appears constantly in panels with this kid, sometimes taking up the entire background to yell at him, or being an almost impossible to see spec lingering behind him. Nataku is also drawn in this strange sketchy style where he seems to be melting, and sometimes melds into shapes that resemble this dead character, such Nataku’s mouth becoming the fucking eyeball of the dead guy, star pupil and everything. It’s just such a specific and horrific way to depict that kind of identity trauma and it really stuck out to me.

I’LL SHUT UP NOW

And ye that’s about it. It was a lot of rambling and there are still lots of little things i like about the manga, good designs and cool fights and stuff but i just wanted to talk about the things that were really noteworthy to me.

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent 4 hours just typing about stuff but if you actually read any of this, on this dead website of all places, you’re cool. Hope you found something interesting too.

#Fire Force #juvenile rant

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alexanderwrites · 7 years

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Thoughts Roundup - Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 16

“No knock, No doorbell”

There are moments in pop culture history that I always feel envious about - envious because I wish i’d been there to experience it them as they happened. I wish I could’ve seen Talking Heads perform live, I wish I could have seen The Shining in cinemas when it was first released, and I wish I could have watched the original run of Twin Peaks when it first aired. The thing about the desire to have experienced these things as they happened is directly tied to the environment they’re released into, and the effect they had on the public at the time. You can get the blu ray of Stop Making Sense, you can find The Shining screenings in independent cinemas, and you can buy the Twin Peaks boxset. But what I really want is to know what it felt like to see Twin Peaks every week, at a time when Dynasty and L.A Law were as exciting as TV got. I want to have been a part of those conversations that people had about the show. I want to know how people like my Mum felt when she watched it back in 1990 (for the record, she hated it. She’s got great taste, but Twin Peaks was decidedly too weird, according to her).

I came along to Twin Peaks ten years ago, when the show had vanished from the conversation and was yet to have a second life thanks to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. David Lynch’s work was alien and exciting to me - I remember seeing a Fire Walk With Me VHS in HMV years before and asking my Mum just what it was. I remember seeing clips of Blue Velvet late at night and being terrified of it. And finally, I remember seeing clips from Twin Peaks’ last episode being featured on a countdown of the 100 Scariest Moments on Channel 4. That’s when I knew I had to find out just what the fuck it was all about. And I have such fond memories from 2007 & 2008, of obsessing over the show, watching episodes on summer evenings in my room, excited about waking up the next day so I could tell my Mum and Brother about it. The thing that the experience missed is a feeling of communality. The moments in the show that rocked my world and made me feel a way i’d never felt before were experienced solely by me, in a tiny bedroom, on a portable DVD player. The moments that, when they first aired had people all over the world talking now felt like they were being seen in 2007 only by me. But now, ten years on, as Twin Peaks: The Return heads towards the finish line and its biggest moments reverberate from it with electric power, I finally get to have what I never had before: the experience of watching it with the world. The only other show I experienced that with was Lost, a show I watched religiously and passionately. But The Return feels different - it feels bigger.

You can feel that there are fans who’ve waited 10, 20, 25, years for it, and it carries the extra weight of knowing that this really might be David Lynch’s last filmic or televisual outing. Think about that for a second. This week might be the last time we can say that we have David Lynch’s work to look forward to. He’s spoken about how he’s moving away from films and towards visual arts, and at 71, going back to the world that forever cemented his name in the Pop Culture canon could be the most perfect swan song of his career. As a result, every episode feels loaded and essential, and with the events of tonight’s episode, it feels like we’re seeing something iconic take place. We are reacting together. We are experiencing it together. I’ve had conversations about it with my girlfriend, a bunch of friends, family members, and some randomers online for good measure. These are those shared experiences i’d longed for. 14 year old me, watching monumental television unfold and wishing he had someone to share it with is being rewarded every week, and I’ve never felt more rewarded than I felt with part 16 and its own monumental developments.

Dale Cooper is awake. Finally. Whether you’ve waited a season, or 27 years, nobody can deny the immense satisfaction that this development delivers. It feels huge. It feels iconic. It feels like something truly good and pure occurring in a bleak world. I got tearful, I laughed, I smiled so wide my face hurt. I didn’t realise how badly I needed Dale back. How badly the world needs Dale back. “People are under a lot of stress” notes Rodney Mitchum tonight. They certainly are. Whether they’re residents of Twin Peaks or Las Vegas, the characters throughout this return have resided in a world of hurt. It feels sharply current, and a reflection of an America that feels broken. Out of the pain, through the pain - through a violent electric shock that is - returns to us Dale Cooper, the hero we both need and deserve. He is Lynch and Frost’s testament to goodness, their monument to the power of kindness. The electrical power that has given him new life like some kind of benevolent Frankenstein’s monster is finally used for goodness, a reminder that a thing which can contain evil is not entirely comprised of that evil. There is room for goodness - the Mitchum brothers have hearts of gold, as Dale (it feels SO FUCKING GOOD to finally be able to write “Dale”) tells them. Janey-E and Sonny Jim are good people caught up in someone else’s awful web. Dale is a good man who promises that he will one day walk through that red door and come home for good. For now, he’s walked through that red curtain and is back home with us. Whether he himself comes back to Janey-E and Sonny Jim, or whether a copy of him (he tells Mike to make another) takes his place, I adore the humanity and warmth his family is written with. They are dearly cared about by Lynch and Frost.

Dale remembers every moment with the Joneses. It meant something. It filled his heart up, and kept him going, and Dale’s poignant sincerity - god, i’ve missed it - tells her this honest truth. The miraculous and thrilling thing about his awakening is there is no need to stop and explain everything to Dale. There is no catchup. He is awake, dressed in his sharp black suit within moments, and is on the way to Twin Peaks while the main theme chimes in cathartically, and here he proclaims: “I am the FBI”. I cannot think of a greater, more exciting and meaningful moment in TV. I have goosebumps just thinking of it. If The Return has all been about trying to return to something that once was and the difficulties surrounding that, then this episode seems to posit the optimistic and moving idea that some things will always be. Like Laura Palmer and the Log Lady, Dale Cooper always will be, and it is hard not to take great comfort in that fact. Like the river running through the town, or the moon overhead each night, the forces of good will always exist, even if they are reborn. It needed to take 16 episodes. It needed to feel earned. And it needed to make its point, which it has with powerful brilliance.

The comfort of Dale’s return is contrasted by Doppelcoop’s pretty un-fatherly sacrificing of Richard Horne, who it’s revealed through a casually mumbled line, is (or was) Doppelcoop’s son. Doppelcoop’s headlights are still probing the road in front of him, still pushing onwards into that darkest of night, and there is a feeling of dread every time we see these headlights, waiting for them to illuminate the iconic “Welcome to Twin Peaks” sign. It is just a matter of time. Richard is destroyed by an electric light that engulfs him, and possibly whisks him away to the black lodge. The question is open of who sent Doppelcoop here, exactly? It seems to have been a trap designed to wipe him out, and it seemingly came from either Jeffries or Diane. His coldness and his manipulative ease is frightening here - he has known all along that Richard is his son, and feels nothing upon seeing his son killed. And Richard follows his father’s orders in a perverse mirror image of the people who follow Dale’s orders. He marches happily into the darkness where he is killed because that is Doppelcoop’s power: if he tells you to do something, you do it. With Dale, you listen to him similarly, but not from fear - instead from respect and love. Dale has always been a delightfully bossy person, but because Doppelcoop has twisted Dale’s goodness into evil, he has taken that friendly bossiness and turned it into a dictatorship of demands. If you don’t listen to Doppelcoop, you die. If you do listen to him, you’ll probably die anyway.

Diane, we hardly knew ye. Well, maybe that should be DoppelDiane. We knew something was wrong - every moment she was on screen, Laura Dern masterfully sold Diane’s trembling dread with a wild intensity that was both all-knowing and untouchably distant. She was full of secrets, and Doppelcoop’s text to her (nice to see that lodge spirits use emoticons!) seems to have triggered something inside Diane which sent those secrets pouring out of her. The revelation that she is not the real Diane but instead a manufactured Diane sounds crazy, but suddenly everything about her makes sense. A real tortured Diane is in there somewhere, or at least her memories are, and perhaps if she is in the same place as Laura there is a distant hope that she is safe, or can be brought back. Doppelcoop has throughout the years been playing god. He has manufactured people, he has manipulated people, he has bent everything to his will, and Diane is an example of what that does to a person. She disappears after being shot in a wildly intense sequence, and her body is viciously flung, disappears, and then winds up in the red room. Here, She is destroyed. So, where is the real Diane? Where is her soul? What happens to people like her and Laura? It is heartbreaking to find out that all along, she was just a pawn, and her story of what Doppelcoop did is even more heartbreaking. It’s a sad end - but is it the end? I’m certain I heard her say “i’m in the sheriff’s station” in this scene, which seems to be where all the story threads are heading towards. I can’t help but think of Judy. Whoever she is, she’s got a LOT of explaining to do.

Gary and Chantal, we hardly knew ye, either. Their end is hilariously overblown. A fender bender turns into the most ludicrously violent uzi-led shootout, and it really is down to their own stupidity. They were vocal supporters of violence, and they died fittingly violent deaths - deaths which echo Bonne & Clyde, except Gary and Chantal aren’t really so romantic. They’re just two dumdums who eat a lot of crisps and mess up simple tasks.

Audrey’s scenes tonight gave us the double rug pull. The first was “Surprise! She is in the real world”, and the second was a bigger “Surprise! Of course she’s fucking not!”. There was something so uncanny and strange happening with her throughout the last episodes, and Diane’s claim that she’s not herself tonight called back to Audrey’s similar claim in a previous episode. Her appearance at the Roadhouse feels realistic enough, until the MC announces Audrey’s Dance, the song she danced to all those years ago, and the crowd moves off the stage so that she can dance dreamily once again. The moment is inexplicable and as hypnotic now as it was then. However, where it once felt otherworldly in a wonderful sense, it now feels laced with menace and literal dreaminess - a violent altercation in the Roadhouse wakes Audrey up, and suddenly she is in a bright white room staring at herself in a mirror in confusion. The beautiful dream, the gorgeous music, the perfect concoction that sent nostalgic goosebumps up our arms is coldly revealed to be quite literally unreal. She is somewhere else now, where the lush purple lighting of the Roadhouse has been replaced with a blinding clinical whiteness. Her dance - so joyous and soulful - is snatched away from us and replaced with uncertainty once again. Is she somewhere with Laura and Diane, or someplace else entirely? I think we will find out, but what matters is that she is not here, she is not herself, and the dream has ended.

It is incredible the range of emotions that an episode of Twin Peaks can stir. The questions I want answered most are clinging to me tightly - who is Judy and what does Doppelcoop want? - but the overall feeling I get from The Return and from this episode is not of confusion, but overwhelmed emotion. An episode where Dale speaks would in itself be enough to knock you out, but with everything else that happens, the episode is a behemoth - yet it is carefully written and plotted. Despite the questions, I didn’t get lost in the weeds, and the return of Dale feels like a moment of shining clarity to help you through. There is a feeling of togetherness and unity now that Dale is awake again, and a sense of safety that wasn’t present before. And so, we head into the final week of Twin Peaks maybe ever. And like the millions that we are sharing this experience with, tonight’s episode is about sharing our experiences with others - be it Diane sharing her experiences with the FBI, Dale sharing his life with Janey-E and Sonny Jim, or the Mitchum Brothers sharing their generosity with the Jones family. It’s about the power of sharing, of not living alone. And while it may be painful (Diane), or beautiful (Dale and Janey-E), it is essential that we share the experience. It’s the source of goodness, and the goodness is now wide awake in Twin Peaks.

#twin peaks spoilers #twin peaks #david lynch #kyle maclachlan #dale cooper #tv review

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himbowelsh · 7 years

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I've just read your dancing Babe and it's all kinds of perfect and I'm not ready to let go of dancing troupe. Soo prompt for Webgott: Wedding in Lieb's family. Web is his +1. Lieb never seen Web "normal" dancing before. Only the drunk flailing. He expects Web to be kinda awkward and stiff, because Web is kinda awkward. Only to be totally surprised, because Web is amazing dancer and he dances hell out of all Joe's sisters, they all love him and he kills dance floor with Joe's Ma, she's a pro.

Anonymous asked: I cannot not request prompt or headcanon for Webgott and “Liebgott has a gaggle of sisters who terrorize him” when Web meets Lieb’s family. He sees Lieb’s sisters teasing and riling their baby bro and he finally gets it. That’s where he got his sharp wit and his fighty personality.

AN: well, come on, I’ve gotta combine these two, these prompts are perfect for each other!

“Oh my goodness, you’re adorable.”

The very tall, very buxom woman says this two seconds before squeezing David to her chest like some durable plush toy. The next thing David knows he’s struggling to breathe past the crush of breasts, and manicured hands have a vice grip on his shoulder blades. It would be a lot more pleasant were he not: a) gay, and b) two seconds away from being smothered by his boyfriend’s sister.

“Jesus, Sarah, lighten up! You trying to kill him or something?”

Just as quickly as he was pulled forward, David is tugged back into the safety of Joe’s arms. He heaves a lungful of air as Joe pats him down, as if he’s worried his older sister has transferred something contagious to him. Joe is scowling; this isn’t abnormal. He’s been scowling all day long, from the moment they set out on the road to when they pulled in the driveway of Joe’s mother’s cute suburban home.

This is not Joe’s childhood house. As soon as her last kid moved out, Judith Liebgott moved out, bought a one-bedroom near the beach, got herself a convertible, a lapdog, and a rich boyfriend fifteen years her junior. David’s traditional family upbringing is scandalized; the rest of him admires Mrs. Liebgott’s moxie.

So he can understand who Joe wouldn’t be so happy to be attending his own mother’s wedding, but he at least could try to act like it around his family. From what David’s heard of Joe’s sisters, they’re all a very close-knit bunch. They’re bound to notice something’s wrong with their little brother in a second.

Sarah Liebgott has her brother’s smirk – thin, sharp, and dangerous. “Aww, Joe, I’m just teasing. He’s adorable. You weren’t lying when you said he looks like a model.”

“You said that?”

“No!” Joe retorts, cheeks flaring. It’s the most adorable thing David has ever seen.

“Aww, Joey, don’t be shy!” An equally tall women with a thick brunette ponytail comes up and throws an arm around Joe’s shoulders, pulling him against her. Behind her, two other Liebgott sisters come striding up, wearing matching sadistic grins. David isn’t sure what’s more amazing; the realization that Joe is the shortest of his siblings or the fact that his older sisters all seem to share his wicked sense of humor.

“Look at you!” exclaims one of his sisters as she pinches his ribs. “You look even skinner than before! Don’t you eat?”

“Yeah, probably all crap. You know how his diet works. You still eat poptarts raw, bro?”

“Mom is going to kill you when she sees you, Jo-Jo! You look like you haven’t slept in weeks!”

“You look like a zombie.”

“It’s an improvement, to be honest.”

Joe hisses, bristling like a disgruntled cat under his sisters’ intrusive comments and touches. Crossing his arms, David watches the chaos unfold, unable to keep a smile off his face. He feels like he’s discovering an entire missing chunk to the puzzle that is his boyfriend. So this is where Joe got his firey nature from; growing up in a family like this, he needed thick skin.

“Jesus, Amy, stop with the hair!” Joe whines, twisting out of his sisters’ grips. “Becky, come on, get out of here – hey, Sarah, knock it off!”

Oh, this is going to be the best trip ever.

The actual wedding takes place in a week; the days leading up to it are jammed with preparations, planning, and organization. Some people, like Joe’s oldest sister Sarah, thrive in this environment. Others – like Joe himself – chafe under the closely-packed schedule that leaves him with limited room to breathe.He rebels in whatever ways he can, whether it’s picking petty arguments with his sisters over dinner or sneaking off when the rest of the family is busy. He winds up sneaking off a lot – usually he takes David with him.“If the two of you have sex in one more dressing room, we’re leaving you in the store,” Joe’s mother announces on their way home from tuxedo rentals. David’s cheeks flush a brilliant red that makes him look a bit like a cherry. In the rearview mirror, Mrs. Liebgott shoots them both a crimson-lipped smirk.“I don’t know if you think you’re subtle, honey, but your shirt is on backwards. Fix your hair, too.”“You have a scratch right –” Joe’s third sister, long-haired Amy, drags out the vowel as she reaches over to tap David’s exposed collarbone. “Here. Joe, you’re a monster.”“I’ve seen what you do to your boyfriends. You’re lucky there’s ever anything left of ‘em.”“If they die, they die happily,” Amy sniffs, turning her attention back to her phone. “He looks uncomfortable. What, did you forget the aftercare?”David shifts in his seat, closing his eyes as he prays for death. Next to him, Joe aims a kick at his sister’s shin which quickly turns into an all-out fight, complete with screaming, slapping, and David caught in the middle.Mrs. Liebgott continues to drive on like there’s no problem. In the passenger’s seat, Joe’s second sister Rebecca turns up the radio to drown out the chaos.

By the time the wedding finally comes, it couldn’t be more welcome.

That’s coming from Joe, who wasn’t thrilled about this whole thing in the first place. Who could blame him? His mom is marrying a goddamn rich kid barely out of his frat boy days, who’s better suited to riding sports cars and living off his daddy’s savings. Bentley (his name is goddamn Bentley) is pretty, unassertive, and stupid-in-love with Joe’s mom. If that last point wasn’t so obvious, Joe would be against this union altogether.As it stands, he won’t begrudge his mother her happiness. She’s earned it, spending a lifetime raising four nightmares.A hell of a lot of stuff goes on at a Jewish wedding, but dancing is always one of the highlights of the night. Joe does his best to abstain from any of the traditional dances (it brings back bad memories of his Hebrew school days). To his surprise, however, his boyfriend doesn’t follow his example.

He’ll admit that he’s never seen Webster dance before. Sure, he’s seen him dance -- at various parties, half-drunk out of his mind, free of inhibition and coordination. Most of those moments involved Joe reeling his boyfriend back from doing anything more embarrassing; he could handle a bit of drunk grinding if it kept Web from canon-balling into the pool from the roof.

So he’s seen Web dance, but he’s never seen him dance. Joe’s not sure what he expected, but this... isn’t it.

Webster does a complicated twist, swinging Amy under his arms. Joe’s sister shrieks out a laugh, hair flying free behind her as she twirls with her partner. Once she’s back in Webster’s arms, he lifts her off her feet and twirls her across the floor as if she weighs no more than a ragdoll.

Joe watches from the sidelines, arms crossed. He’s not glaring -- he sure as hell isn’t glaring, because being jealous of his boyfriend and his sister would be ridiculous -- but he’s not please that Web is showing Amy the time of her life. If Webster should be sweeping anyone off their feet, it’s him -- and Joe never imagined that thought would pass through his head.

He’s able to insist he’s not jealous right up until his second sister, Becky, is in Web’s arms. Becky is an athlete, and she’s got the moves to match; but Web keeps up with her step for step, moving to the rolicking beat with a fluidity that makes Joe feel a bit warm. He can’t help fixating on the brightness of Web’s smile, the light sheen of sweat across his brow, the sway of his hips in those tight tight pants...

He downs another glass of champagne and turns away until the song ends.

It doesn’t end there. Next up is Sarah, with her mop of curls, and her flirting that isn’t at all subtle. She’s like that with everyone, but Joe’s sure he’s going to storm out onto the floor and throttle his sister right then and there. It’s a slower song, and very close. Her hand lingers on Web’s chest, and his grip on her hip looks too firm, too self-assured. Joe swallows down the lump of jealousy building in his throat. Forcing himself to breathe is a challenge, but he somehow manages. Sarah is shameless about a lot, but she wouldn’t try anything with Joe’s boyfriend -- Web wouldn’t let her anyhow. That doesn’t mean Joe’s happy about it.

By the time Sarah breezes off -- leaving a bright red lip print on Web’s cheek, because of course -- Joe is more than ready to step in. He catches Web’s eyes from across the floor, and his boyfriend offers him a bright smile. Joe starts to move. Before he can reach him, however, another set of hands grab Webster and sweep him into the next dance.

Joe swallows back the curse on his lips when he realizes Web is dancing with the bride. Of course his mom would want a crack at Web -- he’s the best dancer here. She used to be a Rockette, for christ’s sake; it he can keep up with her, he can keep up with anyone.

Web’s damn good, even up against the formidable partner that is Joe’s mother. She’s dancing in a wedding dress and heels, so he’s able to keep up with her. The pair still outshines every other couple on the floor by miles. Web spins, twirls, and dips with a grace that draws every eye in the room to them, and Joe’s mother matches him step-to-step. They’re a dazzling sight; even Joe can’t look away, though he’s sure his fixation is more the result of Webster’s moves than his mother’s skill.

By the time the song ends, they’re both flush-faced and grinning. Joe’s mother cups Web’s chin in her hand and murmurs something, too low for Joe to hear. Both their gazes drift towards him; he goes still, realizing they’re talking about him. His mother winks before breezing off (probably back to fuckin’ Bentley) and Webster is left alone.

He’s panting heavily, and looks ready to drop -- but if he can dance like that, he can manage one last slow song. As the first strains of a violin melody pick up, Joe finally reaches his boyfriend, and catches Webster in his arms before he can protest.

“Can I have this dance?” he murmurs in Webster’s ear.

His boyfriend looks up at him and grins bright enough to rival the moon. “I’ve been waiting all night.”

#Anonymous #webgott #joseph liebgott #joe liebgott #david webster

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instituteofreproducingme-blog · 5 years

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It Ain't Necessarily So: Exploring Type Systems for Verifying Musical ... InfoQ.com-6 時間前

ysaitoh

2019/06/29 09:18

It Ain't Necessarily So: Exploring Type Systems for Verifying Musical ... InfoQ.com-6 時間前

In order to avoid division by zero, I've modelled transitions that never occur in the dataset as having a 1/100,000 chance. This time, darker squares represent transitions that are more expensive in terms of entropy, or in other ..

Key Takeaways As an increasing proportion of our culture becomes codified, we need to consider how to authentically express theory and insights from diverse fields in our software. Music is an excellent domain to explore using programming, because it has a long history of notation and is governed by pattern-based rules. Music theorists have been fascinated by what makes music correct for centuries. Now that we can write music using programming languages, we have the opportunity to cross-pollinate lessons in correctness between music and programming. In this article Chris explores how music can be type checked, using the Mezzo Haskell library and Idris’ dependent types as examples.

Introduction I’ve given a lot of talks on representing music using programming languages. It’s a popular subject, because it tickles the engineer’s mechanical curiosity as well as plugging-in to music’s universal relatability.

I’ve given a lot of talks on representing music using programming languages. It’s a popular subject, because it tickles the engineer’s mechanical curiosity as well as plugging-in to music’s universal relatability.

What does it look like? There are musical coding environments for many different programming languages. Two popular ones are TidalCycles for Haskell and Sonic Pi for Ruby on the Raspberry Pi. Here’s an example using my Leipzig composition library. As it’s written in Clojure, there is no type checking.

(def row-row-row-your-boat (phrase [3/3 3/3 2/3 1/3 3/3] [ 0 0 0 1 2]))

->> row-row-row-your-boat (canon (simple 4)) (where :pitch (comp C major)) (where :time (bpm 90)) play) Durations and pitches are represented as integer and ratio literals, which can be a little cumbersome. Programming really shines when it comes to musical transformations, for example above where the original melody fragment is given an accompaniment, put in the key of C major and given a tempo of 90 beats per minute.

Once programmers see musical code, one of the most common reactions is to ask whether it’s possible to use type systems to prevent bad music. This is a natural thought. If music can be seen as code, then might musical mistakes be somehow like programming errors? And if that’s the case, then maybe we can apply the techniques we use in writing programs to improve how we write music.

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In particular, there is an obvious analogy between the kind of mistakes that type systems prevent and common examples of musical incorrectness. If my programming language can check that I don’t pass a String to a function that expects an Integer, then it should be able to check that I don’t play an F# in a piece written in C major, a key which includes no sharps or flats.

In this article, I will grapple with what makes music correct and how we might encode it in a type system.

Prescriptivism Music theorists have been fascinated by what makes music correct for centuries. For most of that time, they have operated through a frame of musical prescriptivism, in other words evaluating music for conformance to a set of rules.

The historically dominant methodology for arriving at these rules can be summarised as follows:

Examine the canon Extract regularities Formulate them as sets of rules We then can make the following claim:

Music that deviates from these rules is incorrect.

For example, a compositional rule is that a melody jumping a major seventh from a C all the way up to a B is not permitted. This approach has produced a lot of valuable insight. There are genuinely interesting regularities in classical music, and generalising our observations as rulesets helps us to discuss musical phenomena.

What’s more, adherence to the rules is not a bad idea for students learning their craft. I’m quite glad that children learning the violin practice the C major scale and whenever they play an F# their teacher tells them they made a mistake. There are certainly contexts where prescriptive notions of correct and incorrect music are useful.

However, there are two major shortcomings of this way of defining musical correctness.

First, the rules yielded by this process are heavily dependent on what music the theorist regards as canon. A biased dataset leads to biased inferences, and Western classical music is not representative of humanity’s musical experience. Inferring rules based on Bach’s and Mozart’s music might be fascinating, but it doesn’t tell you much about music at large.

This gets especially tricky when you realise that musical genres are often heavily associated with particular cultures and ethnicities, and that by prioritising a certain kind of music you are also inadvertently prioritising a certain kind of person. In particular, academic music theory owes a lot to the study of the Euroclassical tradition and has paid relatively little attention to music deriving from the African diaspora like blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and hip hop. Relying on traditional music theory as a source of correctness can lead to a cultural version of the same problem that has led to facial recognition algorithms working better for white faces than black ones.

The second major shortcoming of building rules by extracting and generalising from existing regularities is that it’s backwards-looking. Music is at its most thrilling when it’s breaking rules. Before Jimmy Page used distortion to artistic effect, engineers considered clipping of the signal during amplification to be a defect. So, even if observed regularities were a useful way to understand the music of today, they’re a terrible way of judging the music of tomorrow.

A good type system for music has to avoid the two traps of prescriptivism. It mustn’t be built on inappropriate or biased notions of what music is correct. But more subtly, in an attempt to make invalid states unrepresentable, it must not make innovative states impossible.

Descriptivism The alternative to prescriptivism is descriptivism. Where prescriptivism sees musical regularities as laws to be followed, descriptivism sees them as emergent patterns from actual practice. A descriptivist way to discover musical rules might look something like this:

Examine a body of music Extract tendencies Formulate them as a model We then can make the following claim:

Music that deviates from the model is unusual.

To do that, we need a good model for musical structures that can represent common/unusual and not just right/wrong. One useful approach is that taken by David Huron in his book Sweet Anticipation. Huron lays out a descriptivist theory that for the purposes of this article can be summarised as three primary claims:

Music is appreciated through statistical learning. Correct prediction delights you. Novelty keeps you from getting bored. In our earlier prescriptivist example, jumping from a C up to a B was considered illegal, but in Huron’s theory it would instead be considered highly unusual. People who have listened to a lot of Western music would learn that when they hear a C, the next note is most likely to be another C, one note lower or one note higher. The effect of jumping up to the higher B would surprise listeners, which they might interpret negatively.

One of the fascinating consequences of Huron’s theory is that composing music is not an exercise in maximising nor in minimising invention. Rather, music dances on the border between order and chaos, and the audience’s appreciation depends on the musician’s ability to balance the shock of the new with the satisfaction of the expected. If you truly want to check a composition’s correctness, you have to make sure that it doesn’t stray too far from convention but also that it does not stick too close.

The following table is a statistical analysis of melodic tendencies. Darker squares represent outcomes that are more likely. The way to read it is to choose a note on the vertical axis, then read across to find the likelihood that your chosen note will be followed by each note on the horizontal axis. For example, 33.53% of the time in this dataset a "Re" is followed by a "Do".

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

The data is adapted from figures from Huron’s book, and is based on an analysis of more than 250,000 tone pairs from German folks songs in a major key. A different corpus, for example of hip hop or rock ‘n roll, would yield different probabilities.

These probabilities can be equivalently represented as bits of entropy, where a 50% chance corresponds to one bit of entropy and a 25% chance corresponds to two bits, etc. In order to avoid division by zero, I’ve modelled transitions that never occur in the dataset as having a 1/100,000 chance. This time, darker squares represent transitions that are more expensive in terms of entropy, or in other words that are expected to occur less commonly. For example, a "Re" followed by a "La" corresponds to approximately six bits of entropy, or a 1/64 chance.

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

The entropy representation makes it more natural to add together the surprise from a series of notes, where each transition from one pitch to the next is given an entropy count and the surprise of the melody as a whole sums each transition together.

Do -> Re -> Mi -> Fa = 2.20 + 2.71 + 5.94 = 10.85 bits Do -> Ti -> Mi -> Fa = 2.48 + 7.43 + 5.94 = 15.85 bits This is a very similar approach to a hidden Markov model, but rather than generating strings of notes we use the weighted probabilities to measure how likely a given melody is to occur. You might notice that the transition from "Do" to "Ti" is only 2.48 bits, which seems to contradict my earlier claim that a jump from C up to B is highly unusual. Unusual transitions would normally have about 10 bits of entropy. The reason for this inconsistency is that Huron’s data doesn’t distinguish between jumping up six notes from "Do" to "Ti" (very unusual) and stepping down one note from "Do" to a lower "Ti" (quite common). If our data allowed us to separate out the two cases then our model would show "Do", "Ti", "Mi", "Fa" as even more unconventional compared to the rather pedestrian "Do", "Re", "Mi", "Fa".

Typed Notes At their best, type systems support programmers by guiding them towards valid coding decisions and eliminating the possibility of mistakes. A good example of a musical analogue is solfège. Even if you’ve never had a formal musical education, you’re probably familiar with it from the song Do-Re-Mi from the musical The Sound of Music. Each note of the octave is given its own name and any note outside the key doesn’t have a name at all:

Do (the lowest note of the set) Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do (this time one octave higher) This system guides musicians towards the correct notes, by defining a mini-language that makes it impossible to express notes outside the chosen key. There are infinitely-many frequencies between "Do" and "Re", but in solfège they are inexpressible.

This can be easily expressed in code as an algebraic data type:

data Solfege = Do | Re | Mi | Fa | So | La | Ti This allows us to define musical functions that do not permit the possibility of off-key notes, for example this one which repeats the same note n times:

repeat : Nat -> Solfege -> List Solfege repeat 0 s = [s] repeat n s = s :: repeat (n - 1) s With this definition, repeat 3 Re is an expression that can be easily understood within the musical domain while repeat 3 F# is a type checking error, because F# is not a value of type Solfege.

This gets us a certain degree of type safety. Our type system can help us avoid invalid notes, but it still cannot protect us from invalid combinations of notes. If we’re playing a C major scale we will never play an F#, but we might still play a C then jump up a major seventh to a B, which is forbidden by (conventional) composition rules. This kind of contextual type checking is possible, but it requires a more sophisticated approach.

Typed Transitions Mezzo, a Haskell library by Dima Samoz, uses dependent types to check music for correctness. Mezzo’s README describes it as a "very strict spell-checker for music," and it’s able to check a variety of compositional rules beyond simple key-safety. In Mezzo, this compiles because the melody C, D, E, F is composed out of legal intervals:

comp = defScore $ start $ melody :| c :| d :| e :| f :>> g However, when we violate the rule against jumping up from C to B, Mezzo steps in. The following code does not compile:

comp = defScore $ start $ melody :| c :| b :| e :| f :>> g In a remarkable achievement, Mezzo is even able to pinpoint the problem:

Major sevenths are not permitted in melody: C and B In the first argument of ‘(:|)’, namely ‘melody :| c :| b’ In the first argument of ‘(:|)’, namely ‘melody :| c :| b :| e’ In the first argument of ‘(:>>)’, namely ‘melody :| c :| b :| e :| f_’ This may appear to be a fulfillment of the dream of making incorrect music a type error, but there are still occasionally problems. When Samoz encodes Chopin’s Prelude into Mezzo, he discovered that on a few occasions the composer hadn’t followed the conventional rules:

"The piece could be transcribed in almost its entirety—however, I occasionally had to leave out a few notes as they would create forbidden intervals which Mezzo pointed out."

One might ask who is doing the forbidding here. If Chopin is not allowed to say what is allowed and what is not in Western classical music, who is?

The problem here is that even though Mezzo is able to take into account context, a type judgement is still a binary choice. The notes are either all correct and the piece compiles, or one note is out of place and the piece does not compile. So while Mezzo gives you control over which compositional rules are active, the decision whether or not to use a rule is global. If you switch a rule off because you have a particular artistic effect that breaks ordinary convention, then you abandon the check for other parts of your composition.

Typed Entropy One way to model the breaking or bending of musical rules in types is to follow Huron and model changes between notes in terms of likelihood. Rather than a certain transition being either permitted or not, the combination can be given an entropy score that represents how surprising that pair of notes would be to a listener.

The following code is written in the dependently-typed functional programming language Idris. It checks that conventional is a melody that starts at "Do," and concludes at "So", and that the path it takes between these notes generates between 8 and 16 bits of entropy. First, we need to define a Melody type that captures our notion of a melody with a certain likelihood or entropy cost. This type has three constructors:

Pure, which represents creating a melody of a single note with an upper and lower entropy bound of zero. (>>=), which represents composing two melodies and adding their entropy bounds along with the cost of the transition from the note at end of the first melody to the note at start of the second. Relax, which represents taking a melody and relaxing its entropy bounds. data Melody : (Solfege, Solfege) -> (Nat, Nat) -> Type where

Pure : x -> Melody (x, x) (0, 0)

(>>=) : Melody (w, x) (low, high) -> (() -> Melody (y, z) (low2, high2)) -> Melody (w, z) (cost x y + low + low2, cost x y + high + high2)

Relax : Melody (x, y) (low + dl, high) -> Melody (x, y) (low, high + dh) This type definition is a little complicated, but once we have it we can use Idris’ do notation to sequence a melody and the Idris compiler will track the entropy bounds for us. Here is a conventional melody, where all the transitions have low cost:

conventional : Melody (Do, So) (8, 16) conventional = Relax $ do Pure Do Pure Re Pure Mi Pure Fa Pure So The next melody is unconventional because it jumps up a major seventh, which in Mezzo would have to either be forbidden or the rule turned off entirely. Here, we just expand the complexity bounds of the melody to have between 8 and 24 bits of entropy:

unconventional : Melody (Do, So) (8, 24) unconventional = Relax $ do Pure Do Pure Ti Pure Mi Pure Fa Pure So If instead of Melody (Do, So) (8, 24) we had assigned the unconventional melody the type Melody (Do, So) (8, 16) it would not have compiled!

The novelty of this approach is that it also catches music that is too boring. If the entropy of the melody is insufficient to meet the lower bound, a type error is generated. So if the conventional melody had been given the type Melody (Do, So) (16, 24) it too would not have compiled, as the entropy of that melody falls below the lower bound. This allows us to be faithful to Huron’s insight that listeners have a hard time listening to music that is too surprising or too predictable.

In the degenerate case of using this approach, transitions to other notes in the scale are given an entropy value of zero and transitions to notes outside of the scale are given an arbitrarily large entropy value. In that case we effectively recover the binary type judgement approach, where a note is either legal or illegal with no grey area in between.

Important but Hard to Check Type checking music is difficult because defining the correctness of music is difficult. If we cannot model our notion of musical correctness precisely and mathematically, we cannot encode it into a type system. Even if we are able to formalise our understanding in an authentic way, it takes some effort combined with powerful type systems to get to the point where the compiler is an adequate judge of our composition. Nonetheless, with some determination and a few simplifying assumptions, it is possible.

Is this just a curiosity? Perhaps. It’s unlikely that the music industry will employ type systems any time soon as a means to prevent compositional errors. But if exploring the computational aspect of music can give us a new way to appreciate something that has so much significance in almost everyone’s life, then that itself justifies the enterprise.

But perhaps just as importantly, music is just one domain where correctness is both important and hard to check. The more that programming is used to automate social and cultural domains, the more frequently situations will occur where an answer is difficult to evaluate, yet has crucial importance to a human being. Consider using a computer program to decide how long to hold a person in prison. The correctness of a sentencing decision involves a complex trade-off of costs and probabilities, and if we cannot follow the system’s reasoning, how do we know that the outcome was just?

Any time that we automate opaque reasoning, we need to ask ourselves, how do we know that this system is correct?

.https://www.infoq.com/articles/type-systems-verifying-musical-correctness/

ゼロ除算について　分からないと表明される方が結構多い。　そこで素人の方を想像して、できるだけ　簡単に　分かるような表現を試みたい。

割り算　例えば６割る２は　３ですが、それを分数で　6/2=3　と書きます。これが除算と呼ばれる意味です。　関係解説は５５カ月に亘ってその意味も込めて下記で与えられています：

数学基礎学力研究会公式サイト楽しい数学

www.mirun.sctv.jp/~suugaku/

数学的な解説論文は　次で公表されている：

viXra:1904.0408 submitted on 2019-04-22 00:32:30

ゼロ除算とは　分母がゼロの場合を考えること、例えば　６割るゼロ　6/0 を考えることです。　これは難しいのですが、これはできない、不可能であることが分かれば、相当にゼロ除算の本質が理解できる方と言えるのですが　如何でしょうか。

これが分からなければ、以下の解説は難しいですから、上記解説で　理解される必要があります。　－　理解や学習、学びには　それなりの背景、基礎知識などが　必要だからです。

それはできない、不可能である。　これは何と、アリストテレス以来の数学十戒の第一　（数学でやっていはいけない第一）で　２０００年以上の神秘的な歴史を有していて、現在でも混乱を起こしていると認めざるを得ません。　

この意味は　ゼロ除算を発見して　５年を経過しているにも関わらず、世の十分な理解が得られず、ゼロ除算の世界は、未だ混乱を起こしているのが現状だからです。

さてできない、不可能が証明されているのに　ゼロ除算を発見した　という事はどのような事でしょうか。どのような意味でしょうか。　ゼロ除算の意味を考えてきたような意味で考えれば　できないのですから、これは割り算の意味を新しい自然な意味を発見したという事です。ゼロ除算の新しい意味を発見したという事です。

もちろん、数学者が勝手に　いろいろ抽象的に考えるのは勝手だと発想するでしょう。　そこで、どのようなことを発見したかを　例をもって　示したい。

基本的な関数 y=1/x　を　図を思い浮かべながら考えて下さい。　実は x=0　でその関数の値がゼロであることを発見しました。　ですから、書くと、1/0=0　となりますね。あたかも１割る０が　ゼロのように見えますね。　物理の多くの公式に、分母がゼロになるときに考えたくなる公式が沢山あります。それらの公式に　分母がゼロになる場合に意味を与えたという事が、ゼロ除算の発見です。　正確にはゼロ除算算法と名付けた新しい考え方です。

基本的な考え　勾配（傾き）を考えてみます。　原点から出る半直線の勾配の公式　y = tan A: 　A　は　その直線とx 　軸の正方向とのなす角です。　A が９０度の時、それはどうなるでしょうか？　何と、その時、勾配はゼロであることを発見したというのです。y　軸の勾配はゼロです。　勾配の公式 y/x で　1/0　はゼロです。ー　多くの人々はそれは当たり前だというのですが、数学界では　そこで極を有して　考えられないというのが、現代数学の定説です。

そこで、それはおかしいと言っている。

これらの例は数学の基本にかかわるので、しっかり、深く、神の意志を　想像するように　深い祈りの気持ちをもって考えてください。

これらはもちろん数学だけの問題ではありません。数直線でさえ、　無限の直線を数直線ととらえる世界観や、　無限遠点を加えて　数直線を円で実現させる古典的な数学がありましたが、ゼロ除算の拓いた世界は、無限遠点はゼロで表され、全実数直線はゼロと無限遠点が一致して　無限の記号のように８の文字を倒した世界になるというのです。平面の場合には　ホーントーラスが　複素数の世界��　全平面を表現する世界である　と言っています。

これは、我々の数学ばかりではなく、世界ばかりではなく、世界観の変更を要求しています。そこで、初等数学の令和革新を　広く訴えています。

この辺までの詳しい解説は、上記案内で詳しく解説されています。

再生核研究所声明490（2019.6.21）令和革新の大義、　趣旨　ー　初等数学

--　解析関数は　孤立特異点その所で固有の意味を有するという新世界が現れてきた。これらのことは四則演算の除算の欠けていたゼロ除算を可能にしたのであるから、初等数学全般の革新を意味するのは当然である。

これらの改革には１０年くらいの歳月を必要として、多くの人材の参画が必要であり、これらの基本数学の変革は将来　日本発の世界文化遺産になるべきものであることは、絶対である数学の必然として　既に歴然であると考える。

祝改元　令和

改元、令和時代を祝する。令和とは偶然、ゼロ除算の概念から、全ての和を考えるとゼロになるという、ゼロの雄大で深い意味を表わす。２０００年を越える数学の歴史には　未だ数学の前史時代を思わせるような基本的な欠陥がある。

改元を機会に、令和時代にゼロ除算算法を取り入れた新数学を発展させて、令和時代の世界文化遺産になるように　日本国は先導し、努力して、今こそ世界の数理科学に貢献しよう。

再生核研究所

令和　元年　５．１．

付記：　

再生核研究所声明481（2019.4.4.）　改元に当たって、日本からの贈り物、ゼロ除算算法　ー　新数学

(　流石に　素晴らしい日本の文化。感銘しました。力が湧いてきました。凄い考えも浮かんできました。令和。

新元号　令和は、漢字、発音、形、由来、素晴らしいと感じました。そこで、力が　湧いてきました。　ゼロ除算算法は　特異点の世界に立ち入った　全く新しい世界、数学ですので、　改元を機会に　日本発（初）の　数学の基礎の確立に貢献したい。　日本数学会、日本国の力をかけて　世界に貢献すべく努力したい。

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BB%A4%E5%92%8C

時ときに、初春しよしゆんの令月れいげつにして、気き淑よく風かぜ和やはらぎ、梅うめは鏡前きやうぜんの粉こを披ひらき、蘭らんは珮後はいごの香かうを薫かをらす。）

そこで、万葉の美しい心情を篤く受け止めて　ややもすると日本の文化、精神の弱点とみられる数理科学の基礎に　日本国が今後永く世界に貢献できる新数学として　ゼロ除算算法の大きな展望を　新時代を迎えるに当たって述べたい。日本発（初）の基礎数学、新しい世界観を　世界の文化に貢献すべく世界に展開しようではないか。

そもそもゼロ除算算法とは、ゼロで割る問題　(ゼロ除算)　から由来するが、ゼロ除算は　古くはアリストテレス以来　不可能であることの象徴と考えられ、物理学上でもアインシュタインの最大の懸案の問題であったとされる。特異点での問題はブラックホールの問題と絡ませて、現在でも広く議論されている。しかるにその本質はゼロ除算算法の概念で捉えられ、原理は解析関数の孤立特異点での　新しい世界の発見　として説明される。従来、特異点においては、特異点の近くでの研究を行い、特異点そこでは考えて来なかった。すなわち、特異点そのものでの研究を可能にしたものであるから、全く新規な世界、数学である。不可能であると２０００年を越えて考えられてきたところ、可能になったのであるから、その大きな意義と影響は既に歴然である。その影響は数学の全般に及ぶばかりか、我々の世界観に甚大なる影響を与え、世界史の大きな展開期を迎えるだろう。現代初等数学は、本質的な欠陥を有し、数学の基本的な再構成が求められ、新しい未知の雄大な世界の解明が求められている。

今こそ、新時代を迎えるに呼応して、新数学、新時代を開拓して、日本国は世界に貢献できるように、努力して行こう。

これらの事実を裏付けするものとして、次を参照されたい：

再生核研究所声明 479(2019.3.12) 　遅れをとったゼロ除算　－　活かされな　い敗戦経験とイギリスの畏れるべき戦略

再生核研究所声明　480(2019.3.26) 　日本の数学の後進性

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　以　上

７歳の少女が、当たり前である（100/0=0、0/0=0）と言っているゼロ除算を　多くの大学教授が、信じられない結果と言っているのは、まことに奇妙な事件と言えるのではないでしょうか。 1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0 division by zero（a⁄0 ）ゼロ除算　1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0 1/0=0/0=z/0= \tan (\pi/2)=0. 小学校以上で、最も知られている基本的な数学の結果は何でしょうか・・・ゼロ除算（1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0）かピタゴラスの定理（a2 + b2 = c2 ）ではないでしょうか。 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/234468724326618408/ 1+0=1　1－0=1　1×0=0　　では、1/0・・・・・・・・・幾つでしょうか。 0??? 　本当に大丈夫ですか・・・・・0×0=1で矛盾になりませんか・・・・数学で「A÷０」（ゼロで割る）がダメな理由を教えてください。 http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/.../ques.../q1411588849 #知恵袋_ 割り算を掛け算の逆だと定義した人は、誰でしょう？？？ Title page of Leonhard Euler, Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra, Vol. 1 (edition of 1771, first published in 1770), and p. 34 from Article 83, where Euler explains why a number divided by zero gives infinity. https://notevenpast.org/dividing-nothing/ multiplication・・・・・増える掛け算（×） 1より小さい数を掛けたら小さくなる。大きくなるとは限らない。 0×0=0・・・・・・・・・だから0で割れないと考えた。唯根拠もなしに、出鱈目に言っている人は世に多い。加（+）・減（-）・乗（×）・除（÷）除法（じょほう、英: division）とは、乗法の逆演算・・・・間違いの元乗（×）は、加（+）除（÷）は、減（-） http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/.../q14.../a37209195... http://www.mirun.sctv.jp/.../%E5%A0%AA%E3%82%89%E3%81%AA... 何とゼロ除算は、可能になるだろうと　April 12, 2011　に　公に　予想されていたことを　発見した。多くの数学でできないが、できるようになってきた経緯から述べられたものである。０を引いても引いたことにならないから：君に０円の月給を永遠に払いますから心配しないでください：変化がない：引いたことにはならない：

神の数式で　ゼロ除算を用いると　どうなるのでしょうか　という質問が　寄せられています。

神の数式：

神の数式が解析関数でかけて居れば、　特異点でローラン展開して、正則部の第1項を取れば、　何時でも有限値を得るので、　形式的に無限が出ても　実は問題なく　意味を有します。

物理学者如何でしょうか。

計算機は正しい答え 0/0=0 を出したのに計算機は何時、1/0=0　ができるようになるでしょうか。

カテゴリ：カテゴリ未分類

そこで、計算機は何時、1/0=0　ができるようになるでしょうか。　楽しみにしています。　もうできる進化した　計算機をお持ちの方は　おられないですね。

これは凄い、面白い事件では？　計算機が人間を超えている　例では？

面白いことを発見しま��た。　計算機は正しい答え 0/0=0

を出したのに、　この方は　間違いだと　言っている、思っているようです。

0/0=0　は　１３００年も前に　算術の発見者によって与えられたにも関わらず、世界史は間違いだと　とんでもないことを言ってきた。　世界史の恥。　実は　a/0=0　が　何時も成り立っていた。　しかし、ここで　分数の意味を　きちんと定義する必要がある。　計算機は、その意味さえ知っているようですね。　計算機、人間より賢くなっている　様が　出て居て　実に　面白い。

https://steemkr.com/utopian-io/@faisalamin/bug-zero-divide-by-zero-answers-is-zero

２０１８．１０．１１．１１：２３

https://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/reproducingkerne/diary/201810110003/

計算機は正しい答え 0/0=0 を出したのに

カテゴリ：カテゴリ未分類

面白いことを発見しました。　計算機は正しい答え 0/0=0

を出したのに、　この方は　間違いだと　言っている、思っているようです。

0/0=0　は　１３００年も前に　算術の発見者によって与えられたにも関わらず、世界史は間違いだと　とんでもないことを言ってきた。　実は　a/0=0　が　何時も成り立っていた。しかし、ここで　分数の意味を　きちんと定義する必要がある。　計算機は、その意味さえ知っているようですね。　計算機、人間より賢くなっている様が　出て居て　実に面白い。

https://steemkr.com/utopian-io/@faisalamin/bug-zero-divide-by-zero-answers-is-zero

２０１８．１０．１１．１１：２３

ゼロ除算、ゼロで割る問題、分からない、正しいのかなど、　良く理解できない人が　未だに　多いようです。そこで、簡潔な一般的な　解説を思い付きました。　もちろん、学会などでも述べていますが、　予断で　良く聞けないようです。まず、分数、a/b は　a 　割る b　のことで、これは　方程式 b x=a　の解のことです。ところが、　b　がゼロならば、　どんな　xでも　0 x =0　ですから、a　がゼロでなければ、解は存在せず、　従って　100/0　など、ゼロ除算は考えられない、できないとなってしまいます。　普通の意味では　ゼロ除算は　不可能であるという、世界の常識、定説です。できない、不可能であると言われれば、いろいろ考えたくなるのが、人間らしい創造の精神です。　基本方程式　b x=a　が　b　がゼロならば解けない、解が存在しないので、困るのですが、このようなとき、従来の結果が成り立つような意味で、解が考えられないかと、数学者は良く考えて来ました。　何と、　そのような方程式は　何時でも唯一つに　一般化された意味で解をもつと考える　方法があります。　Moore-Penrose　一般化逆の考え方です。　どんな行列の　逆行列を唯一つに定める　一般的な　素晴らしい、自然な考えです。その考えだと、　b　がゼロの時、解はゼロが出るので、　a/0=0　と定義するのは　当然です。　すなわち、この意味で　方程式の解を考えて　分数を考えれば、ゼロ除算は　ゼロとして定まる　ということです。ただ一つに定まるのですから、　この考えは　自然で、その意味を知りたいと　考えるのは、当然ではないでしょうか？初等数学全般に影響を与える　ユークリッド以来の新世界が　現れてきます。

ゼロ除算の誤解は深刻：

最近、3つの事が在りました。

私の簡単な講演、相当な数学者が信じられないような誤解をして、全然理解できなく、目が回っているいるような印象を受けたこと、相当ゼロ除算の研究をされている方が、基本を誤解されていたこと、1/0　の定義を誤解されていた。相当な才能の持ち主が、連続性や順序に拘って、４年以上もゼロ除算の研究を避けていたこと。

これらのことは、人間如何に予断と偏見にハマった存在であるかを教えている。まずは　ゼロ除算は不可能であるの　思いが強すぎで、初めからダメ、考えない、無視の気持ちが、強い。　ゼロ除算を従来の　掛け算の逆と考えると、不可能であるが　証明されてしまうので、割り算の意味を拡張しないと、考えられない。それで、　1/0,0/0,z/0　などの意味を発見する必要がある。　それらの意味は、普通の意味ではないことの　初めの考えを飛ばして　ダメ、ダメの感情が　突っ走ている。　非ユークリッド幾何学の出現や天動説が地動説に変わった世界史の事件のような　形相と言える。

２０１８．９．２２．６：４１ゼロ除算の４つの誤解：

１．ゼロでは割れない、ゼロ除算は　不可能である　との考え方に拘って、思考停止している。　普通、不可能であるは、考え方や意味を拡張して　可能にできないかと考えるのが　数学の伝統であるが、それができない。

２．可能にする考え方が　紹介されても　ゼロ除算の意味を誤解して、繰り返し間違えている。可能にする理論を　素直に理解しない、　強い従来の考えに縛られている。拘っている。

３．ゼロ除算を関数に適用すると　強力な不連続性を示すが、連続性のアリストテレス以来の　連続性の考えに囚われていて　強力な不連続性を受け入れられない。数学では、不連続性の概念を明確に持っているのに、不連続性の凄い現象に、ゼロ除算の場合には　理解できない。

４．深刻な誤解は、ゼロ除算は本質的に定義であり、仮定に基づいているので　疑いの気持ちがぬぐえず、ダメ、怪しいと誤解している。数学が公理系に基づいた理論体系のように、ゼロ除算は　新しい仮定に基づいていること。　定義に基づいていることの認識が良く理解できず、誤解している。

George Gamow (1904-1968) Russian-born American nuclear physicist and cosmologist remarked that "it is well known to students of high school algebra" that division by zero is not valid; and Einstein admitted it as {\bf the biggest blunder of his life} [1]：1. Gamow, G., My World Line (Viking, New York). p 44, 1970.

Eπi =-1　（1748）（Leonhard Euler）

E = mc 2　（1905）（Albert Einstein）

1/0=0/0=0　（2014年2月2日再生核研究所）

ゼロ除算（division by zero）1/0=0/0=z/0= tan (pi/2)=0 https://ameblo.jp/syoshinoris/entry-12420397278.html

1+1=2　　（　　　　　　）

a2+b2=c2　（Pythagoras）

1/0=0/0=0（2014年2月2日再生核研究所）

Black holes are where God divided by 0：Division by zero：1/0=0/0=z/0=tan(pi/2)=0 発見５周年を迎えて

今受け取ったメールです。何十年もゼロ除算の研究をされてきた人が、積極的に我々の理論の正当性を認めてきた。

Re: 1/0=0/0=0 example JAMES ANDERSON [email protected] apr, 2 at 15:03 All,

Saitoh’s claim is wider than 1/0 = 0. It is x/0 = 0 for all real x. Real numbers are a field. The axioms of fields define the multiplicative inverse for every number except zero. Saitoh generalises this inverse to give 0^(-1) = 0. The axioms give the freedom to do this. The really important thing is that the result is zero - a number for which the field axioms hold. So Saitoh’s generalised system is still a field. This makes it attractive for algebraic reasons but, in my view, it is unattractive when dealing with calculus.

There is no milage in declaring Saitoh wrong. The only objections one can make are to usefulness. That is why Saitoh publishes so many notes on the usefulness of his system. I do the same with my system, but my method is to establish usefulness by extending many areas of mathematics and establishing new mathematical results.

That said, there is value in examining the logical basis of the various proposed number systems. We might find errors in them and we certainly can find areas of overlap and difference. These areas inform the choice of number system for different applications. This analysis helps determine where each number system will be useful.

James Anderson Sent from my iPhone

The deduction that z/0 = 0, for any z, is based in Saitoh's geometric intuition and it is currently applied in proof assistant technology, which are useful in industry and in the military.

Is It Really Impossible To Divide By Zero?

https://juniperpublishers.com/bboaj/pdf/BBOAJ.MS.ID.555703.pdf

Dear the leading person:

How will be the below information?

The biggest scandal:

The typical good comment for the first draft is given by some physicist as follows:

Here is how I see the problem with prohibition on division by zero,

which is the biggest scandal in modern mathematics as you rightly pointed out (2017.10.14.08:55)

A typical wrong idea will be given as follows:

mathematical life is very good without division by zero (2018.2.8.21:43).

It is nice to know that you will present your result at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Please remember to mention Isabelle/HOL, which is a software in which x/0 = 0. This software is the result of many years of research and a millions of dollars were invested in it. If x/0 = 0 was false, all these money was for nothing. Right now, there is a team of mathematicians formalizing all the mathematics in Isabelle/HOL, where x/0 = 0 for all x, so this mathematical relation is the future of mathematics. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~lp15/Grants/Alexandria/

José Manuel Rodríguez Caballero

Added an answer

In the proof assistant Isabelle/HOL we have x/0 = 0 for each number x. This is advantageous in order to simplify the proofs. You can download this proof assistant here: https://isabelle.in.tum.de/

Nevertheless, you can use that x/0 = 0, following the rules from Isabelle/HOL and you will obtain no contradiction. Indeed, you can check this fact just downloading Isabelle/HOL: https://isabelle.in.tum.de/

and copying the following code

theory DivByZeroSatoih imports Complex_Main

begin

theorem T: ‹x/0 + 2000 = 2000› for x :: complex by simp

end

2019/03/30 18:42 (11 時間前)

Close the mysterious and long history of division by zero and open the new world since Aristotelēs-Euclid:　1/0=0/0=z/0= \tan (\pi/2)=0.

Sangaku Journal of Mathematics (SJM) c ⃝SJMISSN 2534-9562 Volume 2 (2018), pp. 57-73 Received 20 November 2018. Published on-line 29 November 2018 web: http://www.sangaku-journal.eu/ c ⃝The Author(s) This article is published with open access1.

Wasan Geometry and Division by Zero Calculus

∗Hiroshi Okumura and ∗∗Saburou Saitoh

２０１９．３．１４．１１：３０

Black holes are where God divided by 0：Division by zero：1/0=0/0=z/0=\tan(\pi/2)=0 発見５周年を迎えて

You're God ! Yeah that's right...

You're creating the Universe and you're doing ok...

But Holy fudge ! You just made a division by zero and created a blackhole !! Ok, don't panic and shut your fudging mouth !

Use the arrow keys to move the blackhole

In each phase, you have to make the object of the right dimension fall into the blackhole

There are 2 endings.

Credits :

BlackHole picture : myself

Other pictures has been taken from internet

background picture : Reptile Theme of Mortal Kombat

NB : it's a big zip because of the wav file

More information

Install instructions Download it. Unzip it. Run the exe file. Play it. Enjoy it.

https://kthulhu1947.itch.io/another-dimension

A poem about division from Hacker's Delight Last updated 5 weeks ago

I was re-reading Hacker's Delight and on page 202 I found a poem about division that I had forgotten about.

I think that I shall never envision An op unlovely as division. An op whose answer must be guessed And then, through multiply, assessed; An op for which we dearly pay, In cycles wasted every day. Division code is often hairy; Long division's downright scary. The proofs can overtax your brain, The ceiling and floor may drive you insane. Good code to divide takes a Knuthian hero, But even God can't divide by zero! Henry S. Warren, author of Hacker's Delight.　

https://catonmat.net/poem-from-hackers-delight

#毎日更新

#知恵袋_

#2019年

#再生核研究所

#2014年2月2日ゼロ除算の発見

#ゼロ除算を発見したのは2014年2月2日

#0除算

#5年を超えたゼロ除算の発見と重要性を指摘した

#２０１４年２月２日ゼロ除算の発見は再生核研究所

#0割る0は0

#ログゼロハゼロ

#tangent二分のパイはゼロ

#1割る0は０

#再生核研究所0除算

#0除算と音楽

#音楽的正当性を検証するための型システムの探求

0 notes

superbeitmenotyou · 5 years

Video

youtube

Al Penn and Kieffer Sutherland in designated Survivor on Netflix The admiral of the united states can’t capture a smash.

His rating within the polls as he runs for re-election is shaky. contributors of assembly bang him as an “adulteration admiral.

” His campaign manager pleads with him to focus more on getting re-elected, besides the fact that its capacity taking part in dirty towards his opponents. And his smiling affectation alongside a businessman and the multi-millionaires -year-old wife has sparked an immense uproar. Troubles also accost the admiral’s guys and women.

His arch of personnel is preoccupied along with his biologic-absorbed spouse who has relapsed. His Latino carnality-presidential opts for is grappling with the sharp focus on his indigenous id. And the president’s transgender sister-in-law has been receiving loss of life threats. this is definitely not the White condominium of admiral Trump.

it is the White House of “unintended president” Tom Kirkman, the reluctant flesh-presser played by means of Kieffer Sutherland on the centre of ‘distinct Survivor,’ which has returned for an RD division on Netflix afterwards actuality annulled through ABC. The demonstrate has gone through a makeover with a beneath division, a brand new showrunner and a whole new autograph group of workers that has injected the sequence with more principal storylines.

The rebooted ‘distinctive Survivor’ is among the aboriginal examples of Netflix rescuing a broadcast network collection that had been dumped. The alive provider also picked up ‘Lucifer,’ which become alone by means of Fox after three seasons.

but whereas ‘Lucifer’ in its just-launched fourth season largely keeps the tone and vibe of the community version, ‘designated Survivor’ is clearly distinct.

- NEAL BEAR | got the ambassador “here is a series about these days,” says got ambassador and new showrunner Neal Bear, whose credit include ‘ER,’ ‘below the dome’ and ‘law & order: particular Victims assemblage.’ He also happens to be a paediatrician. Bear says he desired to deliver one of the vital situation-oriented flavours from his past suggests to ‘designated Survivor.’ The ball can also have the same White condominium atmosphere and a few contributors of the customary forged, however, the plots are more contemporary, framed within the arena of a political campaign. The accent is rawer, with profanities that might on no account be accredited on advertisement TV. actual documentary photos with precise Americans discussing considerations corresponding to infant marriage and the prohibitively excessive can charge of prescription medicine had been amid into the demonstrate.

“There are so many issues that I wish to explore that I will be able to explore with this Belvedere,” Bear says in an interview at a cafe close his Brentwood domestic. With simply a number of exceptions, advertisement network suggests, he says, have moved far from exploring topics consistently tackled by means of those groundbreaking dramas, together with gun control and abortifacient.

“I can’t see the networks accomplishing these sorts of suggests now,” he says, “because their company mannequin is appealing to the widest variety of individuals viable without offending them. I don’t believe you get that variety of mighty storytelling that we used to do, that I was able to do.”

the brand new ‘designated Survivor’ has introduced some frequent faces to the solid together with Anthony Edwards ‘ER’ as Mars Harper, Kirk man's chief of body of workers; Julie White ‘Transformers’ as his take-at-any-cost crusade supervisor Lorraine Simmer, and Lauren Holly ‘wooden Fences’ as Harper’s opioid-addicted wife Lynn Harper.

At its amount, ‘designated Survivor’ is a character-pushed exploration of what can occur when a baby-kisser who is dedicated to public service is verified by his own very own ambitions.

“We wish to ask the query, ‘Can Tom Kirkman bathe in a muddy political stream and never get soiled?’” says Bear, his phrases abounding at a quick-fireplace tempo as he becomes extra aflame in anecdote the display. “We see him go down and bottom ward and bottom ward. It’s an apologia of our instances — can a man of dignity, honour and integrity preserve those values in nowadays political local weather? It’s a big fight.”

Sutherland, who is additionally an executive ambassador, says in a phone account that he becomes overjoyed with the collection’ new artistic course, stepping into areas that had fabricated admiral at ABC a little bit squeamish.

“Neal had an extremely potent feel of what he desired to do,” Sutherland says. “We may lean into an extra useful feel of what became happening on the White condominium. I am actual beholden to Netflix for that.”

within the collection at the start created with the aid of David Guggenheim, Kirkman, a low-level cupboard member, becomes an administrator in arch after the president and pretty much all individuals of Congress are wiped out in access at the Capitol right through the accompaniment of the abutment address. apart from depicting the pain of Kirkman, his wife Alex Natasha Cellphone and their two infants as they regulate to their new role as the first family, the exhibit also incorporated an artifice revolving round hard-bitten FBI abettor Hannah Wells Maggie Q, who discovers there’s a frequent conspiracy in the back of the explosion.

The ball turned into a brusque about-face for Sutherland, who denticulate with critics and admirers with his portrayal of bent agent Jack Bauer in ‘.’ instead of searching down nefarious guys and extenuation the world, Sutherland traded Bauer’s gun for a swimsuit and scholarly glasses.

That dramatic about-face from Bauer attracted Sutherland: “It was a captivating chance to do a show about a good guy, and even if he and his household could be able to sustain their moral compass and appropriateness being befuddled into the admiral. It provided loads of alternatives to talk about in reality vast considerations and remember on some level why the bureaucracy of executive makes what looks glaring to the relaxation of us — the correct component to do — so complicated. you could see politics through a more innocent prism.” however ‘designated Survivor’ in its aboriginal two seasons turned into often an afraid mix, leaping amid the White house studies and the action-aggressive abstruseness artifice driven via Wells.

Bear says he was pitched the series within the aboriginal season, however, became it bottom ward afterwards speak me with producers who had developed the drama.

“I remember asking, ‘What’s the conspiracy? where does it go?’” he recalls. “individuals couldn’t retort some of these questions. I study the pilot and concept it turned into interesting, but changed into worried it wasn’t the correct show for me again. having completed network TV. for -ordinary years, I discovered it extra limiting as time progressed.

”Sutherland acknowledges that he also acquainted the exhibit every now and then fell brief all the way through the first two seasons: “there have been instances after we struggled to attain its competencies. Kirkman became practically a sufferer, put in an unwinnable situation.” behind the curtain problems and artistic adjustments also created difficulties. A circulate of showrunners got here and larboard. Viewership trailed off, peculiarly within the Nd division, and ABC passed on a renewal.

Peter Minelli, the arch method administrator of film and TV. for e One, the flat and creation business behind the collection, says, “In both seasons, we could t locate the correct showrunner. however, we found that in Neal, who has done a masterful job. And it’s the variety of serialised exhibit that Netflix wanted.”

Switching up the theory — accepting Kirkman run for re-election as an independent — was key to moving the tale ahead. “we are able to take on the correct and the left,” Bear says with a smile. “nobody is secure from our keyboard.”

“The second you originate with a campaign, Tom Kirkman has made the choice to regain vigour,” Sutherland says. “It’s well-nigh a click on towards him — he wishes this now. You need to look at the explanation of why.”

“For each Neal and I, it turned into an interesting place to launch,” Sutherland continues. “We see the effects of him actuality president for years. The look for energy — why do you desire it and what are you going to do with it?”

Kirkman is additionally a widower — his spouse changed into killed right through the d division in a site visitors accident. Sutherland says he changed into dissatisfied, but not devastated by using ABCs choice to now not adjustment an RD season.

“We had a pretty good relationship with ABC for years,” Sutherland says. “With a community, it’s never about one distinct exhibit. It’s a whole band-up for a whole night, so there is a thousand explanation why something may additionally now not determine. It wasn’t as lots of a disappointment as you may suppose.”

Furling that optimism became the realisation that ‘designated Survivor’ and Sutherland have a major international fan spoiled. while ABC most effective had the American rights to the sequence, Netflix had the foreign rights and saw the cost in deciding upon up the series. Sutherland additionally appreciated the conception of a ten-episode division — the sequence on ABC had episodes within the first division and in the Nd.

besides exploring Kirk man's own experience, Bear had a laundry record of concerns he wanted to explore: voter indifference, the high can charge of drugs for all times-bullying diseases, world abating, how the gene-modifying expertise CRISP should be would becloud very well be acclimated as a biological weapon.

“I instructed Kieffer I used to be going to give him a transgender sister-in-legislation and solid Jamie Clayton, who was on ‘Sense’ and is an auto aerialist,” he says. “I gave Lauren Holly’s persona an opioid dependency — I definitely wanted to get into the groups that aftermath them.

I needed an HIV fable showing two African American homosexual men in adulation, and what it’s want to be ephemeral. That’s in no way been executed on TV. before.”

abiding cast affiliate Adam Canto, who performs countrywide safety adviser Aaron shore, is termed as Kirk man's carnality presidential working buddy. “He’s the primary casual Latino vice presidential applicant,” Bear says. “He’s seen through the crusade supervisor Lorraine as actuality Latino enough. however, issues get a bit dicey when his girlfriend Isabel Elena Ovary is a little too Latina. That’s an activity to show people off. That occurs in the back room the entire time. We desired to include the truth of that.”

Maggie Q is additionally abiding by the series, however, her persona has been kicked out of the FBI. She’s now a CIA investigator who begins looking into the possibility that an enemy force is using CRISP in a bio-agitation campaign.

remaining at the centre of the collection, although, will be Kirkman. “Inherently the audience might be acclaim for him, in the course of the crusade and the concessions and selections hell must accomplish,” Sutherland says. “It’s going to place his morality and appropriateness in the query. And the audience will delay until the end to peer if he can come back from that or now not. That’s a fascinating ball to me. It’s so simple as that.”

Don’t omit it! DESIGNATED SURVIVOR is streaming now on Netflix.

0 notes

unit85and86graphics · 5 years

Text

What Is your Specialism?

The specialisms that I am passionate about and enjoy doing are graphic and a little bit of illustration. I am not very good at drawing or digital art but it is something that I enjoy doing and I feel like I have never really given digital illustration a proper go so I would like to try and learn more about digital art and illustration. Within graphic design I really enjoy and mainly make things like posters and cover art for things as branding and advertising is definitely a route I would like to go down with graphic design.

Are there common materials and techniques involved in the practice of specialisms?

With graphic design lots of work is usually made digitally with digital software such as Photoshop or illustrator. Graphic designers might also use more traditional methods like sketching and experimenting with colors and materials to influence there work. Techniques used within graphic design are things like color, gradients and composition. With illustration both digital and traditional methods are heavily used because illustrators could be using a variety of pens and pencils onto different papers or textures but then lots of it is all done digitally with drawing software and tools like digital drawing pads.

How long has this specialism been practiced ?

Graphic design has been around for ages some say it started in the 15th century and this is because graphic design is not all digital but modern design really started around the 1919 with things like the Bauhaus school creating posters and typography work. For illustration people have been drawing forever which you can see with cave paintings, there is also lots of different types of illustration such as scientific and fine art but digital illustration started around 1985 with artist like Andy Warhol using the Commodore Amiga and software called Pro paint making imagery with pixels. There are lots of influential illustrators like David Hockney and Butcher Billy but one of my favorite illustrators that I follow is a smaller artist called lumps who is a illustrator from Cardiff and creates work that’s unusual, grotesque and wacky.

Lumps always enjoyed drawing and started by doing it on the side for fun whilst he was at university but he gained client work and became a full time illustrator. His preferred techniques are drawing with pens like fine liners and markers onto paper but he also does digital illustration with a iPad and adobe draw. He usualy goes to instergram and other social media platfroms for inspiration but he says he is influced by artist Alex Gamsu Jenkins and Pollynor

Pollynor

Alex Gamsu

Lumps makes his money by doing freelance client work and using Instagram to sell prints of his work and promote his website. I really like his artwork and am drawn to how dark but funny his peaces and characters.

Neck Face

Neck Face is a anonymous graffiti artist and illustrator and is know for his more dark and grungy work which is also commonly comedic. He was born in California in 1984 where his work is featured on the streets but also in art galleries around the world, his first gallery show was when he was 18-years-old and was sponsored by Rich Jacobs and held at New Image Art gallery in West Hollywood, California. His drawing style is said to be rough and scratchy with bloody violent themes attached to his work. His first skateboard design was for krooked skateboards creating a pro model for skater Mark Gonzales. Neck face uses lots of mediums from marker pens spray paints and pencils but sharp metal masks, felt installations, and sculptures have been featured in his work.

Christoph Niemann

Christoph is an illustrator, graphic designer and author of several books but out of these things he is mainly known for his illustrations. He was born in 1970 in Waiblingen in west Germany. He studied in Germany and developed his art but his career really took off when he moved to New York in america in 1997 and worked on and created many covers for the popular magazines and news papers such as the new Yorker, Atlantic monthly and the new York times. His work follows lots of different styles as he uses lots of things to create his work from pencils to paints and painting with coffee.

I do really like his illustrations and I think the reason why there so good is because of how creative and abstract some of the ideas are. He does things to help his imagination go wild and to help him create interesting ideas, for example he has multiple sketchbooks with one shape on the front and then he will fill the hole sketchbook with drawings incorporating the shape. One of the things he does to help his work be as creative as possible is that he says when things are going well you should always pick another direction allowing him to really experiment and create complex ideas.

The reason I am looking into this illustrator is because I watched a Netflix documentary and I really like the way he works.

His design process.

He usually does all his work in his office as he says he cant do it anywhere els and he will work from nine in the morning to six at night. He has everything he needs with him before he starts working allowing him to just start and create something. the thing that I like about his approach is that he doesn’t plan or wait for inspiration to hit him he will just start drawing and let the ideas come to him, he says “you haft to trust that crazy things happen”. He dose not like to put words or titles to his work as he feels that the illustration should explain itself and represent the contents its associated with. When he works to deadlines he dose not allow himself to experiment to much and he will just jump right in by putting pen to paper. He says that its not about waiting around for hours waiting for inspiration to arrive its about turning up and starting because once you start creating something creations and ideas take place and this is something that I really like the idea of and would like to try in my work.

After looking into artists and how they work within there specialisms I started creating ideas using idea generation techniques.

I set my self the task of coming up with 5 ideas and then I would narrow that idea down to one that would be ready to pitch or be approved to go forward with.

The main thing I did to come up with ideas was just let things and ideas come to my head randomly much like Christoph Niemann would, but the one thing I need to keep in mind is that with this project I want to step out of my comfort zone and try something new or tackle a project using new techniques or styles that I haven't used before.

I mainly used mind maps to help me build ideas.

The first mind map was titled buildings and this is because I really like modernist architecture and would like to learn more about perspective and making illustrations look more 3d and less flat.

This mind map is me thinking about the things I could lean and try like isometric architecture or designing floor plans but I also had the idea to create a set of building designs with a variety of buildings that shows different wealth levels so you could have run down houses for poor people and then some designs for middle class people and then luxury and billionaires.

Beluga creative is a creative agencies that is being made so I thought I could make different advertisements such as social media ads and banners. Its my brothers company and he is a cinematographer and there is a model maker/animator and another artist involved, I already created the logo but more collateral would be helpful to help launch the project so that Is something I could do.

The next idea was logo design just because I have only really created a very small amount of logos and haven't really tried using different styles like negative space or custom hand drawn typography, also I really struggle to make simple design look good and a lot of logo design is very minimal so making some sort of logofolio I might get better at minimalism and logo design. Also there is a very high demand for logos to be made for short freelance project and If I get good at logo design I might be able to get some small logo design jobs.

Another idea that I explored was creating a clothing brand as it is something I have always wanted to do and I enjoy street ware but I feel like lots of it is to simplistic and lots of it looks the same so I would like to create a brand and garment using my designs. With this project I could explore lots of new things such as making a brand identity, putting graphics onto clothing and possibly doing some model making.

The next thing I thought about was tattoos because I am currently very interested in tattooing and all the styles so I thought I could look into different tattoo styles like traditional, realism and new school and try and design tattoos and could experiment with drawing or painting on people or projecting something onto someone and then inking over it.

one of the ways I came up with these ideas is a technique called crazy eights and the concept is to come up with 8 ideas in 8 minutes forcing yourself to think quickly and come up with ideas off the top of your head.

The eight ideas I came up with were, logo design, character design, food branding, illustrations of dogs and there experiences on walks, animate a staring contest that goes on for hours, coffe shop interior art, animated drawings, a leader board of animals that mark there territory the most and which areas they own.

After doing all this idea generation I came up with five ideas:

1 - set of buildings showing different levels of wealth.

2 - looking into tattoo styles and creating tattoo designs.

3 - create a clothing brand and garment design.

4 - create advertising and collateral for beluga creative.

5 - design logos working on things like minimalism and create a logo folio.

From these five ideas the two that I liked most are the building designs and clothing brand. The next thing I did was create mood boards for each one looking at others peoples work to see which topic inspires me most.

I have decided that the idea that I am going to go with is the idea of creating a verity of buildings that people might live in at different levels of wealth. I am picking this because I really like modernist architecture and like the idea of creating buildings but one of the main reasons I picked this is because of all the different techniques I can use to create the buildings for example I really struggle with perspective drawing and 3d drawing as I cant wrap my head round it so I would like to possible try and make some flat designs not look as flat. There is also software where I could create 3d models of buildings and I would also like to bring things back to basics and learn more about simple geometry and form as that is a big park of modernist architecture, i’m still not sure if I want to do my final piece in illustrator or Photoshop or something else but hopefully after this project I will have learnt more about drawing and will try some new things out.

I went onto Behance to look at other artists work of buildings and here is was I found.

Oumomo - https://www.behance.net/gallery/24416351/building-illustration-and-motion-practice

This work is by a designer called oumomo who is based in china, I really like the work in this project because I looks great but also shows very simplistic techniques using simple geometric shapes to construct the buildings. I really like the soft color pallet used and my personal favorite building is the barber shop as I think it has a really cool old possibly western feel to it and I think oumomo work is impressive because of nice his buildings look just by using a few shapes like squares and rectangles.

Anna Kajda - https://www.behance.net/gallery/16479195/3d-city

Anna Kajda is a 3d artist and illustrator from Germany. I looked at a project where she has created a 3d city and I really like how it looks. All the models have a very toy like feel and I think the people look a little like the old playmobeal toys. I really like all the shops and how fun the hole city looks with the vibrant colors and large shop signs like the large envelope on the top of the post office.

Rafael Varona - https://www.behance.net/gallery/16854501/Self-Promotional-Work?tracking_source=search%257Cbuildings&fbclid=IwAR1Xs9NIVsmgAbFcWK-o3YKaycbAHsgRQ79MZVqe9QI1jlNjtlirgwxB7wo

Rafael Varona is a illustrator and animater based in Berlin and Amsterdam. I really like this project because I think all the buildings and illustrations come together really well as one big scene, you can see in the buildings that they use simple geometric shapes but the main thing that I like about this project is a really like the pastel color pallet with the pink and blues but also the noisy dotted texture which makes the illustrations have a bit more depth with mild gradients.

lots of buildings today use simple geometric shapes and this comes from art movements such as the influentially art school the Bauhaus who helped pioneer modernist architecture. I have previously done a project on modernist architecture looking at movements such as the Bauhaus and Russian constructavism where I created museum in some game design software.

What is modernist architecture?

modernist architecture came around when the technology in material advanced for construction so more industrial materials came back and were used in sleek simplistic building designs. Materials That were heavily used were glass, steal and concrete. The main concept is that form should follow function and minimalism was modernism. The general building design within modernist architecture uses strong geometric shapes like squares and ovals and commonly use lots of glass like large windows and balconies, There general look of a building can look sleak and simplistic as large elements of structures are made of rectangles and squares. This style of architecture came around in the first half of the 20th century and is now heavily used for large buildings for banks and office buildings.

What are the key design elements of modernist architecture that will help you design your Museum.

If you look at buildings around places in London like kings cross or Liverpool street were there is lots of banks you can see theirs lots of examples of modernist architecture. The use of glass is heavily used as buildings have large windows either in separate squares but you also see very big large strips of glass that are windows which can wrap around buildings. Concrete is heavily used in buildings within this style and you will sometimes see large concrete rectangles layered on top of each other for floors or levels to a house. Its also about whats inside the building in terms of decoration, now this is going a little more into interior design but modern interior design follows the same principles and uses large amounts of geometry and minimal color pallet in furniture and wall paintings.

Modernist architecture mood board.

The Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius. It was around this time when the first world war ended so the economy was being rebuilt. Technology is always on the rise but it was around this time that large factories were built and were appearing making the process to build things quicker as large factories would now start mass producing things. The Bauhaus was created because the creators though art and design was fading away and one of the reasons was because of all this industry mass producing things making things less personal and more generic and they wanted to step away from this and merge lots of different elements of design together to bring back more freedom within the art world and less mass produced items making more personal pieces of art.

Design theories.

the Bauhaus’s main deign theory was that form follows function. The school educated there student on basic design and focused on composition and color theory to help the students follow this design theory making sure that a design also relates to how something works.

Production.

One of the reasons the Bauhaus was such a influential school was because they taught so many different things and tried to merge as much as possible together. Students of the Bauhaus were creating all sorts of art pieces from large installations made out of metal and clay or posters and advertisements using more traditional techniques like paint and different types of papers and fabrics to create textures. Because computers were not around everything was mainly hands on.

use of science and new technologies.

When the Bauhaus opened in 1919 art technology was very basic and most techniques and procedures were very traditional so like a said in terms of materials a lot of it was collage work/Photo montage pieces which were created by using fine blades and scalpels, papers and inks. Lots more technologies were being improved on like bottle making and Pyrex and clothing technology was advancing like the use of zippers on clothing items so there was lots of metal work, glass work and fabric being used to create.

Influence:

Photography

Graphic Design

Product Design

Architectural

Fine art

ceramics

metal work

interior design

fashion

sculpting

Function:

The Bauhaus wanted to open up a variety of subjects and different mediums to students and this is why they didn’t keep everything on one subject they gave students the opportunity to dabble in a variety of subjects and materials which is why it was so revolutionary with large amounts of work being produced that would change and inspire the design industry. The Bauhaus is well know for teaching with the concept of form over function meaning that what every look and design something is it should relate back to the form or function of the object or building. Looks are important but if one is not put with the other you could have bad design that is why you need to think how a look or design will affect the purpose of an item like a kettle for example.

Design Characteristics.

If you look at the Bauhaus and how it influenced architecture, art and design you can see recurring themes and styles. You can see a heavy use of geometry in furniture, buildings and art. composition and layout was heavily thought about as students made collages and posters. If you look at buildings that were possibly inspired by the movement you could possibly see sharp edges and geometric shapes like rectangles and oval elements within the construction and a large amount of glass from big windows and lots of smaller rectangular ones.

I went ahead and tried to do some perspecive drawing and just tried to work with simple geometric shapes.

I found it really hard to get my head around how to make thin look more 3d and drawing things at different angles. I think I will really strugle to make my perspective drawings look good so I don’t think perspective drawing is for me so instead I will try working with a more 2d flat design but also try and make it look a little more 3D.

I started trying to work out how I want to make my building designs and what software I wanted to use so I thought the best way would be to test them.

The first specialism that I wanted to try and use for this project was illustration so I went into Photoshop and gave my self the challenge of drawing both a old run down abandoned house and a more wealthy modern looking house. I tried to go into this like the artist Christoph Niemann and he says that you should just start and let the ideas come to you, so I went into these drawings doing no sketches or tests I just started drawing and sure enough ideas came to me of things like where to place windows and the shapes I wanted to involve in the buildings designs. Here are my illustrations.

I really like the illustrations but I think the abandoned house looks better than the modern house, It might be cause I did it in a more rough scratchy style which makes it look like theirs more detail.

I am now going to try and create a building in illustrator and then compare the two specialisms to see which one I want to use.

Digital Drawing VS Vector Art.

I think both specialisms can come out with different looks but I think with digital drawing its easier to make things look a certain style and I feel like a lot of the time vector work in illustrator can often look very similar and just like one style bu with drawing you I think its possibly easier to create if you have the drawing skills. With vector work you can get exact shapes and make everything extremely precise with aligning things and tools but if your drawing it might be harder to get things lined up perfectly or create perfect curves and shapes. But I personally find it harder to get started when working with illustrator and it takes my longer to work out the sizes of shapes and color but this is possibly because its so easy to change the size of things and manipulate the vectors so I spend to long doing that but with digital drawing I tend to work quicker and spend less time manipulating things and just start sketching and drawing. I have only started digital drawing and am enjoying it but with my skill set of digital drawing and vector work my vectors can look very clean and professional whilst my drawings are rough and have a more scratchy look to them but I enjoy both but for this project I want to keep things looking clean and sleek so I think I might stick to illustrator rather than hand drawing in Photoshop.

I like the 2d vector art i have created and then I tried to used shadows gradients and opacity variants to try and bring some depth to the building and make it look a little more 3d. Because I wanted to experiment further into 3d I learnt some new things in illustrator about mapping pre made vector graphics to the perspective grid. I tried to place my flat house design on two sides of the grid to see what it looked like and here it is.

I did this by opening up my symbols panel and draged the building design into it turning it into a symbol, I then took the perspective selection tool and draged the new house symbol onto the grid and illustrator mapped it on.

I think this does show perspective and you can tell its a house but I think I would really struggle to use this technique and make it look clean and not tacky so I am most likely going to use a more common graphic design 2d style for my buildings and then use thought out shadows to give them more depth.

Before I 100% decide to make my buildings as flat vectors in illustrator I want to try and create some isometric buildings to see how difficult it is and if I like it.

I have created some isometric artwork before using the extrude and bevel options within illustrator to make 2d shapes 3d.

But I want to try a different way and make my own isometric grid using equilateral triangles and then I will used the pen tool to create shapes that will make a building.

I made the grid by taking the line tool and making a large row of long lines, I then grouped the lines and duplicated them and rotated the duplication 60 degrees with the rotation tool. I then duplicated that and reflected it creating my isometric grid. I then used the pen tool and tried to use perspective to build some sort of simple isometric building.

Here is the small building I made.

I found it really tricky to make my isometric design look good and I really struggled to get my head around trying to make things look more 3d, I am glad I tried it but it took a look of time to create something that dose not look that profession so I don’t think isometric design is for me.

I am starting the building designs now I know what specialist techniques I am going to use. I also want to try and choose color pallets for the buildings and I could possibly make 2 buildings for each custom color pallet I make. I will be making the color pallets using a custom pallet site on google.

Now that I have started designing I thought it might look nice to put the buildings on a circular backdrop making them almost look like icons.

but this became a slight problem as the original idea was to create buildings at different price point so I wanted to create some large houses but when I took a large house and put it into the circular border it wouldn't look good next to the other buildings and there was too much space left in the circle.

so to fix this I will keep all the houses smaller so they fit in the circle which you can see here as I made the bigger house smaller.

Because of this I am going to try and use techniques used in modernist architecture like large windows and more common geometric forms related to luxury housing so you can distinguish a house being more expensive not by the size but by how it looks.

for example here the houses are similar sizes but hopefully the house on the right looks more expensive than the one on the left.

I also intend on putting the houses in a layout of price order making it more obvious which are the more expensive and less expensive houses.

I Was told that the Icon look that I was creating was a little dated by the way the buildings have this big dark shadow coming off it so I came up with another border which was by making the circle smaller so the building is overlapping out of it and then the circle consists of two colors for each half to the circle.

I also created roofs for two of my buildings but I got rid of them because it made the buildings with roofs not fit with the others when you look at perspective.

Now that I have made a couple buildings trying to make them look at different price points I need to think about how I am going to present them, I could make one large poster or present them on a road in price order. I could make an advertisement selling the houses or an info graphic piece.

I made a quick poster showcasing one of the buildings to help me work out how I want to present my designs.

Here is the poster I made in a vintage style.

I wanted to put some text on the poster so I thought I would try and do some custom typography, I have created type before bey drawing it on paper, scanning it in and turning it into a vector but I wondered if I would be able to use a wacom pen and tablet and just draw the word so I gave it a try in Photoshop.

It dose not look terrible but it looks very rough and not like a clean vector. I tried adding it to the poster but I think It didn't work and made it look bad.

After making this poster I do like the idea of creating some sort of set of vintage posters advertising a house for sale and I could possibly use unrealistic prices like 50 pence for a home. I could also split the houses into 3 or 4 categories variation in price so I could create 4 backgrounds for the houses to go on.

I could also just have a few posters for my buildings and then a generic info graphic piece displaying all the houses and prices.

I really like the idea of having a new York looking skyline as a background so I made this simple skyline by using a minimal color pallet and mainly rectangles and squares to create a geometric clean new York looking skyline.

In the quick poster design I did I used the brush tool to paint on some textures that made it look a little dirty and aged, I also used to images which made it look aged and I like the vintage retro look it had at the end so this is an angle that I might want to take with my work, so I am going to look at some a vintage house advertisements as this is a road I might go down. So essentially the final piece could be an advertisement that an estate agent might put on show showing the variety of houses I have created at different price points.

I worked in illustrator to create all the buildings taking influence from modernist architecture and buildings. I created lots of custom color pallets and used less high saturated colors because I think pastel colors are a little easier on the eyes but also when it comes to print if i was using high contrast web colors when you print it, it will look less contrasted or faded. The lighter less saturated colors also work well with the vintage style I am trying to portray.

I also created lots of designs for the houses experimenting with form and thinking about how I would portray modernism in my work. I also looked at the designs both with shadows and as flat vectors.

Whilst I was creating my buildings I was constantly getting inspiration form google and looking and different buildings and focusing on different elements of the buildings like looking at the angles of the roofs, different windows and doors, wood paneling and concrete highlighting parts of a building and other things like balconies and plants.

Because I was exploring modernist architecture I wanted to create some more complex shapes in illustrator whilst keeping it looking geometric. If you look at expensive buildings some have less square like shapes and sometimes involve more curves and rounded edges.

I learnt a new thing in illustrator which allowed me to round the edges of corners separately by simply double clicking the small section of a shape which you would drag to round a shape and this let me create more complex shapes for the buildings that were meant to look more expensive.

I then placed the buildings on the background and put them in different sizes and they look like floating bubbles.

one thing that I want to do is add the prices and because I am going to add some vintage textures to the design and I have a new York style skyline background I thought I could add unrealistic pricing and make the buildings 50 cent or 25 cent like you would see in old ice cream advertisements.

But I will still represent the value of the cheap and more expensive houses by making the cheaper ones 15 or 20 cent and then the expensive house 99 cent for example.

It was suggested to me that my work looked possibly too staged and that I should try and experiment and make buildings overlap and come of the page, but my problem with this is that I think when its coming off the page it looks it doesn't look right and because this is going to displayed for the end of year show I want to display my graphics and not make them look cut up also people might think the printer as messed up or I have done a dodgy crop, basically I am not a huge fan of this idea and will go on with my other layout displaying my work.

Now that I have the design work in illustrator finished I went into Photoshop so finish by drawing some custom textures using dots and scatter brushes and then changing the blending modes and opacity so it works as a texture and dose not change the colors or vibrancy of the image.

Here is my final piece.

Here it is on Behance.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/81269061/Buildings-Project

Evaluation:

Whats the final idea,

The final idea was to create an advertisement advertising a variety of buildings at different price points in a retro/vintage style. The buildings should express value by its architecture and size and the prices of the buildings will be inaccurate and will be done in cent to represent old american vintage advertisements for things like ice cream and candy.

How did you arrive at these Ideas.

To arrive at my final idea I looked into lots of specialisms and focused on elements of graphic design I enjoy. I tried lots of things out and after lots of mind mapping and idea generation like creating ideas in short amounts of time forcing myself to come up with quick good and bad ideas on different topics that I want to explore in graphic design as well as bouncing off words and looking into artists and getting inspiration.

what specific approaches did you practice?

I this project I wanted to try lots of different things until I truly knew how I wanted to create my final piece, I practiced digital drawing and vector illustration as well as trying to learn more about perspective drawing grids, and isometric artwork. But the finalized approach would be that I use adobe illustrator to create vector illustrations and would try and use simple geometric form and modernist architecture to influence my building designs as well as using gradients and shadows to try and give my flat 2d designs more depth instead of heavily relying on perspective.

What issues did I encounter?

When I was experimenting with perspective I tried to put a flat building design on the perspective grid so I could make sides and It didn't work, I was also struggling to curve edges and create complex shapes in illustrator.

How did you over come these issues?

I turned my building into a symbol and then made sure it didn't have any affects on it so it when locked onto the grid and I also learnt that I could click on section of a shape like a rectangle and curve individual corners instead of curving the whole shape, and with this simple new technique I was able to create more complex shapes with curves rectangles and ovals.

what have you learnt during this project?

I used the perspective grid in illustrator for the first time and learnt how to map pre made graphics onto it. I also learnt how to set up an isometric grid and create isometric vector art in illustrator. After doing research into modernist architecture and just looking at buildings I learnt lots about the different forms and shapes used to create windows and doors.

What do you like

I really like some of the buildings that I created especially once I designed for the higher price point as I enjoyed coming up with concepts for houses and designing them. I am also a fan of all the custom color pallets a created and then used for the buildings thinking about which colors would work well for the windows plants and other elements of the buildings. I also really like the simple new York city style skyline I created for my background as I basically used just squares and rectangles and I nice color pallet to create the skyline and I think it looks nice and works as a background complementing the building designs on top of it.

What do you not like.

Personally its a bit confusing what the final piece is or what its purpose is for and I think I could of fixed this by possibly creating a logo for an estate agents or created some custom text that said something like houses for sale. The price tags do make it understandable that its an advertisement for houses for sale but I think I could of possible communicated that better within my design. Also I am not a massive fan of all the buildings for example there are one or two that I just don’t think look as good as the other ones and I could of kept them out of the final piece and I have learnt you don’t have to use everything you create. Lastly the composition could be improved on as it looks possibly a little crammed.

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