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bogkeep · 3 years

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hmmmmmmmmmm maybe i’ll write an Introspective Musing Post about my relationship to religion and their depiction in stories because i’ve pondering about this topic lately

so for those who are reading this and DON’T know what’s been going on... there’s this webcomic i fell in love with some years ago, about six years actually, that depicts a post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror adventure set in the nordic countries. it had, and has still, some very uncomfortable flaws regarding racial representation, and the creator has historically not dealt very well with criticism towards it. it’s a whole Thing. my relationship with this comic has fluctuated a lot, since there are a lot of elements in it i DO love and i still feel very nostalgic about, and like idk i felt like i trust my skills in critical thinking enough to keep reading. aaand then the creator went a teensy bit off the deep end created a whole minicomic which is like... a lukewarm social media dystopia where christians are oppressed (and also everyone is a cute bunny, including our lord and saviour jesus christ). which is already tonedeaf enough considering there are religious people who DO get prosecuted for their faith, like, that’s an actual reality for a lot of people - but as far as i can tell, usually not christians. and then there’s an afterword that’s like, “anyway i got recently converted and realized i’m a disgusting human being full of sin who doesn’t deserve redemption but jesus loves me so i’ll be fine!! remember to repent for your sins xoxo” and a bunch of other stuff and IT’S KIND OF REALLY CONCERNING i have, uh, been habitually looking at the reactions to and discussions around this, maybe it’s not very self care of me but there’s a lot of overwhelming things rn and it’s fantastically distracting, yknow? like, overall this situation is fairly reminiscent of the whole jkr thing. creator of a series that is Fairly Beloved, does something hurtful, handles backlash in a weird way, a lot of people start taking distance from Beloved Series or find ways to enjoy it on their own terms, creator later reveals to have been fully radicalized and releases a whole manifesto, and any and all criticism gets framed as harassment and proving them right. of course, one of them is a super rich person with a LOT of media power and a topic that is a lot more destructive in our current zeitgeist, and the other is an independent webcomic creator, so it’s not the same situation. just similar vibez ya feel as a result of this, i have been Thinking. and just this feels like some sort of defeat like god dammit she got me i AM thinking about the topic she wrote about!!! i should dismiss the whole thing!!! but thinking about topics is probably a good thing so hey lets go. me, i’m agnostic. i understand that this is a ‘lazy’ position to take, but it’s what works for me. i simply do not vibe with organized religion, personally. (i had the wikipedia page for ‘chaos magic’ open in a tab for several weeks, if that helps.) i was raised by atheists in a majorly atheist culture. christian atheist, i should specify. norway has been mostly and historically lutheran, and religion has usually been a private and personal thing. it turns out the teacher i had in 7th grade was mormon, but i ONLY found out because he showed up in a tv series discussing religious groups in norway later, and he was honestly one of the best teachers i have ever had - he reignited the whole class’ interest in science, math, and dungeons and dragons. it was a real “wait WHAT” moment for my teenage self. i think i was briefly converted to christianity by my friend when i was like 7, who grew up in a christian family (i visited them a couple times and always forgot they do prayers before dinner. oops!), but like, she ALSO made me believe she was the guardian of a secret magic orb that controls the entire world and if i told anybody the world would burn down in 3 seconds. i only suspected something was off when one day the Orb ran on batteries, and another day the Orb had to be plugged in to charge. in my defense i really wanted to be part of a cool fantasy plot. i had no idea how to be a christian beyond “uuuuh believe in god i guess” so it just faded away on its own. when i met this friend several years later, she was no longer christian. i think every childhood friend of mine who grew up in a christian family, was no longer christian when they grew up. most notably my closest internet friend whose family was catholic - she had several siblings, and each of them took a wildly different path, from hippie treehugger to laveyan satanist or something in that area. (i joined them for a sermon in a church when they visited my town. my phone went off during it because i had forgotten to silence it. oops!) ((i also really liked their mother’s interpretation of purgatory. she explained it as a bath, not fire. i like that.)) i have never had any personal negative experiences with christianity, despite being openly queer/gay/trans. the only time someone has directly told me i’m going to hell was some guy who saw me wearing a hoodie on norway’s constitution day. yeah i still remember that you bastard i’ve sworn to be spiteful about it till the day i die!! i’ve actually had much more insufferable interactions with the obnoxious kind of atheists - like yes yes i agree with you on a lot but that doesn’t diminish your ability to be an absolute hypocrite, it turns out? i remember going to see the movie ‘noah’ with a friend who had recently discovered reddit atheism and it was just really exhausting to discuss it with her. one of these Obnoxious Atheists is my Own Mother. which is a little strange, honestly, because she LOVES visiting churches for the Aesthetic and Architecture. we cannot go anywhere without having to stop by a pretty church to Admire and Explore. I’VE BEEN IN SO MANY CHURCHES FOR AN ATHEIST RAISED NON-CHRISTIAN. i’ve been to the vatican TWICE (i genuinely don’t even know how much of my extended family is christian. up north in the tiny village i come from, i believe my uncle is the churchkeeper, and it’s the only building in the area that did not get burnt down by the the nazis during ww2 - mostly because soldiers needed a place to sleep. still don’t know whether or not said uncle believes or not, because hey, it’s Personal) i think my biggest personal relationship to religion, and christianity specifically, has been academic. yeah, we learned a brief synopsis of world religions at school (and i remember the class used to be called ‘christianity, religion, and ethics’ and got changed to ‘religion, beliefs, and ethics’ which is cool. it was probably a big discourse but i was a teen who didnt care), but also my bachelor degree is in art history, specifically western art history because it’s a vast sprawling topic and they had to distill it as best they could SIGHS. western art history is deeply entangled with the history of the church, and i think the most i’ve ever learnt about christianity is through these classes (one of my professors wrote an article about how jesus can be interpreted as queer which i Deeply Appreciate). i also specifically tried to diversify my academic input by picking classes such as ‘depiction of muslims and jewish people in western medieval art’ and ‘art and religion’ when i was an exchange student in canada, along with 101 classes in anthropology and archaeology. because i think human diversity and culture is very cool and i want to absorb that knowledge as best as i can. i think my exchange semester in canada was the most religiously diverse space have ever been in, to be honest. now as an adult i have more christian friends again, but friends who chose it for themselves, and who practice in ways that sound good and healthy, like a place of solace and community for them. the vast majority of my friends are queer too, yknow?? i’ve known too many people who have seen these identities as fated opposites, but they aren’t, they’re just parts of who people are. it’s like... i genuinely love people having their faiths and beliefs so much. i love people finding that space where they belong and feel safe in. i love people having communities and heritages and connections. i deeply respect and admire opening up that space for faith within any other communities, like... if i’m going to listen to a podcast about scepticism and cults, i am not going to listen to it if it’s just an excuse to bash religion. i think the search for truth needs to be compassionate, always. you can acknowledge that crystals are cool and make people happy AND that multi level marketing schemes are deeply harmful and prey on people in vulnerable situaitons. YOU KNOW???? so now’s when i bring up Apocalypse Comic again. one of the things i really did like about it was, ironically, how it handled religion. in its setting, people have returned to old gods, and their magic drew power from their religion. characters from different regions had different beliefs and sources. in the first arc, they meet the spirit of a lutheran pastor, who ends up helping them with her powers. it was treated as, in the creators own words, ‘just another mythology’. and honestly? i love that. it was one of the nicest depictions i’ve seen of christianity in fiction, and as something that could coexist with other faiths. I Vibe With That. and then, uh, then... bunny dystopia comic. it just... it just straight up tells you christianity is literally the only way to..?? be a good person??? i guess?? i’m still kind of struggling to parse what exactly it wanted to say. the evil social media overlord bird tells you the bible makes you a DANGEROUS FREETHINKER, but the comic also treats rewriting the bible or finding your own way to faith as something,, Bad. The Bible Must Remain Unsullied. Never Criticize The Bible. also, doing good things just for social media clout is bad and selfish. you should do good things so you don’t burn in hell instead. is that the message? it reads a lot like the comic creator already had the idea for the comic, but only got the urge to make it after she was converted and needed to spread the good word. you do you i guess!! i understand that she’s new to this and probably Going Through Something, and this is just a step on her journey. but the absolute self-loathing she described in her afterword... it does not sound good. i’m just some agnostic kid so what do i know, but i do not think that kind of self-flagellating is a kind faith to have for yourself. i might not ever have been properly religious, but you know what i AM familiar with? a brain wired for ocd and intrusive thoughts. for a lot of my life i’ve struggled with my own kind of purity complex. i’ve had this really strange sensitivity for things that felt ‘tainted’. i’ve experienced having to remove more and more words from my vocabulary because they were Bad and i did not want to sully my sentences. it stacked, too - if a word turned out to be an euphemism for something, i could never feel comfortable saying it again. i still struggle a bit with these things, but i have confronted these things within myself. i’ve had to make myself comfortable with imperfection and ‘tainted’ things and accept that these are just, arbitrary categories my mind made up. maybe that’s the reason i can’t do organized religion even if i found one that fit for me - just like diets can trigger disordered eating, i think it would carve some bad brainpaths for me. so yeah i’m worried i guess! i’m worried when people think it’s so good that she finally found the correct faith even if it’s causing all this self-hate. is there really not a better way? or are they just trusting she’ll find it? and yeah it’s none of my concern, it’s like, i worry for jkr too but i do not want her within miles of my trans self thANKS. so like, i DO enjoy media that explores faith and what it means for you. my favourite band is the oh hellos, which DOES draw on faith and the songwriter’s experience with it. because of my religious iliteracy most of it has flown over my head for years and i’m like “oh hey this is gay” and then only later realize it was about god all along Probably. i like what they’ve done with the place. also, stormlight archive - i had NO idea sanderson was mormon, the way he writes his characters, many of whom actively discuss religion and their relationship to it. i love that about the books, honestly. Media That Explores Religion In A Complex And Compassionate Way... we like that i’ve been thinking about my own stories too, and how i might want to explore faith in them. most of my settings are based on magic and it’s like, what role does religion have in a world where gods are real and makes u magic. in sparrow spellcaster’s story, xe creates? summons? an old god - brings them to life out of the idea of them. it’s a story about hubris, mostly. then there’s iphimery, the story where i am actively fleshing out a pantheon. there’s no doubt the gods are real in the fantasy version of iphimery, they are the source of magic and sustain themselves on slivers of humanity in exchange. but in the modern version, where they are mostly forgotten? that’s some room for me to explore, i think. especially the character of timian, who comes from a smaller town and moves to a large and diverse city. in the fantasy story, the guardian deity chooses his sister as a vessel. in the modern setting, that does not happen, and i don’t yet know what does, but i really want timian to be someone who struggles with his identity - his faith, his sexuality, the expectations cast upon him by his hometown... i’m sure it’s a cliché story retold through a million gay characters but i want to do it too okay. i want to see him carve out his own way of existing within the world because i care him and want to see him thrive!!! alrighty i THINK that’s all i wanted to write. thanks if you read all of this, and if you didn’t that’s super cool have a nice day !

#rambles #i wrote this for me and theres no obligation to read it

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elindae-writes · 3 years

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Sorry if this is a bit of a weird question, but what are your favourite transformer pairings? (Also unburied is a work of art and I am delighted to have read it)

I prefer platonic relationships over romantic ones so I don’t really have many romantic pairings. I do have plenty of platonic ones!

Optimus + Starscream (obviously)

I prefer the platonic version. They’re so so different and they have this opposites attract thing going on. Optimus obviously teaches Starscream a lot of stuff but I think that Starscream could teach Optimus a lot as well. OP teaches Star to be a better and happier person. Star could teach Optimus that just because everybody thinks he’s this emotionless divine figure doesn’t mean he has to act emotionlessly.

Ratchet + Optimus

I get very strong nephew and uncle vibes from them. I don’t know their canon backstory but from what I can tell it’s this: Ratchet just found this lone archivist zipping around and told himself “no. i am not getting involved.” And then he took one look at Orion and pulled out the adoption papers. Kind of like that one scene in Up where the old guy, Carl, is just grumpily grumping in his house and he sees Russell on his porch begging to be let in. Then he shuts the door in his face.

Then he lets him in.

Orion: please. please let me in.

Ratchet: off my lawn NOW, whippersnapper

Orion: ... :(

Ratchet: Oh my Primus get inside--

This also makes their current relationship in the show even deeper. Ratchet used to be the caretaker. Now Optimus is not only the caretaker of Ratchet but is also the one who looks out for, well, literally everybody.

Kidnapper: We have your son.

Ratchet: I don’t have a son! You have the wrong number.

Kidnapper: Please come pick him up, he keeps making us reevaluate the morals of the government and the caste system and also he keeps trying to re-archive our files to “fit the proper Iaconian standard”

Ratchet: O R I O N

Then Orion brought his weird gladiator friend home, what’s up with that?

Starscream + Bulkhead

They’re just so different and I love them both. We have Bulkhead who is this big softie on the outside but who is this stone-cold warrior deep down. Then we have Starscream who tries to be this cold warrior on the outside but who is deep down just a big softie. Starscream is just like “this is my oaf. do not touch.” Bulkhead constantly tolerates Starscream’s oddities and weird behaviors that turn other people away.

Bulkhead: he don’t bite :)

Starscream: *feRaL hiSSing noIseES*

Bulkhead: he’s like that sometimes ;)

Ultra Magnus + Starscream

This final relationship could be platonic or romantic (but will just be platonic in Unburied.) I’m not entirely sure why this relationship intrigues me so much or why I think it could possibly be the one to work best as a romance.

We have Magnus, a madly devoted and loyal bot who is so loyal he is probably unable to even spell the word “treason.” Then we have Starscream, whose faceplate is very likely on the Cybertronian dictionary page for treason.

These two bots who are so different but who at the same time are so similar. Both are extremely loyal to their causes and both are or were at risk of forgetting why they’re fighting for their causes. Ultra Magnus gets so absorbed into trying to end the war that he forgets why they’re fighting it. Starscream gets so absorbed into why he’s fighting the war that he ends up prolonging it. Both have the same cause at the end of the day: to bring justice and try to create a better future. They just went about and go about achieving their cause in different ways.

On some level I think they kind of want to be each other? Maybe Magnus deep down envies Starscream’s ability to be unpredictable and to actually change and radically shift things. Magnus himself has been fighting the same monotonous battles since day 1 to the point where’s he’s just completely clung onto military protocol. All of this is because the seemingly pointless and monotonous battles have begun to wear him down to his core. He lives in a comfortable world of good + evil, black + white, good soldiers + bad ones, and despite hating Starscream envies how Starscream can completely change everything--even though he often changes things for the worse. The Wreckers haven’t endured, they fractured apart, but Starscream has endured. Magnus has just been floating around in his ship for so long, so apart from the action, and perhaps he envies Starscream’s ability to always be the center of it.

Starscream deep down envies Magnus for being able to hold on and remain sane and the same despite millennia of war. Magnus has always been devotedly loyal to his cause, always, with the kind of unwavering faith Starscream has rarely felt and has only begun to feel again recently thanks to Optimus. This kind of rare intense unwavering faith is always accompanied with an intense “this is the right thing to do” moral surety that Starscream has rarely felt in his turbulent and morally dubious life but that he wants to feel.

Primus, what would Starscream give to have lived Magnus’s version of life in which there is always a clearly defined good and bad guy? And what would Magnus give to actually make a difference in the war and have the power to chaotically change things on a dime?

Or maybe I’m just looking too deep into this and seeing things and parallels that aren’t there. Perhaps I’ll sit down to write another fic about them and five minutes in I’ll make their relationship platonic. I don’t even know. (Did they even interact in the show? I think Magnus punched him. This show has a lot of punching. Even the intro has a giant punch in it.)

#unburied #fanfiction #headcanons #starscream #starscream redemption #ultra magnus #ratchet #optimus prime #orion pax #bulkhead #ask #transformers #transformers: prime

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eroticcannibal · 3 years

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Common myths and misconceptions about home education

So in case anyone has somehow missed it, I have recently become a Big supporter of home education in a very lefty way, which has meant I have had to challenge a lot of views I have previously held about home education and that I know a lot of other lefties hold too. I am of the opinion that embracing home education, not as a last resort, but as the primary form of education for as many children as possible, is a vital part of achieving the required shifts in society needed to meet the goals of most leftists. So I am taking it on myself to convince you all that it is a very good thing, and also to clear up some misconceptions people have about home education that may make them feel they are unable to do it.

(A note, I am from the UK and shall be using UK terminology and specifics regarding law, policy and other such things will be from a UK perspective. I shall be using the term home education, as that is the legal term in the UK and is distinct from home schooling, which is the term for what school children have been doing during the pandemic.)

And I would also like to extend a quick thanks to Education Otherwise and the mods at Home education and your local authority for teaching me A LOT.

Have any questions about anything I’ve not covered here? Just let me know!

1. “Home education is illegal.”

- Sadly, home education is illegal or restricted to the point of inaccessibility in most of the world. From the research I have done, it seems that only the US and the UK have reasonable laws around home education (if I am using a very broad definition of reasonable, it is still not great). I do hope I can change this section soon, and I would *heavily* encourage people to campaign for the right to home educate post pandemic, perhaps cite any benefits learning at home has provided to children, perhaps???

2. “Home education is a tool used by religious fundamentalists to brainwash children!”

- This is a view many hold, and for good reason. For many of us, when we think of home education, we think of christian fundamentalists in the deep south of America, pulling their children out of school to avoid the liberal agenda. The truth is, anything can be used as a tool of indoctrination. This can happen in home education, and it can happen and has happened in schools too. In my own communities we have had instances of schools being a site of religious radicalization of children. The reality is this is far too complex and deep an issue to be solved by deeming any particular form of education as “bad”. I am not an expert on how best to deal with such issues, but I do feel that things like outreach and building a healthy community with otherwise more isolated religious groups would be a better way to address these issues.

3. “You need to have x qualification to home educate.”

- Again, a reasonable view to hold, given that state run and private education does require educators to hold certain qualifications, but in practice it quickly becomes evident the same does not necessarily have to apply with home education. Educational qualifications are very much focused on delivering an education in a classroom, which is a far cry from home education. During our home education of our child, my partner, who is a qualified SEN TA, has struggled far more than I have with educating our SEN child, despite the fact I hold no qualifications.

We live in amazing times when it comes to education. There are many things that parents and communities have to teach a child, and there are many things a child can teach to themself if given the tools to do so. You can even learn together! Their are endless resources available, books and games and documentaries, and even home education groups and private tutors if you feel that is the right fit for your child. You don’t need a piece of paper for your child to spend a day with their nose buried in a book, or to help the neighbor with his vegetable patch, or to cuddle up on the sofa while watching Planet Earth.

4. “You are required to follow the national curriculum.”

- This does vary by country (that allows home education). As a general rule, the stricter a country is about who can home educate, the stricter they are about what must be taught. In the UK, you are not required to follow the national curriculum. Education must be “efficient” and suited to the child’s “age, aptitude and ability”, and LAs do require that english and maths are covered. Other than that, you are allowed to tailor the content of education to the child and their interests. We have recently dropped geography for now and are only just picking up history again. It has also given us the freedom to focus on areas our child needs that would not be covered in mainstream education, such as anxiety management, trauma processing, self care and hygiene.

5. “Home education looks like school/is just filling out workbooks/etc”

- The thing you will always hear from experienced home educators when you begin home education is “home education doesn’t need to be school at home”. Much like you can tailor the content of the learning to the child, you can also tailor the delivery to the child. Some child need structure, timetable, instructions. Some need freedom and to bounce between topics. Some need to have an hour learning maths and only maths, some need to go dig up your garden “for science”. Some want to learn every day, some will need extended breaks.

Learning happens all the time, from the moment they wake to the moment they sleep. As an example, at home we have some workbooks, as both me and my child have ADHD and need someone to go “ok learn this” rather than us having to work out for ourselves what we need to cover for core subjects like english and maths. For the rest of most days my child is left to their own devices to binge youtube and netflix and work on their art. We try and go for a woodland walk every few days, where we have Deep Discussions about all kinds of topics, and we are also working on growing edible plants and baking cakes from around the world. We are more hands-off at the moment, due to the current bout of anxiety, but when that settles again we will get back to history themed crafts and STEM activities. Post-pandemic, we will be signing our kid up for swimming classes and “after school” clubs, and looking at sending them down to my mum for the home ed groups where she lives, like the forest school. A lot of home education outside of a pandemic is in groups and community based, or will make use of libraries and museums and other public learning opportunities. Frequently very little will happen at home.

In fact many home educators will advise new families to “deschool” for a while before jumping in to learning. This is a period where you “get school out of your system”, and just exist. Learning does not have to be intentional, you will be surprised how much you can achieve by just having fun.

6. “Home education is expensive.”

- It can be, ask my bank account. However, it is perfectly possible to deliver a quality education with little to no money. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s doable. Their are many online resources for free (check out oak academy), and libraries have plenty available too. Even paid resources can be very cheap if you know where to look. (psst, if your kid thrives with worksheets and powerpoints, get yourself a twinkl subscription, download everything you need for a year then cancel it.)

(This does not apply to exams. Get saving!)

7. “Home educated children are not properly socialised.”

- This is only really true during the pandemic. The rest of the time, home educated children are free to socialise whenever they want, with whoever they want, in whatever setting they choose. Socialisation while home educating is in the opinions of many of a higher quality, as they are not limited to groups of a similar age and background. Many home educating families form groups for their children to socialise together too. For ND children especially, socialising while home educated can be far less stressful and far more fulfilling than in school.

8. “Home educated children won’t get qualifications.”

- Just plain not true. Arranging qualifications can be costly and time consuming, but it is possible and regularly done. Some children may return to school or college to access exams for free, and I have heard of a handful of cases where individuals were able to secure prestigious university places without any qualifications. Home education also allows for more freedom with how exams and qualifications are approached, for example, many home educated children will pick one GCSE to focus on at a time, rather than covering numerous topics over 2 years and having exams for all of them at once like children in school will.

9. “Home education is a safeguarding risk/is used to cover up abuse/home educated children are not seen.”

- In the UK at least, home education is not considered a safeguarding risk, no matter what authorities may tell you, nor are home educated “not seen”. They still visit medical professionals, they still engage with their communities.

Now I shall add the relevant paper here should I find it again, but the idea that home education is used to cover up abuse to a statistically significant degree, or that home educated children are at more risk of abuse, is false. Home educating families do face a significantly higher risk of social services involvement than other families, but far less abuse is found in comparison to other families. It is also worth considering, when talking about social services involvement, that many families pursue home education due to failures by schools regarding a child’s vulnerabilities. In most cases, especially the Big Ones, where a home educated child is abused, the child was already known to authorities as a victim of abuse, therefore home educating did nothing to hide said abuse.

Children are also routinely abused in schools, which is another common reason for home educating.

10. “Home education has to be monitored or approved.”

- Depends on the country, I know in Japan home education is monitored by schools, however in the UK, monitoring is not lawful. Local authorities may make informal enquiries to ensure a suitable education is being facilitated (keep EVERYTHING in writing and please go straight to “home education and your local authority” group on FB for advice, you WILL need it!). In England, if your child is in mainstream education, you can deregister at will, from a special school will require LA approval. In Scotland deregistering requires LA approval. (Again, head to the aforementioned group for advice).

11. “You can’t work/get an education while home educating”

- It is hard to balance work, education and educating your child, but it is possible, people do it every day. Obviously, having at least one parent free to educate unhindered at all times is an ideal situation, but in the real world it often does not work that way. Parents may have to home educate regardless of their other commitments if a child truly needs to escape the school system. Many parents work or learn from home, and sometimes it is even possible to combine these activities with home education. Professional artists and crafters can pass down their skills while working, distance learners can invite their children to sit in on lectures. The really great thing about home education is it is flexible. Do you have a whole day of meetings? Let the kid play minecraft all day! Going to be in the office all day? Drop the kid off at the local forest school or something else they can do all day. Drop them with the grandparents to help with the gardening!

12. “Home educated are behind/achieve less than school children.”

- Their is no evidence that home education is of a lower quality than school education. Many children are home educated specifically because the school environment was detrimental to their education, and thrive with home education. Plenty of children are able to learn more simply by having 1-to-1 attention, without the distraction of an entire class. And others may well be “behind”, and are educated at home because of their specific needs that mean they will never thrive in an academic setting, so they are allowed to focus on learning skills that will allow them to live independently.

#word of god #home education

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midnightactual · 3 years

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As a child, before she acquired a zanpakuto, did she have an idea or fantasy of what she wanted her abilities to look like? Was she consequently excited or disappointing with the reality of how her soul manifested its power? (if she had one more or less since as long as she can remember, can you talk a little bit about the Shihoin's traditions in training their heirs and the logic or superstition behind it?)

I’m going to take the scenic route in answering this one, so you’ll have to bear with me. I’ve been (probably rather obviously) watching Cobra Kai lately (into season 3 now) and although there are lots of things to recommend it, two things that I think are very interesting about it (and that apply to this question) are the themes of generational trauma and incomplete philosophies of life. The first—the mistakes and overcorrections of one generation transferring to the next—is pretty self evident, but the second bears some more scrutiny.

Cobra Kai, the dōjō, has a simple set of three rules: “Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy.” Meanwhile, Miyagi-Do, the dōjō, has just one ethos: “First learn balance. Balance good, karate good, everything good.” A thing that I think the show strives to communicate without constantly shoving it in the viewer’s face is that both are right, actually. They’re just incomplete. Both are inflexible. Cobra Kai’s logic has ruthlessness when it counts, but lacks balance and predictably always overcommits. Miyagi-Do’s logic has balance, but lacks the ability to commit and engage decisively. Both are unsustainable. And the problem with Cobra Kai’s ethos in particular is that it can’t be readily grasped by teenagers, because it takes wisdom and experience to see its failings. (Meanwhile, Miyagi-Do’s ethos can cultivate wisdom, but it can become a trap that prevents thinking outside the box it creates.) Johnny Lawrence eventually figures this out from the Cobra Kai end through a long series of painful missteps, and sums it up with:

“This creed on the wall... follow it to the letter, it'll make you strong. It’ll make you formidable. It will also make you an asshole. ’Cause that’s just black paint on a white wall. But life’s not black and white. More often than not, it’s gray. And it’s in those gray areas where Johnny Lawrence’s Cobra Kai... sometimes shows mercy.”

So, what does all that have to do with Yoruichi? Well, my conception of the Shihōin Clan, even before I ever saw that show, is that it possessed a mindset a lot like Cobra Kai. (At the time I started here, I imagined her home life as a child as being like a more watered down version of what Azula and Zuko endured under Ozai and Ursa in Avatar: The Last Airbender, with Yoruichi’s father being ultimately rather less of an asshole than Ozai and reforming, and that still fits and correlates quite well to my current thinking, but Cobra Kai makes for a more apt comparison.)

The Shihōin are not only the masters of the martial arts within Soul Society’s nobility, but of combat, conflict, and war as a whole. That is, in a sense, their “purpose”. They’re warriors, right down to their genes, because they not only train for combat (in a grueling and regimented way from childhood, a la the SPARTAN-II program in Halo, or the one shown in Soldier) but they historically bred for it too. (And to some extent, still do, with reiatsu output and quality having been a major element of mate selection as recently as with Yoruichi’s parents, and with even Yoruichi herself sort of subconsciously looking down on the possibility of meaningful long-term intimate relationships with notably weaker partners.)

Anyway, the ultimate traditional end-product of this was Yoruichi, and she reflects the pathologies of the process as much as she does its culmination. (Her decisive defeat of her relatives in Agni Kai to become Clan Head was the ultimate proof of her superior ability and pedigree within this system.) There’s some indication (from Yoruichi herself) that Yūshirō might have an even easier time of achieving power than her, but I view him as a product of a newer, different, and superior process. (Basically: Yoruichi broke the old one, and Yūshirō’s far more playful attitude is a product of a different childhood environment after Yōsuke chilled the fuck out and stopped trying to be Kreese/Ozai; play is really how mammals learn best, after all. Someone like Yūno, @ice-cold-shihoin’s middle sibling OC, is to my mind a sort of intermediary step in this transitional process.)

In other words, Yoruichi was raised to be a complete badass. The total package. The perfect soldier. The ultimate weapon. Not just battlefield superiority, but battlefield supremacy. Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy. And so to finally come back to your actual question, she dreamed of a zanpakutō that’d help her be exactly that: a badass. I don’t think she was really too focused on the nature of how that worked, exactly, so long as it did.

The trouble is: she got it. She joined the Onmitsukidō at 100, manifested her asauchi into a zanpakutō (Kurayami) before she was 101, had her Shikai before she was 103, it became a(n actual) permanent-release type by the time she was 145, and she achieved Bankai at 152. Kurayami’s Shikai form seems rather plain and boring compared to many—unless she so chooses, the sword cannot be perceived except when its edge or point is penetrating a target, and then only visually—but that belies a simple point: it exists purely to kill. Not to duel, not to pacify, not to disarm... to kill, and with the first strike. It’s a blade purely for assassination. And this is even more true of her Bankai, Kurayami Kara Umareta Daikokutennyo, which exists for mass destruction and slaughter. She got exactly what she always dreamed of, and it completely horrified her.

Even by the time she got her Bankai, she had some inkling of what Johnny’s trying to communicate in the earlier quote. She knew that her zanpakutō was inflexible, its use was unsustainable, and that leaning into it too heavily and becoming habituated to it would make her a murderous asshole. (Think like Unohana Yachiru, but even more so, because using Kurayami doesn’t foster any sort of sense of good sportsmanship.) The reason for that is obvious: when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. It didn’t help that Kurayami, the zanpakutō spirit, was (and has always been) a kind of dark Azula-like mirror of Yoruichi herself, Yoruichi-As-She-Might-Have-Been had she not met Kaien. (Kind of like Ichigo and “Shirosaki” Zangetsu, but not nearly so extreme or directly comparable as Yoruichi has obviously [?] had no Hollowfication exposure.)

And so, just as Yoruichi had already blatantly rejected her father’s initial efforts to raise her like a boy by radically asserting her femininity, and just as she had tacitly rejected the Shihōin Clan’s focus on total efficiency by becoming far more sociable and using social engineering as much as combat ability, so too did she reject her zanpakutō by developing Shunkō.

It’s only in the present, with the aid of (bitter) wisdom and experience, that she’s gone back to it to not only try use it, but to bend it to her will rather than being afraid of it bending her to its. (To carry on with my theme here, this is actually kinda like adult Johnny going back to try and redeem the Cobra Kai dōjō of his youth and turn it into something more positive.)

Shorter answer: she wanted a badass zanpakutō, and she got rather more than she bargained for in the process. (With all that that says about the base nature of her soul and id, for lack of a better term.)

#Out Of Character #Asks #Headcanons #Long Post #deivorous

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divineknowing2021 · 3 years

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curator interview

Suzanne Kachmar: Tell us about yourself? School, work, play?

Natasha Kuranko: I’m a tender-hearted 27-year-old adult who refuses to stop dressing like a child. Currently, I am unemployed though I’ve made a small gig for myself selling thrifted clothes online. I'm a full-time student at Norwalk Community College working towards my associates degree. My free time is best spent riding my bike, reading a book, visiting museums, or catching up with a friend. It makes me chuckle a bit thinking about how eccentric my taste and appearance can be, but overall I prefer to lead a relatively simple existence.

SK: You worked as the gallery manager at Franklin Street Works. How long did you work there, what was your job like? What did you do?

NK: I worked at Franklin Street Works for just under 4 years. It was an incredibly nurturing environment. The artwork I was exposed to there provided me with the motivation and tools I needed to become a better person. Whether an artwork was intimately revealing a struggle unfamiliar to me or pulling back the curtain on oppressive structures I too was inflicted by, my critical thinking skills and will to be compassionate (for both myself and others) was constantly being asked to grow. The executive and creative directors of FSW at the time I was hired, put a lot of intention into creating a work environment that functioned on open communication, care, respect, and mutualism. They trusted me with responsibilities despite my lack of formal education in the arts and were always available if I needed guidance. They taught me to be confident in my abilities; I don't think I'd have half the aspirations I do today if it weren't for either of these women.

If I wasn't walking a visitor through an exhibition, I was likely busy reaching out to local community groups with overlapping interests to an exhibition's theme, writing letters of appreciation to patrons, updating our CRM database, preparing for an upcoming event, or snacking on cherry tomatoes from our back patio vegetable garden. My favorite work happened while we were bittersweetly deinstalling one exhibition and installing the next. I find the process of repairing holes in walls oddly calming and symbolic of healing, plus nothing beats the precious feeling of holding an artwork in your hands.

SK: What have you been doing since FSW closed and during Covid 19?

NK: The pandemic put a halt to some crucial fundraising efforts for FSW forcing us to close permanently. Unlike many people, I was fortunate enough to qualify for unemployment and not be burdened with food or housing insecurity. My focus has been on my physical, mental, and spiritual health. I see the culture of today as being very tiring, constantly asking us to perform success and prove ourselves. It's easy to get caught up in this pressure while allowing traumas or feelings of anger, sadness, and grief to accumulate. It's been nice stepping outside of that mindset and giving myself the time to process and move on from bad things that have happened to me. I just wish more people could be given that opportunity. It's a bit cheesy to say, but life is really beautiful; I think this pandemic has helped open a lot of people's eyes, including my own, to how lucky we are to be alive.

SK: Tell us about the exhibit you produced. You proposed and defined the concept, curated the art and mounted the exhibit, bringing your other work experiences to City Lights Gallery.

NK: diving knowing is a group show featuring 19 artists. Most of them are either self-taught or in the early stages of their career. The submission process consisted of me posting a call for art on my Instagram and reaching out to a few individuals I had already established a relationship with, asking if they wanted to submit. I felt so moved by all the work I had access to just through my personal network. A handful of artists in the show are close friends of mine. It's really amazing to see all their artworks getting along with another in one space.

I was invited to curate this exhibition for women's month. I wanted to develop a theme relevant to women's issues and my personal experience as a woman, which wasn't centered around biology or would risk excluding trans and non-binary artists. I was thinking about how commonly the voices of women, and other marginalized groups, are devalued or ignored and how over generations, this has pushed us into a more perceptive mode of being. Intuition is a really radical concept; there's a lot of power in recognizing the knowledge you already have inside you and not depending on an external authority to validate it. It was a long train of thoughts and feelings, but basically, I wanted to celebrate something I've found to be so crucial in my own life and learn more about how it exists in the life and work of artists.

SK: What's next? What are your ambitions or plans as an artist, creative, arts professional?

NK: My next, or current step, is finishing up my associate degree at Norwalk Community College. What I go on to study after that will depend on where I am accepted as a transfer student. I'm looking at schools offering majors in curatorial or archival studies but I'd also be totally satisfied getting my masters in education and teaching elementary school somewhere. Far as my ambitions or plans as an artist/creative/arts professional goes... I'd love to refamiliarize myself with guitar and get back into songwriting. My dream is to open up an alternative art space, with a similar value system as FSW, that doubles as a vegan fast food joint. Though that probably won't be happening for another 5-10 years. One of the names I've been playing with for the space is "beans on bread."

SK: Is there anything else you want to tell us or announce?

NK: No announcements here! I would like to thank every artist who submitted and everyone who supported me throughout this project. Knowing there were people in my life with curatorial experience who were willing to provide guidance if needed saved me from a lot of sleepless nights!

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kittenfemme27 · 3 years

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Bastion: What it means to truly move on.

“Someday, your bird is gonna fly.”

Bastion is the first game released by what is now the critically acclaimed Supergiant Games, makers of other games like Transistor, Pyre, and most recently Hades. But back in 2011 they were a nobody. 7 developers from various backgrounds within the industry came together to make games that could focus on storytelling first and foremost more than any of their previous studios would allow. Bastion was the result of that. Starting out from the idea of a top down isometric RPG, Supergiant realized that they wanted to portray a world that was fractured and broken, and wanted to show the vast and empty sky as a contrast to that destruction, but realized the camera angle wouldn’t allow this. So they came up with the idea that the ground would come up in front of the player as they walked forward, allowing the empty sky to show beneath them since the groundwork would not originally be laid until the player walked towards it. To explain this choice and why the world reacted this way, a destructive event known as “The Calamity” was created in the game's story. Thus, Bastion found its ethos.

Bastion’s a masterpiece. Plain and simple. It's been ported to nearly everything under the sun for a reason, being playable on literally 3 different console generations as well as every OS a PC can run, but coming back to play this game for the first time within the current political and geological climate that we find ourselves within as time goes on only makes it more and more apparent how much the story has to say. Even if you could somehow ignore it’s absolutely incredible music, insanely varied and addictive and yet delightfully simple gameplay, jaw dropping art direction and set pieces, Bastion’s storytelling is at its core and the story it has to tell is one that I think a lot of people didn’t fully appreciate back in 2011. From what I could find online, most people either ignored it in favor of the gameplay, or let the meaning of it glaze over them. And that's really, deeply a shame. Because Bastion is one of the best games I have ever played. And I’d like to talk about why.

Gameplay:

“Kid just rages for a while...”

I want to start first and foremost by talking about the gameplay and how you engage with the world. Combat in Bastion is simple and not exactly groundbreaking. An isometric hack ‘n’ slash with 2 weapon slots and a single ability, with a shield that has a parry mechanic and a dodge roll with fairly lenient invulnerability frames. Player movement is very, very slow which encourages you to very quickly become proficient in dodging and blocking. It’s fun, for sure, if just a little bit easy. But it’s nothing to write home about at first. As you play, though, you’ll begin to uncover Bastion's hidden depth and variety within its combat. A lot of that depth comes from the sheer number of Weapons, Upgrades, Passives, and Skills you can equip in any combination.

You are given 11 weapons, each of which can be upgraded with collectibles found within the levels for a total of 5 times per weapon, and these upgrades form a loose “trees” of upgrades that you can switch between at will. You can make the Spear better at critical hits and critical damage and faster thrusts, or make it better at throwing with more spears per throw, for example. Every single weapon has a 2 distinctive upgrade “Trees” in this way that clearly make it better at one specific aspect of the weapon, but you are free to mix and match these upgrades as you see fit. Maybe you want the Spear to have a high critical hit rate, but also throw 2 spears per throw, you can do that. It’s also worth mentioning that there are no restrictions placed upon you on what type of weapons you want to take. You can take two melee weapons, or two ranged weapons, whatever combination you desire is up to you. The narrator even has a line for literally every combination you can have that you’ll hear upon exiting the armory. Some compare you to legends of yore from the game worlds past, others point out just how plain silly it is for the Kid to carry both a mortar launcher and a rocket launcher.

Each weapon also comes with two skills that you can use during gameplay, ranging from protective skills like one that makes you block all attacks for a few seconds, to damage based skills such as the Bow’s skill that fires a ricocheting arrow between enemies. Even then, there are other Skills that are tied to no weapons at all which brings the total of skills in the game to 30.

In addition, there’s the Tonic system in which each level up confers a slot that you can equip a drink from the bar, for a total of 10 at max level. These function as passives applied to your character that allow even further customization. Some are basic things you’d expect, such as overall more health, or more restoration or ability potions, a flat 15% damage resistance, and so on. A number of these however offer a very very strong benefit in exchange for a side effect. Werewhiskey, for example, gives you a 100% crit rate but only below 35% health. Doomshine offers a permanent 10% crit but takes away 10% of your health permanently. Or Leechade, which allows you to gain health from striking enemies, but makes your health potions only 1/3rd as effective. These can all be stacked upon each other in any order or combination. You choose and be changed at any point between missions..

All of these systems together enhance the very simple hack ‘n’ slash combat to be something with infinitely more depth than presented to you at first glance, and something that you can experiment with as much as you want, since no choice is permanent. Part of the way it encourages you to experiment are the Weapon Challenge missions that crop up each time you obtain a new weapon. They ask you to complete some sort of challenge related to that weapon with no Skills, no other weapons, and in some of them not even the ability to dodge or block. Besting these will net you 1 of 3 prizes, depending on how well you did, With the first two prizes being upgrade materials and the last being a Skill for the weapon the challenge is based on.

Beating Bastion unlocks a “Score-Attack” version of New Game+ that keeps a running overall score during the whole game and during stage specific score for each mission, with a multiplier and a timer to keep that multiplier up. This effectively turns the game into a leaderboard chasing isometric arcade game. Every enemy adds 1 to the multiplier, and resets the timer, so it's up to you to run through each mission as fast as possible and challenge yourself to see what kind of score you can get, and since it lets you replay any mission you want, you can always find ways to get a higher and higher score. One of my playthroughs of this game was on the PS Vita and even since beating it, I've found myself trying to one-up my own score while i’m just sitting around since each mission only takes about 10-20 minutes. The most challenging content in the game is a set of 4 different repeatable combat arena’s with 20 waves of some of the toughest enemies in the game. You can make this even harder by invoking each God within the games Pantheon and raising the difficulty of every enemy you encounter. Doing this raises how many points you get per kill, and in these combat arena’s I’ve regularly topped a million points in just a single stage from precise gameplay.

I think that’s what I find amazing about Bastion’s combat is that despite 3 playthroughs, I never once found myself bored or annoyed by any of it. All 3 of my playthroughs had me switching up Weapons, Upgrades, Skills, and Tonics between every mission just to experiment and see what crazy builds I could make. Every challenge was always a delight and a real test of skill, every mission a romp where I got to find a new weapon and play with it each time. Often, I would die, but that was fine! Losing in Bastion is fun. It’s part of the experience, because you can always go back and change your build to whatever you desire to try again. In a way, it’s fitting for the entire theme of the game. It’s the End of the world, and there are no more rules. Do whatever you’ve gotta do. Might as well have fun with it, while you do.

Art & Sound:

“I suppose all that's left... is to try'n remember this moment.”

I think the other reason that I didn’t get bored on any of my 3 playthroughs of Bastion was the absolutely breathtaking art and music the game features. The soundtrack, composed by Darren Korb, clocks in only at an hour and while that does sometimes mean that there are repeats of songs, I'd be lying if I told you there was a single song on that score that I didn’t absolutely love. Or that I thought was out of place during any section of the game. Each and every song is its own radically different soundscape that, in songs like “Brynn the Breaker”, invokes a feeling of complete and utter destruction around you and a sense of leaning into that destruction. It’s fitting that the first time this song plays, you are almost assuredly going to hear the line “Kid just rages for awhile...” as you wreck each and every enemy and object around you after waking up on a floating rock in the sky. Meanwhile, in other songs such as “Build that Wall”, it's clear that Supergiant was acutely aware of the impact their music could have on a scene. In Caelondia, the games world, “Build that Wall” is a jingoistic anthem meant to inspire the Cael by noting the danger they face from the outside world and from the Ura, a people who live to the east, and implores them to build walls to keep everyone else but keep themselves safe. But the first time you hear that song, you’ll be rolling through the dilapidated ruins of Prosper Bluff, a place overrun by birds ready to rip you apart and barely hanging together by literal boards between each floating island, and not a wall in sight. Guided only by the simultaneously soothing and haunting voice of an Ura girl singing the theme of the people who hate her. In that moment, it sounds much more sorrow and sad than any anthem for a nation ever could.

Darren Korb has stated that the point of Bastions music was meant to invoke a sense of the “American Frontier”, of exploring new and uncharted land, but it’s interwoven with melodic and slow moments of tragedy and despair, featuring lots of slow acoustic guitar and lots of slow vocals when there are any at all. I really cannot praise enough this choice of frontier-ism interwoven into the music itself, as it sells the entire theme of the game perfectly.

The art of the game is just as fantastic, too. Supergiant set out to make sure you could see the sky in a top down game, which sounds a little absurd and like a nearly impossible feat, and yet they succeeded with such aplomb it almost seems like it was easy. Below each stage is a blurred barrage of trees, nature, clouds, sky, sometimes ruins within those things, it reminds you constantly that the world has ended and nature has reclaimed it. Progressing further and further down the set of missions and further away from the Bastion and Caelondia sees you going more and more into what's left of those wilds and away from the ruins of civilization, before reaching the icy peaks in the east of the Ura. It creates this feeling of loss and tragedy at what's lost, a sense of exploration into this new and unknown world, before finally getting to it's cold center as you get closer to the truth of the Calamity.

In general, the art style of Bastion feels like a living breathing oil painting. Features on people are exaggerated with small bodies, yet large heads and eyes and hands or feet. Making them feel like something out of a children's book. Every single thing in the game is full of color and life, down to the animals and the foliage, with the only notable exceptions being the ruins of buildings that are oppressive and gray, and the final cold reaches of the Ura’s leftover ruins. Because of the oil painting aesthetic, the narration, even the surreality of the world coming up before you, Bastion feels a lot more like playing a fairy tale than anything else I've ever played, even things that have tried to emulate that same effect. Bastion reminds us that the presentation of a game, in both its art and its music, tell just as much about the story and the world of a game as the actual story itself does.

Story: (Spoiler Warning)

“Now here’s a kid who’s whole world got twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky.”

Bastion is a game about a lot of things, but at its heart, it’s a game about Tragedy. A tragedy you can’t prevent no matter what you do, because it has already happened. Setpieces in the game constantly remind you of this, like going through the Hanging Gardens, a place where people used to gather and finding nothing but ashen corpses. Rucks, Bastion’s narrator, will even tell you the names of these people. I remember playing this game in 2011 and being upset at this. I wanted to know about Maude the Tutor, I wanted to hear the life of Percy the Snitch, but I couldn’t. That was the tragedy. It didn’t register with me at the time, but that was the point. I was supposed to be upset I couldn’t know these people, that they died in a tragedy I couldn’t prevent.

The core story of Bastion revolves around a war that took place some 50 odd years ago. Caelondia and her people, versus the Ura. In the modern day, before the calamity, the war was over. There was an Ura named Zulf who was trying to broker peace, even. But the Caelondian’s military-science division, the “Mancers” had a secret weapon. One they intended to use to get rid of the Ura for good. It would cause a genocide of the very land the Ura lived in and cause it to literally fall into nothing, ripping apart the physical earth where it stood before. Worse yet, this weapon was being created by an Ura inventor that lived within Caelondia named Venn under threat to his daughter, Zia. Venn couldn’t stand to aid the destruction of his people and sabotaged the weapon that ushers in the Calamity with vengeance in his heart, so that it would backfire and take Caelondia down with it. Imagine Venns shock, then, when the mancers asked him to pull the trigger.

Turns out an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Just like that, the Calamity has already happened. The Ura who were discriminated against in every part of Cael society and the racism and cycle of vengeance and violence within the Caels and the Ura reached a boiling point that caused the literal end of the world.. And that’s where you wake up. In a world already torn apart and crumbling before you. On a rock in the sky.

Tragedy permeates everything about the game. In the Hanging Gardens, you find Zulf as he’s about to kill himself after watching his Cael wife crumble to ash right before his eyes. When you meet the second survivor, an Ura singer who just so happens to be Zia, Venns daughter. She’s mournfully singing the tune of Caelondia that was the anthem used to inspire the Caels to oppress her own people, and her sweet voice sounds like the dying breath of an entire nation. Bastion makes it very clear that these people's lives as they knew them are over. But then Bastion asks you a simple question: You have to keep going, so what are you going to do with that world?

Before you get to make that choice, though, you’re asked to decide the fate of a man who hurts you. Zulf at one point reads the journal of Venn that he obtains from Zia and learns everything about the Calamity. He learns about the Mancers plan to genocide his people. He learns about Venns sabotage. Zulf spent his entire life advocating for peace between the two peoples, and this is what he’s met with. Unable to stand it, he attempts to destroy the Bastion and flees after injuring Rucks. As you chase him, he lures you far from the Bastion and sends the signal to an entire army of Ura survivors to attack the Bastion, even persuading Zia to come with him to try and convince her to abandon the Bastion. In the end, though. You chase him all the way to the heart of the Ura nation and as retaliation for bringing someone so powerful who kills so many Ura, the Ura forces attack Zulf and leave him for dead. You come across his body and are given a choice to either leave him and carry on, or take him with you and abandon your weapon. You’re asked right then and there, can you forgive someone who hurt you and your chance at fixing the world and break the cycle of violence? Or will you press on, like Venn, with vengeance in heart. If you choose to save Zulf, you walk forward with zulf on your shoulder through multiple Ura archers shooting you nearly to death. It’s only once they realize that you’re trying to save Zulf do they stop trying to attack you. This moment of compassion, this breaking of the cycle, inspires the Ura to let you pass. If you choose not to save him, you must battle an entire army, which isn’t even hard for you at that point. It’s a bloodbath. You, a Cael kid from nowhere, end the last of the Ura outside of Zia who knows so little of her culture that she can’t even read the journal her father left over. You succeed where the Mancers failed. The cycle of violence remains unbroken within you and within your heart.

You’re given two options upon returning to the Bastion at the end. You can use the power of the Bastion to reset the world to where it was before the Calamity. You’ll lose all your memories, but everyone and everything that died will be okay and alive again. There’s a risk, though. Rucks has no way of knowing if this plan will work. If it will prevent the Calamity in the end. “Problem with a machine that sets things back to a bygone time,” he says, “Is that you can’t test it.”

Your other option is Zia’s choice, though both her and Rucks support whatever decision you make, they know it’s not an easy choice. Her plan is to turn the Bastion into a floating island ship that can travel anywhere. To forge a new world and look for survivors on other floating islands and carry on in this destroyed world and find hope within that tragedy. Make something new, and beautiful, from the ashes of something dead. Maybe that’s not possible, she thinks, but it’s better than recreating a world with institutional violence, with cycles of hate and vengeance, a world where something like the Calamity could happen in the first place.

Supergiant knew what most people would pick, though. Resetting seems like the only real choice, at first. Maybe the Calamity will happen again, maybe it won’t, but you can’t just let all those people die. The whole game has been building up to fixing the Calamity. Rucks, old and clinging to the past, is sure that resetting it will work and that things will be okay again. He’s a bit like a father figure to you, too. He’s narrated every action you took, made sure you were never truly alone in this ruinous world. So of course you trust him. An overwhelming amount of people chose to reset the world the first time they play. I did, too. I knew that maybe the Calamity would happen again, but I couldn’t just let everyone die. Maybe things would be different, I thought. Maybe this time people won’t let something like a genocide happen again. Maybe Venn won’t pull the trigger. I didn’t know, but it was better than letting everyone die, right? It had to be. I had to hope that I made the right decision. So with trepidation in my heart. I chose to reset everything.

Rucks comforts you when you choose to reset that “No matter what happens next... you done good.” Credits roll. You see pictures of the lives of each character in the reset Caelondia. The lonesome Kid continues his work as a mason on the wall built to keep the Ura out, where he isolated himself after losing everyone in his life. The only person to ever sign up for 2 tours on the Wall. Rucks continues his work on the Bastion, refining it for the future, meaning that there’s still a need for a safeguard like it in the first place. Zia plays a concert on her harp with a mournful look on her face, she found comfort in music but that comfort was equally as isolating and lonely, what with her being an Ura girl in Caelondia. Zulf gets married to his fiancee, blissfully unaware of the impending genocide on his people while he fruitlessly brokers peace. Upon seeing these credits, these images of the lives of these characters, I knew I made a mistake. History is going to repeat itself. Sure they were alive, and so was everyone else, but the cycle of violence remains unbroken and eventually, even if the Calamity that befell the world the first time doesn’t happen again, another will. Rucks final words in this ending are a simple forlorn goodbye. “So long kid... Maybe I'll see you in the next one. Caelondia... We’re coming home.”

Choosing this ending left me feeling anxious at first, and then hollow and empty. I didn’t save anyone, I just clung to the past. I expected things to be different in a world where something like the Calamity could happen in the first place. I knew, then, that for there to be any hope at all I had to move on from the old world. I had to do right by Rucks, by Zia, even by Zulf. They were my friends. They deserved better, they deserved more. They deserved a world without the conflict and violence that Caelondia brings. I understood even more clearly what I had done when, upon starting a new game, Rucks final words echoed over the loading screen. As far as I could tell, the Calamity had happened again. Rucks even makes comments of feeling a sort of deja-vu while retelling the story and is much less confident resetting will work the second go around, for a reason he just can’t quite explain.

Bastion is a story about tragedy, about generational trauma left over from a war, about the cycle of violence and all that it perpetuates. It’s a story about waking up in a world that has already crumbled and fallen apart through no fault of your own and being told there is nothing you can do about that destruction. And there isn’t. Climate change is a bigger problem now in 2020 than it ever was in 2011. People are going to die, it’s just an awful fact at this point. Those in charge continue to ignore that fact and these issues while also continuing to stoke the fires and flames of the impoverished and destitute more and more every day, bleeding them dry for any pennies they might have.

But that’s not all Bastion has to say. It’s not fair for the next generation just like it wasn’t fair for the Kid, to wake up in a world already destroyed, and yet still, people like the Kid and Zia found hope. Within Bastion, you can save Zulf and end the cycle of violence, you can choose Zia’s option and set out on a world that is better for everyone in the end, as ruined as it is. Even in the end of the world and everything you knew, there is hope. Bastion doesn’t just ask, it begs on hands and knees for the next generation to take up this dying world and make it better. Bastion, and Supergiant, believes in the next generation. that it's possible to move on from the past and make something better, to seize control and make a better world while purposefully never forgetting the cycles of violence that led us to the end of the world in the first place. Our great Calamity is already unfolding before us and there isn’t anything we can do to stop it, only delay it. Bastion tells us that it's okay, that we can make something beautiful, and new, and better from those ashes.

In the scene for the Evacuation ending, Rucks tells us that he’s not sure how to live in a world like this, but he’s willing to learn. And excitedly offers to help teach you how to fly the Bastion through the skies. The very first image you see during the credits then, is the Kid finally collapsing of exhaustion and resting while Rucks tucks him in. The next is Zia looking forward on the deck of the Bastion, a smile on her face and hope in her heart. You get to see Rucks later teaching the Kid how to fly the Bastion, finally giving the Kid the family that he so desperately needed, and finally you see Zulf. He’s got a frown on his face, he’s still lost everything in the Calamity after all. More than anyone. But he’s chopping food for everyone else still, helping out where he can. I couldn’t help but think upon seeing his expression that he might hate me for the rest of my life, and that was alright. I’d always just be happy he was alive. Seeing the smiling faces of everyone in the Evacuation made something very clear to me. In the Old World, Zia was an outcast, Zulf was a fool, Rucks was nostalgic, and the Kid was alone. In the Calamity, they found friendship, they found happiness, they found love and family in each other, they found adventure and they found hope for the future. Zia’s final words to the Kid echoed in my head:

"Any moment I'd want to live again... happened after the Calamity. Not before."

And I was at peace. I knew I had done the right thing I had chosen to move on, accepting the world for what it was and not looking for miracle solutions to fix it or change it, but to forge on ahead with what I had and make something better.

Bastion’s story is not directly told to you, especially after the ending. There is no epilogue that tells you exactly what happened, just a few lines of dialogue that you can make of what you will and some pictures of the lives after your choice. it’s never explicitly stated that the Calamity happens again if you choose to reset things. It’s meaning is in between the lines that Rucks has to say. It’s In the subtext. It's in the art, it's in the environment, like the tragedy of finding nothing but ashen corpses around a lone peace talker right before he’s about to jump to his death. It’s in the music, like the haunting melody of an outcast’s voice singing the song of her oppressors while never realizing how much the very city she was raised in tried to exterminate her. But more than anything it's in the feeling you get while you play. Bastion’s story plays out in your heart as much as it plays out in your mind and on the screen in-front of you. What you feel, what you make of it, that’s just as important to the meaning of the story as what you’re hearing and seeing. Obviously this can be said of all stories, but Bastion is maybe the one that’s resonated most in my heart and in my soul more so than any other story. It offers no simple answers, no painless choices, and no easy ways out. Move on, or cling to the past, those are your only two options and Bastion forces you to make a choice.

In the end, I chose a new world. A better world. A world with my friends that would never let the cycles of violence and the generational trauma that caused the Calamity to happen again. Sure, resetting technically brings everyone back to life, but it wasn’t until I chose to move on and move forward that I felt I could even say in my heart that I’d saved anyone at all.

Conclusion:

“I dig my hole, you build a wall.”

“Build that wall, and build it strong, Cause we’ll be there before too long.”

Bastion is, and I'm not saying this lightly, a perfect game. The gameplay loop and combat is phenomenal and addicting, the music and art and aesthetics are so top notch you could honestly create an entire art style out of them all on their own, the storytelling is amazing and has so much to say that I cannot believe something this important was just thrown out by an indie studio nobody had ever heard of while it was only 7 people strong, and how many people slept on it or completely missed the point of the tragedy of Caelondia and the Ura.

This game will live in my heart for a very, very long time and its music and messages it conveyed will stick with me even longer. My only regret with Bastion is that I’ll never get to experience it for the first time again. But, even with the spoilers here, you can. Play it, Kid. You won’t regret it.

“We can't go back no more. But I suppose we could go... wherever we please.”

#Bastion #Review #Played on: PC #Played on: PS Vita

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citrineghost · 5 years

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A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

#wordpress #tumblr #news #update #updates #verizon #yahoo #design #web design #developers #development #concept #concept art #art #drawings #good omens #bug #bugs #ghostpost #letter #letters

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linkspooky · 5 years

Note

Your analysis on shigaraki's worldview is 😍😍😍. Who's your fav bnha character btw, and what kind of manga are you into? (i mean as in genre, but my phrasing is terrible at times so idk how to put it all in the last sentence)

My favorite manga in the whole world are the manga that run in Weekly Shonen Jump. I read almost everything that runs in the magazine from week to week. I know that’s not technically a genre, but let’s not arguen semantics.

And now because no one asked for it, my opinion on all of the manga currently running through Jump that I read.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba usually manga in shonen jump slowly get worse over time as they try to stretch their stories out, but Kimetsu no Yaiba is a story that continues to develop on itself and improve the longer it runs.

The art is phenomenal and has a good balance of when to be silly and when to be drop dead gorgeous. It’s more of an ensemble piece tied together by a big brother trying to save his little sister, and because of that almost every character Tanjirou interacts with is fun and really immediately attention grabbing.

It’s also a pretty heavy story that deals with death, grief and loss and trying to find life beyond a world that has suffering like that. I’m actually planning to make some meta of it soon, especially with the interactions between Domi and Shinobu. My only real complaint is that it’s deep but not too deep. Usually the demons are always bad and the demon slayers are always good in the end, even if sympathy is expressed for some of the demons. Once again though it does so well in the technical aspects of telling the story it wants to tell.

My Hero Academia it’s pretty obvious that I like it. The biggest draws for me are the art style and the characters, specifically the villains. Also the idea of a reverse X men world where what are basically the mutants now outnumber normal people and dominate society is a fantastic idea for world building with a lot of options.

I’ve actually followed Horikoshi’s work for a long time. His two previous works, Oumagodoki Zoo and Barrage both ran in Shonen Jump for a short time before they were cancelled which I find really unfortanate because they both had a lot of potential as well.

I love both the hero kids and the villains, though sometimes I feel like the villains are more connected to the central conflict of the story than the heroes. It would be nice to see Deku evolve a more radical philosophy then just wanting to save people right in front of him, or protecting the status quo. The heroes should ideally act in response to the villains to create a better world and resolve a problem the villains brought up, but if say the League of Villains were wiped out now another League would be created later because the central problem of the story has not been dealt with.

Dr. Stone this is a series that almost got cancelled, but was saved by a main character switch. Senku is really likable and unique as a character, kind of a mad scientist archetype who turns out to be the good guy and the hero of the story.

He reminds me a lot of Yoichi from the writers previous work, Eyeshield 21. In that they’re both laughing mad eccentrics who seem like they have little scruples for how they use and treat other people, and yet are surrounded by friends and act as the leaders of their team. They also both have a tendency for strategy over brute strength and like to outwit their opponents.

The only thing I can say about Dr. Stone is that while the characters are a fun little group of oddballs, they rarely get any deeper than that. The most interesting thing is still figuring out the central mystery of the world and what happened to turn everybody to stone, which is why having Senku as a main character was a really smart move on the series part.

Yozakura Family This is a new series that I actually really like and hope beats canellation at the two week mark. It’s kind of your basic romantic comedy characters get married in the first chapter promise, but also there’s some really strong character writing with the older brother. He’s one of the few examples of the obsessive and overprotective brother type that was portrayed as actually abusive and damaging for seeing his younger sister that way.

The premise also reminds me a lot of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, just suddenly getting sucked into the underworld of spies and crimminals when you’re an unlucky loser with no social skills. If the character writing is as strong as it is for the brother I can definitely see a lot of improvement and staying power.

The Promised Neverland the smartest written series in Shonen Jump write now with the best ideas. The Promised Neverland is all about theme, theme, theme, theme, which is why someone like me who devours stories for their nutritious value and content loves it.

While there are only about three major characters with arcs that matter to the plot, Norman, Ray, and Emma they are some of the deepest characters in shonen jump currently and the complexity of their relationship and the way they all foil each other is superb.

It’s a story about children trying to escape a neverland where they can never grow up, and live in a world that never wanted them alive. Not only is it just about them though, it’s also about adults who are still inside the system and gave up at one point or another and decided to just live in the evil world rather than change it. It’s a deep story but it’s also undeniably shonen jump, the central theme is about not giving up even in a world that is determined to deny your existence.

Act Age If you’ve read Chihayafuru this manga has a lot in common with that, because both of them are about very singleminded girls with complex emotions that they themselves don’t understand, finding themselves completely enveloped in a niche hobby to the point of obsession.

Act-Age is a story that’s primarily about storytelling and the nature of stories themselves, with each arc focusing on an adaptation of either a movie made up for the sake of the story or a pre-written play ie, Journey to the West, Night on the Galactic Railroad. However, it’s also bout the nature of stories, as understood by the perspectie of an actor.

There are only a few major characters but they all get intensely developed in their arcs. My absolute favorite relationship is that of the main character, quiet on the surface but with deep emotions that she uses for her acting talent with her rival an actress that’s much more like a pop star or idol. Rather than having deep talent she instead uses her ability to read people to appeal to them. She is cheerful and lively on the surface, but empty inside. The way they envy each other and learn to grow from each other because each of them has what the other one desires.

Jujutsu Kaisen reminds me of really early bleach that was just Ichigo and his teenage friends fighting Hollows. This is one of the manga I definitely reccomend, because it’s one of the lesser known manga in jump currently. The art style has this scratchy look about it which really adds well to the horror aspect of the series. It’s a demon fighting anime with some of the best demon designs, more attention is put on making them look grotesque and scary then in series like KNY where the demons for the most part are pretty good looking still.

The main trio is very solid, a reckless idiot who swallowed a cursed finger in the first chapter and is continually dealing with the consequences of that, the shadowy, quiet type cool headed one who almost never talks about his past or his true feelings on the matter, and between them the cheerful girl whose a tad on the merciless side.

Not only are the characters good, but it’s one of the few series where the fights and lore are super interesting. Rather than dealing with demons directly Kimetsu no Yaiba style we deal with curses, which are generated from the human subconscious.

For exmaple one of the villains Mahito is the embodiment of the fear humans have for other humans, that is the anxieties of life, and the fear and suppressed feelings that go hand in hand with humanity. Because that he’s much like a child curse quickly learning and progressing with a human intelligence.

The fights, the powers of characters, they’re all used to further develop a really interesting world of curses and the people who live dealing with them that it feels like we’re only scratching the surface of right now and desperately makes you want to figure out the system they have in place for this entire world.

Yui Kamio Lets Loose - I find it to be a really sweet romantic comedy about a stuck up boy obsessed with appearances and what other people think of him falling in love with two sides of a girl, the uncontrollable Yui that beat him up and constantly gets into fights and trouble, and the perfect demure girl who can only ever be helpless and kind and needs to be protected. It has a feel of a lot of classic 80s high school romantic comedies. The only real problem is that it needs to acquire a plot fast, because it’s at risk for cancellation which makes it hard for me to get invested in a series that might end soon.

Double Taisei - One of those shonen manga that had a really interesting beginning chapter, but then failed to do anything with it. I think it would work well as a character piece between two personalities who act like brothers in the same body, but the characters aren’t strong enough quite yet to work that way. I do like the character design…

Tokyo Shinobi Squad - It looked like a ripoff at first but the main character is actually fairly different from Naruto, and the manga itself is uniquely its own thing. I just hope it learns to utilize it’s cyberpunk setting better, because ninjas fighting in a cyberpunk dystopia is a very tropey premise and the story needs to utilize those tropes in order to work. I do like the fact that the main character starts out pretty powerful so it’s not a typical shonen formula about a main character slowly learning to gain power, instead it’s him taking in and being responsible for a kid.

Manga I don’t read - One piece, Yuuna of the Haunted Hotsprings, Chainsawman, Samurai 8 the tale of Hachimaru, Beast Children, Miitama Security Busters.

#anime-freakchow #weekly shonen jump #shonen manga #my hero academia #dr. stone #jujutsu kaisen #act-age #the promised neverland #act age #black clover #we never learn #kimetsu no yaiba #spooky speaks #askspookies

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joemuggs · 3 years

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James Blake: Before Before

James Blake has a new EP out, called ‘Before’. It’s really good. I like him, he’s authentic. I’ve spoken to him on and off since he very first released music, and it’s been interesting to see his transformation from north London bohemian to LA superstar bohemian. Below is the text of the first time I interviewed him - I think the first feature length interview he did - from Mixmag in 2010.

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James Blake is good at confounding expectations. At a recent gig at Shoreditch's warehouse-like XOYO, Mixmag saw the 22-year-old play a super-heavyweight mutant dubstep set, then immediately afterwards start larking about with Beyonce and Ms Dynamite tunes, much to the delight of the messy ravers – and yet the tune that's getting him known outside clubland is the deeply odd Feist cover 'Limit to your Love' with its haunted croon and folky repetitions. So, when we catch up with him in a Brixton pub a few days after the gig, we make a point of asking him what his ultimate musical ambition is – thinking it might reveal a common thread that draws these disparate sides together. "I'd like to play a solo piano show at Carnegie Hall," he says without hesitation, referring to one of the most renowned classical venues in the world, which has also played host to legendary shows by the likes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd; "maybe not even singing, just the piano." We think he means it.

That's how he is, though: pretty much every tune he's put out so far has come as a curveball. Going from the soulful mutant dubstep of 'CMYK' – which has ruled underground clubs all year – to the four tracks of gorgeous, weightless piano-laced electronica on his 'Klavierwerke' EP alone was a more radical shift than most artists his age would even think of making. But to then not only make the leap to the intense weirdness of 'Limit to your Love', but to make it work to the point where it is all over radio and sitting alongside 'CMYK' in everyone's “best of 2010” lists demonstrates a boldness that it making heads spin throughout the industry, and generating the sort of anticipation for his major label album that doesn't come around often. In a climate of insane gener meltdowns and turbulence stirred up by dubstep's big push into the mainstream, he truly is the maverick's maverick.

So, we ask him, what is with all of these stylistic shifts? “I get bored!” he laughs. “When I get a sound, like the 'Klavierwerke' tracks, I will just do it and do it until I literally can't do it any more, so then I just have to move on and do something different.” There's an intense air about James, not in the nerdy or over-serious way you sometimes get with electronica musos – quite the opposite, in fact: he's fun and engaging company, and our interview quite frequently gets derailed into just chatting away merrily about tunes, nights out and mutual acquaintances – but nonetheless with a fierce intelligence on display and a maturity way beyond his years. He'll fix you in the eye when he speaks, but often, especially when talking about music that he loves, his gaze will divert up and to the side, darting back and forth as if browsing some inner database to locate exactly the right reference, and he speaks with the clarity and lucidity of someone who has spent a serious amount of time thinking about their plans and beliefs.

As you might expect given the strangeness and diversity of his music, James's upbringing as an only child in the London suburb of Enfield, wasn't entirely conventional. His artist mother and singer/guitarist dad never listened to pop radio but played vintage blues and soul constantly – then as soon as James took up playing the piano his musical interest focused 100% on that. “I listened to Art Tatum and Errol Garner, and I listened to Bach and Satie and Chopin,” he explains; “it wasn't about being into a style, it wasn't a jazz thing or a classical thing, it was just piano, just technique.” And that was that – until finally he discovered dubstep as a teenager, and instantly realised that this could be, as he puts it, “a vehicle” for his musical ideas. “It was,” he says, “just massive for me.”

Listening to the likes of DMZ's Mala made him realise that electronic music had possibilities like the blues he grew up with: “it has that thing where if the ideas and the personality of the artist are strong enough, they can do whatever the fuck they like – Mala could take one simple idea and stretch it out for ages, and it would just work because it's him, and because it has that dread and intensity, and you go with it because you trust him.” It also gave him a way to be musically creative without simply relying on his previous schooling. “When I hear a producer is 'classically trained',” he scowls, “I'm suspicious, to me it's usually a euphemism for 'doesn't have any ideas'. Just because you can read the dots on the score and play complex pieces doesn't mean you have any ability to come up with something new.”

Music production took over his life completely from then on. “I went through a lot of shit, but once I got to 18, 19,” he says, “I just decided that I didn't really give a shit about anyone else. Not friends, not girls – I mean, girls are great...” – he flashes a grin – “...but I didn't want to be distracted. And I didn't want to socialise for the sake of it, go to some shit club just because my mates were, I knew that music was my focus and that was that. I knew from my parents that if you're serious about your creativity you have to be alone a lot.” He did, however, very quickly make connections with fellow one-offs Mount Kimbie and Jack Dunning aka Untold. The latter, after hearing a DJ play one of his demos on Rinse FM got in touch and became something of a mentor, releasing James's first 12” on his own Hemlock label. Mount Kimbie also got in touch after James sent them “a really gushing email about their music” and ended up performing live with him on vocals.

From thereon in, things snowballed fast, with dancefloor-oriented releases on Ramdanman and friends' Hessle Audio and the legendary Belgian techno label R&S – but he was also honing a freakier sound: the sparse, folky vocal tracks that would make up his new album. Only three other people got to hear these initially– Untold, this Mixmag correspondent, and a friend of James's who works for major label A&M records and persuaded them to take a punt. These all feature James extraordinary and emotionally intense singing voice, and are, he says , all about restraint. “I get fed up when people keep describing me as a 'soul' singer, because I'm not,” he insists – “I don't let rip, I just sing the notes as I write them. It's like the production: I don't want to just bang away, I use silence and quiet for effect, and then when it does build up to something tougher it hits much harder in contrast.” And he makes a surprisingly violent punching motion.

The result is something that is both completely removed from trends, and perfectly suited to the current climate of genre meltdown. It's possible to hear everything from ancient echoes of folk and blues to the influence of the crispest modern hip hop, particularly the anything-goes aesthetic of Outkast, who James says are “the Beatles of today, maybe not in sales, but definitely in importance and technical innovation.” It also completely tramples over the idea of dubstep as macho, with a real sexual ambiguity to both James's voice and playing. This is very deliberate: one of his greatest desires is “to learn to play piano in a female way – there's a particular way that Joni Mitchell plays, and also Nina Simone, that is technically incredible but isn't flash, that supports the voice without coming too much into the foreground, yet is incredibly beautiful in its own right.”

There's no disconnect from the dancefloor in any of this, though. He still talks with passion about dancing to his friend Joy Orbison's DJ sets in small, dark clubs - “at one point I completely lost track of where I was, and felt plugged into something bigger,” he says, “like the music was joined into a wider history” - and at XOYO Mixmag witnessed at first hand how even his oddest, most strung-out tracks have a sense of dance dynamics that grabs people on a very basic level. Surveying XOYO's punters, we met everyone from electronica dorks who proclaimed him “the deepest British producer since the Aphex Twin” through indie hipsters waxing lyrical about his voice, to a couple of girls in borderline hysterics about how fit he is (James is indeed striking looking, not to mention well over six foot tall). With this breadth of support, the sky would seem to be the limit for James right now; but whether in five years he's perfoming solo piano or singing with Andre 3000, evidence suggests the results will be beyond anyone's abilities to predict.

#james blake #outkast #dubstep #post dubstep #dmz #blues #joni mitchell

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homenum-revelio-hq · 4 years

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Welcome (again) to the Order of the Phoenix, Karli!

You have been accepted for the role of BENJY FENWICK with the faceclaim change of Nick Robinson, along with the requested bio changes! I loved how you dug into and fleshed-out Benjy’s ills and issues without obscuring the bright, optimistic (naive) core of him. I also adored reading the relationships section and how you wove so many other members of the Order into his life and perspective. I can’t wait to see him interact with everybody on the dash! I’m so glad you’ve decided to bring us the rest of the Chaos Trio!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Karli

AGE: 29

TIMEZONE: CST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Same as it has been, fairly active. Less so in the fall when school starts up again.

ANYTHING ELSE: None.

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Benjy Fenwick

AGE: 19 | September 18, 1962

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis-Male, Him/Him, Heterosexual.

Benjy is very comfortable with his sexuality and isn’t afraid to be friends with people who are not heterosexual. In fact, a majority of his friendships are with people who are discovering their sexuality or already identify as LGBTQ. With a gay father, he sometimes considers himself “knowing” and forgets that his experience is very privileged. Just because he’s accepting and aware doesn’t mean he truly gets it and, being young, that’s sometimes hard to remember.

BLOOD STATUS: Half-Blood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: Even though I wrote the bio and the FC originally, the more I solidified Benjy in my mind, some of the things I originally wrote ended up needing to be changed. For instance, I would like to change my FC to Nick Robinson. As I got to know Benjy, I realized that KJ’s expressions and resources didn’t really fit the mold I’d created with this portrayal. Also, I think it might be important to change the “he’s the newest member” thing in the second part of the bio, as he is no longer the newest member - just started that way when the roleplay began. I would also like to change the Caradoc connection up a bit - I will include it below under “relationships.”

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

The first thing many people notice about Benjy Fenwick is his energy. He is very talkative and likeable in the sense he’ll not only talk to someone, he wants them to talk back. He’s a good listener, even if he doesn’t always look like it. With that energy needing to go somewhere, it’s not always easy for him to sit still (something that the healers were frustrated by during his recovery) and often will be found moving around or doing something with his hands. This can be offensive to those people he’s supposed to be listening to - but he does keep his ears open, even if his eyes aren’t concentrated.

He likely has a mild case of undiagnosed ADHD - which sometimes shows up in the form of struggling to stay focused and hyperactivity. This happens, typically, with those things he cares less about. He could talk for hours about Quidditch without needing a break (or used to, anyway, it hurts a bit more now that he’s on the outside of the sport) and even the art of healing has become important enough to him to have much of his attention. The program at St. Mungo’s is harder for Benjy, given his need for extra support that wouldn’t be given in the Wizarding World, but he manages to stay afloat, even if he’s not at the top of the program.

Benjy is accepting and loving, but sometimes has the complex that he doesn’t really have to do much soul-searching - or doesn’t really have to grow. In modern terms, Benjy thinks himself to be “woke” without realizing that his naivety means he still has a lot of self-awareness left to find. Just because he sees an experience doesn’t mean he knows that experience - and he might need someone to force him to take a step back and really look.

Currently, he’s in a bit of an identity-crisis. For years, Quidditch had been his focus. It had been his life. He chose healing, not because of passion, but because of a lack of other things he could think of. When Quidditch ended, the hospital visits began and the healing program sort of fell into his lap. He is learning to find a love for healing, but it hasn’t fully developed yet.

Benjy is curious and creative. There is a reason he was sorted into Ravenclaw - and it isn’t the stereotypical “booksmart.” He learned that Ravenclaws often have an open-mindedness about them that allows for thought in different ways. While he’s not very artistic, his creativity comes in the ability to think outside the box and look at things from a new perspective. This helped him with his Quidditch skills and it could help within the Order, too.

He doesn’t always come off as though he truly cares, however. Because he picks and chooses what to really put his heart into, sometimes he might seem indifferent to others’ suffering or what they have to say. He’s got a bit of that British-polite in him and doesn’t always stick up for what’s right without someone backing him up. For this, he is a follower. He was pulled into the Order by Dorcas - and doesn’t really do much within the organization without someone telling him what to do. He might get radical at times, but that’s only because Dorcas is telling him to be. He’s a Yes Man in that way and often struggles to make his own decisions. Without her pressure, he likely wouldn’t be in the Order right now and just safely hiding under the radar as a “normal” half-blood.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

(Once again, this isn’t brief and it’s about his whole life, not just family WHOOPS!)

Benjy was seven years old when his father, Jaison, came out as homosexual. Benjy’s mother, Maeve, had been mildly shocked for a bit before praising her husband for his true acceptance of self. They promptly divorced, but remained friendly and shared custody of their two children. Benjy’s sister, Haley, was too young to ever remember a time where their parents were together - so the situation of co-parenting and blended family structure had always been her normal.

For Benjy, it was a bit tougher. He was confused by the fact that Daddy and Mummy weren’t together anymore, but still spent time together. He questioned a bit about love in the capacity a child could. Until he met Lucas. His dad had taken months with Lucas before feeling comfortable enough to introduce his kids, but Benjy learned a bit about love watching his father with his boyfriend. Eventually, Lucas became a staple in the Fenwicks’ life, moving in with Jaison despite their inability to get married.

What won Benjy over about Lucas was Quidditch. While Maeve worked for the Department of Magical Games and Sports, it wasn’t until Lucas entered his life that Benjy actually got to go see a Quidditch match. They would go to as many as they could, buying food from the stances and watching the players fly high into the air, shooting the Quaffle or knocking the bludger or catching the snitch.

He learned to fly early. With his mum at one home and his step-dad at the other, Benjy always had someone to practice with. He grew to love the position of Keeper best. The idea that he was in charge of surveying the entire pitch - that he was the final defense against the opposition and the goal - was exhilarating. He lived and breathed the sport and, by the time he went to Hogwarts, he had his life planned out.

Ravenclaw was surprising until he met some friends and learned the house was about creativity along with intelligence. It helped with his game. Benjy didn’t need a crystal ball to tell him his future: he would get on the team his second year, he’d be promoted to captain by fifth year, get scouted during seventh, preferably by the Falmouth Falcons.

But then a bludger hit towards him by the Gryffindor team’s beater, which caused Benjy to roll the wrong way - he’d practiced the Zelig Flip a thousand times, but he’d positioned his hand a bit too much to the left and slipped. The fall from such an incredible height should’ve killed him - he was lucky, they said. You should be dead, they said. And Benjy wanted to shout but a life without Quidditch is death!

Perhaps the worst thing of all - besides the injuries and healers and learning to put weight on his leg again - was that the Falcon scout had been there. He wouldn’t play again - he couldn’t play again. And the person he most wanted to impress witnessed it all.

He was back at Hogwarts by the time N.E.W.T.s rolled around, but spent the better part of the year between St. Mungo’s and the school. It was because of this he recklessly - and without much thought - applied to the healing program at the hospital. He got in, accepted, and mourned the loss of who he was supposed to have been. Perhaps Dorcas recognized his identity-crisis because he barely thought about it before agreeing to join the Order with her. Searching for something to fight for again.

OCCUPATION: Healer-In-Training at St. Mungo’s.

Benjy applied for the healing program upon graduation because he just didn’t know what else to do. It had never been a real passion for him - but the idea of Quidditch was over and he’d been spending so much time at the hospital lately that he went for it. His N.E.W.T.s were just good enough to get him accepted. Looking back, it’s actually a good fit for him. It’s always different day-to-day, which keeps his interest, and learning all the new healing techniques quells his curious streak.

Currently, he’s still in year one of the two-to-three year program.Recently, he began the portion of the training that involves rotations, where he gets to spend some time in each of the wards of St. Mungos. During his third year, he will have to declare a speciality, but he has no clue what that will be. Right now, his favorite bits of healing have to do with the Order and working with Emmeline.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

Benjy is a lower level member who joined the Order in September 1981, through Dorcas Meadowes’ pushiness encouragement. At the time, he was the newest member and knew little about the organization. As the months have passed and they’ve failed missions and lost members (most notably, one of Benjy’s idols, James Potter), he’s learned to grow more and more passionate about the cause.

He typically stays back during missions, both to help with healing given his qualifications, but also because he just physically can’t do all the dueling. His leg injury makes him slower and the slight tremors in his wand hand can be controlled in moments of healing, but not necessarily high-energy duels.

He believes in the Order, but isn’t overtly vocal about it. Given his nature as a Yes Man, he is known to nod and agree and go ohhh, so that’s how it is depending on whichever person is “explaining” things to him. This makes him fairly susceptible to manipulation - and often spouts Dorcas’ words rather than making his own opinion on the matter.

SURVIVAL:

Benjy survives through his “normalcy.” He’s not rich, but he’s not poor. He’s not loud, but he’s not quiet, either. He’s a half-blood from a few generations back; nothing really special about it all. Had he become famous like he anticipated, the spotlight might be on him more. But, as it is, no one really cares much about the could’ve beens of the world.

He lives with his mum in his childhood home, in his childhood room, and is more than ready to get the fuck outta there! It might be easier to sneak away if his sister wasn’t off at Hogwarts, but all his parents are worried about their son that nearly died. Since the fall, they’ve had eyes on him more than they might’ve had things panned out differently for him. Once allowing him to be fairly independent, now his mum wants to know where he’s going at night - and, whenever he’s at his dad’s, he has two sets of eyes watching over him. It’s rather exhausting making up lies or avoiding the question with the teenage-angst shout of I’m of-age now, Mum!

Still, he’s mostly under the radar and, if any of his parents suspect anything, no one has mentioned it to Benjy. He knows what they’d say if they do find out about the Order, however; they’d want him to stop. Maybe in the beginning, he would’ve listened. Now, especially with James’ death, he’s in too deep. And he likes that.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Dorcas Meadowes. Having been friends since their Hogwarts days, Benjy listens to her maybe more than anyone else. He’s very much the “Yes Man” when it comes to Dorcas - he joined the Order for her, helped with the creation of the Phoenix symbol before the explosion of the Atrium, and is willing to do more destruction for her. Benjy thinks of Dorcas as his best friend, though in truth, she might just be using him. He’s blind to it, whatever it is, and he’s bound to get himself hurt following in her footsteps.

Emma Vanity. A newer friend, but closer than most of the ones Benjy used to have in school (which mainly consisted of the Quidditch team and a few outliers, like Dorcas) these days. While the rest of his friends have moved on to other things not regarding the war, Emma found her way in it. She doesn’t need to fight - she’s a pretty, rich, pureblood, after all! - and Benjy admires that she is.

Emmeline Vance. What started out as an odd pairing (seasoned, weary war healer and over-eager trainee with a limp) has become something really special. Benjy values Emmeline’s guidance more than any of the other “adults” (he’s an adult too, but different sort of adult!) in the Order. She’s sensible and level headed and nothing seems to shake her. She’s taught him more in battlefield healing than he learned in his first 6 months of healer training and he respects her. She might get a bit annoyed with all his antics, but he can make her smile! He knows she’s fond of him!

Caradoc Dearborn. Benjy judged Caradoc too harshly at first - a product of finding the Marauders so cool and knowing that at least half of them didn’t enjoy Caradoc’s presence. Once he learned that Dearborn did, in fact, play Quidditch in school - and once he actually talked to Caradoc - the tides have changed. They’re not close friends, but he’s not as much of a stick-in-the-mud as Benjy thought.

(This is the connection I’d like to change, please!!)

Sirius Black. He’s very cool. Benjy bought a leather jacket because he saw Sirius wearing one, but then felt like an idiot, so it’s never been worn outside his own bedroom (and he’s sure Dorcas will make fun of him, if she ever sees it!). Benjy knows he’ll never be as effortlessly awesome as Sirius Black - the bloke always looks rather careless and that’s just so killer, man! - but he likes taking tips anyway. Maybe he’ll get a girlfriend if he’s more like Sirius. Now that James has died, the easy, cool bloke from before is shifting to something darker and that’s scary. Benjy doesn’t want to get rid of his old idol, but he also doesn’t want to die for Sirius.

Dedalus Diggle. It might be calling the kettle black, but Diggle sort of annoys Benjy. He talks a lot - tinkers a lot - messes with things. And maybe that’s just Benjy seeing himself in Dedalus, but two people who are this energetic together can sometimes be a bit of an explosion.

Daisy Hookum. Benjy doesn’t know Daisy well at all. She was years ahead of him in school and was off on some Muggle retreat when Benjy joined the Order but, now that she’s back, he’s interested in some of the things she learned over there. Especially the Muggle sporting!

Remus Lupin. Just before the disastrous event at the party, Remus was outed as a werewolf. Benjy never really got to know the bloke - he, too, was on some mission when Benjy joined up - but now he’s almost afraid of him. Benjy himself doesn’t realize that’s internalized prejudice coming into play… but he doesn’t want to become a werewolf!

Severus Snape. Benjy doesn’t know how to feel about Severus Snape. It’s clear that Sirius hates him, but Dorcas loves him. Those are two people who could really sway Benjy over to their side if he doesn’t quickly form his own opinion. Severus doesn’t really seem to care about Benjy, though, so it’s not really a priority. But if Severus does want people on his side in the Order, Benjy could be an easy target for loyalty.

Isla Selwyn-Macmillan. She actually played Quidditch professionally for years - Benjy has old magazines with her picture in it! He’s a bit too afraid to ask her about her experience on the major league pitch, however - not just because he’s a bit starstruck, but also because it hurts to talk about what he might’ve been able to have, too. He doesn’t realize it wasn’t Isla’s choice to leave the sport, however. If he were to find out, they might be more kindred spirits than anyone would think.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: Benjy/Chemistry. Since I made him straight explicitly for the goal of providing that “oh so woke, but not exactly” cis, white, straight dude, any ships would have to be heterosexual. But I’m open for whatever within that realm!

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Benjy is right down the middle of privilege, meaning he doesn’t really get the perks of being a pureblood, but doesn’t get the prejudice of being a muggleborn. He’s a halfblood, white, cis-male wizard. His family grew up fairly middle class and, while his parents are divorced, they managed to stay friendly and Benjy never had to go through the trauma of feeling as though he had to choose.

With accepting parents, one of which is gay, Benjy has grown up learning about the importance of tolerance and acceptance. Because of this, he believes he’s (in modern terms) “woke.” However, there is still internalized prejudice in all of us. While he would never dare to utter the word mudblood and would scoff at someone who does, he still might look at a talented muggleborn with a bit of wow, look at that! as though it were surprising they could be just that good. He also wouldn’t fight the person using the word Mudblood. He would likely tell him it’s not cool, but forgive and move on easily. Not realizing that it wouldn’t be his place to forgive. It’s not his story to tell.

While he doesn’t hold the rhetoric of all werewolves are bad and all house-elves should be servants and other things along those lines, he inadvertently acts on it without knowing. It’s very naive -- “You mean werewolves don’t have canine teeth and claws in their human form?!” and “But don’t they like not getting paid?!” -- but Benjy is willing to listen and grow. He just sometimes forgets he still has room to grow because he generally does try to be accepting to all people and creatures. He also doesn’t always care enough to seek out more information because he doesn’t really think he needs it -- it doesn’t affect him. And that’s privilege.

Being a straight bloke with a gay dad and a lot of LGBTQ friendships, he really thinks he understands sexuality. And maybe he gets some of it, but he doesn’t really “get it.” It’s not his experience. He’s also very confused about bisexuality, which makes sense given the timing of the world as well. What he saw in his life shaped his understanding of sexuality - his dad presented straight until he accepted his sexuality and then he was gay. Benjy gets that, but struggles to understand that there are sexualities in-between the two. For instance, Emma and Dorcas -- if they get together, he’d assume that means they’re lesbians, despite sexuality not being so clear cut as that. Once again, it doesn’t come with malicious intent or the desire to erase anyone… it’s just naivety. People need to teach him because he’s willing to learn.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? It’s the roleplay I created and I love how amazing it’s become. It’s honestly a bit eerily relevant to our life right now and I’d like to explore that with a different character than Regulus. Benjy more closely resembles James, but he’s still his own and he has a story to tell.

PLOT DROP IDEAS: All chalked out, sorry! All my ideas are already in the process through admin stuff. I’d love the chaos trio to fuck some shit up together, but that’s all I’ve got!

ANYTHING ELSE? I’m not sure where else to discuss Benjy’s injuries, so I’ll just do it here. When he fell from his broom, he landed on his left side, which also happens to be his dominant side (he’s left-handed in both writing and wand). He walks with a limp all the time - it will likely never go away. For a while, he was forced to use a cane, especially during the healing process, but hasn’t needed that since prior to graduation. If he pushes himself too hard, there’s the possibility he may need that again, but he likely would just rest on those days more than bringing out the old cane full of unwanted reminders. His wand arm’s muscles had torn in the fall and, despite the ability to put them back together through magic, there are some lasting effects. He sometimes has tremors, especially if having a wand raised for long periods of time. Typically, this can be remedied with some techniques taught to him by the healers, but in extreme cases, he needs to put the wand down for an hour or so. This is most difficult when he’s in the middle of healing, otherwise it doesn’t get in the way much.

#homenumaccepted #harry potter rp #hp rp #marauders rp #marauders rpg

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