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shitty17 · 4 years

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the racebending shit in hellvrai is like........ how the fuck do i put this.

okay. okay. the original intention when people started drawing canonically white characters as other races was specifically to make people of color feel included in fandom. It was made by people of color for people of color. It started in fandoms waaaay before the time of half life funny. I think it had a HUGE stake in homestuck when Andrew Hussie himself started listening to fans of color and publicly addressed the fandoms racism. It has history and a place. Drawing characters who are canonically “aracial” or white as a person of color was made SPECIFICALLY to piss off and scare away racists, let fans of color feel safe and welcomed into their fandom, and teach people to unlearn their racism and think more critically about how people of color are represented (or not represented) in media. It was not made for white people, it never will be for white people, it is not a place where white people are welcome to do anything but listen and learn.

hellfrai’s fandom drawing characters as people of color is so glaringly obviously painfully white in the way they do it. So many of the depictions of characters being racebent range from “ambiguously brown” to “literal racist stereotypes”. There is a reason for this. The fandom is predominantly made of very young white artists who most likely live sheltered lives, and likely are doing it because they know that being inclusive of all races is something a good person does. Drawing a character of color is a signal to let racists know they are not welcome here. But they don’t know anything outside of that. They think that just slapping a darker skin tone on a white character means “i’m not racist”. They don’t stop to think about actual people of color and how they feel or why they’re doing it. Their activism starts and ends there. And then they get confused and upset when they get critiqued about it.

Here’s the thing. You CANNOT just race bend a character randomly if you’re white. That’s literally just using people of color, their culture, their experiences, and their struggles, as some sort of wash cloth to wipe yourself of any responsibility for your racism. Your intentions might be good, but if you’re simply signaling to other white people “racism is bad” then your activism is completely useless. If you’re going to do it, take notes from actual fans of color. and really, ACTUALLY listen to them. Listen to their experiences and stories. AND BE SUPER CAREFUL THAT YOU DON’T THINK “oh because i heard this one experience from this one person of color, that means i can apply it to a characters race” BECAUSE THAT IS STEREOTYPING. Don’t talk over them. Make fanart of their designs! Enjoy their content and boost their voices!

You guys are VERY clearly doing annoying pageantry where your whole thing is “Look I’m one of the cool white people because I also think white people are annoying! I’m making fun of white people! Haha white bread!” You need to stop. You need to stop RIGHT NOW because literally all you’re doing is absolving yourself of having to critically think about your whiteness and what racism you’re perpetuating. You’re taking jokes that people of color have made and making them super annoying and completely worthless because they are not coming from a place of trauma and anguish from systematic racism and oppression, they’re coming from a place of insecurity and desperately wanting to fit in. It’s shallow and shows crystal clear that you don’t actually care about people of color, you just don’t want to be seen as racist. You’re lazy.

“If I can’t draw characters of color because it’s problematic, then i should just draw everyone as white” You’re lazy and racist and only see people of color as a way to get internet clout. You’ve given up because you don’t actually care about people of color, you just want an easy way to be seen as cool.

“My style is to exaggerate features anyway, it’s not my fault if it’s read as a stereotype” No, it is. It’s definitely your fault. You didn’t put in the work to actually study what people of color look like or listen to them when they try to tell you, you wanted a quick easy way to get across that these characters are not white so you could get internet clout. Draw some actual facial studies. Like, a lot of them. Realistic ones. Don’t fall back on geometric shapes and cartoons, what you’re drawing effects things that happen in real life, so draw shit from real life. Step out of your comfort zone if you ever want to be a good artist.

“But people of color are just so much better looking than white people!” If you’re saying this while you’re white you’re treating people of color as a fetish. You’re being creepy and racist because you’re saying shit that just sounds cool because a person of color said it. Cut it the fuck out.

You need to put in the work. If you really want to help stop racism in fandom spaces you have to actually listen to people of color and accept that you are white and that it’s a life long journey to unlearn racism. And don’t you dare turn it into a “i’m sorry for being white” pain olympics guilt pity party because it’s not about you. It will never be about you. It’s about fans of color. If you want to get better about it, then your first step is to shut up and listen. Say you’re sorry in your head, but act out what you believe is right by giving fans of color a platform. Amplify their voices and learn. Don’t drown in white guilt. When you get called out on something, apologize, do research or ask about how you can be better about it, and actually put in the work. Don’t put it on people of color to forgive you and absolve you of your sins either. You need to actually stand by fans of color and help them.

This is a very complicated issue that cannot be solved with a few easy to digest pieces of information. But it’s an issue that MUST be worked on constantly, easy or not. Don’t give up.

#long post #racism #should i tag this as hlvrai #my post #idk man just #this post got away from me but the long and short of it is #dont be fucking lazy when it comes to your activism #this isnt play time for internet clout you are doing real ass damage to real ass people #take this shit seriously jesus christ

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interstellarrambles · 4 years

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Hii, I noticed most people in a fandom usually make the exes the villain of the story a lot. We often forget they’re real people who once were in a seemingly loving relationship with our idols. So I wanted to know if you could write something with Harry where the reader goes to an award show with him or something like that, he leaves her for a while, she meets one of his exes, maybe kendall or Camille, who knows, And at first is afraid and insecure but they end up really getting along. thankss

heya, damn I'm sorry this took so long but studying was kicking my ass not gonna lie. I hope you all enjoy this, I did take my time!

EDIT: originally, this fic used Harry's ex, camille rowe, but a user on here made me aware that she isn't the best person and has made mistakes in the past. I don't condone her actions and therefore, I edited the fic to include kendall jenner instead who is problematic in her own right, but perhaps less severely.

harry styles x female!reader

nervous. hs.

silk dripped across your skin, slipping down from your chest to the floor, covering your pounding heart with a dress more expensive than you could imagine. only the best, your boyfriend had insisted, kissing your shoulder as he adjusted your necklace, the only detail your stylist had allowed him any access to. not in a cruel way of course; simply put, harry was more clumsy than most for all his calm demeanour, and she hadn't wanted him to endanger your chance of looking as perfect as possible for your first red carpet appearance.

all in all, you were ready. kind of. the outfit and makeup was complete and with your (perfect) boyfriend accompanying your side, you should have been ready to face anything. however, while having your hair styled, you had found out one of harry's exes would be at the event and needless to say, you were sort of shitting it.

everyone knew how perfect kendall was, and from his latest album, it was clear harry thought the same.

in reality, you knew harry wanted you and you only, since he tried relentlessly to show you how dear you were to him, but your insecurities couldn't quite keep up. only a few months ago, you had received a follow from kendall, something you found quite comforting in moments like these, as the action had been translated to you as an olive branch of sorts. comfortingly sweet and gentle, kendall just seemed so beautifully present and put together, that if there wasn't such weird history between the two of you, you'd want to be her friend.

before you could become completely submerged in your thoughts, a warm hand slipped onto your thigh, squeezing gently. small smirk on his lips, harry leaned in and pressed a kiss to your cheek, admiring your reflection in the mirror. cocky as ever, harry smirked as he watched your body react quickly to his firm touch, goosebumps spreading across your skin.

"we're off soon love, how are you feeling?" his gruff eased a few knots of anxiety in your stomach, and smiling, you reached for his hand to hold. tattooed, studded with silver rings and broken up by veins, you'd always admired how beautiful his hands were, and it was beyond heavenly to be able to hold them.

"not too bad harry, just a little scared. you know how it is," you replied while standing up on the command of his assistant, who announced it was time to go. still holding his hands, you felt a hot blush tickle your cheeks as he kissed your knuckles and raked his eyes over you. dropping his gaze then slowly raising it with a cheeky grin, harry quickly admired how you looked, a sentiment shared by you as you watched him stand and adjust his suit.

"if anyone should be nervous, it's me, with you looking like that doll."

after arriving at the event and fighting your way through the endless photos and inappropriate paparazzi questions, you'd stolen a moment together somewhere in the corner. both of you were slightly giddy and had nicked tequila shots on the way, so choking back the giggles in your throat was too hard to bother with. harry loved this side of you, the one that meshed well with his childish personality and encouraged his antics.

without pondering on this too much, his previous tequila consumption was making him consider how much trouble he'd get into if he made out with you right there, in front of everyone. after cracking another terrible joke and staring at your lips for way too long to be not creepy, he decided to continue regardless.

foolishly though, harry had been so caught up enjoying the feel of your body under his hands, with your lips against his, that he forgot he was supposed to be making his way backstage for his performance. his assistant looked on with a mix of annoyance and admiration, yet even the warming of their heart was not enough to hold them back from interrupting you.

"harry, I hate to do this, but you're needed backstage, they need you to be ready for your performance."

this prompted a step back from harry, and a deep blush from you, mildly hid by your makeup. as a parting gift, you pulled him closer for a hug, and one last kiss on his jawline, for good luck, one that struck a small groan from the back of his throat involuntarily.

almost in a daze, harry ran his fingers across where your lips had been, and rushed off giddily. half awoken from your previous love drunk stupor, you followed your assistant to where your seats were, and took your place pitifully all alone at an empty table.

swilling the complimentary champagne around the glass in your hand, you raked the crowd around you for anyone you might know, hoping someone would rescue you from your loneliness before it began looking pathetic. a few moments passed and just as you were beginning to daze off, someone interrupted you.

"oh, excuse me? we haven't spoken yet I don't think, and I was wondering if I could steal a seat?" a familiar accent swarmed your silence, and a soft hand tapped on your shoulder, causing you to turn around quickly.

kendall looked absolutely stunning, her hair styled effortlessly and her figure accentuated wonderfully by her red dress, a number that dripped in a heavenly way against her skin, emulating perhaps the golden wonders of old Hollywood.

"oh sure, go ahead, there's no other takers," you giggle a little nervously, taking a small sip from your champagne.

as she sat and her skirts fanned out, you didn't see her friendly smile falter once, a fact that warmed your insides a little, as you sat bathed in your feelings of insufficiency.

"hey, I just didn't want you to feel lonely, and I saw you sat all by yourself! you look gorgeous by the way," she turned to face you now, swishing her skirts out the way and offering you another drink.

"oh wow, thank you! I guess I didn't want it to be weird between us, considering... you know."

"not at all! if you're happy and he is happy, that's all I care for. and you seem great, so I wanted to come and introduce myself properly. can I just say, you look amazing!"

slipping a few strands of hair behind your ear, you found yourself immersing fully into a playful conversation with the american girl immediately. her jokes were strange but her calm yet humorous nature eased the nerves in your stomach and helped you relax into the moment. the performances rattled along and you found that you enjoyed all the same musicians as her, getting excited at all the same moments. even when harry was on stage, her hand found yours and her heart warmed watching how the two of you locked eyes on each other letting the world around you disappear, even if it did seem sickeningly similar to a movie moment.

you had had nothing to worry about and with her soft hand slightly on top of yours on the table, with Harry singing on stage and trying to keep his eye on you in the crowd, you needed nothing more to be content.

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sophiamcdougall · 4 years

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I keep thinking that the immortals give Nile a lot of authoritative-sounding information about how being immortal works, and yet their sample size is never more than six and frequently it’s one. Including Nile, there have only ever been seven of them ... that they know of. Obviously, there might have been near-immortals who lived and eventually died before Andy was even born, but also, until encountering Quynh, Andy had no way of knowing that new immortals inspire clairvoyant dreams in each other. Even after the dreams and meeting Quynh in real life ... if I were in her shoes I think I might have read the situation as “destined to find my soulmate” more than “all immortals come with a sort of built-in homing beacon which broadcasts equally to all other immortals.” Not for centuries would either encounter any further evidence either way. And even now -- having dreamed of, and then found, Lykon, Joe, Nicky and Nile, how do you know you’re dreaming of the world’s entire population of immortals, rather than a random selection? Or those Destiny or whatever particularly wants you to meet? Nicky and Joe can only ever have had this experience once before, relatively recently, and Booker can never have had it at all. I guess it doesn’t matter, as acknowledging the possibility that there might be others out there wouldn’t practically change very much, but it’s part of a pattern of jumping to conclusions.

“Eventually you stop healing.” This has only happened once (that they know of, see above) and only one member of the current team was there to see it. “Immortality has limits and in time, this will happen to all of us” is a good theory, but it should only be a theory. How do they know that something hadn’t happened to Lykon, and only Lykon, to rob him of his immortality? What if he got a defective dose of immortality in the first place? Or, given that their own existence proves the existence of the supernatural, is it out of bounds to think that he might have pissed off some other form of supernatural being? Now, I don’t exactly mind them jumping to conclusions on this one, because they all have good reason, actually, to want this to be true -- Booker and Andy because depression and grief and burnout, Nicky and Joe because wonderful as it is to share centuries with your true love, you’d probably rather not stick around for the sun boiling away the oceans. And in fact bearing in mind that they couldn’t truly have known this was coming adds tension and urgency to the scenes after the revelation of Andy’s mortality. But I kind of wish it had been expressed, because it makes the possibility that this might be happening to all of them now - when they’re surrounded by enemies -- even more compelling. It’s somewhat implicit in the acting choices but imagine if they were explicitly grappling with the possibility that Lykon was an outlier in a different way - the rest of them were always supposed to run out of immortality juice now, today. “Your family will reject you.” This is the one that actually bothers me, because Christ, NILE’S POOR MUM. And this isn’t a statement about how immortality works anyway, it’s a statement about anyone who happens to be related to an immortal. The whole team seem to offhandedly agree that Nile is better off not going back to her family, but the only person who actually explains why is Booker, and ... why is anyone accepting Booker’s experiences as representative of anything? Especially after discovering the betrayal! Booker is suicidally depressed! Obviously he thinks the world is terrible, interpersonal problems are insurmountable and every bad thing that’s happened to him is a universal law of nature! You don’t have to believe him! Especially since his situation, as described, has pretty much fuck all in common with Nile’s and there’s little reason to think it has anything much in common with the others, either. And yet even when Nile has her “refusal of the call” moment, she doesn’t say argue with Booker’s predictions, she merely says that she can defer the moment she must vanish from her family’s lives until her immortality becomes impossible to hide. But why? Booker does not mention parents, only his children. There’s no indication any of the others had offspring, but even if they did, it’s largely irrelevant to Nile who clearly doesn’t. She’s concerned about her mother and brother. Nile discovers her immortality a lot younger than the rest of the team, in a period with a much longer average life expectancy. All the rest appear to be in their mid thirties to mid forties. Given how far back in time their origins are, it’s unlikely that all of them had living parents when they discovered their immortality, and any that they did have would have been decidedly elderly by the standards of the time. So how plausible is it that any of the others experienced any version of what Booker describes? I’d say not very, and it’s downright implausible that they experienced it with a parent. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Booker’s situation was agonising specifically because it was a tragic inversion of that rule. Booker’s son had to die in pain while his father now looked younger than he did. But Andy, Joe or Nicky’s parents, even if they were around to witness anything, would have seen ... what? Their 45-year-old son still passing for 35? Even if they knew about the immortality ... how exactly would they have wanted/expected their child to pass it on? Wouldn’t an 11th century parent have been far more likely to take up the unequal distribution of miracles with God rather than their kid? So why should Nile accept that her mother will behave like Booker’s son? Isn’t it enormously more likely that a woman who, like every mother, has always wanted and expected to be outlived by her daughter, and yet has been living with the daily terror of losing her in combat, will be enormously relieved to know that she’s not going to die prematurely? Is it even vaguely likely that the pain of not benefiting directly from your daughter’s magical healing powers, decades from now, is worse than the pain of losing her at 20? OK, so then there’s the brother. Outliving a brother isn’t like outliving a child either, but it’s at least somewhat easier to believe there could be jealousy and conflict there eventually. But is that possibility of pain worth inflicting absolutely certain agony now? Is it impossible to talk through potential issues now just because it didn’t work out that way for Booker? OK, but for argument’s sake, let’s accept your family will inevitably ask you to share your immortality with them. Booker says that of course you can’t pass it on, yet his entire freaking arc is predicated on the possibility that maybe you can. (Which is cool, actually! But it has unexplored implications!) One thing that I actually really liked about film is it made “getting kidnapped and vivisected” a convincing threat, whereas many sci-fi shows vaguely invoke it as a reason that superpowered characters must keep their abilities secret, without ever bothering to show how that would play out in practice. I mean, people with unusual abilities exist! Michael Phelps produces less than half the usual amount of lactic acid! And has twice the normal lung capacity! Which we know, because researchers have studied him! Yet nobody has ever carted Michael Phelps off to a secret laboratory and if they did he would have various legal options! It works here, but part of the reason it works is that Copley raises the obvious objection - why should being a subject of medical research mean anything more than donating some blood, a cheek swab and maybe at absolute worst some bone marrow? That would be enough to map their entire genome ... what else does even the maddest scientist even want? The Old Guard is the first show I can think of which actually had a decent answer, and it’s that Merrick is a greedy hypercapitalist psychopath who doesn’t want to share. Which is brilliant, but acknowledges it isn’t actually the science that’s the problem. But none of that was available in Booker’s time! He not only had to deal with an apparently unique situation among the immortals, he also was caught at a unique moment in history: far enough advanced that his family was less likely to accept “miraculously chosen by god/gods/fate” as an answer, far enough advanced to contemplate the possibility that medical science could replicate his immortality, but nowhere near advanced enough to meaningfully try. But if you’re immortal now and your dying relative is freaking out ... wouldn’t you at least agree to giving them a blood transfusion? They’d know you tried. It’d probably calm them down. It might even work! What is the wider significance of this? Basically fuck all, but it feels like it’s been years since I got to nitpick something that I genuinely enjoyed for the sheer, innocent love of being an insufferable killjoy rather than because I thought it was Problematic.

#The Old Guard

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togglesbloggle · 4 years

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So, @argumate is up to some more prosocial atheistic trolling. As is usual with such things, the conversation isn’t particularly elevated, but it does make me nostalgic for the old bbc days. So I thought I’d be the Discourse I’d like to see in the world. This is the post that kicked things off; correctly noting Platonism as a philosophical foundation underpinning most versions of Abrahamic faiths. And it’s probably the most useful place for me to target also, since hardly anybody just identifies as a Platonist but most westerners are one. So, without further ado, a halfhearted and full-length defense of Platonism:

Well, strike that. A little bit of ado.

I’m not a Platonist myself, so this is a devil’s advocate type of thing. Or maybe you could call it an intellectual Turing test? As I discuss here, my philosophical commitments are mostly to skepticism, and for instrumental reasons, to reductionist materialism. That combo leaves me some wiggle room, and I find it fairly easy to provisionally occupy a religious mindset, so I can generally read and enjoy religious polemics. I also have a fairly deep roster of what are often called ‘spiritual experiences’; I’m probably in the set of people that are by nature predisposed to religion. I am not religious, and I approve of Argumate saying things like ‘God is not real’ a lot. This is in no way a retread of the arguments in The Republic or Plato’s other writings; you can go read those if you want, but I’m going to play around with stuff that I think is better suited to this audience.

Attention conservation notice: yikes. This got pretty long.

Anyway, on to the argument. Argumate’s main point is pretty clear, I think: ‘forms’ in the Greek sense are a function and product of the perceiving mind. Birds don’t conform to bird-ness; instead brains naturally produce a sort of bird-ness category to make processing the world easier, and to turn a series of wiggly and continuous phenomena into a discrete number of well-modeled objects. Basically, we impose ‘thing-ness’ on the wavefunction of reality. And there are some good reasons to think that it might be true! Our understanding of categories gets a lot sharper when reality conveniently segregates itself, and whenever that boundary gets a little blurry, our ability to use categories tends to break down. If the recognition of animal-ness came from contact with a higher plane of reality, you wouldn’t necessarily expect people to get confused about sponges.

But. While there’s certainly plenty of support for Argumate’s position, it doesn’t strike me as anything near self-evident, or necessarily true. So what I’ll argue is that Platonism isn’t obviously false, and that if we ever converge on a true answer to the question of our reality, then that truth could plausibly be recognizably Platonist. My opening salvo here is, predictably enough, mathematics.

‘Mathematical Platonism’ is a whole other thing, only distantly related to Classical Platonism, and I only really mean to talk about the latter. But nonetheless, mathematics really actually does appear to be a situation where we can simply sit in a chair, think deeply, and then more or less directly perceive truths. Basic arithmetic can be independently discovered, and usefully applied, by almost anybody; ‘quantity’ comes naturally to most humans, and the inviolable laws of quantity are exploited just as often. It’s also very hard to argue that these are ‘mere’ linguistic conventions, since fundamental natural behaviors like the conservation of mass depend on a kind of consistent logical framework. In most chemical reactions, the number of atomic nuclei does not change, and the atoms added to a new molecule are perfectly mirrored by the loss of atoms in some reactant; this remains true in times and places where no thinking mind exists to count them.

There are a lot of debates about what math is, fundamentally. But inevitably when we study math, we’re studying the set of things that must be true, given some premise: we’re asking whether some proposition is a necessary consequence of our axioms. The so-called ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’ suggests that the phenomena that Argumate mentions- hotdogs and birds and whatnot- are observed only within the auspices of a sort of super-phenomenon. Loosely speaking, we can call this super-phenomenon self-consistency.

We treat phenomena as having a natural cause. Platonism, at its crunchy intellectually rewarding center, represents a willingness to bite the bullet and say that self-consistency also has a cause. Plato himself actually provided what might be the most elegant possible answer! Basically, posit the simplest thing that meets the criterion of being A) autocausal and B) omnicausal, and then allow the self-consistency of the cosmos to follow from its dependence on (in Platonist terms, its emanation from) that single, unitary cause. The universe is self-consistent for the very straightforward reason that there’s only one thing. Any plurality, to the extent that plurality is even a thing, happens because ‘the only real thing’ is only partially expressed in a particular phenomenon. To skip ahead to Lewis’ Christian interpretation of all this, you’d say that humans and moons and hotdogs are distinguished from God not by what they have, but by what they lack.

And for present purposes, I do want to take a step back and point out that this does feel like a reasonable answer to a very important question. Materialism fundamentally has no answer to the question of self-consistency and/or the presence of logic and order, and that is (for me) one of its least satisfying limits. We’ve got things like ‘the origin of the universe’, sure. But we probe the Big Bang with mathematical models! That’s a hell of an assumption- namely, that even at the origin of our universe, self-consistency applies. It’s not like materialism has a bad explanation. It just remains silent, treats the problem as outside the domain. If we’re adopting the thing for utilitarian reasons, that’s fine. But if we’re treating materialism as a more comprehensive philosophy, a possible approach to the bigger questions, then it’s a painful absence. In that domain, far from being self-evidently true (in comparison to Platonism), materialism doesn’t even toss its hat in the ring!

Which, uh, gets us to the stuff about Forms and shadows in Plato’s Cave and all that- the intermediate form of existence between the omnisimple core of Platonism and the often chaotic and very plural experience of day-to-day life. And frankly, we’re not especially bound to say that the forms are exactly as Plato described them, any more than atomism is restricted to Democritus. Whether there is some ‘bird-ness’ that is supra- to all extant birds might be contestable; however, it’s easier to wonder whether ‘binary tree’ is supra- to speciation and the real pattern of differences between organisms that we map using Linnaean taxonomy.

But, this is an attempted defense of Platonism and not Toggle’s Version of Platonism that He Invented Because it’s Easier, so I’ll give it a try. Fair warning to the reader, what follows is not fully endorsed (even in the context of a devil’s advocate-type essay), except the broader claim that it’s not self-evidently false. And on the givens we came up with a couple paragraphs ago, this is a reasonable way to tackle what necessarily follows. So let me see how far I can defend a very strong claim: in a self-consistent (or: mathematical) cosmos, beauty cannot be arbitrary.

Remember that Plato never argued that his Forms were arbitrary, or even fully discrete as such; their apparent plurality, like our own, emanates from the unitary Thing What Exists. And so, bird-ness is treated as a contingent thing, not an absolute. It’s just not contingent on human experience. And so for us to believe in ‘bird-ness’ is to believe that there exists some specific and necessary pattern- a Form- which any given material bird must express.

Let’s take an obvious example: any flying bird will, for fairly simple aerodynamic reasons, tend to be symmetrical. Usually, this means two wings. In theory, you could… have one in the middle? Maybe? Even that seems rather goofy to try to imagine, but you could probably get away with it if you were extremely creative biologically. And if we see a bird with only one wing (without a prosthetic or other form of accommodation), then we will tend quite naturally to recognize that something awful is in the process of happening.

A fully materialist explanation of our reaction here would say: we think of the one-winged bird as problematic because A) we have been socialized to recognize and appreciate two-winged birds, and spurn deviations from that socialization, or maybe B) because natural selection has given us a set of instincts that recognize when a body plan has failed in the past, so things like ‘being crippled’ or ‘being sick’ are recognizable.

Platonism, I think, would offer a third option, that C) we recognize (as emanations of The Real Thing) that a one-winged bird body is insufficiently reflective of The Real Thing, and that accordingly it lacks the ability to keep existing. Plato had some… basically magical ideas, about how Forms are recognized, but here I’ll point out that ‘deduction’ is a completely serviceable kind of magic for our purposes. It is, after all, our direct experience of the self-consistency of the cosmos, which follows from the fact that we are ourselves an expression of that same self-consistency; it meets the criteria.

Materialists, obviously, would agree that deductive reasoning could allow a person to recognize the problems inherent in a one-winged bird, but as I said a few paragraphs up, their(/our) explanation of this process is rootless. “Yes, logic and a few high-confidence assumptions let you assume that a bird with only one wing is in trouble,” they might say. And we might ask- “what makes you so sure?” And then the materialist must respond, “Well, let me be more clear. It always worked in the past, and my Bayesian priors are strongly in the direction of the method continuing to bear fruit.” True enough, but it’s not an explanation and doesn’t pretend to be. The universe just does this weird thing for some reason; it works ‘by magic’. So why not call it that? Theurgy for all!

So, consider. We recognize (deductively, let’s say for the sake of argument) that a one-winged bird is on the road to becoming nonexistent, absent some change in circumstances. It may keep going for a little while, but it’s not in homeostasis. And if we reasonably admit this very basic duality to our thinking- things which can persist, and things which cannot- then we start to recognize a sort of analogy between physical phenomena and mathematical propositions. A lemma can be right or wrong, albeit sometimes unprovably so. Basically, it can follow- or not- from the axioms we’re working with. And in a softer but very real sense, that one-winged body plan is wrong analogously to the lemma’s wrongness. Not ‘wrong’ as in ‘counter to cultural norms’, but ‘wrong’ as in ‘unstable given the premises, given the Thing That Exists Most’. Look up research on fitness landscapes, if you’re so inclined- actual biological research isn’t totally unacquainted with the notion. There exists a surprisingly discrete ideal or set of ideals, both for flying birds as a whole and subordinately for any given flying bird species. And we have discovered this using magic.

Insofar as beauty is something to be admired, or pursued, or is otherwise desirable, then our sense of beauty must necessarily correlate with those abstract, and dare I say supra-real, qualities which allow things to persist, and which can therefore be understood deductively. And that set of qualities does, effectively, meet the Platonic criterion of a ‘form’.

The immediate materialist objection is: hey, wait a minute. The supposed ‘objective’ criterion of a bird is contingent, not absolute! It follows from the strength of gravity, the thickness of the atmosphere, the availability of food sources, and on and on. This is one of the most important reasons why genetic drift and speciation happens in the first place, because the ‘ideal’ bird depends on an environment that’s in constant flux.

True enough. But! How do you think the atmosphere got there? It’s an old trick in religious discourse, but in this case I think a valid one. The rightness of the bird depends on the atmosphere, the rightness of the atmosphere depends on the planet, the rightness of the planet depends on the solar system, and ultimately it all depends on that necessary self-consistency which (we proclaim) implies our unitary Most Real Thing. This does mean that we can’t really think of Platonic forms as wholly discrete objects, unconnected to one another and without internal relation among themselves- unfortunately, that’s part of the original Plato that I don’t see as defensible, even with maximum charity. But there’s such a thing as a ‘ring species’, and if we admit Platonic Forms of that type, a kind of dense network of paths being traced through higher-dimensional spaces that correspond to the shadow of That Than Which There Is No Whicher, then it’s more than salvageable. It’s both satisfying to imagine and, I think, quite consistent with the spirit of the original philosophy.

One thing this doesn’t mean. Even if we were to accept all of this, we aren’t obliged to resign ourselves to the lot of that one-winged bird. Indeed, if anything this gives us a rich language by which to justify a prosthetic wing or other form of accommodation: we can talk about ‘making the bird whole’, and can see how our compassion for that bird might lead us to create the conditions of homeostasis once again. But it does mean that if we take a position on the merits of existence- if we’re in favor- then we don’t treat a one- and two-winged bird as coequal scenarios.

Anyway, this has gone on hideously long already for what’s basically an intellectual exercise, so I won’t dive into immortal souls or any of the other ancillaries. I mostly want to reiterate that, far from being obviously false, I do think that (some forms of) Platonism are quite defensible, and can provide coherent answers to questions that I A) care about very deeply and B) can’t resolve to my own satisfaction. Of course, it is not obviously nor trivially true, either. But one can be Platonist without being willfully wrong.

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psychotic-psypport · 3 years

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Thank you for your blog!!!

TW: media ableism, slurs, delusions, nonverbal auditory hallucinations, mentions of bullying, mentions of misdiagnosis

CW: infodump

How do you feel about reclaiming fictional characters who are written by ableist writers but nevertheless mean a lot to you? I have this one character, we are almost polar opposites in some important things, but I have always related to them so much in terms of mental illness, to the point of once, soon after I first met them, having a delusion on being them under human disguise with false memories (a thing in this canon, it is generally extremely psychosis-triggering and I'm making a list of the main triggers to post. Several affected me back then, but even though I still love that canon). That was way before I got diagnosed, first thought that they might be schizo-spec too and actually learned what schizophrenia is (pretty much in that order).

They are one of the core reappearing antagonists, and yes, that's as bad as it sounds. I'm on my way on going through all their appearances, but for now I'm mostly familliar with the later ones. So, I don't know how schizo-spec were they shown originally, but :))))) I know that the main character called them "m*d and paranoid" in one of the early appearances :)))))) F*CK. The character responded that everyone is, but they admit it. Fast forward to the time where the series died and after 15 years of books-and-audios-only was revived on screen: that's when things got HORRIBLE. The character got introduced into the revived series returning from being disguised as human with false memories, what I mentioned earlier — thanks for inducing delusions!!!!! Much appreciated!!!!!!! But this was, like, the least bad part for a while. The writers suddenly gave them a constant abstract auditory hallucination (four-beat rhythm, the heartbeat of their species) which they never had been mentioned having before, AAAAAND they got a delusion that it is "calling for them", and tried to turn Earth into a warship and conquer the universe thinking an eternal destruction might stop the drumming. Things are even worse because the actor still wanted to give them depth but the writer/showrunner 'pushed him to play "giggling lunatic"' (TV Tropes quote)! In their next appearance, still with the same actor and writer (also the last episode by that writer) they are still psychotic, but this time they have a lot of depth and it's honestly still my favorite episode in the entire show. But, don't know how it counts, but: their hallucination turned out to not be a hallucination but was implanted into their head as a child so that looking for the means to stop it they would save their home planet from the eternal war (the story is actually longer than I said it) and then the person who did this wanted to dispose of them.

Oh and yes I had this hallucination when I had the delusion of being them and thanks to that shit I thought it's more than a simple hallucination without any additional delusions :)))))))))

Their next several appearances, with a different writer and a different actress, are usually much less ableist in itself, but the actress constantly called them cr*zy/ins*ne/etc in interviews and there are some other gross ableist things. The previous actor and writer did that too. And the next, current actor and writer seemed to be a GIFT — they recognized them as mentally ill, recognized their depth, they did not call them names, they respected them!! And the actor is an absolute GOD in playing them. But some of the promos were f*cking ugly, and in the last interview the actor did, in the end, call them cr*zy. That was a full stop knife in the back. I could not believe it.

The main character is repeatedly ableist to them too — "m*d and paranoid", "psychiatrist field day", "a lunatic". Thanks, I hate it

So, why don't I throw it all into the Ableism Garbage Can?

They were pretty much the first character to whom I related in terms of mental illness. Like me, they were emotionally unstable, codependent, depressed, constantly on fire mentally, had lifelong identity crisis, and that was way before I learned what else united us.

Also, they, together with the main character, were bullied as a child, and it was the first time I saw a character who shared the traumatic experience which unfortunately shaped my whole life, and their experience wasn't mocked in any way. That meant and still means SO MUCH to me.

(and yes, this point was written by an entirely different person than those who wrote them in the revived TV series)

When I got diagnosed, I first thought that I was misdiagnosed — I thought I was autistic for a long time, and I got diagnosed with Pseudoneurotic Schizophrenia, which is a subtype of Schizotypal in my country, and many autistic people in my country get misdiagnosed as schizotypal. But I started to read about it and it was the first thing ever that explained what the hell was I going through.

(I still think I'm misdiagnosed — I'm most probably Schizoaffective bipolar subtype, but the doctors in the hospital didn't take my bipolar symptomatic in account. I'm going to a new psychiatrist this Sunday, and I hope to talk to him about it)

So I desperately needed schizo-spectrum characters to relate. Characters to relate were always a biggest thing for me, long before this one. Aaaand I first had a thought, then fully realized that they shared this experience to me, too.

I first met them five years ago, and got diagnosed half a year ago, all this time they were there for me when I most needed it, along with several other characters, but they are still the only schizo-spectrum character among them. I don't want to let go of them. I want to reclaim them.

What I told about are not the only instances of them showing schizo-spec symptoms, and I want to make a big post on it once, perhaps when I'm familiar with all their appearances. And I'm on my way, and I'm moving!

I'm also writing a fanfic about them, and I want to explore the topic, along with everything that I appreciate in them and a general deep character study.

Also: their homeworld used "insanity" as a term about them — it has probably about early XX-century concept of psychiatry (barring the sh*tty gender things, literally the only good thing about that society is a complete absence of gender), and back then it was a legitimate term for psychosis (please don't think I'm defending the early XX-century psychiatry or the character's homeworld). So, pretty much confirms.

My answer for this is probably gonna be a lot shorter than the ask, mostly because I feel a very strong pull in one direction.

It's ok to claim characters like this! Death of the author! Frankly, we've seen it happen a lot where the whole fandom of a piece of media goes "ok, my character now". It's especially understandable if you relate to this character like you do. Honestly, take what you can and take what you want from this and discard the pieces you don't want. You don't want to defend this behavior of course, but there's not a thing wrong with claiming this character as your own and finding yourself in them. You are allowed this, and you don't have to ask anyone's permission. Kinda like the other ask I got earlier, who finds themself in and enjoys the Shining, it's ok to enjoy it even if it's problematic. We don't get much representation, so mostly we come away with villains, which sucks, but you get to do with those characters what you please, no one can stop you from relating or feeling connected to the character. If they give us the scarcist representation possible, is it really a failing on our part when we connect with the few characters we find like us? I don't think so. It's only natural to seek these parts of yourself in media, and they just happen to mostly show up in an ableist/derogatory/stereotypical way with villains.

#ask #anon #answered #leviathan

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darkdisrepair · 4 years

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the first step (is always the hardest)

alright guys fun fact someone asked about the origin of the queens living together but i wasn’t sure how to answer the ask while also having a title so here we are! hopefully whoever asked sees this.

in this, i’m thinking parr is around 20 (which would be about her second/third year of university in the united states, idk about the uk) which makes anne around 21-22

“I think I found our place,” Anne declared with a wide grin on her face. Parr looked up from her worn copy of Sense and Sensibility, eyebrows raised.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it, then,” Parr said, closing the book and turning her her full attention toward the brunette.

“It’s on Upper Park Road. The website says we’d have housemates. They’re looking for two women to help them pay rent, but they don’t really care how old. There’d be a meeting first, so that the other people living in the house could meet us.”

“Upper Park Road is a really nice area,” Parr said skeptically. “Do you really think we could even realistically afford that?!”

“Honestly, it doesn’t look like they’re asking for much. I’m pretty sure whoever owns the house isn’t too worried about making a profit, necessarily.”

“Does it say what they’d expect us to pay? Let’s not forget that we both have university fees still.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “Would I be bringing this up to you if I didn’t think we could do it? They didn’t mention a price estimate. They just want whoever’s interested to set up a meeting and then they said that we’ll talk money there. If it doesn’t work out, fine, we’ll keep looking.”

“I don’t know, Annie, this seems way too far out of our wheelhouse. Houses on Upper Park Road go for millions of pounds, and I, for one, know that that’s definitely out of my price range.”

“Just give it a chance, okay? It’s a beautiful house, and it’s in a pretty decent location. We could get where we needed to go without having to deal with the tourists all the time.”

Parr still looked skeptical, with her arms crossed over her chest. “Anne...”

“It’s just one meeting. And then we can go for ice cream afterward, and I’ll pay.”

“That’s a dirty move.”

“But I know you’ll say yes.”

Even though she tried not to hide it, Anne was incredibly nervous for this first meeting with the homeowner. She and Parr had been looking for somewhere to stay for quite some time now, and this was one of, if not the only promising prospect they had.

It was either this, or find some run down old place on the outskirts of London, in some sketchy neighborhood. Which Anne would rather not do. They tried another place a few months prior, but their landlord had been less than pleasant, always lurking around the building, following Anne to the store one day, trying to bargain a kiss from Parr another...

She just prayed that whoever it was wasn’t going to ask them for much, rent-wise. She made a solid amount performing, but it wasn’t a lot, and Parr was in her final year of university. They certainly couldn’t afford a house on Upper Park Road by themselves.

Anne had dressed as nicely as she could, in one of her favorite olive green sweaters, dark jeans, and a pair of nice boots. Parr wore a white button down shirt, a blue blazer, and maroon pants.

“Ready?” Anne asked, hand on the doorbell.

“As I’ll ever be.”

The doorbell rang once, twice, before the door swung open to reveal a very professional looking woman, with blonde hair that was nearly white. “You must be Anne and Catherine.”

“Yes, that would be us,” Parr said a bit awkwardly. “And you must be Ms. Seymour.”

“That would be correct, but do call me Jane. Come in. I was thinking we’d get to know each other a bit before we talk business, if that works for the two of you. Are you in much of a rush this morning?” Jane asked as she led them down the entrance hall.

“No, we have nothing planned.”

“Lovely.”

They’d reached the living room now, which was brightly lit by a large window on one side.

“These two women are Catherine Aragon and Anna Cleves,” Jane said, motioning toward the two women who were seated on the couch. “They are also staying here at the present time. Catherine, Anna, meet, well, Catherine and Anne.”

“It looks like your Catherine and Anna quotas are already filled,” Anne quipped as she sat down in one of the armchairs. “Don’t need much more of those around the house.”

“All we need is another Jane,” Cleves added, smirking. “Then it would be even teams.”

“How about you tell us a little about yourselves? What do you do for a living? How long have you been in London?” Jane asked, looking at the two of them in a manner that made Anne feel like she was a piece of art to be appraised in a museum.

“We both went to university here, and I’m currently auditioning on the West End,” Anne said. “I studied musical theatre.”

“And I’m planning on becoming a writer after I graduate,” Parr added. “But I still have a little ways to go.”

“What sort of writing?” Catherine Aragon asked, at the same time Cleves asked about what shows Anne was going for.

“Um, well, I like writing about social issues. Women’s rights, how people interact with others, problematic trends. But I also enjoy fiction quite a bit, so maybe I’ll write some novels on the side while I work as a journalist the rest of the time.”

“I’ll really go for any role they want me,” Anne explained. “But I love dancing, and I love playing the quirky characters. The love interest doesn’t really suit me- I prefer the witty ones, the ones with the good one-liners.”

The conversation continued like that for about thirty more minutes. To Anne, it felt more like a job interview than a get-to-know-you session, but when something as intimate as sharing a house was on the line, she couldn’t blame any of them for wanting to know as much as possible.

“I have one more question before we make our decision. What brought you here?” Jane asked.

“We had a bad experience at the last place we visited,” Parr said after a heavy silence. “Our landlord was very... pushy. He followed Anne around all the time, flirting with her, trying to get her to go on a date with him... I forgot the keys one time and he tried to get me to sleep with him in order for him to let me in. It just wasn’t where we wanted to be anymore.”

Anne couldn’t bring herself to look at the other women.

“Thank you for telling us that,” Aragon said, but Anne couldn’t tell if her tone of voice had changed because she disliked the two of them or because she disapproved of their old landlord.

Jane, Aragon, and Cleves left the room for a few minutes to discuss, leaving Anne and Parr alone in the living room.

“They seemed nice, if not intense,” Parr commented. “They seem so put together.”

“They are older than us. They’ve had time to find out what they want to do with their lives, where as we’re just... skating through.”

“Do you really think they’re even considering letting us stay with them? We’re so different from each other. They’re successful, well-off women, and we’re practically kids,” Parr wondered out loud.

“I don’t know. I can see it going either way.”

Anne definitely couldn’t see Jane Seymour appreciating the late-night lifestyle of a theatre actress, or Anne’s passion for wearing wheeled sneakers indoors, but she didn’t tell that to Parr.

The three women came back.

“We’ve made our decision. We’d be happy to have the two of you stay with us, if you would like,” Jane said with little fanfare. “You seem like you have promising futures ahead of you, we’d love to be a part of that. I know the value of a healthy living environment, and while I don’t have much experience acting as a landlady, I’m more than happy to open my home to bright young women such as yourselves.”

“And we need some new life in this house,” Aragon added.

“I’m sure we don’t be without our disagreements. Those are inherent when you put five women in the same house for long periods of time. But as long as you’re willing to adapt, compromise, and try it out, I’m willing to give it a shot,” Jane continued.

Anne held her breath.

“I’m not going to charge you an exorbitant amount. I’m the CEO of a company- I don’t plan on taking your hard-earned money away from you. I consider this less of a business transaction and more as a foray into the human experience. I refuse to let the two of you go through another housing experience like your past one. So, we’ll settle on some kind of monthly payment that fits your financial abilities, such as a few hundred pounds a month. You’ll contribute to groceries, and such, but I am certainly not depending your money in order to keep this house. That was never the issue.”

Both girls were stunned. Anne couldn’t even process what the blonde woman was telling them, she was so shocked. “Is this a dream?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“No, it’s not a dream,” Jane said warmly. “Is this a yes?”

Anne and Parr barely needed to look at each other to confirm before they nodded their assent.

“Welcome home, then, Anne and Catherine.”

#six the musical #six the musical fanfic #six the musical fanfiction #anne boleyn #catherine parr #jane seymour #catherine of aragon #anna of cleves #tiny tiny kat au

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stephenofallon-blog · 4 years

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How Violence Can Depict the Quality of a Film

When it comes to sitting down and enjoying a movie, I believe there are two types of people. Those who casually watch movies and those who watch movies. Up until roughly two years ago, I would have classified myself as someone who casually went to the theater with friends or family. That was until my junior year of high school when I took film studies as an elective class just for fun. Like I said before, I always enjoyed watching movies, but when I learned about the history of cinema and how it has drastically changed over time I really became interested. I began to watch the most notable films by the big-name directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, just to name a few. That’s when I realized that I was really missing out on what watching a good movie was like. The instructor who taught the class was also incredible, and I will always give him credit for my interest in cinema- shoutout to Mr. Peters. I have always been interested in action movies that contained violence, not that I just absolutely love violence or anything, but when I was younger I really enjoyed the Dark Knight trilogy, for example, (and I still do). However, after watching so many action movies my whole life I really began to notice what made them good or bad and the common themes most of them shared. I have discovered that violence can build a certain tone to a movie. Violence and suggestive themes can also determine viewership depending on circumstance, and can help the audience empathize with a character or characters.

Violence has always came off as a more serious aspect when it comes to movies. Which is understandable, most violence originates from something bad or malicious. However, that doesn’t always mean the violent origin is serious. There is even a genre of violent movies that has been popular since the mid-1970’s. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is known as the first summer blockbuster. The movie was an outstanding success in the summer of 1975 and is widely known as one of the top movies of all-time. The movie was so popular, it spawned a series of corny, over-the-top copycat films that are still being produced today. The violence in Jaws is completely appropriate because it sets the tone for type of movie that follows a killer Great White Shark that is terrorizing a fictional “Amityville Island” beach. So, are there other type of tone-setting instances of violence that can define the quality of a movie? Absolutely. One of the most famous copycat movies that came out recently is Anthony C. Ferrante’s Sharknado. The use of ridiculous CGI and corny violence in Sharknado is very necessary because it fits its own genre that audiences love. I personally enjoyed Sharknado’s silliness just because its so outrageous that it’s actually funny. Brian Lowry of Variety; Los Angeles stated, “Inevitably, that mini eruption spawned ‘Sharknado 2! The Second One’, which plops down into the summer, cheesy as ever, with an added infusion of conspicuous celebrity cameos that success has made possible.”(Lowry, para. 1). Audiences enjoy a good laugh, and Sharknado was able to become very successful due to its use of comedic violence.

Some of the most famous films ever made contain violence. So, does this mean violence can be important to developing a good story? Of course. But does this mean the use of violence can go too far? It definitely can. Audiences felt the intensity of the Allied soldiers as they stormed the beaches of Normandy in Saving Private Ryan. Loud gunshots, explosions, and soldiers crying in pain displayed the true terror that the soldiers were experiencing during this moment in time. This use of violence may have been graphic, but the audiences were fully aware that scenes displayed in the film were depicted of what WWII was really like. Saving Private Ryan is widely known as the greatest depiction of what war was like among all films. I was shown the famous D-Day scene in my World History class my freshman year of high school. So, I believe this level of violence is appropriate to be seen by many simply because it is with historic meaning and good purpose. The film made 482 million dollars at the box office, which surpassed its 70 million dollar budget. Amongst all of the recent superhero films, Tim Miller’s Deadpool is by far my favorite. Deadpool, as any anti-hero would, took a much different approach than previous Marvel films. Deadpool hit theaters with an R-Rating which instantly became controversial. This is not necessarily a bad thing, considering the film was the highest-grossing R-Rated film of all time until the release of Joker, which came out in September of this year. However, the R-Rating certainly restricted certain audiences, such as anyone below the age of 17. Matt Donnelly of Variety; Los Angeles stated, “The studio is also grappling with how to fit the very R-rated Deadpool into its PG-13 rated Marvel Cinematic Universe.” (Donnelly, para. 15). The film was very successful at the box-office, and will go down as one of the highest grossing R-rated movies for a long time. But that doesn’t help the fact that kids who love superheroes, such as Deadpool, won’t get to watch his movie because of how graphic and inappropriate it is for many years to come (unless their parents approve, of course).

Violence can be used in many ways to influence the audience to feel a certain way. I remember watching Tom and Jerry when I was younger every single time I went to my aunt’s house. Chasing each other around, blowing each other up with dynamite, beating one another with baseball bats, Tom and Jerry would have my sister and I laughing all day. The violence came off as comedic and fun because neither character was depicted to be actually getting hurt, and there was always the next episode where both characters were alright, at least for a few minutes. The goofy sound effects and non-use of graphic violence came together to create a product that was O.K. for younger and even older audiences because it made everyone laugh. However, violence can also provide messages that can cause the audience to feel for a character or characters. I think that best way screen-play writers can get the audience to really feel for characters is to relate a situation to real-life events. One of my favorite films from the 1990’s is Menace II Society, which was directed by Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes. The movie depicts what life is like in certain urban cities in The United States and how violence surrounds everyone in them. The movie mainly follows Caine, played by Tyrin Turner, and O-Dog, played by Larenz Tate. The characters endure violence, relationship problems, and domestic issues all throughout the span of the movie. What made this movie make me feel sad was not so much the story of O-Dog, but Caine. O-Dog never really came around to wanting to leave the life he was living and move on to better things. But Caine did, and when he decided to leave the “streets” he still could not get away. Paula Massood of Cineaste said in her review of Menace II Society, “As Caine is riddled with bullets in this driveway scene, the cinematography resorts to a stylistics of violence standardized ever since its introduction to Bonnie and Clyde - brilliant colors, bright lighting, and slow motion, photography, prolonging the event and heightening the tension as well as pathos.” (Massood, para. 4). We saw Caine live a very problematic life, and when he tried to turn it around he was abruptly stopped right when he had everything worked out. This made me feel upset for the character because I wanted the best for him in the end, as did everyone else. Combining the likes of drama and violence can create a very dramatic tone for a movie, or any type of entertainment. This is a great example of how using violence with a purpose can have a positive impact on an audiences viewing experience as well.

Although I would consider myself as an amateur “cinephile”, my opinions and statements about violence and its impact on film are much more interesting than the flip side of the media violence debates. There is much more research I need to do to be able to understand what really can impact a quality of a movie so there is plenty of room to grow my knowledge of cinema studies as well. I have seen countless of movies of all genres so I don’t want my audience to believe I am really only interested in one type of film; I just believe the impact that violence can have on the quality of a movie is not talked about enough.

Works Cited

Donnelly, Matt, and Brent Lang. "Disney's Fox Under Pressure from the Top After Rough Start." Variety, vol. 345, no. 4, Aug 13, 2019, pp. 17-18. ProQuest, https://login.proxy.lib.utk.edu:443/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2275867195?accountid=14766.

Lowry, Brian. "SHARKNADO 2! THE SECOND ONE." Variety, vol. 324, no. 17, Jul 29, 2014, pp. 92. ProQuest, https://login.proxy.lib.utk.edu:443/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1552848590?accountid=14766.

Massood, Paula. "Menace II Society." Cineaste (ARCHIVE), vol. 20, no. 2, 1993, pp. 44-45,31. ProQuest, https://login.proxy.lib.utk.edu:443/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/222653552?accountid=14766.

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staycalmandlovekpop · 6 years

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Who You Are

A/N: (Another old request) Sorry anon for super long wait! This was inspired by the K-drama “Kill Me, Heal Me”

Date: March 7, 2018 Patient: Im Jaebum Diagnosis: Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality disorder

Observations of the Personalities 1. Im Jaebum (The main original personality) A normal 24 year-old young man who is caring, warm-hearted, active, and emotional. He just wants to be a filial son, good friend, and live out his dreams. Interests: Music, hanging out with friends and family, composing, playing sports, and joking around Note: Due to the fact that the manager of GOT7 didn’t want Jaebum to know that he had hired a private personal nurse for his disorder, I haven’t met him yet. My contract clearly stated that I had to keep my distance from him whenever he returns to his normal state and to only approach him if one of his other personalities came out. He usually feels a sharp pain in his head like a migraine before the personalities come out.

2. JB (The bad boy) Makes himself known as the “charismatic leader of GOT7” but is actually quite stubborn, has a bad temper, is strong-minded, impatient, doesn’t listen to others, the MOST PROBLEMATIC ONE, and is quite selfish. HOW HE WAS CREATED: I suspect that “JB” was born when Jaebum hurt his ankle and couldn’t dance on stage with the other members. He was quite frustrated with himself as he felt that he was letting down his fans and the members. As a the leader and a dancer he wanted to always give it his all on stage, but his injury was preventing him from doing so. The stress had become too overwhelming for him to handle therefore JB was created to help him through tough situations and bear through the pain. INTERESTS: Getting what he wants, singing, dancing, flirting with girls, being in the spotlight, and going to nightclubs. NOTE: He wasn’t very thrilled at first when he found out that GOT7’s manager hired a personal nurse and refuses to listen to me AT ALL. CAN BE SUCH A PAIN IN THE BUTT sometimes. He’s always causing trouble and just does whatever he wishes to do. Sometimes the way he looks at me makes me feel very uncomfortable... He keeps on winking at me and saying “You’ll fall for me one day Muffin~.” He’s also been showing up a lot these days...I wonder why?

3. Seo Mijoon (The Actor) Possibly JB’s “older brother” but whenever I ask him or JB about it, they both deny it profusely. Thinks he’s a worldwide star and assumes that everybody is his fan. Very arrogant, snotty, rude, but is very serious when acting. HOW HE WAS CREATED: After receiving some recognition for his role in Dream High 2, Jaebum began to feel pressured when he got another offer for the drama “When a Man Falls in Love.” I suspect that he studied the script VERY VERY diligently and eventually the lack of sleep and stress got to him causing alter ego Mijoon to be born. It’s quite likely that’s what happened considering this personality adopted Jaebum’s character’s name from the drama. INTERESTS: Being the center of attention, acting, memorizing scripts, fashion, magazines, coffee, signing autographs, modeling, and taking selcas. NOTE: He didn’t care that GOT7’s manager hired a personal nurse at all. To him, I was someone he could order around to do stuff. He treats me like an intern by making me get him coffee, walking his cat(???), driving him to places, buying him magazines, dusting off lint from his clothes with a lint roller, and taking endless pictures of him. Since Jaebum isn’t focused on acting these days, whenever Mijoon comes out I would always catch him stealing Jinyoung’s scripts and practicing lines in his room.

4. JYP A dorky fun loving ahjussi who is health conscience and is starting to feel his age but still wants to enjoy life to the fullest. Though he exercises and can move around quite well, his knees occasionally go weak and he experiences gastric problems often. HOW HE WAS CREATED: It’s pretty obvious that this personality is based off the CEO of Jaebum’s company. He must be really grateful to Mr. Park Jinyoung for all that he’s done and admire him as an artist as well. INTERESTS: Organic herbal drinks, working out, drinking, partying, dancing, giving people life advice, composing music, playing piano, and wearing glasses. NOTE: He’s a pretty nice ahjussi when he’s not drunk or giving me long lectures about how it’s better to sing with half air half sound and why it’s good to always be honest. Whenever music starts playing, JYP gets into a dancing groove.

You sighed as you finished typing the last note and shut your laptop. You still couldn’t believe that it’s been two weeks since you took this job. Who ever thought that your first official job would be to become a secret private nurse for GOT7’s Im Jaebum?

It was just three weeks ago when GOT7’s manager came to your senior’s office, asking for someone who is plain, average, and could easily blend in a crowd. Of course your ‘oh so considerate’ senior (and mentor) suggested you, a first-year psychiatry resident who was eager to start working and was basically invisible to everyone in the office. You refused at first, begging your senior to help you find a position elsewhere in a local hospital. You knew how messy things could get in the entertainment field, and you didn’t want to be involved. Even if it was a private job.

“Kang sunbaenim, please don’t make me do this! What if his fans find out and assume that we’re dating or something?”

Your senior scoffed. “You? Dating a K-pop idol?”

You rolled your eyes at him. “I’m serious!! If something happens, all the hard work that I’ve done to get to where I am now will go down the drain!”

He then sighed deeply before placing a hand on your shoulder and looking in you dead in the eye. “Listen. You’re one of my favorite pupils and I know that you can excel in anything you put your heart to. Mr. Im is not only our client, but our patient. A patient that needs to be treated and set free from his inner demons. I know very well that you understand what it’s like to have a disorder and how it can greatly impact someone’s life.”

You looked away and sighed. Must he always be right?

“Did you ever consider how hard it probably is for him? Having to deal with dissociative identity disorder AND living as a K-pop idol??”

After a week of contemplating, you finally decided to take the job. GOT7’s manager explained to you about how they were hiring a private nurse behind Jaebum’s back, as he would never have approved of it. You also had to swear that you would never let anyone know about Jaebum’s psychological condition, even if it was already a given that every patient’s information is to remain confidential. Since then, you’ve been following GOT7 around. You went to every event, hiding somewhere in the distance like a sasaeng fan and making observations of Jaebum’s behavior. Today’s schedule was filming for the second episode of their reality show called “GOT7’s Showtime.”

“Cut! Good job everyone. We will commence a ten minute break and resume filming shortly.” The PD-nim announced through his megaphone. A moment later, you get a text from the manager:

“You take a break too. I can keep an eye on Jaebum for now.”

You looked up from your phone and made eye contact with him from afar. He gave you a thumbs up and you nodded in acknowledgment, secretly thanking him since it was an extremely hot day and you really needed a cold drink. You made sure to head the opposite way GOT7 were headed and decided to go to your favorite cafe around the corner.

“One iced americano please.” You tell the cashier as you dig out your wallet from your bag.

“Okay, that will be ￦3,550 please.”

You opened your wallet to find only a couple bills inside. You had forgotten to get more cash from the bank this weekend. “Do you accept card?” You ask the cashier with a hopeful voice.

“Sorry, but we accept cash only.”

You felt your throat get dry, making your thirst for a cold drink even greater. You placed your two ￦1,000 bills on the counter and dumped all your coins out. After counting and calculating, you realized that you were ￦50 short. You were about to sadly collect your coins when suddenly a man behind you spoke up.

“I can lend you ￦50.” He said, placing the coin on the counter.

You were about to turn around to thank the man when suddenly realized that the voice sounded familiar to you. It was indeed HIM. You turned slightly and did a quick bow before walking to the far corner of the cafe with your receipt and buzzer in hand.

That was way too close. Why was he here? Where was the manager? As if on cue, you received a text from him: “I lost him.” You were about to text back, notifying him about Jaebum’s whereabouts, when someone tapped you on your shoulder.

“Hey aren’t you the girl that was in front of me in line?”

You dared to face him and looked into his eyes. A pair of soft brown eyes, and a closed smile which you never saw up-close. It indeed was the real Jaebum who was speaking to you.

“Uhh sorry! I-I can’t speak Korean!” You stuttered in English.

Jaebum tilted his head. “Didn’t you speak Korean to the cashier just now?” “Ahh. I know only little Korean…” You trailed off, hoping to confuse him with more English.

A playful smile formed on his face. “Oh, but you must know enough Korean to understand what I just said. I didn’t ask you in English.”

You slumped your shoulders and sighed, reverting back to Korean. “Alright, you got me. I can speak Korean...Sorry, it’s just that I’m...I’m uncomfortable around strangers.”

Jaebum’s smile faltered. “Oh...I didn’t mean to creep you out or anything. I promise. I just found you...intriguing.”

“Intriguing...?”

Jaebum rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, that sounded creepy didn’t it?” He chuckled, feeling flustered by his choice of words. “You know what, let’s just start over. Hi, I’m Im Jaebum.”

You looked at his outstretched hand, which was waiting for a handshake. Should you hide your identity? Or just tell him your real name? Maybe you could use a cool mysterious name like Midnight or something like Demetria. Yeah Demetria sounded nice.

You slipped your hand into his and shook it. “I’m Y/N.” Shoot. There goes your chance of having a mysterious sounding name.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N. I really want to stay and chat, but I have something to attend to...Do you mind meeting me for a late night snack at midnight?”

Your eyes widened in surprise of his sudden offer. Why would he want to meet up with you?

“I-um….”

You felt conflicted. You knew that it was against your contract to interact with his main personality, but a part of you wanted to learn more about the real Jaebum. Suddenly you were filled with deep curiosity, wondering what he was like personally compared to his other personalities. Maybe getting to know him firsthand will help you with your research.

“Sure. Why not.” You replied with a friendly smile.

Jaebum grinned. “Great. Meet me at the ice cream shop nearby tonight.” After he left to continue filming, you stood there frozen, wondering if you did the right thing accepting his offer. You snapped out of it when your phone rang. It was GOT7’s manager.

“H..Hello?”

“Y/N did you find him?”

“Yeah...about that….”

You explained to him about what happened and was pretty sure that you were gonna get fired...but surprisingly the manager thought that it would be a good opportunity to get to know Jaebum more. So that’s how you ended up waiting outside the ice cream shop past midnight while freezing cold.

You were kicking pebbles with your shoe when you heard someone running towards you.

“H-Hey….Sorry I’m late!” Jaebum said while breathing heavily. Once he caught his breath, he continued. “It was kinda hard for me to sneak out, but I made it. I didn’t keep you waiting too long did I...?”

“Nope. I just got here haha…” (You totally did not just wait over half an hour…) “But wait...why did you ask to meet at this ice cream shop? It’s closed now…” You said as you pointed at the sign and the dark empty room.

Jaebum gave you a knowingly smile. “That’s what most people think, but actually…”

He then starting walking towards the back of the shop and you followed after him. Jaebum eventually led you to the backdoor of the shop and knocked on the door 7 times. The door then opened slowly and a bright light peeped from inside. Jaebum opened the door wide and gestured for you to go in first. “After you~.” As you walked in, your eyes popped out in amazement. The secret backroom was filled with tables and basically everything that the front part of the shop had. You were also surprised to see so many celebrities, such as actors and idols, with their dates enjoying their ice cream together. (For their privacy, none shall be named in this story).

“Surprised?” Jaebum asked after making sure to close the door shut behind him. Since you were there for work, you shook off the starstruckness and tried to keep your cool. “Just a bit…”

“Yeah, the owner here is cousins with the TV personality/restaurateur Hong Seokcheon. He put in this whole separate back part of the ice cream shop when designing it just for celebrities to have a secret hideout.”

“Wow that’s pretty cool~. What if the non-celebrity dates don’t end well though?” You asked.

“Well if anyone were to ever try to expose the secret, the password would change or they will just move to another location before Dispatch arrives. That hasn’t happened yet though, thankfully.”

You nodded in understanding. “So~. Have you been here often?” Although you didn’t really care, you were curious to see how he would react.

Jaebum looked taken aback by your sudden question.”What, me? Pfft no...I just heard about it a lot from my friends.”

Just then, a large man came over and gave Jaebum a big hug. You assumed that he was the owner of the shop. “Ayee JB my man~. Good to see you again!!”

You raised an eyebrow at Jaebum and gave him a look as a flustered Jaebum gave you a small forced smile.

“You want the usual JB?” The man asked.

Jaebum nodded and looked over at you.

“Ahh..I’ll take a cookies n’ cream thank you.” You said.

Once you and Jaebum got your orders, you both sat down at a table near the covered windows. You noticed that he got the mint choco ice cream and made a mental note of that for your report later.

“Sooo you haven’t been here often huh?” You said, trying to poke fun at him.

Jaebum raised his hands up. “I swear I only come here from the front for their ice cream.”

You laughed and took a bite out of your ice cream. “Sure you do…”

Jaebum chuckled. “No, really! I don’t usually ask anyone out.”

You looked at him questionably. “Then what makes me special? Why did you ask me out? I know for sure that it’s not because I owed you a mere ￦50. You even paid for our ice cream without me knowing!”

Jaebum licked his ice cream. “I told you already. It’s because I found you...intriguing.”

“There you go again with that creepy-like word.” You joked.

Jaebum chuckled. “Fine! How about ‘interesting’? Enthralling? Thought-provoking? Fascinating?”

“Oh my goodness. What are you? A walking thesaurus?” You said laughing. “That’s not usually how a guy would describe a girl.”

“It’s just hard to explain...Even though I’m sure we never met before, I feel like you seem very familiar...Like you seemed very approachable..?”

Your eyes widened. Was it possible that your interactions with his other personalities gave him a sense of familiarity around you? “Ah, I see…”

“Also, you just treated me differently that how other people would.”

“What do you mean?” You asked.

“Well, you treated me like how you would treat any man you didn’t know. Haha. You probably thought that I was a creeper at first didn’t you? I just liked how you didn’t treat me like a celebrity. Even though it might just be because you didn’t know who I was...Do you know who I am?”

Although you knew that Jaebum was just asking you if you knew that he was from GOT7, you received the question differently as if he was asking you if you really knew who Jaebum was on the inside. If you knew about his secret disorder and internal struggles.

When you were about to reply, Jaebum grunted while putting his hands on his forehead. The oh so familiar piercing migraine has returned. No...NOT NOW. Jaebum thought to himself.

“Are you feeling okay?” You asked.

“Huh? Yeah I’m fine. I think I..I’ll be right back.” He said as he quickly got up and started heading towards the direction of the restrooms. Why must this happen right now? Jaebum had left his pills back at the dorm and his personalities are trying to take over at the worst moments. As he headed towards the hallway that led to the restrooms, he was struck with sudden dizziness. Jaebum held his hand against his head as he stumbled, going back and forth from bumping into nearby chairs and against the wall. He stopped moving for a moment and tried to stabilize himself. However, once he took another step, Jaebum slipped and hit his ended up hitting his back onto a nearby countertop.

Hearing all the commotion, you quickly ran over to him and found Jaebum slumping over in pain.

Your eyes widened. Did a personality take over already?? “OMG JYP is that you?? Is your back aching again ahjusshi?”

At your comment Jaebum’s pain momentarily went away as he looked at you speechless. “How did you know-”

You looked into Jaebum’s eyes and noticed that his gaze was not the same as JYP’s or any other of his personalities’. WAS HE STILL JAEBUM??

You turned to leave but Jaebum grabbed your wrist and looked at you suspiciously. “Who are you really?”

“Uhh...I...uh…”

“Who are you?! A sasaeng fan trying to blackmail me?! ANSWER ME!” He said in a harsher tone.

You looked around to make sure that no one else was looking over at you guys. “J-Jaebum...Listen, I-”

Before you could continue, he loosened his grasp on your arm as he felt another sharp pain in his head. “Ugh...not now...” Jaebum murmured under his breath as he pulled away from you and pressed his palm against his forehead. He groaned in agony.

“Hey, stay with me now. Where’s your medication?” You asked as you took a hold of his arm to stabilize him.

“Left....it...at...the...dorm.” With those last words, Jaebum lost consciousness and collapsed.

You stumbled as you struggled to support Jaebum’s weight, preventing him from falling on the floor. With a loud grunt, you managed to lean him slouched against the wall with his head down. “Wow. Best first date ever.” You said sarcastically.

When you were about to go call GOT7′s manager, Jaebum lifted his head and stared straight at you. You looked back at him with surprise and looked into his eyes with curiosity.

“Jaebum...?”

He scoffed with a smug smile on his face. “Still can’t recognize me yet, Muffin?”

You rolled your eyes and sighed with frustration. “JB.”

JB stood up straight and put his hands into his pants pockets. “Whoa calm down. I know that you’re excited to see me again, but chill~.”

“Just be quiet and let Jaebum come back out again. I need to talk to him right now.” You firmly said, not in the mood to deal with his bs.

“Jaebum? That piece of trash? Why would-....Wait. Why are you even here next to me right now? Why were you with him?! Did you get caught? Haha wow, I knew that sooner or later you’d-.”

“This is serious!!! There is a misunderstanding that I need to clear with him, so go back and let him come back out right now!”

JB crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. He smirked when an idea popped into his mind. “How about a kiss then?”

You stared at him with an ‘are you freakin’ kidding me’ expression.

“I’m serious! I came out because you made him furious right? Maybe if you kissed me, it would shock my body so much to make me go back.”

You didn’t believe him, but it seemed like you didn’t have a choice at this point. As well, this would probably break a bunch of rules on your contract...Even though you hated the idea of kissing the sleazeball, you knew that you had to do it for Jaebum.

To JB’s surprise, you stepped closer to him and yanked him down to your height.

“Fxxk it.” You said before leaning in and pressing your lips against his.

~To Be Continued...? Maybe, maybe not.~

#jb #got7 jb #jaebum #im jaebum #jb scenarios #jb fanfic #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfic #got7 fluff #jb fluff #requests #kpop scenarios #kpop fanfiction

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terranoctis · 3 years

Text

epic iv

Here follows spoilers, lingering in the dark with another list of stories I’ve consumed.

1. The Song Of Achilles by Madeleine Miller

I’ve heard a spectrum of comments about this story for years, most things good. I studied Latin for three years in high school, so I’ve translated more parts of the Iliad than I wanted to as a teenager. But now that years have passed, I have a fondness for classical texts like the Iliad that I couldn’t have had then when it was my homework. Though I’ve forgotten much of my Latin nowadays, I do remember the story of Aeneas somewhat--and by connection, fragments of Achilles’ story. The ending of this story did not come as a surprise to me, because it’s a story most will know if they have some familiarity with classical Latin literature. Even so, the novel is still a great read when one knows the ending. If anything, there’s a kind of beauty in knowing the end and taking in the views along the way.

Though there are prophecies in the original texts, like one that I believe where it was foretold Achilles would die at Troy, this story specifically uses the prophecies to foreshadow the kind of ending we already know will come. From Patroclus being promised to fight for Helen to Achilles being the fated warrior and dying after Hector...We’re privy to these storms coming down the road, but we’re also living in this moment of Patroclus seeing the most humane sides of Achilles. Achilles, by all means, is a flawed human, but that’s what makes this story so much more compelling. His pride is what sets most of the ending arc in motion, as it is his grief that brings the story to its penultimate end. It’s a Greek tragedy, and a story of love between two men who are seen as anything as but in many interpretations of their relationship.

And really, what’s the most refreshing is that it’s written from Patroclus’ perspective. He is a character who doesn’t have a voice as much in these stories, as a man at Achilles’ side. It’s also, if one might add, a good friends to lovers story (*winks terribly*). It is though, a stronger focus on the relationship between the two than anything else. Though Miller still does a good job at illustrating the world around the pair, the story is hyper-focused on the two.

I personally don’t think I enjoyed the story as much as it was lauded (I’ve been seeing rave reviews for years), but I very much still understand why it was lauded and liked the novel. I would like to read Miller’s other story Circe now because I think her way of writing would make the story of a witch that much more compelling. I think I may have to also re-read the Iliad, only if because I’m curious to see how it would make think about this story if I remembered more of the classical text. Even though I have some criticisms, it boils down to the fact that I enjoyed this novel. You cannot deny the beauty of the writing.

2. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

It’s hard to put my feelings on this novel into sensible terms. I was trying to make sense of whether I actually liked the book or not, and it came down to the fact that I did even though it felt like the book was trying very hard to be something more substantive than it was. That isn’t to say it’s not a good book, or that it is a great book. It is a fun read, for what it is. I believe it is a fun book, much more so than Novik’s other books I’ve read that kind of follow a relatively more serious plot in worlds she seems to have stronger footing in. It’s clear to me and one that should be noted in case there are comparisons--this novel seems markedly intended to be marketed towards a younger age group than Uprooted and Spinning Silver. This world also takes place on Earth, unlike previous novels, so there are significantly more modern references and writing that evokes our modern world. In turn, I think it opens up to more criticisms because it will be comparable to our society, which in turns up some issues I’ll mention further in this post. If anything, I feel slightly terrible that there will be comparisons made regardless of the author’s intent to Harry Potter for any who have read that series. J.K. Rowling doesn’t have the sole authorship of magical schools in fiction, but the comparison is there because it’s the most prominent ones in most readers’ minds.

Before I proceed further, there have been controversies over Novik’s writing of race in this novel. I did not take issue personally, as an Asian American, with depictions of Asians in this novel. That being said, I am not of the specific descent with which it could be taken as offensive, and so in reading the text, my personal stake in the depiction would have lessened any perceived offense in it. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, and please understand that I do empathize with those who are offended. I understand why people may take issues with Yi Liu as a name, and I particularly understand why descriptions of hair associated with race (i.e., locs, El’s hair as someone of Indian descent) being written in terms of being “dirty,” may particularly be offensive. Though the latter was related to how the scholomance, or the school, has maleficara that will attack any students and hair was a bad idea in the school in general because it’s an easy way for them to get attacked--I can understand why even that connotation (that I don’t think Novik ever intended) could be extremely problematic. It’s not okay the loc description was connotated that way, if you reread that section, and it’s something I hope she learns in future books. That being said, I do think much of the criticism is unfair. Novik is not tone-deaf as I’ve read in other writers. She is working to describe a more diverse world even if it’s not the strongest way to do so. I think it should be noted the bullies in her story are establishment, rich kids. The loc description is the worst of her offenses, but it’s something a writer is learning and reprimanded for (not hated on, as I’ve been seeing in some reviews). Novik works to write a diverse world, which is something markedly more than what many white writers in magical schools have done--and that effort is something that should be commended. I mentioned earlier Rowling. Simply compare the student body of Novik’s world to Rowling’s Hogwarts to see what I mean about diversity. I sincerely hope she takes the constructive criticisms of this novel to improve in the next one, because I sincerely think she can be better and will be.

The story definitely focuses on the grim side of magic, with larger-than-life stakes when it comes to survival and becoming accomplished students. Even the most minute details like eating lunch are filled with danger, to which all these students have acclimated to. Nonetheless, as a story led with teenage protagonists, there’s very much a sense of cliques and popularity that correlate directly to their survival and futures.

It’s interesting that El’s foil is everyone’s favorite hero and her new best himbo friend, Orion Lake. (It also made me giggle, because one of my characters is named Orion, and he’s the complete opposite of the Orion in this book) Orion is immediately likable to everyone, but he’s being used while El is disliked and refuses to be used by anyone. They’ve both never been quite treated as a normal person or friend by anyone, so their unlikely friendship is the core of this story. Quite frankly, the story shines the most when these two are working together to do whatever they need to. A review I read remarked upon their relationship as the amazing friendship of a himbo and his intelligent best friend, and it made me laugh because it’s so true and it’s fun to read.

El’s nature as someone shunned makes her want to shun everyone else and build alliances. It’s nice, for one, that she builds an alliance of other anti-establishment people at the costing of shunning establishment people, depending on how you look at it. It assumes though that all establishment people are bad, and maybe it’s my hesitance on that which makes me hesitant on liking El. Nonetheless, that’s kind of the joy of a flawed character. She’s allowed to make mistakes and reassess them as her experiences go on. We see that in her gradual interactions with Clara, and that’s a credit to the writing, no matter how minimal those interactions are so far.

Overall, I do think the book is a fun read. The execution of the writing, in El’s attitude at times to the glaring problems of depiction mentioned earlier, are the flaws in this story. Nonetheless, the dialogue and the interactions between these kids still make it a fun ride. It’s not exactly my favorite book on magic, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

3. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Where do I even start with this one? I think I was drawn from the very first chapter. It’s a refreshing and beautifully-woven take on the multi-verse, in ways that I think I would love to see a film or TV adaptation on this. A multi-verse is a subject matter that interests me, but it’s also the way this novel was written that truly sells it for me. This might be one of my favorite novels I’ve read in awhile. It’s not a perfect novel (what novel is?), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is not only a depiction of multi-verses, but also a discussion on how the conditions of your environment can dictate much of who you become. It opens in an interesting way, showing that the only people who can become traversers, or travelers through multi-verses, are those who are dead in that world. That is why Cara is a traverser, because she’s dead on almost every world they’ve discovered. She only survived by a different choice or a different means of life on this one, when the conditions of how she was raised with a poor mother, generally killed her on most worlds. The multi-verse in this story is not only just for the exploration side of things, but also a commentary on classism and social constructs. It’s what makes this story stand out. All good science fiction novels for me are a commentary on something very human, and in this case, it’s the result of how little choices or even little factors can factor in someone surviving or not. Cara’s a survivor, and there are twists that are introduced throughout the story that continually took me off-guard, when generally, I can sort of guess some twists for most stories I read nowadays. It’s a testament to how well-written the story is from Cara’s POV.

At first, I felt the last third of the novel was not as strong as the first two-thirds, but the more I think about it from a thematic standpoint, the more I do like it and the ending, at least in terms of Cara and Dell. I’m not certain I enjoy the ambiguity of what happens with Adam Brosch, our main antagonist, and his brother. That being said, I sort of understand where the author wanted to go with this. We only have one world to live with sometimes, so might as well live the best one with the brother we do have and the world we can control. At least, that’s one take on it. One doesn’t forget the atrocities of such men’s crimes, however.

The longing between Cara and Dell is quite beautiful as well. I do feel the writer put them in at times with a romantic connection that was a glowing bright light at all times, which I have my issues with, but some loves can be like that and I respect that. It doesn’t always read the best though, but for the purposes of this novel, I think it suffices and weaves in beautifully when tied to traversers. There’s a kind of haunting way in which Cara understands that on every world, she’s afraid of her abusive ex and his brother (who turns out to be her boss in this main world). There’s an even more beautiful meaning in Cara thinking that in every world, she's drawn to Dell. It takes on a different mean when you think about who you are in multiple, divergent universes and think that perhaps there is one constant factor to it with someone you love. I think it’s telling that the author ended on that note, about a couple who probably wouldn’t have worked out on any other universe because the space between them was so vast. But that it existed in just one world, with them, meant more than anything and that it was precious. In the end, the story closes to multiple worlds and talks lovingly about the possibility and hope in this one. It closes with Cara’s vision of herself with Dell, despite everything that has happened and may happen to her--and that this one out of all the infinite worlds means significantly more to her.

I also wanted to note that the author’s dedication at the end of the novel, right after the words that Cara narrates in her vision of her future with Dell, is touching. I don’t mean to read into the author’s intent, but I can’t help but feel in a good way that the story sort of takes on another meaning with that dedication. I admire that kind of affection, that I can only imagine to an extent she wrote for someone else she left unnamed. I guess, after all, I do want love stories in my fantasy and science fiction novels. I’m not surprised exactly.

When it comes down to it, I’m also a ruthless romantic at times. This is the kind of story that makes me want to write more and more.

#personal #.chrysalis.#reading and ramblings

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larsminute · 4 years

Text

Coronavirus may confine us - but we can learn to explore in very different ways

Alain de Botton: how to travel from your sofa At some point in the 1650s, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal jotted down one of the most counterintuitive aphorisms of all time: “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he cannot stay quietly in his room.

”Really? Surely having to stay quietly in one’s room must be the start of a particularly evolved kind of psychological torture? What could be more opposed to the human spirit than to have to inhabit four walls when, potentially, there would be a whole planet to explore?

And yet Pascal’s idea usefully challenges one of our most cherished beliefs: that we must always go to new places in order to feel and discover fresh and worthwhile things. What if, in fact, there were already a treasury inside us?

What if we had within our own brains already accumulated a sufficient number of awe-inspiring, calming and interesting experiences to last us 10 lifetimes? What if our real problem was not so much that we are not allowed to go anywhere — but that we don’t know how to make the most of what is already to hand?

Being confined at home gives us a range of curious benefits. The first is an encouragement to think. Whatever we like to believe, few of us do much of the solitary, original, bold kind of thinking that can restore our spirits and move our lives ahead. The new ideas we might stumble upon if we did travel more ambitiously around our minds while lying on the sofa could threaten our mental status quo.

An original thought might, for example, alienate us from what people around us think of as normal. Or it might herald a realisation that we’ve been pursuing the wrong approach to an important issue in our lives, perhaps for a long time. If we took a given new idea seriously, we might have to abandon a relationship, leave a job, ditch a friend, apologise to someone, rethink our sexuality or break a habit.

But a period of quiet thinking in our room creates an occasion when the mind can order and understand itself. Fears, resentments and hopes become easier to name; we grow less scared of the contents of our own minds — and less resentful, calmer and clearer about our direction. We start, in faltering steps, to know ourselves slightly better.

Another thing we can do in our own rooms is to return to travels we have already taken.This is not a fashionable idea. Most of the time, we are given powerful encouragement to engineer new kinds of travel experiences.The idea of making a big deal of revisiting a journey in memory sounds a little strange —or simply sad. This is an enormous pity. We are careless curators of our own pasts. We push the important scenes that have happened to us to the back of the cupboard of our minds and don’t expect to see them ever again.

But what if we were to alter the hierarchy of prestige a little and argue that regular immersion in our travel memories could be a critical part of what can sustain and console us — and, not least, is perhaps the cheapest and most flexible form of entertainment. We should think it almost as prestigious to sit at home and reflect on a trip we once took to an island with our imaginations, as to trek to the island with our cumbersome bodies.

In our neglect of our memories, we are spoilt children, who squeeze only a portion of the pleasure from experiences and then toss them aside to seek fresh thrills. Part of why we feel the need for so many new experiences may simply be that we are so bad at absorbing the ones we have had.

To help us focus more on our memories, we need nothing technical. We certainly don’t need a camera. There is one in our minds already: it is always on, it takes in everything we’ve ever seen. Huge chunks of experience are still there in our heads,intact and vivid, just waiting for us to ask ourselves leading questions, such as:“Where did we go after we landed?” or “What was the first breakfast like?” Our experiences have not disappeared, just because they are no longer unfolding right in front of our eyes. We can remain in touch with so much of what made them pleasurable simply through the art of evocation.and reflect on a trip we once took to an island as to trek to the island with our cumbersome bodies.

We talk endlessly of virtual reality. Yet we don’t need gadgets. We have the finest virtual reality machines already in our own heads. We can — right now — shut our eyes and travel into, and linger among, the very best and most consoling and life-enhancing bits of our pasts.

We tend to travel because of a background belief that, of course, the reality of a scene must be nicer than a mental image we form of it at home. But there is something about the way our minds work that we would do well to study when we regret our inability to go anywhere. There will always be something else that obscures that beautiful destination scene, something so tricky and oppressive as to somewhat undermine the purpose of having left home in the first place, namely: ourselves.

We have no choice but to bring ourselves along to every destination we ever want to enjoy. And that means bringing along so much of the mental baggage that makes being us so intolerably problematic day to day: all the anxiety, regret, confusion, guilt,irritability and despair.

None of this smear of the self is there when we picture a trip from home for a few minutes. In the imagination, we can enjoy unsullied views. But there, at the foot of the golden temple or high up on the pine-covered mountain, we stand to find that there is so much of “us” intruding on our vistas.

There’s a tragicomic irony at work: the vast labour of getting ourselves physically to a place won’t necessarily bring us any closer to the essence of what we seek. As we should remind ourselves, we may already enjoy the very best that any place has to offer us simply by thinking about it.

Let’s turn to another Frenchman with a comparable underlying philosophy. In the spring of 1790, a 27-year-old writer called Xavier de Maistre locked himself at home and decided to study the wonders and beauty of what lay closest to him,entitling the account of what he had seen A Journey Around My Room.

The book is a charming shaggy-dog story. De Maistre shuts his door and changes into a pair of pink-and-blue pyjamas. Without needing to pack a suitcase, he “travels” to the sofa, which he looks at through fresh eyes and appreciates anew. He admires itselegant feet and remembers the pleasant hours he has spent among its cushions,dreaming of professional success and love.

Next, de Maistre spots his bed. Using a traveller’s perspective, he also learns to value this piece of furniture. He feels gratitude for the agreeable nights he has passed in it and takes pride that his sheets almost match his pyjamas. “I advise every man who can to get himself pink-and-white bed linen,” he writes, for these are colours to induce calm and pleasant reveries in the fragile sleeper.

However playful, de Maistre’s work is inspired by a profound insight: that the pleasure we find in new places is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination. If only we could apply a similar mindset to our own rooms and immediate neighbourhoods, we might find these places becoming no less fascinating than foreign lands.

So, what is the traveller’s mindset? Receptivity, appreciation and gratitude might beits chief characteristics. And, crucially, this mindset doesn’t need to wait for a farawayjourney to be deployed.

A walk is the smallest sort of journey we can ever undertake. It stands in relation to atypical holiday as a bonsai tree does to a forest. But even if it is only an eight-minute interlude around the block or a few moments in a nearby park, a walk is already a journey in which many of the grander themes of travel are present.

We might, on such a walk, catch sight of a flower. It is extremely rare properly to delight in flowers when one can at any point take off to another continent. There are so many larger, grander things to be concerned about than these small, delicately sculpted manifestations of nature. However, it is unusual to be left entirely indifferent by flowers when the world has narrowed dramatically and there is global sadness in the air. Flowers no longer seem like a petty distraction from a mighty destiny, but a genuine pleasure amid a litany of troubles, a small resting place for hope in a sea of difficulties.

Or we might, on a local walk, spot a small animal: a duck or a hedgehog. Its life goes on utterly oblivious to ours. It is entirely devoted to its own purposes. The habits of its species have not changed for centuries. We may be looking intently at it but it feels not the slightest curiosity about who we are; from its point of view, we are absorbed into the immense blankness of unknowable things. A duck will take a piece of bread as gladly from a criminal as from a high-court judge, from a billionaire as from a bankrupt felon; our individuality is suspended and, on certain days, that may be an enormous relief.

On our walk around the block, themes we’d lost touch with — childhood, an odd dream we’ve had, a friend we haven’t seen for years, a big task we had always told ourselves we’d undertake — float into attention. In physical terms, we’re hardly going any distance at all, but we’re crossing acres of mental territory.

A short while later, we’re back at home once again. No one has missed us, or perhaps even noticed we’ve been out. Yet we are subtly different: a slightly more complete,more visionary, courageous and imaginative version of the person we knew how to be before we wisely went out on a modest journey.

We will — one day — recover our freedoms. The world will be ours to roam in once more. But during our collective confinements, aside from the obvious inconveniences,we might come to cherish some of what is granted to us when we lose our customary liberties. It cannot be a coincidence that many of the world’s greatest thinkers have spent unusual amounts of time alone in their rooms. Silence gives us an opportunity to appreciate a great deal of what we generally see without properly noticing; and to understand what we have felt but not yet adequately processed.

We have at present not only been locked away; we have also been granted the privilege of being able to travel around a range of unfamiliar, sometimes daunting but essentially wondrous inner continents.

- Alain de Botton

#travel #mind #corona

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brothersapart · 7 years

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FAQ

(the mobile-friendly version)

Background information:

Brothers Apart was started by @nightmares06 October 24th, 2014 and has been going strong ever since! During the last two years two other writers have been added to the team along with a very helpful assistant!

The main storyline, Brothers Apart, has since sparked a collection of AUs. Each storyline is individual in and of itself, but all tie into the main arc in their own way. Visit Links to find your way to the stories.

Why don’t you just post Brothers Apart and not all these other stories?

Since Brothers Apart is (mostly) written by myself, there isn’t enough story built up to have a backlog. Due to a falling out with a former beta reader, writing for Brothers Apart was frozen for a year. During that time we conceived a number of other storylines, and we invite you to enjoy them along with us.

When/where do the stories post?

Sunday, 9pm EST Wednesday, 9pm EST

Any changes to this schedule will be announced on the tumblr as soon as we know about them.

There are three different sites the stories post on:

Archive of Our Own || Fanfiction || Deviantart

Any prompts received will be posted to the tumblr blog before appearing on any other sites, otherwise stories are on the three sites listed above.

Order of creation of the various AUs:

Brothers Apart– “But what if I never fixed Sam?”

Brothers Found– “But what about JACOB?”

Brothers Adopted– “Okay but Jacob’s too cute, let’s make him small”

Brothers Divided– “… bad, Dean”

Brothers Together– “OSCAR”

Brothers Lost– “Okay we should make BOTH brothers small”

Brothers Asunder– “Wee Sammers and Bowman as brothers!”

Brothers Unexpected– “Because Sam/Jacob and Dean/Oscar are too cute to contain”

Brothers Consulted– “I wonder how Sherlock and Dean would react to each other…”

**Various unannounced ideas**

Brothers Saved– “Big Sam and his tiny big brother strutting around”

I love the artwork! Why don’t you have more of (insert character)?

We love the art too! But since we’re writers, and our skill at actual drawing is lacking, all of the artwork you see posted here (with a few incredibly rare exceptions), are either commissioned with our own money or submitted by fans (you lovely, lovely people). We love supporting our favorite artists, so we won’t stop commissioning anytime soon, but it’s dependent on if we have money at the time we get the idea.

If you want to help us out, please Buy Me a Coffee and let us know what character or AU you want commissioned! Once we have enough money for that AU, we’ll get it done.

When does (insert story) start posting?

We’re not sure when each story goes up, we only have a timeline for the days stuff will post. To prevent any stories from gaining favoritism over others, we started running a poll. During the last week or two of a story, there will be a poll with (2) to (6) options offered, and the winner will be the story that starts next!

Keep in mind that the stories that appear in the poll will be fully written/edited and beta’d by our wonderful beta readers, any stories that are incomplete in any fashion will not be included.

The poll is run through SurveyMonkey, and each person gets only (1) vote! Duplicate votes WILL BE REMOVED.

Can you go back to posting stories about only Sam and Dean?

No.

Seriously, we’re going to keep writing together because we do it for fun. You’ll see classic Brothers Apart stories come around when I finish them, but you’ll also get a lot of the collabs we do. We write for ourselves and to get rid of stress. Since we’re not paid to do this (in fact, we spend a decent amount of money on story things), we’ll continue to write what we like.

We still love feedback and getting new ideas from all you readers out there, so keep sending us prompts and suggestions! Just don’t be upset if we don’t do yours– we might not be feeling it.

There’s a book? Where can I get a copy!?

There used to be a book, but it has been discontinued and no longer offered as an option in the contest. Thanks for your interest!

Will Castiel be in the story?

Go read all the stories.

Why didn’t my ask get answered yet?

Generally only one ask is answered a day, please be patient with us.

Popular Tags:

#commissioned art– all the artwork commissioned by the writers of the BA for the stories/ideas we have.

#fanart– artwork done by the fans.

#contest entry 2016– entries submitted for the 2016 BA contest

#bac 2017 tumblr– entries submitted for the 2017 BA contest on the tumblr side (for DA entries, go here).

#daily update– all the story excerpts posted since the beginning.

#prompt– finished prompts (or unfinished prompts, multiple things get filed here).

#submission– wonderful submissions from you readers!

Commissions are open!

What characters belong to who?

@nightmares06–

Supernatural characters– Sam and Dean Winchester, Bobby Singer, John Winchester (though I’ll warn that any prompts for John Win are the least likely to be fulfilled because he usually gives me writer’s block), Castiel, Gabriel, Rufus and Rumsfeld. Various other Supernatural characters.

Original characters– Nixie, Ilyana, Celeste (problematic fave), Walt Watch, Mallory Watch, Briella Watch, Moira Wainscot, Krissy Vent, Sean, Kara Bolt, Christian Bolt, Mikael Foyer, Noonia and Elenia.

@neonthewrite–

Original Characters– Bowman, Jacob Andris, Oscar, Rischa, Cerul, Scar, Vel, (any of the wood sprites, basically), Colfax and Adrian (better prompted at @alittleblogoftrust ), Asp the shadow sprite, Indigo Seraf.

Only original characters, as canon characters tend to come very slowly for me.

@borrowedtimeandspace--

Sherlock Characters– Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, Greg Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly Hooper and Mycroft Holmes.

Doctor Who Characters– Mostly Tenth Doctor, will do Nine, Eleven, and Twelve (I’m working through Classic Who at a snail’s pace xD) Willing to write for companions from New Who as well.

Original Chracters– Zepheera is my main OC, Stan Baker, Simon Baker, Nathan Sullivan and a bunch of borrower bbys: Kernel, Orrick Shelf, Boston Mantel, Baycliff, Klerida, Marcue Overmantle; basically, if you’ve read my stories, any of the OCs are up for grabs.

Story excerpts

Each day on brothersapart.tumblr.com, we will be posting a new excerpt from a story we are working on at the time. This happens at 10a.m. est, and it’s a tiny blurb from the story.

A bit on the tags for our story excerpts:

#trnt here is the abbreviation of the story the excerpt came from– later revealed to be “The Road Not Taken”

Abbreviations we’ve used and their names if announced:

#trnt– The Road Not Taken (posted)

#twf– The Water’s Fine (posted)

#tnplh– There’s No Place Like Home

#atth– A Time to Heal

#iatwaa– It’s a Tall World After All

#sow– Sam of Wellwood (posted)

#don– Dean of Nowhere (posting)

#bofa– Bobby of Far Away

#dow– Dean of Wellwood

#awos– A World of Secrets

#eotm– Epidemic of the Mannequins

#ws– Wayward Sons

#bah– Bigfoot's a Hoax

#coth– Clash of the Hunters

#auv– An Unexpected Visitor

#sotw– Shadows on the Wall

#gacs– Garlic and Cold Spots (posted)

#tsotf– The Study of the Four (posted)

#tttb– The Ties that Bind (posted)

#ababs– A Burglary at Baker Street

#teome– The Enemy of my Enemy

#jiw– Jacob in Wonderland (posted)

#rt– Road Trip

#a:asocs– Aftermath: A Series of Consulted Shorts

#bp– Bittersweet Parting (posted)

#ffh– Far From Home

#fs– For Science

#adod– A Day of Duality

#bftp– Blast from the Past

#apias– Any Port in a Storm

#thoaw– The Heart of a Wolf

#san– Sam and Nicholas

#apfo– A Place for Oz

#sb– Something Borrowed

#ttol– The Trials of Logan

#lald– Live and Let Die

#aol– Avenue of Life

#malc– M&Ms and Lucky Charms

#afin– A Friend in Need

#boan– Birth of a Nightmare (posted)

#rj– Regarding Jacob

The last kind of tag you’ll see is the queue tag:

All this means is it is a reblogged excerpt from 2016, you can go to the original post to find out its tags.

This has been a dissertation on tags!

If you see any questions we left out, be sure to send in an ask!

#faq #brothers apart faq #masterpost #tags #frequently asked questions

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