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why-so-serious-lucifer · 5 months

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K-pop Discography Deep Dives: Only One Of (Supplemental)

A Disclaimer: I was planning, when I first started Tumblr, to be a lurker, but then I began an office job and needed something to listen to to keep myself occupied. And then, I started going through entire K-pop groups’ repertoires, album by album, and jotting down my thoughts. And then, I stumbled into K-pop tumblr and decided, you know what, there’s at least four people on this hell site who would read in depth rants about these discographies and at least five who wouldn’t read it and then get mad because it’s kind of our job as K-pop fans. My lukewarm takes should be taken with an entire silo of salt and the knowledge that this is completely for fun and occupying my very bored, very neurodivergent brain. All this to say, for the love of god, I’m a sleep-deprived student and I don’t have time for internet hate, so don’t kill me. With that being said, enjoy!

So, since I’ll probably be tackling some groups with large discographies, both now and in the future, I thought it’d be good to shine lights on some smaller groups and soloists who either aren’t as popular and/or have much smaller repertoires, so that’s what we’re doing today! These are going to be a lot more chill than my deep dives because they’re really more of a fun break than anything else.

Here are my credentials: I’d already been a fan of SHINee for a while before, but it was actually OnlyOneOf that helped me realize that I wasn’t just a girl group stan and SHINee weren’t just a one-off. I’m mainly a fan of their Underground Idol solos series so I’m looking forward to hearing more of their other titles and b-sides. Let’s do this!

OnlyOneOf debuted in 2019 with seven members: Love, Nine, Yoojung, Rie, KB, Junji, and Mill (Love left in 2021). They’re most known for their…concept in a way? Basically, for basing their music around queerness, while not stating their actual orientations. This is thorny territory, as k-pop is infamous for its shipping and fanservice-heavy culture, which we could argue about until we’re so blue in the face that we’d be mistaken for smurfs. Is it queerbaiting? Is it representation? I know what I believe, but is that “right”? I don’t know. Either way, it’s important to keep in mind (even as I’m going to praise them for the good work they’ve done) that what they’re doing is, at the end of the day, proving profitable.

We start off with Savanna, which has one hell of a music video intro. The song is more subdued than I’m used to from their later singles, but with a similar subject matter. It gives me Taemin vibes with its self-assured sexuality, but speaking of sexuality, what would later make them famous is basically non-existent here. I do like this song, especially the slowed-down reverb and distortion, but it’s not especially unique, and it didn’t have a lot of staying power with me. I love the drama of the visuals though—I’m a sucker for cathartically lighting things on fire. (For the FBI agents reading this, I promise that that was a joke.)

From the Dot Point Jump single, I enjoyed the chill soft-rock of Time Leap, which absolutely did have staying power for me and I added it to my playlist. I really liked that chorus, and by the end of the first one, I was in. I think their voices both blend better and feel more unique in this one than in the title, which is probably another reason I liked it so much. Blossom I enjoyed less but it reminded me more of what I’m used to from them.

Sage is up next, and again we have a really odd MV intro. A lot has changed since Savanna—now, the song has much more sing-talk, feels more disjointed in terms of when the tempo changes, and it has a greater focus on the cyberpunk citypop vibes than before. It also adds a greater sense of drama with the slight strings and the control in the voices. It took me a few listens but I like this one too, more than Savanna, and I can see how the singles are slowly shifting to become the OnlyOneOf they are today.

Line Sun Goodness is a pretty solid EP, and I enjoyed the whistling hook in Boss, the chill guitar in Desert, and the breathy layers of vocals in Only One Of Me (which was my favorite). However, the songs, despite the few quirks I mentioned before, sound very similar to each other. None of them are bad, but none of them stick out either.

Dora Maar goes even further in the direction that Sage began, with its harsh background clanging, its heavy use of percussion, and reliance on more intentional frying in the vocals. I wasn’t as big a fan of this one as Sage, to be honest, because I felt like it went from the calmer (yet still fried) parts to the harsher ones, and I got a bit of whiplash.

Angel was a song that I’d heard before, but I actually had no idea that it was by OnlyOneOf. It’s catchy from the outset, and has a self-aware humor that I could get behind. It’s also softer than their usual titles, and that little bit of vulnerability is a good balance for the flashier parts of their discography. That repeating rap in the pre-choruses caught me off-guard every time, I have to say, and by the time I’d gotten used to the new tempo, we were back to the usual. I have no idea why it's there, because it really didn’t have to be. I really liked Heartbreak Theatre from the single, because I love some drama and that piano was perfect.

A Song Of Ice & Fire pulses with a great energy, and I was nodding my head through the first verse. I was worried they’d go with the dreaded anti-drop chorus and they kind of did in the second half, but thankfully the rest of the chorus is quite strong. I liked this one, but I actually have the opposite comment I have on the rest of their songs, which is that I wish it carried through that great build up through the chorus, because they were almost there…but no. I didn’t have a hidden gem for this single.

Libido is the song that I think most people know from OnlyOneOf, and it’s obvious why: unlike many of their singles, it’s pretty unique. I was surprised that what they’re so known for started here and not before though. Between the choreo, the lyrics, and the music video, it definitely breaks the boundaries of what’s normal in k-pop. It’s a song I appreciate more than enjoy, I’ll be honest, but I do like the pre-choruses. I know the whole point is that the chorus comes out of nowhere, but it’s not for me. I admit though, the “girl I just wanna know” makes me cackle every time, because what girl? Where? There is not a girl within a 10 kilometer radius, folks. If we’re aiming for plausible deniability, that train left the station halfway through the first verse with whatever the hell Nine’s character was doing watching Love take a bath.

From Instinct (Part 1), my favorite was Instinct, because it has good drive and its vocals match perfectly with that distorted guitar instrumental in the background. It’s definitely not a combination I’ve heard before, but it works quite well. The other songs are similar to other b-sides from earlier, in my opinion.

Coy is calmer and more subdued than their usual singles as well, while still keeping the smooth sexuality that defines much of their work. I think it needs more of a show stopping moment, personally, but this isn’t a song for me. I don’t have a hidden gem from this single, but I did like Night Flight.

Skinz gave me a jumpscare right away, I admit it, with that scratching noise grating on my ears. It continues the queer themes from Libido. Unlike a lot of their other work, it doesn’t have enough of a balance between the harsh distortion and the gentler moments, because there really aren’t enough gentler moments for that to happen. It’s just not a pleasant experience on my ears, and not one I want to repeat either. OnlyOneOf has a lot of charisma but none of it carries through enough for this one, and quite frankly, I don’t like it. From the single, I think that Suit Dance would’ve made a better single with its well-flowing vocals and jazzier beat and I also liked Ultimate Bliss.

It’s nothing new for idols to release solo music while still part of a band, but Only One Of’s “Underground Idol” series is absolutely unique. The members were divided back into their branded pairs for this, and each pair told the story of a couple from two different perspectives. Yoojung and KB were the first in Begin and Be Free, Junji and Rie were the second in Be Mine and Because, and Mill and Nine were the last in Beat and Beyond. This series is both where I found them and where, at least to me, a discography that could have been seen as queerbaiting-for-profit becomes something that genuinely means so much to so many queer people, myself included.

Begin, fittingly, begins the solo series, and expertly captures the feeling of boredom expressed in the music video until, of course, we get the meet-cute and literal crash into each other that begins the relationship too. The song is a gentle, breathy city pop sound, and feels both hopeful and resigned (“when you’re free from prejudice, freedom will begin”), reaching a catharsis in its understated bridge (“It’s time, and I know it.”) as Yoojung’s character takes care of KB’s when he’s drunk. Never has a k-pop song title so fit a song, because it’s about so many different beginnings: the relationship, the freedom, and even the journey of coming out itself. I like this one.

Be Free is Begin’s other side, and starts where it left off. As befits the title and its character’s personality, it’s far more open from the beginning and knows what it wants right out of the gate (“Hey guess what?”), while also embracing a funkier, brighter sound that feels more joyful. The relationship continues, and the characters bond deeply in the space of a night (a very queer thing in and of itself), before they end up waking up together, shirtless. Genuinely, the first time I watched this, I was shocked that they were so open about it, despite the fact that nothing is shown, and it was this that began to change my mind on the subject of queerbaiting. The story shown here is given an open ending—we have no idea what happens after that one day—but the final line (“You never know, baby. One more time could make it right.”) seems to hint that it won’t end here. I like this one more than Begin, but it’s not my favorite.

Be Mine starts the second of the three stories, and, again fittingly to the title, feels softer and more romantic with its gentle piano as Junji’s character runs after Rie’s. This duo shows an established relationship between its characters as they have a summer romance that involves dancing, listening to music, cooking, and just spending time together. Its slow and settled melody isn’t for me, personally, and neither is its seemingly out-of-nowhere rap verse, but on the whole, the song is very sweet.

Because was actually the first song I’d heard by OnlyOneOf, since it was recommended to me about a week after it came out, and, as previously stated, changed my mind that I was only a girl group stan. I was surprised by it right out of the gate, and was soon won over by the quite convincing intimacy between its two characters, its quiet folding of paper cranes, and overall bluntness of its subject matter. The song is nostalgic and feels lived in, waffling between comforting and melancholy as the characters have a fight and go their separate ways while all their best memories replay, then reconnect many months later (though it’s left open whether they get back together). It’s genuinely quite touching; I wince when Junji’s character smacks the paper cranes off of the table and I hurt for Rie’s when he’s heartbroken. It was my favorite of their songs when I first watched it and it’s stayed that way since.

Beat marks the start of the third and last series, and sticks out from the rest of the songs in the solos with its harsh beat and most of the song is either sing-talk or outright rapping. Mill is the group’s rapper, so I do get it, but this one is just too grating for me. The video shows two students falling in love with each other while facing hinted-to-be-homophobically-motivated bullying and dealing with both the fear and the excitement of that love. The song does fit the video, I’ll give it that, perfectly connecting with the insecurity and genuine danger the characters face (“wanna tell them to beat it, beat up, beat out”), and the video ends with Nine’s character falling into Mill’s arms after getting beaten up.

Beyond is the last of the Underground Idol series, and rather than match the harshness of Beat, it goes the exact opposite way, and is quite an understated slow burn mixed with citypop that makes the most of Nine’s smooth and soothing vocals, meaning that I enjoyed this one much more. Its lyrics are quite lovely with how they mix floral imagery (“perhaps it’s withered; my heart is dried up, but you take root”), and openness (“Baby, I wanna make you mine”), and captures the head-over-heels feeling of first love quite well. These two videos don’t push boundaries in the same way as the first two sets do, only because they tell what is a quite well-trodden story rather than breaking new ground, but seeing the characters take care of each other is very sweet. The quiet, mutual moment of realization at the end where they’re lying next to each other and move to kiss feels very comfortable and honest.

The description box written for Beyond on their official YouTube channel states: “How did our music reach you, who are far away? How did our small melody crafted in Korea reach you, who are on the other side of the world? To all those lovers who do not feel like they’ve been given the blessing, we hope our music will comfort you and cheer you up. We hope you’ll dream the same dream as us.” Is it a little cheesy? Perhaps. But does it make me emotional? Absolutely. Does it still matter? Hell yes.

The thing that really felt meaningful to me was the mundanity with which the characters live their lives; they may face internalized or external homophobia, but what the solo series gets across so well is how normal and everyday these people are, no matter who they love. The best way I can explain it, as a queer person myself, is that it feels like another queer person wrote and planned these six songs. They feel very honest and self-reflective, and don’t try to tiptoe around their subject matter, which I really appreciate. Look, I’m not going to speculate on whether any of the members of OnlyOneOf are queer themselves, because I frankly can’t stress enough that unless one of them bursts through my window at 2 am with a megaphone and tells me to share it with the world, it was and remains none of my fucking business.

Seoul Drift is their latest comeback, and similarly to many of their other full-group singles, it’s not that fun to listen to. It follows Skinz; there isn’t really a break in the song, which normally I’d be a fan of, but here it just makes it feel overwhelming and unnecessarily harsh. I like the idea of it—the lyrics are pretty good and the whole idea of loneliness and the intensely fast pace of life in Seoul in the MV intrigues me—but the execution just doesn’t win me over.

From the album, Seoul Collection, Blue Blue Seoul stuck out to me. It’s breathy and soft, and it moves along with an inviting, almost warm feeling. It feels a lot like a song from their Underground Idol series, which is probably why I like it. I love the way the voices are layered and how the minimalistic background gives them a chance to grow.

OnlyOneOf have gained attention yet again this year, not only for their earlier comeback but for their participation in Bump Up Business, a short drama adaptation of a BL webtoon that stars Mill and Nine as two k-pop idols forced to do a “business gay partnership” (basically, act like they’re in a gay relationship with each other), who actually end up falling in love. You can see why this is causing a stir, when their whole concept already has people declaring it queerbaiting.

Personally, I honestly don’t know where I stand, because I do think that they do genuinely important, boundary-breaking work, but they also play into the queerbaiting and the lines between characters they play and the idols themselves are intentionally made smaller. I applaud them for acting in this and having the guts to actually kiss on screen, and despite how toothless the show is, I did watch it and go “aww” at several points.

I’m glad I did this! Even if I didn’t end up becoming a Lyon or a fan, I did still have fun with this, especially watching the series and the solos, and a couple interviews (which gave me some good laughs, so thanks guys). I also learned that Nine and KB are very involved with the writing and composing of OnlyOneOf’s music, which is something I really appreciate that happens to be quite rare in k-pop.

My top 5 songs from Only One Of are Because, Time Leap, Heartbreak Theatre, Be Free, and Beyond, with Only One Of Me as an honorable mention. Only One Of gets a 7.75 / 10 from me. To be honest, I’ve found that besides their Underground Idol series and a few odd b-sides, their music is mostly not for me. I do really appreciate the self-production, the important messages, and the experimental quality of a lot of their work, but at the end of the day, this is my blog and it comes down to personal preference.

Next time, we’ll be doing part two of the Red Velvet deep-dive and next week we’re restarting the one-group-a-week schedule with a boy group. Tschüss!

#onlyoneof #k-pop #review #k-pop deep dive #k pop boy groups #yoojung #kb #rie #junji #nine #wookjin #mill #love #be free #underground idol #bump up business #Spotify

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rianafying · 2 months

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i’m having a really bad day emotionally. idk if it’s my period hormones or bpd but i’m just in a really sucky mood today. yesterday i recovered from one illness that i had since late jan. i’ve been desperately waiting to feel better and this morning i woke up with another kind of illness. and i’m doing my best to recover from this as well. and something triggered my abandonment response and im just having a really really hard time right now. and i can’t even freely talk about it to anyone or even write about it in my journal. i’m just. so sad right now. i’m not abandoned but i feel that way. i have been feeling abandoned for a while now and a small thing that happened last night really amped it up. then this morning i woke up with a crazy amount of physical pain and fever from said illness and im also severely dehydrated because i have been too upset to drink water so i’ve been forcing myself to drink lots of water all day. and had to take painkillers and sleep the fever off. all by myself. i hate being by myself. but it was worse when i was living with family back in bangladesh. somehow i felt even lonelier and more horrible there. lately i’ve had very little hope about myself and my future. i’m just going through a rough time mentally. so are my loved ones. i’m sobbing as i’m writing about this. this isn’t even bad. like it’s just my mental illness over reacting and my hormones possibly amplifying the negative emotions. but nothing terrible has actually happened it’s just that i wanted something and i can’t have it and even in my dreams, my desires plague me. it all sounds vague but that’s on purpose because i can’t openly talk about it. even when faced with much greater difficulty, i have handled things better but right now even though it’s not actually that bad, i feel exceptionally sad. i did my groceries. made the right decisions. i literally did my very fucking best today. and yet i feel nothing but awful awful awful. even some self hatred and self pity. i’m having a hard time trying to logic myself out of this one. maybe it just needs some time. the problem is that i don’t have all that much time to give. i have a class early tomorrow and it’s one of those classes that i really have to participate in and even though i normally look forward to this class, im dreading it right now. i dont have the energy to learn a whole bunch of things right now. and my friends invited me for drinks after classes, which is great but sucks because i literally have 5$ in my bank account to last me the whole week, and today was just monday. idk how this happened. actually i know exactly how this happened, i paid of my medical bills when i got paid this weekend. that’s why i have nothing left. but it’s a big relief. that i have paid off all my hospital debt. it’s a huge deal. and it’s done. now temporarily i’ll struggle a little but it’ll be okay soon. also it was just 11:11pm and i made a good wish. i’m going to try my best to bring it to fruition. rn im still a bit sick, and im not gonna beat myself up for having a bad couple of days. i know im doing my best. my best is not as good as other people’s but it’s mine. and i am choosing to go easy on myself. i’m feeling a fever coming back. the plan for the rest of the night is to maybe rest till my fever goes away. then watch the movies i downloaded w the library wifi, because guess what, i didn’t have money to get wifi this month. so i barely use my data and i try to download as much as i can at uni and at the library. it has been kind of good for me. to be off the internet mostly. this reminds me i should deactivate my instagram soon. idc if i loose my work flow. or maybe try to find balance between life offline and online. after i’m done resting and my fever subsides, ill boil some eggs and what not. i deserve to eat well. nvm im back to crying in my fetal position. oh god i feel so bad. i feel so bad right now. i can’t do anything about this. and the things that i can fix, i don’t. this is literally my life. crying about things i can’t control and ignoring the things i can control

this is the worst i have felt in 2024 so far. i’m so sad that it’s giving me a headache. i’m so disoriented and confused and tired and sad i don’t wanna do anything. i’m depressed as fuck. why does this happen to me. oh god i let a couple of hours pass, and i’m doing a little bit better. this is so stupid.

#personal #journal entry

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sorryyourenglishteachersucked · 2 years

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Recently I saw a post going around about how people are overly condescending about people not knowing valuable internet skills such as how to curate your experience, and it was a good post that I didn't want to derail, but it reminded me of a closely related issue, so I'm making my own post:

When it comes to a lot of common fanfic and shipping discourse, I suspect a good chunk of it comes from people noticing a very real problem with Web 2.0 – that is, that the trend toward centralizing content on a few Big Sites makes it way harder to curate one's online experience than it needs to be, and contrary to popular claims, in many ways harder than it used to be – and applying the wrong framework to analyze and solve that problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming this brand of wank entirely on this Damned Newfangled Internet, Why Back In My Day--

But I am saying that the way the internet operates at this point is definitely a factor.

Look, I got into online fandom in the era where a SINGLE large enough fandom might have enough fanfic archives to fill an entire Monopoly board. This had its own problems (many of these sites could just cease to exist with no warning, whether because someone got tired of maintaining them or because a lot of source media creators were a lot more litigious and small archives didn't have lawyers; a lot of mod teams were unprofessional and inconsistent in which rules they enforced and how strictly and/or would just make up technicalities to remove pieces they didn't like, etc.), and this brand of drama existed then too, but it was a lot less...all-consuming. Back then you could usually just go about your life on Your Big Central Site (usually Livejournal if you were a fannish type) without being asked which “side” of an argument you were on, with no way to answer that wouldn't get you death threats.

Dark fic existed. Smut fic existed. Fics about touchy and upsetting subjects existed. Of course there were always some people who got really upset by that, and there were always regulars and even webmasters of more strictly moderated sites who were really judgy about it and assumed the worst of everyone who used the free-for-all archives, but in that period, by and large the response to people getting belligerent about it was basically “dude, stay off that site/out of that group then, stick to this one where that kind of stuff isn't allowed, leave it alone, it’s not worth it.” It was usually a lot less heated than it is now, simply because people had the option to stick to their own circles without being all but forced to interact with content that upset them if they wanted to be in the fandom at all.

The problem is, that advice doesn't work now that we're mostly centralized on big social media juggernauts and AO3, and “then block the tag/that user” is not actually the same.

The result is that curating your experience used to be done passively – you just stayed on sites and in groups oriented toward the kind of fannish content you wanted to see, and didn't visit the ones that invited what you didn't want, and on Big Sites where everyone mingled, you just didn't follow links you didn't trust – whereas now it must be done actively, in many cases involving downloading a ton of browser extensions, by creating tag and keyword blacklists that you have to configure yourself, which is not only tedious, but really sucks when something bothers you enough that you don't want to be reminded that it even exists and now you have to type it into your blacklist for every new site you visit. Never mind the fact that these measures can fail if someone forgets a tag, doesn’t tag their work properly because they don’t recognize the element as something people are likely to want to block (i.e., something that would get a work removed from a stricter archive before most users are subjected to it), does tag something but does so in a way that’s not picked up by your filters, you’re on a site that doesn’t let you opt out of seeing when and why content has been blocked (which, again, is not exactly a fun time when you blocked something because you don’t want to be reminded it even exists), or someone just decides not to tag something at all. You can block someone who does this or add their version of the tag to your blacklist, of course, but when that happens, the damage is already done. It’s even more likely for this to fail on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, where The Algorithm is very likely to decide to show you things you never even knew you’d want to block, even more so than just this model where, even if you don't HAVE to follow individuals' whole accounts to see their content for your fandom, you're still more heavily encouraged to than you used to be now that broad site-wide tags have largely replaced groups. The onus of filtering has shifted from webmasters and moderators, to individual social media users who just dare to have boundaries, often for disability-related reasons that make that job a lot more difficult and stressful than it might be for others.

Because of the way the modern internet is structured, modern fandom absolutely has a problem with making it harder than it used to be to avoid what you don’t want to see, and this needs to be addressed and fixed.

Again, I'm not saying things used to be all sunshine and rainbows, or that there are no benefits to centralizing, because there are a lot. However, even positive changes can introduce complications; every change breaks someone’s workflow (and steadily increasing corporate control of the internet isn't even a net positive in the first place), so of course we're having Issues. People love to talk about how rah, back in my day it used to be the wild west out there, "lemon" could be anything from vanilla fluffy smut to hardcore guro porn with detailed illustrations, and the only warnings you got were "don't like don't read" – but, as true as that was, there were other filtering methods. You didn't like how FFN or the big communities on Livejournal were more of a free-for-all than you were comfortable with? You went and made your own archive with blackjack and hookers by just opening up a new Invisionfree forum or something like it to only host/link to the kind of content you liked, or you started a new Livejournal community that banned the content that caused you distress. You invited all your friends. You ignored the broader unfiltered sites and groups unless you were feeling really brave and bored that day.

For all we talk about how things used to be so much worse and more unfiltered, that's really only half true. You were more inclined to accidentally actively click through to a surprise moderate squick, yes, but you would usually stick to sites and groups where any actual major triggers you had weren't allowed and certainly wouldn’t pop up in their full glory in your (now often algorithmically-generated) personalized feed like some kind of horrible jack-in-the-box (unless you were unlucky enough to log in during a 4chan raid, but that wasn’t exactly a daily occurrence like filter failures on Twitter now).

We don't really do that anymore. We don't really have the option to do that anymore, at least not the way we used to. Free and cheap forum hosts still exist, but hardly anyone uses them, because it's hard to populate a new site when the culture has shifted to wanting to maximize exposure more than build community and ALL the members of your my-otp-only-no-lemons-allowed forum and thensome already follow you on Twitter or tumblr.

However, somewhere along the line, fandom largely missed the point and applied a media critique model to this problem. Instead of calling for more websites to adopt (or more accurately bring back) interest-based user-run groups a la Livejournal, or placing more value on people who curate rec lists and building more tools to do so, it’s become a battle over what kind of content is allowed to exist at all. In this environment, depending on which side of the great debate you’re on, either every fanfic is treated as if it has the reach and influence of a major mainstream Hollywood production or more, or you recognize that that model doesn’t really apply so every problem it gets misapplied to gets shouted down as nonexistent.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely things in fandom that do need to be critiqued using that framework. Fandom has a long history of...not always being kind to marginalized people or characters. The beauty and ugliness alike of fandom is in the fact that fan works, especially fanfics, are mostly created for fun and nothing more. “Crack taken seriously” is so ubiquitous that a lot of it doesn’t even recognize itself for what it is; it’s just part of The Nature of Fanfic. Fan works are often unpolished; the quality is all over the place (and that is a good thing), because the barrier to entry doesn’t exist – people can just post whatever the hell they want, and in some cases this is actually more true than ever as the internet becomes more and more centralized, as people usually don’t need to go as far out of their way to search for the specific websites that allow their type of content. The downside is, this often means that because no one is reviewing someone’s work before publishing, no one is there to say “dude, what the fuck is wrong with you, that’s racist as hell, we are NOT gonna publish that”. This is definitely something worth addressing using the media critique framework.

But that’s not the same problem as the fact that content that explores uncomfortable and potentially triggering topics exists, and we are having trouble keeping it contained because the modern internet is built around trying to smash everything vaguely related together for Maximum Engagement.

Some people have liked to explore darker subjects in fiction for as long as fiction has existed, and this is especially common with marginalized people who may have a complicated relationship with darker subjects in fantasy because of their real life experiences. However, for just as long, some people have preferred to stick to fantasies that feel safe, often for the exact same reasons. This is because humanity is extremely varied. It’s really that simple. Darker fiction will never cease to exist, even if it turns out to be true that it “should” (which I highly doubt is the case). What we need to be doing is working on more ways to make that fact safer to navigate-

Which is the exact opposite of what the modern internet is doing.

The modern internet is mostly about getting more eyes on every page to sell more ads, to the extent that even when it’s not about selling ad space, it’s created a cultural expectation of centralized content delivery where more engagement is always better and there's no such thing as a non-target audience. The modern internet is about cramming as much Content on Big Sites as possible, both commercially and culturally – mentally, we’re often averse to taking the few minutes it takes to sign up for a new site when we have bigger hubs we consider Good Enough. Oftentimes, the modern internet is about obsessing over your engagement numbers to the point of feeling dejected and personally slighted if someone doesn’t want to see content you know is a trigger for them because Your Friend Is Not Contributing To Number-Based Support. All the art is on Twitter, all the fic is on AO3, and if you want to browse those sites to look for it (especially Twitter with its very limited tag room) you will almost certainly run into content that will feel tailor-made to personally upset you, and if you want to engage with your fandom at large you have very few other options.

It’s just plain not good for fandom. At least AO3 is made for fandom, but it has its flaws anyway, because yes, the fact that it’s not made to sell ad space and user data may mean the features that get made are made with improving the actual human user experience in mind, but it also means...not nearly as many resources to make better features in the first place. (Block function? Easier filtering system? Saving filters account-side? I know they're working on some of these, but...well, the fact that they don't have the corporate backing of Twitter and Facebook is painfully obvious.)

We need to go back to embracing smaller and more specialized archives; we don't have to give up the security that AO3 provides to do that if we just mirror or link works hosted there. We need to create more rec lists. We need to push for more sites to adopt/bring back groups (it's sad when Facebook is doing something more right than any other major site). It would be great if someone could create an engine to let people easily create their own archives where users can embed AO3 fics, to let authors and readers alike take advantage of AO3’s protections while allowing readers the full benefit of passive curation again.

We need to recognize that Web 2.0 is just plain hostile to meaningful human interaction and community-building, perhaps especially in fandom.

#fandom #fandom culture #fandom problems #internet problems #web 2.0 #sorry your english teacher sucked #long post

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ange-de-la-mort · 8 months

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What are all your fandom tats if you don’t mind me asking

nonny, thank you for asking omg. I just LOVE talking about tattoos - not just about mine but also about tattoos in general. They're just. So cool. And everyone has such an individual taste and style, it's awesome!

(Cut for length and pictures)

My first tattoo is a pink and purple Wayfinder from Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep on my wrist (because BBS is my fav Kingdom Hearts game and Xigbar/Braig used to be my fav character until a certain plot twist in KH3 that fucked up 12 years of stanning.) I haven't completely lost hope, but depending on where the games go, I just. Might get it modified or redone or touched-up or expanded. We'll see.

I got it in 2019 during my first burnout to remind myself that I belong to myself and my body is mine and only mine, so I guess it's something between a self-healing and a trans thing. I don't even know anymore. Anyway, I don't regret it, it still looks nice, but since I don't know where I'm going with it, I won't take a pic for now.

I got my second one in 2021. I've been a fan of Resident Evil ever since I was 12 years old (yes, I know, I was too young, but this was before I could piss off people on the internet by sliding into adult spaces as a kid), and while I kind of lost interest in the franchise for a while and while I HATED 7 (yes, I know. Unpopular opinion), 8 dragged me back. I commissioned a friend for the design because while I knew what I wanted - Umbrella, Steampunk, the Heisenberg logo) I'm not an artist.

I will link Vincent here, please go check out his art and buy some cool things from him, okay?

Anyway, this is the finished piece:

Since my tattoo artist fucked up a bunch of things, it's very much faded already and looks like it's like 10 years old instead of 2 already, sigh sigh, and I'll have to get it re-done soon-ish. Once I have the spare cash because this is gonna be expensive as fuck.

The third one was also designed by Vincent (no, for real, go give him money) and it's basically a glorified ship tattoo for The Quarry. I wanted something for the Travislaura working together + Lauramax reunion + Travislaura killing each other achievements, and I told Vincent I wanted it with the base of the broken mirror shards and the flowers being mirrored in them while needle and thread and hold everything loosely together. It's gorgeous, and I love it a lot. I'm very unashamed about wearing it on my chest because literally nobody gets that it's a ship tattoo until I tell them lmao

I got it last November.

Once we clean up the Resident Evil tattoo, my studio and I will also expand the Quarry one and make them look like they belong together. Which means we will make sure to give them both a water colour background blending from my left shoulder (reddish-brown/rust coloured RE tattoo) to my chest (blue and purple hues for the Quarry), we will also add a few more smaller mirror shards to my shoulder.

And. Well. Now there's the 4 birds. I initially only had a mock-up picture from the internet, but I asked my spouse to trace them off an ingame screenshot. I'm very glad we did that lmao because the mock-up would have looked way worse than what I have now. Like. I was... hoping it would look halfway okay. I had never believed it would look just fucking incredible. It's probably gonna peel in a day or two already, it's healing perfectly!

........................I want more tattoos. I grew up with games. And books. But it's mostly games that made me feel and fall in love with them. So it's gonna be more game tattoos.

(Also hi, I stream video games sometimes because *clenches fists* I just love video games.)

#kingdom hearts #resident evil #the quarry #uncharted #fandom tattoos #HELLO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR TATTOOS I WANNA SEE THEM ALL #anon

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mlobsters · 4 months

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supernatural s12e11 regarding dean (w. meredith glynn)

feeling the futility of this but let's go anyway

like waking up in the field in 11x01 but fluffier.

SAM All right, Dean, you know, uh, you had a good run, but maybe let's pump the brakes a little bit. I mean, you're not 20 anymore. Dean just stares at Sam for a moment. DEAN Okay, one, the Rat Pack partied till the day they died. And B, I can still kick your ass.

did paul reiser do 1) b) or a) 2) on mad about you? trying to find that on the internet um, challenging. was just plain watching an episode hoping to stumble into it. i seem to recall him doing 2 with his hand though in the L shape so maybe that. or was it he did 2 with his hand and said b? lol. anyway i do that reference occasionally most likely around no one that would get it, and likely the wrong version now too! rolling my eyes at myself

SAM All right. Well, I'm gonna go scope out the body. If you wanna spend some more alone time with, uh, your waffles…all right. Have fun.

realizing i've seen a number of gifs from this episode recently. the ordering sam waffles, a snippet later where he's clearly under the whammy

DEAN Well, I guess it's true what they say. Mo' money, mo' problems. Right?

would be cute if this is actually a thing of making a bunch of 90s references because his memory is all jacked up

this reminds me a little of swap meat maybe? where i had a hard time swallowing that dean wouldn't notice how weird sam was behaving earlier.

lol what i said apparently about that in 5x12: not in any universe, especially when sam has been possessed before, do i believe that dean winchester is not going to notice sam behaving so differently. you don’t get every demon, monster and psychiatrist within a 50 mile radius calling out your codependent relationship with your brother and not notice some bumbling teenager is behind the wheel of his body.

so anyway, when you continue to brush off the behavior with, he's just really hungover/still kinda drunk - when working a case dean randomly disappears while getting food --- and apparently sam is just hanging out waiting for him to call/show up until the next morning????

but sam's gonna let him drive even though he can't remember what key to use. sure, fine, whatever

so he goes to pick up some food and picks up a girl and stays out and that's within normal enough parameters sam doesn't freak out. ok

i'm being a grump about this and i don't like it. saw this bit about the durable inner thighs (which was about the mechanical bull i gather) post recently so hey context

this memory loss is very specific. wiping out his knowledge of hunting? which is most of his life. what's he left with. being happy i guess

DEAN Mm, your hair, it's all so bouncy. ROWENA Why, thank you. DEAN Mm-hmm. ROWENA Do we have to fix him? SAM Rowena. ROWENA Samuel.

what's rowena doing with his hand behind his back? anyway i've seen this in gif form and with rowena cropped out :p

SAM We're gonna sit you down right here. And, uh, yeah, go ahead. DEAN This like live Skinemax or…

okay what's all the more amusing about that is like, what, live skinemax as in rowena (... and sam?) getting naked? also skinemax another old 90s-esque reference. the live skinemax thing isn't in the script that's linked to the wiki (but i don't know if that's the final draft etc)

SAM You know, I've seen my brother die, but watching him become… not him… This might actually be worse.

then we're taking the memory loss very seriously with sam admitting how awful it is and this rather miserable to watch sequence of dean slowly forgetting things talking in the mirror. gonna try to make you cry in the middle here for no reason but play most of it for laughs

ROWENA But me, I've done horrible things, and I told myself it was fine. It was the price of power. And power's what matters, right? ROWENA Then I met God and his sister. The two most powerful beings in the universe, wasting it on squabbling with each other. I thought, if—if they can't be happy, or at least satisfied, how can there be any hope for me?

blah blah can tell him because he won't remember - but i'm having a hard time taking that at anything resembling face value. she's very good at what she does with rowena, but she pretty much always has the faux honesty thing going on so i assume she's basically always lying.

sam going over to force these witches to translate the spell or whatever is some really dumb plot thing. witches can do shit at a distance and there's more than one of them. whyyyy. (so rowena and dean can save the day apparently)

SAM You know, I gotta be honest. I was actually, uh, a little jealous at first. DEAN Of what? The curse that nearly killed me? SAM No, just, you know… some of the things we've done, we've had this weight for… forever. And seeing it gone, uh, you looked happy. DEAN Huh. Well, look, was it nice to drop our baggage? Yeah, maybe. Hell, probably. But it wasn't just the crap that got lost. I mean, it was everything. It was us, it was what we do, you know? All of it. So… that's what being happy looks like? I think I'll pass.

definitely don't want to lose "us"

100% don't understand this montage of clips intercut with the mechanical bull riding. sort of conceptually yes i've seen things like that done in shows but i don't get them choosing to do it here. maybe the only excuse they could come up with to have jackles on the bull for an extended period of time

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 12x11 #meredith glynn #sam and dean mush

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rainbowsalt0412 · 1 year

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Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam - Chapter 2

11th

Returning home late, I face my inkstone in silence.

Though this is a day I will never forget, I will not inscribe it in my notebook.

No matter how difficult the trial, no matter how great my disgrace, I must laugh. But for now, there is only silence.

I read the paper at my desk at the office. The news has been chaotic all morning. Sensational reports flood the television and Internet.

MISSING YOKOHAMA VISITORS FOUND DEAD

DID A PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY’S MEDDLING LEAD TO THE VICTIMS’ DEATHS?

And then there are the images—the white gas, the suffering victims, and me, grabbing on to the cage. It’s only a matter of time before the pictures make the front page of the newspaper. The agency’s phone has been ringing off the hook all morning with no end in sight. So far, they’ve all been complaints, but it won’t be long before the victims’ families begin to call us to threaten legal action. To make matters worse, we still have no leads as to where the remaining seven missing persons are.

Who took the pictures the moment the victims were killed, and why make them public?

The phone on my desk gives a teeth-grinding trill. I reach for the receiver, but Dazai promptly snatches it up and puts it back in its cradle. The ringing stops.

“Looks like this is exactly what the enemy wanted, huh?” Dazai says cheerfully. He’s carrying a photo in his hand. “If it’s any consolation, this is a really good picture of you.”

I silently try to take it from him, but he nimbly lifts his arm into the air before I can.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? You look awful.”

“…No. There’s work to be done.”

“Wow. You’re not gonna take a day off even after all this? You know, someone threw a rock at me on two separate occasions while I was trying to come into the office today.”

I look outside. A few protesters have been standing in front of the agency, causing a ruckus since morning. There will undoubtedly be even more tomorrow.

“‘Take a day off’? Have you lost your mind? We have a mission of utmost priority: Find the criminal behind this.”

“Well… Yeah. You’re right,” Dazai agrees with a blank look on his face. “Where’s Miss Sasaki?”

“She’s in the infirmary getting examined by Dr. Yosano. Sounds like she’s gonna be okay.”

“Let’s pay her a little visit.”

I get out of my chair. Miss Sasaki is the only known victim to have had contact with the murderer and lived to tell the tale. We can probably figure out who the perpetrator is if we can learn how they’re kidnapping everyone.

I casually look down at the picture before following Dazai into the infirmary. You can clearly see my face in the pictures along with Miss Sasaki’s and the victims’, but the most of Dazai you can see is the tail of his overcoat. How was he able to avoid the secret photos?

***

“I’m sorry… I really wish I could help you, but…” Miss Sasaki helplessly gazes at the floor.

“I’ve always been prone to illness, and I’m anemic, which causes me to faint every now and then. I was feeling especially ill the day I was abducted… I passed out at the train station, probably from the anemia.”

In that case, I guess she wouldn’t have any idea how she was abducted.

However…

“Then that would mean someone abducted you in the midst of the confusion after you passed out.”

Kidnapping someone in the middle of a place as crowded as Yokohama Station would be impossible. Carrying an unconscious woman would draw even more attention. Either there are multiple kidnappers or someone’s using a very clever trick…

“Let me just say…thank you so much for saving me yesterday. I… I don’t have any friends or family to turn to, so…”

Miss Sasaki hangs her head low in silence. She doesn’t say another word after that. With her naturally delicate features coupled together with the porcelain skin, she reminds me of a marionette doll whose strings have been cut. Actually, her own experience isn’t too much different. As if her thread of life had been cut, she was almost killed by an unidentified serial killer for who knows why, and her life could still very well be in danger.

“You even allowed me to stay at your home last night…”

……Hmm?

“Hold on. Where did you stay last night?”

“My place,” Dazai nonchalantly replies.

…………

Are things like this the norm nowadays?

“Thank you so much, Mr. Dazai. You… You were very…kind to me last night…”

Miss Sasaki flushes bashfully for some reason.

“What’s wrong, Kunikida? You’ve got a really weird look on your face.”

“Dazai… Don’t you think that’s taking things a little too fast?”

“I… I was the one who asked him to let me stay over. I basically forced him.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I simply did what any gentleman would. Besides, I’m used to getting asked for things from people I’ve just met,” he replies with a smile.

…………

I have no interest in frivolous love affairs. Two people must have mutual respect for each other when building a relationship. If you ask me, an unplanned single night of fleeting passion is unforgivable and shameless. So—therefore—for this reason alone, it doesn’t matter how popular a fool like Dazai may be, because I am not the least bit jealous or frustrated.

Not the least bit jealous!

***

“What a beautiful, misfortunate woman,” Dazai says with a smirk. We’ve returned to the office to prepare for our next investigation.

“So that’s your type?”

“I like all types of women. They’re the bearers of all human life, a source of mystery. But I do like the fact that Miss Sasaki would probably kill herself with me if I asked.”

“Go marry a cicada or something, then.”

Relations between the sexes must be pure and strong. The only feminine company I intend to keep will be with my ideal spouse, where we complement and lift each other up, and I will be with her until the day I draw my last breath. That is my ideal. It’s also written in my notebook. “What about you, Kunikida? What do you think of Miss Sasaki?”

“She’s a victim and a witness to the case. That’s all.”

“I’m asking only because I can’t even begin to imagine, but…what’s your ideal woman like?”

“You’re free to read about it.”

I open my notebook to the page titled ‘Spouse’ and show him. All my future plans are written here.

“What is this, an encyclopedia?!”

His expression slowly hardens as he skims over the page. “…Whoa. Oh no, no, no… This is just… Wow. I’m…”

“The hell kind of reaction is that? Is it weird?”

“No, not at all. I think all guys can relate to the ideals…of each section.”

“Right? What’s wrong with having standards?”

“Exactly. I agree with you one hundred percent, Kunikida. A word of advice, though: Never show this to a woman. It’d really turn them off. I mean, even I’m struggling to keep myself from yelling ‘A girl like this doesn’t exist!’”

Is it really that far-fetched?

“Okay, I get it. Now let’s get to work and find that kidnapper. By the way, have you found out anything else?”

“There’s one thing I noticed.”

“What’s that?”

“If you truly wish to pursue your ideal woman, then we’re going to have to do something about those boring glasses first.”

Dazai swiftly swipes the glasses off my face, then puts them on. They look awful on him.

“Enough! Give those back!”

So long as my work isn’t hindered, then nothing else matters. Besides, simply wearing nice glasses isn’t going to magically improve my life. And Dazai looks even more comical with them on… Even more ridiculous than usual for some odd reason.

“……Glasses?”

Glasses. The photos of the victims. Their faces. The monitoring equipment. The hotel they stayed in—

“Something the matter, Kunikida?”

The missing people all left the hotel of their own accord, and they all stayed in Yokohama alone. So that means the security footage of everyone entering and leaving the hotel is…

“Come on, Dazai. We’re leaving.”

I snatch my glasses and put them back on.

“I figured out who the kidnapper is.”

***

The ocean breeze soars past the Port of Yokohama. Dazai and I stand on the levee at the mouth by the shore. I gaze into the sky. The sun is already high, peeking through the sea of clouds and shining onto us. I do not feel as fine as the weather, however. A familiar taxi stops before me.

“Detective Kunikida! Please get in.”

A familiar cabdriver waves me over, and we waste no time climbing in. “I apologize for the sudden call.”

“Oh, don’t be. I would go through fire and water for you and the agency, Detective! So are you in a hurry to get somewhere? Don’t you worry! The speed limit means nothing to me!”

“It should. Anyway, do you remember the missing-persons case we spoke of last evening? Well, I figured out who the kidnapper is.”

“What?! I saw the news about the abandoned hospital. I feel so sorry for those poor victims… So we’re going to arrest the kidnapper, yes? Roger that! We have to hurry, though, or he’ll get away. So where is this perpetrator?”

“Right here.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the kidnapper, and inside this taxi is where the kidnappings have been taking place.”

“Uh… I don’t think I’m following you, Detective. What are you saying?”

“I thought, ‘Who would be able to kidnap someone in this city without anyone noticing? Where in Yokohama would a victim be comfortable alone with a complete stranger?’ The answer is here. You used sleeping gas on the victims, then kidnapped them. While wearing a gas mask yourself, of course.”

“Wait… No, no, no. Hold on. I’m pretty sure the investigation indicated that the victims all left of their own accord, by themselves, and mysteriously disappeared. I heard there were no records of them ever getting into any vehicle or going inside any building. If all the victims got into this taxi, then wouldn’t there be a record of a phone call or of them hailing a cab?”

“Yes, there would be. And that’s why there is no doubt in my mind that every victim got into this taxi. Of course, the city police weren’t able to find any records no matter how hard they looked. Why? Because they were looking at the wrong date. The victims didn’t get in this taxi on the day they went missing.”

“What… What are you trying to say?”

“Okay, Kunikida, we’re not going to get anywhere trying to answer each and every one of his questions. Let me explain exactly what happened,” Dazai chimes in. “Driver, you were searching for certain customers during your daily work shift. The conditions for a target were simple: They had to be in Yokohama alone and heading to their hotel, they had to be wearing something that partially covered their face such as a hat, glasses, or sunglasses, and they had to be around the same height as you. You have a small frame, which is why women would be viable candidates as long as they met those few requirements. All of this would make it appear as if you had no relation to the victim, and you could disrupt the investigation.”

“I… I’m afraid I don’t follow. I—”

“Yes, yes. Let me finish first, okay? You’re a taxi driver who operates in the area. Those requirements may be strict, but you’d be able to find someone who matched them in two, three days tops. Then, when just the right person happened to show up, you used sleeping gas on them just like Kunikida mentioned. After that, you went to a secret hideout, held the victims prisoner there, and stole their clothes and belongings. That’s why the victims at the abandoned hospital were in their underwear. Now this is where you really begin to shine.” Dazai claps his hands giddily before continuing. “Next, you dressed in the victim’s clothing and disguised yourself as them. After that, it’s just as you told us last night. All you have to do is put on a little makeup, stuff your cheeks and clothing a bit, and you’re someone else. Of course, you must have religiously practiced and chosen only people you were confident you could pull off, though. Plus, you weren’t trying to deceive people, only video footage. You went to the hotel the victims planned to stay at and purposely made sure the security cameras saw you.”

I think back to the footage I viewed during the investigation. In hindsight, there was an unnaturally high rate of people with their face covered—six in glasses and two in sunglasses. The remaining three had either a hat or long hair, leaving only a portion of their face exposed to the security cameras. This was possible only because he selected victims wearing specific clothing that would be easy to emulate.

“The rest is simple. You leave the victims’ belongings in the hotel room and check out the next morning in broad daylight. By leaving a record of what appears to be the victim entering, checking in, and exiting the hotel, the police would stubbornly focus on investigating what happened to the victim after they left. Naturally, they didn’t find anything, though, since you undoubtedly know Yokohama inside and out. At the very least, you knew where you would be recorded and where you could escape to avoid any security cameras. That’s why the more we investigated, the more it appeared as if the victims intentionally spirited themselves away while making sure there would be no records of it.”

“This is absurd. This hypothetical, purely speculative situation you’re proposing is—is nothing without…without evidence. That’s right—you’ve got no evidence to support your claim.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. You would have been more than able to conduct Miss Sasaki’s kidnapping on your own as well,” I continue explaining from where Dazai left off. “Abducting Miss Sasaki after she passed out at the station must have been your easiest job yet. I’ll bet you felt like the luckiest man alive. People usually call an ambulance if they see somebody suddenly faint, but it takes time for the ambulances to arrive from the hospital. But there’s always a taxi waiting in front of the station for passengers, and luckily for Miss Sasaki, a Good Samaritan happened to be present to save her. This well-intentioned individual wanted to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible, so he decided to have a taxi take her. That’s when you took her away, bold as brass, except you didn’t take her to the hospital like you were supposed to.”

“I…”

The driver sounds as if he wants to say something, but he doesn’t speak another word. I can’t see his expression clearly from where we’re sitting, either. I shift my gaze to the interior of the car, where I find a few small white particles in one of the crevices. I pinch what I can with my fingertips.

“If you’re going to turn yourself in, you should probably do it quickly. It won’t be long until we have evidence. I’m sure you cleaned the inside of this car, but there’s still some residue from the gas. A lab analysis will confirm it in no time.”

“I… I have no idea where that came from. It must have been from one of my customers. That doesn’t count as evidence.”

The driver barely manages to stammer out the words. Nevertheless, he admitted his guilt the moment he started making excuses.

“Evidence isn’t even necessary to prove you’re the only one who could have done it.” I begin to lay out the basis of the argument. “The only way to use the trick Dazai mentioned would be to get the victims into a taxi, and you had two of the victims in your vehicle, which is no different from admitting you gave rides to the other nine.”

“That isn’t physical evidence, Detective Kunikida,” the driver plainly states while avoiding eye contact. “Everything you’ve presented has been circumstantial evidence. It’s not as if you found a weapon in my house or have video evidence of me committing a crime. Sure, you could file charges, but I wouldn’t be convicted.”

It’s my turn to fall silent. He’s right. We would need physical evidence to connect him to the victims: blood, fingerprints, video recordings, a confession with information only the criminal would know…

We don’t have the necessary hard evidence. In fact, our case could be dismissed due to a lack of probable cause as things stand now. From the way the driver’s talking, it sounds like he made sure to dispose of all the physical evidence. He’s cleverer than I thought. What’s my next move?

But what he says next completely disproves my assumptions.

“Detective Kunikida… Let’s make a deal. If you accept my conditions, I will turn myself in.”

“What?”

“I would like the Armed Detective Agency to protect me and guarantee my safety in return for my confession. I request only seventy-two hours of your time until I receive witness protection following the prosecutorial investigation.”

“A witness protection deal? What are you talking about?”

“There’s no time… I’m going to be killed. They’re going to kill me.”

“Wait. I’m not following. Tell me step-by-step what’s going on. Who’s going to kill you? And for what?!”

“I wish I never did business with that lot… I should have never tried to get into the organ-trafficking business alone! And now I’ve made them angry! This is bad… This is really bad. I can’t get in touch with any of the buyers, either. They’ve cut me loose! But why? They were never supposed to find out… But they’re already onto me. And they’re getting closer…”

“I see. So that’s what’s going on here.” Dazai places a hand on his chin and nods.

“Dazai, what’s going on?! What is he rambling about?!”

“It’s exactly how it sounds. He was selling the victims to an organ- trafficking syndicate, but the month’s supply rose too high relative to demand. Naturally, this led to a drop in prices, throwing the market into confusion. Imagine a private one-man business suddenly entering a supply market more or less controlled by a large corporation. How would the large corporation feel?”

“They would get mad, I guess?”

“It would be healthy competition if these were normal, legal companies. But these organ-trafficking businesses are run by underground groups who profit off blood and violence. Causing trouble on their turf would only anger—”

The next moment, the car is suddenly hit, then hit again so hard its wheels leave the ground. A high-pitched echo follows. The taxi’s right side lifts into the air as the windows shatter along with the sound of gunshots.

“We’re under fire! Get down!” I yell out.

The car rocks back and forth as if being pummeled with a hammer, and shards of glass rain down inside.

“It’s them! H-help, help me… I don’t wanna die!”

“Hey! Wait!”

The driver opens the car door before bolting in the opposite direction of the gunfire.

“Kunikida, we have to catch him before the enemy does, or we’ll never know what really happened! We can’t let him escape or turn up dead in a grove somewhere!” Dazai shouts, keeping his head down. That’s easier said than done, though! “Okay, I’ll go after the driver! You distract the enemies!”

“Dazai, wait! It’s too dangerous to go alone!”

Dazai darts out of the car without even listening to my warning. I can’t allow a rookie to go off on his own during his first shoot-out. We don’t have any other options, though. I curse to myself while getting a look at the enemy. Three men stand dressed in black suits and black sunglasses, equipped with submachine guns smuggled in from abroad via the black market. Judging from their attire, their skills, and their ruthless willingness to suddenly turn the place into a war zone, it’s clear who they are…

“Damn it! This couldn’t be any worse… It’s the Port Mafia!”

The Port Mafia is an underground organization that uses the Port of Yokohama as their base of operations. They’re the cruelest, most coldhearted criminal syndicate in the city, willing to follow any orders from their boss and crush all who oppose them. The three men here are from that organization. The longer this goes on, the more they have the advantage.

“The Matchless Poet: Stun Grenade!”

I record the word in my notebook before tearing it out. The sheet of paper twists into a grenade the size of my fist. Aiming at the group, I hurl the grenade out the broken window. Stun grenades are nonlethal sonic weapons used to temporarily disorient an enemy’s senses. It blows up right in front of them, emitting a light so bright and creating an explosion so thunderous that it could give a sick man a heart attack. They fall to their knees while covering their temples, perhaps completely taken by surprise at being countered with a flashbang. I use this momentary distraction to leap out of the taxi and charge the enemies. I elbow the man closest to me in the neck, knocking him to the ground. I keep my elbow out and charge the next criminal, following up with a high kick to the face. The last armed man tries to hit me with his gun, but I swerve to the side, evading the strike. As he staggers off-balance, I grab his wrist and twist while pulling inside. Then I throw him into the air with a four- corner throw. The Mafia member goes flying and lands cranium first, immediately losing consciousness.

“Good grief.”

After making sure they’re all out, I walk back to the taxi.

I really hope Dazai’s all right…

Just then, I suddenly sense an ever-increasing thirst for blood coming from behind. Something flies past my side before I can even turn around. The black torrent runs through right where I was just standing, hitting the taxi and cutting right through it, too. As the vehicle completely splits in half, springs and shafts take to the air, scattering every which way. Without even a moment to let my surprise sink in, I kick off the ground to evade. The nearby sign and handrails are finely sliced into pieces. After rolling across the ground and looking back, I see a small-framed man clad in black in the distance.

“Cough, cough…”

That must be the source of the bloodlust.

“Cough… I came thinking this was going to be an easy side job. I wasn’t expecting to run into someone skilled enough to neutralize three men in the blink of an eye. I’m impressed. Now let’s see how you fare against Rashomon.”

With no weapon in hand, the young man simply walks toward me with his back hunched, occasionally coughing. However, the malice oozing from his body soon transforms into a silent but furious storm.

A man short of stature dressed in a black overcoat, with the skill to control a black torrent—the Port Mafia’s Hellhound.

“You… You’re Ryuunosuke Akutagawa from the Port Mafia, aren’t you?”

“The one and only. I was sent here by the boss to dispose of the fool who trespassed on our turf. Where is he?”

“He’s not here. He ran away with his tail tucked between his legs.”

I point in the direction the driver ran, but my eyes remain locked on Akutagawa. I don’t look away—not even for a second. This man is the worst of the worst. Even the toughest criminals run away in tears when they hear Akutagawa’s despicable name. The Black-Fanged Hellhound, the Skill User of Destruction and Disaster, the Apostle of Calamity and Despair: There are too many aliases to count. This is my first time actually meeting him, but judging by what he did to the taxi, he’s even more dangerous than the rumors made him out to be.

So what’s my next move? It’s simple. His target is the kidnapper, and there’s no reason for me to risk my life to protect a kidnapper against someone this dangerous. All I need to do is back off.

“He’s a witness. I cannot allow you to kill him until he tells us where the other missing people are. If you want to go after him, you’re going to have to get past me first.”

“You’re willing to risk your life for a murderer? Just as I expected.”

Damn it. I can’t believe how stupid I can be. But as a member of the Armed Detective Agency, I cannot allow our witness to be helplessly killed by this scumbag.

Do what must be done. I mentally recite the phrase from my notebook. Akutagawa’s black overcoat wriggles. It’s as if a thousand specters gathered and meshed, taking form. It’s no longer a coat; part of it transforms into a claw, while another part begins to take the shape of a piercing fang.

“Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, the Port Mafia’s attack dog.”

“Doppo Kunikida, Armed Detective Agency.”

Akutagawa launches a shadowy blade in one explosive motion. It disperses into a black rain, heading right in my direction. I jump to the side. A few dark blades pierce my shirt while the others stab the wall behind me, leaving numerous holes. I jot down a word in my notebook and tear out the sheet before he can draw his blade to attack. The piece of paper instantly transforms into a wire gun. Squeezing the trigger, I shoot the hook…but moments before the iron-penetrating hook reaches him, it’s deflected by an invisible wall.

“What…?!”

I saw no signs of him moving to defend. Is this another one of his skills? Before I can even reel in my airborne hook, part of Akutagawa’s coat transforms into a shadowy beast. With a roar, it swings its head. It’s quick!

I twist away to dodge, but its fangs tear into my left shoulder. Blood spurts out of the wound, but I don’t have time to stop the bleeding. I step back while evading the beast’s relentless fangs. I have no chance to counter, let alone even get near the thing!

“Is running away the only thing you know how to do? You’re putting me to sleep,” he scoffs, still standing upright. A cold bead of sweat runs down my cheek. He’s strong.

Akutagawa speedily shoots his lethal shadowy blade at me from only a few feet away, giving me no chance to do anything other than dodge. To make matters worse, any projectile I throw at him is easily knocked aside. Even if I do hit him, he’s being protected by that mysterious force field. He has no openings.

I dodge the flurry of attacks until I land on a paved road, where a sudden unidentifiable chill eerily shoots down my spine.

A blade thrusts up from the pavement before shooting back into the air like a fountain of spears.

He was getting me to focus on the aerial attacks while he used another blade to pierce the ground! I try to turn my body and jump away, but the ground is uneven, and I’m too late. The pitch-black blade penetrates my side and exits through my back.

“Gah…!”

My vision blurs from the excruciating pain, and I helplessly fall to my knees. This isn’t good. The next attack is coming. If I stop moving for even a second, I’m dead…but there’s nothing I can do. The black fabric of Rashomon wraps around my neck, lifting me off the ground. It bends like a serpent’s neck, then catapults me into the nearby wall.

“Pathetic. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much from a detective agency that works for chump change. Don’t worry. It’ll all be over when I snap your head off.”

The black fabric tightens around my neck. I start to see red.

“There’s always someone—someone who wants…to get in the way of my work!”

As Akutagawa’s skill strangles me, I shoot my wire gun. My target isn’t Akutagawa, though. The airborne iron wire’s hook directly hits the water pipe running up the building next to him, showering him with water.

“What…?!”

He raises his arm to block, but the high-pressure stream fully drenches him and the ground around him.

“Fool. Do you really think a little water is going to scare me?”

I raise another sheet of paper in my left hand into the air with something else I wrote down while making the wire gun.

“The Matchless Poet: Stun Gun!”

I instantly turn on the handheld high-voltage stun gun before tossing it into the puddle of water. A flash of light shoots out, and sparks fly.

“Nnng—gaaah?!”

Using the water as a conductor, the submerged stun gun emits beams of violet and white light. A purple flash of lightning jolts through Akutagawa’s wet body like a boa constrictor wrapping around its prey. The flash shines as bright as the sun before eventually disappearing along with the hiss of steam and the crack of the ground splitting under it. Rashomon’s grip around my neck loosens, and I land on the pavement below. As I cradle my injured neck and side, I glare at Akutagawa. He’s on his knees as steam and white smoke rise from his body.

“Heh-heh… Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

Akutagawa’s shoulders shake as he laughs. He can still move after taking a shock like that?

“Looks like I was wrong about the Armed Detective Agency. Heh. This is wonderful. Truly wonderful.”

“…Come at me if you want to keep going. I still have plenty more paper left.” I force myself to my feet, then get back into stance with the wire gun.

“By all means, I would love the opportunity to see whether you have what it takes to kill me, but it seems we have guests.”

I follow Akutagawa’s gaze and see the city police approach with their sirens blazing. Somebody must have reported the gunshots.

“A pathetic traitor won’t be able to hide for long before we hunt him down. I will withdraw for today. We’ll continue this soon.” He coughs and turns his back to me. He leaves just like that, with the same nonchalance as if he was going home after a walk. Honestly speaking, continuing to fight and withdrawing probably aren’t too different from his point of view.

“I’d rather you not come back…”

I fall to my knees while watching him walk away. Akutagawa from the Port Mafia is just as— No, he’s even fiercer than the rumors say. No thanks on the rematch. For now, I just want to go home and sleep like the dead.

***

Unfortunately, this is no time for a nap. After a short break, I return to the agency to report what happened. In the company’s infirmary, I have my stomach wound temporarily patched up, then head to the office. That’s where I find Dazai sipping on some tea as if he was relaxing after a hard day’s work.

“Dazai, you caught the taxi driver, right?”

“Of course. I tied him right up and handed him off to the police. He was actually thrilled that the Mafia wouldn’t be able to assassinate him anymore.” I’m relieved. It appears Dazai isn’t as stupid as I originally thought. I was almost worried that he knew it was the Mafia attacking us and used chasing the kidnapper as an excuse to escape. Nevertheless, everything ended up working out, so I guess it was just a groundless fear.

“It looks like the taxi driver will be charged for the series of kidnappings. Case closed.”

I worked my fingers to the bone on this case, and in return, I get paid nothing. The military police will toss us a letter of thanks and a small gift as an expression of their gratitude, and that will be the end of it. Good grief.

“I don’t feel like working anymore. Let’s get today’s tasks over with and go out for a drink.”

“Your treat?” Dazai asks, beaming with joy.

“You’re a real piece of work. I’ll pay, but you better work your ass off tomorrow.”

I return to my desk and take care of my remaining duties. I skim through some documents that are being passed around, then make a few business calls. After that, I start recording the case’s details until inadvertently glancing at my work computer and noticing I got an e-mail. Paying little attention, I begin to follow the sentences with my eyes. After finishing the e- mail, I start over from the beginning.

“Dazai.”

The moment I call for him is the moment I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

“We’ll have to take a rain check on those drinks. We’ve got work to do.” “Whaaat? But I was all ready to drink. There’s a hole in my stomach shaped exactly like a cup of sake.”

“We got a job offer…from the anonymous client who lured us into the abandoned hospital.”

My throat is dry, and my tongue is stuck in place. The next words don’t want to come out.

“It’s a request to defuse a bomb. If we don’t find and defuse it by sundown tomorrow, over one hundred people will die.”

***

#Bungo Stray Dogs #Bungou Stray Dogs #BSD #Bungo Stray Dogs Light Novels #Light Novel #Light Novel Volume 1 #Osamu Dazai's Entrance Exam #Armed Detective Agency #Port Mafia #Kafka Asagiri #Sango Harukawa

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catsvrsdogscatswin · 2 years

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Hellsing Commentary 8 Notes

This commentary is done by Taliesin Jaffe, the voice director and lead script adapter of Hellsing, and Crispin Freeman, the voice of Alucard. Direct quotes may vary in accuracy, as these are written down from audio without transcripts. I also didn't write down every joke or piece of trivia because I feel like people who watch the commentaries should get to have some nice surprises for stuff that isn't covered here.

-Taliesin notes that there's a lot of role-reversal in OVA 8. "Poor Anderson has to be the protagonist for, like, thirty minutes."

-Crispin is envious of the microphones Maxwell is using to broadcast.

-According to Crispin, the Vatican is flying American helicopters. "I mean, those look like Hueys to me." Taliesin agrees and says "They know quality and I think they'd feel a little awkward buying from the Israelis at this point."

-Upon commenting on a de-aged Walter, Crispin asks if he and the Captain "are a couple now?" Taliesin replies "That I imagine is implied. Well, that's what the internet told me. I went to this place called 4chan, and there's tons of manga pages of the two of them doing all sorts of terrible things."

-Taliesin's "half-assed" explanation for why Maxwell wants everyone in London dead is "Way back in the 1950s, Japan created a fantasy Europe in their manga, where...people lived in harmony and flowers were beautiful -in this fantasy Europe, I imagine, uh, they imagine that the- the separation of the church, when King Henry decided that he was going to have some divorces, um, sort've left a deeper scar, perhaps, in the actual Vatican than maybe it had. So this is, perhaps, the Vatican coming back to finally- the equivalent of England coming back to deal with the colonies once and for all, where we're finally weak enough that they can come back and claim the east coast. They're coming back in to, uh, remind England that they are Catholic."

-Crispin calls the Iscariot branch "very sort've Last Temptation of Christ, where Judas is the one who was the one who's willing to...take the black mark, for Jesus. How could Jesus become the savior if he was not sacrificed? and Judas is the one who said- eh, agreed to it. That's sort of the spin The Last Temptation of Christ puts on the whole story, that Judas is not evil, that in fact Judas is the one who made the necessary sacrifice, who's allowed to paint himself as the villain, in order to fulfill Jesus's savior."

-Taliesin has a big phobia of ghost ships and fish.

-Taliesin and Crispin talk about the three sides facing off, and when Crispin asks what he sees it as, Taliesin replies "Well, its- it's different attitudes towards the path to enlightenment, at this point. He's (the Major) going towards sacrifice, yeah, Max is pushing towards sacrificial magic, which the Nazis were really into, the whole theory that if you just- you just -enough bloodletting and you can get anywhere...It's the leech theory, it's one of the most interesting and ridiculous, uh, interpretations of the Ouroboros and the Bird of Hermes, and how sacrificial magic works. And then you've got the Catholics, who are not really- this is the interesting thing, is Maxwell is no longer really- Maxwell is going in for this power grab...Maxwell just sort've wants, uh, he's trying to grab power, and he's searching for his enlightenment through material gain. And...and Integra at this point, is just fighting for peace at this point. She is just trying to maintain her home. There's so little of them left, and all they have is just themselves, and they are sitting just for their own self-preservation. And its sort've the- I don't quite want to call it Buddhist, 'cause that's not quite right. But she's just trying to level the playing field at this point. And then we release the dragon, and once the dragon is there then we have St. George and the dragon for the rest of the episode."

-Taliesin also talks about the protagonist/antagonist roles in OVA 8, "The antagonist is imposing his will upon the story. That's your whole Act 2, is the antagonist saying 'I have a series of thoughts about the universe, and I am now going to impose them onto the universe. I am not reacting, I am to be reacted-to.' And your protagonist is your Act 3 character, and he's got a set of theories about the universe, of morals, o-or some sort of metaphor that he lives by, and he's going to live by it and see how that can affect what's going on. So he is, 'How do I react from the place that I believe towards what's going on, and how does that affect it?' So suddenly you're (Crispin/Alucard) the opposing force, and Anderson -who has now kinda abandoned the Catholics at this point, 'cause Maxwell has turned from the mission, his (Anderson's) imposed theory of the universe- now has to face you and has to react to your- to what you're doing to London."

-Alucard calling himself a dragon was "not a mistake," according to Taliesin: they wanted to paint Anderson "very uncomfortably, as Saint George -coming in to slay chaos, and slay the prime evil, and bring order back to the city. But he fails -as we'll all see- and he, he succumbs to his weaker instincts. He's a failed protagonist, which is why in the next episode we get to switch back- you have that moment, actually, which we will come to, where you go 'You're doing it wrong.'"

-Crispin questions whether or not Alucard actually ate horses when the cavalry familiars emerge.

-Crispin also comments on how "-it is interesting, because, you know, as we go later in this episode, Alucard keeps saying he's the dragon, and he's fighting this Christian knight, which is hilarious because historically Dracula was the Christian knight fighting the Sultan, he was fighting the forces of invading Islam, so it's sort of curious that he's now taken this demonic role."

-When discussing the waves of familiars engulfing the various fighters of London, Crispin brings up how awe-inspiring it is. "Where you talk about trying to make a piece of artwork that holds you in what James Joyce would call "aesthetic arrest," where the piece of artwork is so amazing you just go (gasp), and you just are sort of in this static place of aesthetic arrest. And many times that's accomplished through immense beauty, something so beautiful that you just look at it and you don't want it, or you don't dislike it, you just (gasp), you know? ...But the other way to do it, not beauty, is also what's called the sublime. And the sublime is when you're dealt with, you're dealing with something that's so huge, that's so powerful, that's so ego-destroying, that it obliterates your sense of yourself as an individual person, and you just kinda go- it's almost cosmic dread. There's this sort of awe, in the face of humongous power, or humongous destruction, or cosmic scale of things, that obliterates your personal ego, and you just go (extended gasp)...and sometimes in watching this, I go, 'I get it. They're trying to go for that notion of -we're just going to overwhelm you with this scale of destruction.' ...You're trying to go for that sense of sort of aesthetic arrest from this mass destruction."

-Taliesin agrees with Crispin and quotes a musician that "Beauty is the first glimpse of horror that we are just about able to bear."

-Taliesin calls Dracula "a much softer character" than Alucard and intends to reel in some of the voice effects on Crispin while he's in the armor.

-Taliesin has a friend who is an alchemist that he consulted with in regard to the Ripley Scroll.

-Apparently, Taliesin's Darby Bible wore out due to all the times he had to consult it when writing Hellsing.

-Anderson encouraging Alucard to hurry and come at him after his arm is partially shot off was meant to be a callback to Alucard encouraging Luke in OVA 2, "to really push the role-reversal."

-During the recording of Alucard and Anderson's fight, Taliesin and Crispin talked a lot about how Alucard was "trying to press a pre-recorded script on him, of how this is supposed to go."

-Taliesin builds on that during the commentary, saying "This is my theory: this is the script you (Alucard/Crispin) performed upon the Sultan, and then hundreds of years later, it just keeps having to be repeated -as, as the dead must. The whole point of being dead -and again, this is my wild speculations- is that you become- is that nothing new ever happens. And so this is very much, the script has to run its course, and that's sort of where your power comes from, is that this cycle of defeat and rebirth, and defeat and rebirth, and defeat and rebirth...which, in theory, is the whole point of enlightenment, is the Bird of Hermes, the Ouroboros, is the snake devouring its own tail." Crispin asks if the cycling is for Alucard's benefit or for other's, and Taliesin answers that "Alucard is wise enough to know that all is one and I think he's- on a certain level reached a particular type of enlightenment. And I think there's a part of him that understands that this is just circular and there is no beginning and there is no end, there is only the now."

-During the fight with Anderson, Crispin comments that Alucard eventually has the revelation that he's a coward, that he "admires those who are trying to defeat him, uh, he's got more respect for them than he does for himself. And it seems- it's almost like he wants their humanity to prove to him, he- he likes being defeated by those who have more humanity than he does. I wonder if it solves an argument for him in his head...Yeah, he wants to be the most- uh, the biggest dragon possible, because if he can be that powerful and still defeated by a human, then the human- the way of being human wins, and he'll be satisfied."

-Taliesin agrees with Crispin's assessment of Alucard's motivations and says "It is a vindication of the human soul. Which is where Anderson fucks everything up. (laughs) By rejecting humanity despite- supposing to be the champion of humanity while rejecting humanity, which...you can't do. It's actually- my god, I think we've finally hit a moral point in this show. Eight episodes in and we finally hit a moral point! My god! I think we've all learned something, finally!"

-On the topic of the Major saluting Iscariot and saying that they're struggling towards enlightenment together, Crispin states that "The philosophical core of what's going on here, is the idea that- it's a common trope in many- in much of storytelling that the difference between the hero and the villain, or the protagonist and antagonist, is that they're both two sides of the same coin. What's the difference between Batman and the Joker except that one's on our side and one isn't? Um...and so for him to say that everyone here is basically trying to go towards some sort of enlightenment, and whether you wanna do that through, uh, the paradigm of Christianity, whether you wanna do that through the paradigm of Nazism, or whether you wanna do that through the individual of Alucard, which I assume implies the paradigm of...his Cthulhu nature and everything else- that we're all gonna do this, not through beauty, but through the sublime. We're gonna do this through some sort of ego-obliteration."

-Taliesin agrees and says "I was trying to give Max (the Major) the same -and again in my, in the wonderful occult tomes that I have- the fundamental flaw in the occult philosophy of Nazism, which the Major is trying to point out, he's- I put the philosophy out there so we could see the fundamental flaw in it, which is- the theory being that the struggle is what its all about. And that enlightenment is that...is that birth is the endzone, if that makes sense. Coming at it from a more traditional occult sense, is that you have this very violent act, which gives birth to life, but the mistake that's made there is that the violent act is the end, is that that's where it ends, is that this is what we're all trying to do: create as much violence as possible so that we're all striving for the same thing...but that's not where enlightenment lies, because violence by itself is a...act of- the denial of higher powers of the universe. Violence by its very own nature, while sometimes it's something in nature and something that moves, it is by its very act, separating. It's not unifying, the act of imposing violence upon another person is self-mutilation in the eyes of an enlightened creature. And if you deny that that's self-mutilation, that you're trying to cut as much of yourself off as possible so that you have nothing left to think about other than you own enlightenment, that's false enlightenment."

-On a similar vein with the Bird of Hermes, Taliesin also talks about how "The Bird of Hermes is not consuming himself because he's trying to, you know, because he's trying to enact enough violence that he's got nothing left to think about, its- the metaphor is deeper than that. Its- he's consuming himself just because that much of himself is...uh, maintains growth, it's the passage of time that is the consumption of the wings, or the consumption of the snake (in the Ouroboros symbol). The head is not- the head is just perspective. The head is just the here and now, and it's to show you where the illusion lies. The head is an illusion. The Ouroboros is a circle, and the only reason the head is there is you can't see the circle when you're in it."

-Crispin also talks about "I think a lot of people look at Alucard and think he's so powerful, and he's not afraid of anything, but in fact, it is those who are most insecure who go for this kind of power. Those who are secure never need this kind of power over others. And that's, I think, what Alucard has probably learned over all these centuries he's existed, which is 'Oh my god, I went through- for all this power because I'm insecure. I would love it if a secure human would defeat me.'" Taliesin agrees with Crispin and says that that might be one of the reasons Alucard created Seras, "because she's such a wonderful mirror of his own internal insecurities, of her denial of self and her fear. And it's a way that he can project that onto someone else."

-Crispin explains that he didn't know about Seras's backstory until Ultimate, and says that she and Dracula share the same "kind of internal, emotional wound...and the two of them are sort of working from the same 'I was hurt, I feel powerless, and so a next step better than powerlessness is revenge, and anger. And so I'm gonna live in that place.' But I think, after spending a couple of centuries living in a place of anger and revenge, you realize there's more. And I think this...the 'sickness in his heart' is this idea that he's wounded. But he's not, he's as wounded as he wants to be." Taliesin brings up how that relates to Dracula's struggle for Mina's romantic feelings, and Crispin agrees, "Right, somehow Mina's gonna solve the problem, somehow something external is gonna solve the problem...So now of course the frustration that Alucard I think probably has, is that instead of having a human being who could defeat him, he now has a titan- so now we have two titans fighting, and that's gonna go on forever. It cannot- it does not resolve the emotional, uh, insecurity within Alucard. It does not resolve the emotional dissatisfaction within Alucard."

-Regarding Crispin's assessment of Alucard's feelings during the fight, Taliesin agrees and says "And if anything, it may bring him back, right back to that place he was when this all began, that feeling of weakness and powerlessness, which he's been running from for hundreds and hundreds of years." Crispin agrees and says "Which is probably on some level why he- it looks like he sort of gives up, at the end of this episode. That, in the middle of this he just sort've...ehh, you know, it's not like he hasn't been stabbed in the head by one of Anderson's blades before. But this time, it's like-" (Taliesin cuts in with "This is not Anderson anymore.") "-yeah, this is this other thing, and it's like, wow." Taliesin continues, adding that "This is his own denial coming right back at him."

-Taliesin has "fabulous plans" for Girlycard as of this commentary.

#Hellsing #alucard (hellsing)#alucard/alexander anderson #This is the only commentary not on YouTube rn so I tried to pull pretty much everything #Crispin really loves the philosophy of this series and it shows

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thebussynotes · 2 years

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Now I remember why I like the Billy community so much, because they give his character(one that’s largely hated) a chance and it remind me of the Hifumi Yamada community(specifically on TikTok because I’m still not fond of tumblr yet but it’s working) where they gave him a chance as well and tried to show people the good in him and how his intentions were in the right place and how silly he is…etc. But I feel more fond of the Billy community and it’s because you guys never gave up on him despite how fucking D I R T Y they did him in season 3/4 and being very inclusive with him and just being very chill about him in every way and make silly headcanons about him and delve(I hope that’s the right word) into his very complex trauma. You guys never gave up on him. It’s harder for me to find Hifumi content now in days because Hifumi was also done very dirty but their recent(I’m not sure how recent it is anymore lmao) game “DR:S(Danganronpa: Summercamp(?))”, the writers seem to make it their goal to make Hifumi more and more hated by the fandom as a whole, it pissed the Hifumi community and they have stopped(from what I know of) making Hifumi content and rightfully so if they so choose but it’s sad because many Danganronpa fans like Stranger Things fans don’t like how canon treats their favorite characters but then have the audacity to say “it’s canon that Hifumi/Billy did…(this that the third)”. Like they are both fucked by the narrative so bad and y’all refuse to acknowledge it just because they made bad decisions (Billy being an implied rascist(I don’t perceive him as racist though that line did make me feel some type of way) (Edit(5/6/23): I reread this a while back and yes he was racist for that comment, I feel like he would have unlearned it if he lived and got away from Neil(which is where his racism stemmed from in the first place)) and Hifumi making his classmates uncomfortable in some occasions and for ⚠️*spoilers for chapter three of DANAGNRONPA : Trigger Happy Havoc*⚠️ killing Taka(Kiyotaka Ishimaru)). Like there are more to their actions that meet the eye but not many acknowledge it and it’s alright if you do not like a character or if said character makes you uncomfortable, but to go off and harass the fans of said characters is fucked like at this point just shut your fucking mouth and don’t interact with the content that’s being provided to you. I hope this all made sense and I feel like I got distracted from the main point of this but in all I love the Billy community and it makes me miss the Hifumi community a lot more but it’s okay because Hifumi and Billy are now besties and no one can fucking stop me >: D I absolutely love them both and I’ll cherish them both with my heart no matter their many flaws. End of discussion.

(As they are deep into conversation)

Billy: wait, so let me get this straight… so you write about characters that are on tv…on the internet?…what the hells the internet? And what’s the point of writing about those characters if they aren’t real?… that sounds unreal…

Hifumi : *thinks hardly for a minute before responding* I guess I’m gonna have to give you a big lecture on this history of the internet and fanfiction and Princess Piggles of course! Buckle in it’s gonna be a wild ride!

Billy : sure, talk as much as you want Dick Tip*points at his ahoge*

Hifumi : Okay and please don’t ever call me that again! Hmph! *starts talking about the internet for a long while*

*they are both enjoying each other’s company and discovering a lot of things together considering their time period difference*

///notes on the picture///

*(Hifumi) talking about his interests with passion(as he should >:3)*

*(Billy) is impressed and intrigued by what he’s saying actually and is actively listening to him but doesn’t know(or in this case understand) wtf he’s talking about*

(and no he’s not talking he just has his mouth open because he’s been fed so much information all at once and he doesn’t know wtf to say because Hifumi just keeps talking XD)

#billy hargrove #love the Billy Hargrove fandom/community #hifumi yamada #love the Hifumi Yamada fandom/community #fuck the duffers #fuck the Danganronpa writers #billy hargrove deserved better #Hifumi Yamada deserves better #leave these boys at peace and leave their fans alone they aren’t doing anything to you

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angeldiaries777 · 7 months

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My random thoughts recently

My entire fyp is just people with septum piercings and bleach fried hair

MAKE IT STOPPP

is this what I attract online???

Like I justify all of this but I don’t claim mental illness anymore because I am NOT in good company !!! people are idiots. We know this anyway

it’s been this way for a while but I think listening to people on the internet constantly talk about their mental illness just made me shutup about mine because I don’t want being this mentally tortured aura around me anymore. I’ve accepted it as just “who I am” for far too long. I’ve been in the avoid every trigger ever phase for a long time and that’s the thing is I tried to make a timeline but every memory is in a vault and I can’t access it unless im reminded which is also a dilemma because like you guys already know minimalism is my new thing so I basically have no sentimental items left because I was being Angsty and wanted to “start over” why does the teenage brain work the way that it does? Okay regardless I just want to address my past pain and every single little thing that I’ve done to myself or that has happened to me the past two years I just want a record of and then I want to move on. Because I’ve tried to move on and moved on from moving on. But like I’m past empty that I’m just permanently mentally exhausted and everything is a blur. Like I’m so lost on what to do next to “fix everything” I just don’t want to backtrack on progress just to feel something. the sheer amount of progress I’ve made the past few months alone is insane and I guess I’m proud of myself but I’m still not doing enough. I’ve been really sick lately so I’ve had that excuse but I’m getting better so soon I just want to check a bunch of things off of all my lists and just prove to myself that I am still here and that I can actually live in the world and not hate everyone and everything all the time. I’m sure a lot of people my age feel this way but atleast they have school to occupy them I’ve gone through an unfathomable about mentally and with myself. Yeah I’m going to stop typing now because if I continue this would never end all of my more long format posts are just my an endless stream of thoughts conscious and subconscious.

I love you

#angeldiaries777

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penisaswordus · 8 months

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The Stand Up Comedy Hour

A handful of m&ms seem like enough until you’re done with them. Candy fucks with your brain. You want to do as much candy as you can all the time. Chocoholism is real. It’s a sugar high.

I like the concept of having sex until I think about the effort it takes me to talk to people. The sex part is easy, but making it seem like I know what I’m doing isn’t. There isn’t a shirt you can wear to declare your sexual capability, despite some questionable attempts I’ve seen. There’s no secret code.

Waking up early is such a scam. No one who isn’t a farmer needs to be up before sunrise, and even then, wait a bit. We’re actually a lot happier and more productive if we start the day with leisure time instead of stress.

I spend most of my day thinking about my first meal. That’s the joy of intermittent fasting. I don’t feel super hungry all day or anything, I just have nothing else going for me.

What happened to TV? Didn’t there use to be blocks of shows to look forward to? And that went on for decades? And now we have on demand and it’s too much. Anything good I just watch in one sitting and then have to wait months for something new.

There needs to be more hypemen for fiction books. I have no idea what books are coming out and I don’t know where to look. I’m not going to pop into book stores to check, so they should really have influencers or someone talking about books. Self help books are the only ones that get sold like a commodity, when fantasy and fiction are just as valuable to our minds.

Why am I constantly in a fight with my own mind about what to do with my body? I want to lose weight because I’ve done it before and it felt good, but I also want to get high and eat m&ms and gummies while playing Skyrim on godmode and somehow the latter option makes a very convincing argument nightly. Like, I’m not happy about it, even in the midst of it usually, but it’s like that charismatic sociopath that talks people into going along with his crimes. This won’t end well! No, but we’re having fun aren’t we!? I guess.

I don’t think it’s fair to try to date someone else when you hate yourself or your life. What can you bring to a conversation? I really hated getting up today. Work was miserable. I have no passion for anything I used to enjoy, and I look at my body with disgust. So how are you doing? Oh that sounds like the actions of a functional person. Can’t relate. Can we have sex now?

I let little things ruin my life instead of just dealing with them. My car is coming due for an oil change and instead of just getting it over with, I spend night and day dreading doing it. Doctors appointments are the same thing. I can’t enjoy myself because I know I have to talk to someone, take some time out of my day to ask them to do a service, and then pay them. Just a normal interaction that everyone has to do, and I want to give up on life instead.

Gum is tricky. I like it, and I like the flavor, but I can’t chew it without wanting to eat something for real. It’s a tease. I wanted to use it in place of snacking, but I think it just upped my urge to snack by reminding me how good sweets taste. It can also turn into a bad flavor after a while, which again, only pushes me toward putting something better in my mouth. So there’s no good situation for me to chew gum.

The lack of public space to just exist in is a bit jarring. If you don’t drink regularly, or want to just stand around at a park, what else is there? It’s all businesses now, and no loitering. When did living become loitering? This has been going on a long time, because as a kid I remember big box stores were the most interesting place I could go to hang out. Once the internet came along to show me all the new stuff that was being sold, even those stores lost my interest. What’s left? A sectioned off piece of land with some trees and grass. It’s not just the lack of social spaces, the urgency I feel anytime I’m around crowds is also a big deterrent. I don’t want to hang out and meet people, I want to get in and out like a spy on a secret mission behind enemy lines.

Garfield started in the 70s. He was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid because he was grumpy and that’s my favorite type of character. But I read his 90s strips. Going back to the beginning, you learn some new stuff. It’s bizarre. Garfield loves mondays. Odie belongs to some guy named Lyman. Jon sexually assaults Liz by forcefully kissing her against her will at a vet appointment. Ah, humor. Yes.

Having kids is weird. Like, they're such a pain in the ass, but occasionally, they also cost a lot of money. I don’t want to make them feel unloved, but it’s so much easier to complain about them then to brag about how they made clean cuts when they used the scissors to cut grapes in half and toss them all over the floor. I don’t have unreasonable expectations of them, and I’m proud of them for doing just about anything, but where they really excel is at being loud and inconsiderate. Also now I have to keep living or else they get raised by their mother.

I’m tired of hearing about how the government is failing and the country is going to collapse. I’m not going to be the person who fixes it. Beyond voting, I don’t have any actual power at all. I’m just along for the ride. It’s too much negativity for my brain. I don’t want to be judged for blocking it out, but I need to in order to feel happy. I’m not living a charmed life here, I eat rice or pasta or hot dogs for most meals. Let me feel good about eating broccoli and spinach. The civil war is going to happen the same either way.

I wish private security had a better face than Paul Blart. Mall cops are better than real cops precisely because they don’t have power to abuse. We shouldn’t be associated with cops at all. Observe and report is what journalists do. We’re story tellers. We watch crazy shit go down and then we write the tale. It’s true, some of us are tasked with stupid jobs, like stopping skateboarders and booting homeless people, but no one likes that part of the job. The bourgeoisie hate the poor and make the rules. We’d rather help the homeless and give props to skaters for nailing tricks. Then there’s the other side of the spectrum, like blackwater; killers for hire. Somehow more respected than mall security.

I’ve realized I have a lot of internalized shame about what I have and haven’t accomplished in my life. It’s crazy, because if I were an objective observer, I wouldn’t think anything of it; I wouldn’t look at my life and say “that guy really fucked up somewhere.” I graduated from a good school, I have a decent job, I have a car and an apartment and two healthy kids. It’s honestly just the pay. I don’t get paid enough to relax, and that in itself feels like failure. I also consider myself an artist, and I have very little in the way of art to back that up, so on that level, I can’t feel successful. I blame myself for not getting stuff done, and the world is happy to reinforce that belief for me. It feeds the depression that keeps me from getting more done. It sucks.

Some weekends seem to go off the rails for no reason at all. Like, I’m just staying in and watching movies and eating leftover pizza, but now I’m stoned at 6 pm eating chips in bed and my sleep schedule is all fucked, and my stomach hurts, and my throat is sore and I did fucking nothing. It’s like a no effort bender. Somehow completing the thieves guild quest line and having a sandwich was all it took. Now it’s 2 am and I slept but I have to be up at 5:30 for work and that’s stressful somehow, even though I’m not tired, but I will be before I get off work because I woke up so early and couldn’t fall asleep again. Why do I feel so bloated?

I think more time needs to be granted to people to just do nothing. Stare at a lake. Watch squirrels. Responsibilities are shit and taking a break from it is harder and harder. Unless you’re rich. But the rest of us need our moments to just exist with no stress, ticking clocks, duties, goals, etcetera. Maybe it’s just me, but sitting in silence and zoning out is the best thing I can do to clear my head. It’s what siddartha did, right? Nirvana comes from rejecting active thought and just vibing with the universe. But I like art and entertainment too.

I still get excited to have a little bit of spending cash. It’s a holdover from being a kid, I guess. But back then, I would buy something and it would become my world for a period of time. I could spend hours looking at it, thinking about it, getting lost in it. Now, I take a look at what I can afford, and I feel empty. Nothing I see is going to make much of a difference to my life. I’m not going to get sucked in to a product and enjoy it like I used to. I’m lucky if I can find something that I even feel strongly about. Being broke feels terrible, but having some cash and knowing there’s nothing I can do with it that’s going to make me happy is almost just as bad. Sometimes I get desperate to find something and end up spending the money just hoping that the rush will come, but it doesn’t.

The concept of emotional capacity is something that I wish I had considered earlier. The limits I have on my emotional capacity make it a challenge to take care of even just myself. The more stress there is on it, the harder it gets and the worse I perform. We’re not all unlimited. I can’t spread myself that thin. I’m exhausted and the only way to recover is to not have to care for a while. How do I do that when I’m a single father? When can I stop expending my emotional energy on my kids? They're hardly self sufficient. Their mother isn’t going to let me relax.

I like to pretend life is a video game and break it down into stats and quests. It’s fun to micromanage that stuff in videogames, but kind of dreadful to do it in real life. Counting my money, grinding, trying to buy upgrades; it’s somehow less tedious if I imagine I’m building a character. If I don’t, then it doesn’t feel like I make any movement at all, and it’s easy to start wasting my time and money on things that seem amusing for a moment but ultimate just hurt me. It kinda falls down when I have to do “multiplayer” though. I’ve never been good at that part even in videogames.

It feels selfish to care so much about myself, but I’m the only person I have to please, and I still let myself down constantly. I’m hard on myself, but apparently not ready to change. I guess if it only matters to me, that’s not much different than it not mattering at all, and that’s what screws me up. Holding myself accountable, letting myself fuck up; they both feel like punishment.

Why did my chicken wings come out so dry? Is it me? Did I not love them enough? There was sauce, but it was clear about not putting the sauce on top. Even in pictures, it’s in a cup on the side. But that’s not good enough. I dipped every bite, and it still felt too dry. Covered in sauce. I think it must have been the quality of the meat, or quantity. Following the time on the instructions fucked me, or they were always going to be bad. Either way, it’s a bummer.

#observational humor #stand up #real talk

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