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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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I feel another fanon debunk session coming over me, and this one’s a BIG one.

Let’s talk about the DickKory breakup, and why it happened.

Yup, we’re going there.

Before we get going though, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: this is NOT an invitation to bash on Kory. There will be no bashing of Kory on this post if I have anything to say about it, and its my post, so I do. So nyah nyah. But seriously like, don’t get my reasons for making this post wrong. I LOVE Kory. I SHIP Dick/Kory. And I don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, no matter how the page I’m about to show makes it appear, for reasons that I will get into later in this post, but like. I really truly don’t. I don’t think the Dick/Kory breakup ultimately was either of their fault. I think it was the painful end result of them both hitting rock bottom due to endless external fuckery with their lives and their minds during the tail end of their relationship, making it all but impossible for them to be there for each other the way they truly needed and WANTED to be....ultimately forcing them to break off and BOTH try and reorder their lives on their own. But IMO, this NEVER actually marked a dissolution of their feelings for each other, no matter what either (particularly Dick) eventually claimed in order to rationalize things to themselves.

I do however think some of the other Titans bear some culpability for not seeing things as they truly were here. I can understand given what they all went through during this time period like, how maybe it became easier to just blame Dick especially as he has a tendency to be so willing to accept blame? And so I think a lot of conclusions were jumped to that at other times they WOULD have spent more time thinking through. But here and now they didn’t simply because they were so relieved to HAVE an easy, simple explanation for things going wrong and someone to blame, someone who ACCEPTED blame. And thus more easily allowing them to speed through to the portion of events where they worked on ‘forgiving him’ for what he’d done so they could all move past it.

Okay, so let me stop talking in code for those of you who have only the faintest idea of what I’m talking about.

Traditional fanon states - and most wiki summaries I’ve seen actually CORROBORATE this, which drives me COMPLETELY up the wall because I would like to have WORDS with whomever wrote each of these wiki summaries - that ultimately, Dick and Kory broke up because they rushed into things with the wedding and both realized they weren’t actually ready to get married.

Let me be clear: this is totally and completely 100% true.

Fanon and wikis go ON however, to conclude that the ‘fault’ lies with Dick, because he was the one who jumped the gun in proposing, and that he only DID so, because he thought getting married would ‘help him finally grow up’ and ‘hit one of the milestones he thought he was missing while everyone else his age that he’d known in high school and stuff were graduating college and getting married and having kids right about now.’ And also that he eventually concluded that he didn’t actually love Kory the way he thought he did and needed to let her go for her sake.

Now let me also be clear: this is also MOSTLY true in the sense that he did eventually THINK these thoughts, some ten or fifteen issues after their crashed wedding, when he was off on his own and thinking through everything that was going on in his life and trying to make sense of the decisions he’d been making lately, most of which he was unhappy with.

The one part that ISN’T true is that last bit, which a lot of people extrapolate from and use as their basis for saying Dick ‘fell out of love with Kory’ and ‘realized that he no longer loved her the way he once had,’ with this leading into why they never got back together after Kory returned to Earth in the Titans revival series in the late 90s.

HOWEVER.

There’s a tiiiiiiiiiny little correction I must make to that last part, which might seem insignificant, but becomes ABUNDANTLY important when added to some other much needed - and much ignored overlooked - context:

Dick never ACTUALLY said or thought that he didn’t love Kory anymore, full stop. What he actually said, in its entirety, was that he realized “he never really loved Kory the way she deserved to be loved.”

Why is this distinction so important? Hang on just a sec, we’re almost there.

Now I would like to share with you, for those who have never seen this page or those who perhaps have forgotten it or its significance, the EXACT page where Dick proposes to Kory, from The New Titans #99, one issue before their wedding special in issue #100. (What’s that? You’re surprised that they got married the very issue after the proposal? You thought that they were engaged for a lengthier period of time? Ohhhh don’t worry, fair readers. We’ll get there. Ohhhh we’ll get there).

But first, those of you who have never actually read this page before, I would like you to take a look at it, and see if you can Where’s Waldo what it is about this page that makes my blood reach a boiling point in excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit every time someone utters the words “Dick rushed into marriage because he thought it would make him grow up or hit some important life milestone.”

Take a gander, what do you see:

See it? Get what I’m talking about?

Any talk of Dick and Kory breaking up because they weren’t ready to get married, and Dick having been the one to rush them into it before they were ready, COMPLETELY fails at accurately representing the events of that time if it fails to mention the fact that:

DICK ONLY PROPOSED WHEN HE DID BECAUSE HE WAS DESPERATE TO CONVINCE KORY, HIMSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT HE LOVED HER AND ONLY HER AND SLEEPING WITH MIRAGE HAD MEANT NOTHING!

(Since, y’know, he didn’t actually sleep with her so much as he was raped by her).

I mean, your mileage may vary, but me, I happen to think that bit there is pretty CRITICAL FUCKING INTEL when it comes to this whole matter.

Claiming Dick is to blame because he rushed into marriage because he was looking to grow up or hit some milestone utterly FAILS as an analytical conclusion in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY....

When there is both ZERO indication from him BEFORE the proposal, that those are reasons or thoughts he has that has him leaning towards proposing.....

As well as ZERO reflection AFTER the failed wedding, that being desperate to convince everyone who thought he’d cheated on Kory that he really did love her, was at all a key motivating factor in him proposing when and how he did.

Like it or not, Mirage and the storyline surrounding that is utterly CRUCIAL to the DickKory breakup, because EVERY mention of that describes the cause of that breakup being rushing into marriage, and if you take away that storyline - and every character’s reaction to it - there is absolutely NO reason to even THINK Dick would still have proposed when he did.

And thus, leaving the Mirage story ENTIRELY out of all talk of the end of Dick and Kory’s relationship, is just....blatantly not indicative of what the story actually was.

Now, in addition, I know we tend to talk about this story as though DC sucks for never calling the rape what it was, and say that if DC’s not willing to treat these things as what they really are, they shouldn’t be using them as story points. First order of business: Yes DC sucks a lot and their handling of all this sucked.

BUT.

It is also not entirely accurate to say that they never TREATED this story as what it was.

Because while everyone else may have been fixated on it as Dick cheating on Kory....initially, at pretty much every point UNTIL the wedding....Dick at least was STEADFAST in not considering HIMSELF having cheated. I mean, look at his language in just the page above. He talks about being “repulsed” by what Mirage did. The writers might have never actually called what happened to Dick ‘rape,’ but initially they were VERY consistent in nevertheless writing him as someone who at least to some degree felt victimized by what happened, rather than culpable. He was trying to convince everyone ELSE to see it that way - until eventually he kinda gave up, and started to see it THEIR way.

You can literally see him already starting to make the pivot towards rationalizing that POV to himself in the above page....he talks about ‘thinking with his hormones’ and that leading him to make a mistake, even though his hormones had nothing to do with whether what happened was wrong or not.....it was always entirely about: would he have consented to sex with Mirage IF he knew she wasn’t really Kory. Thinking with his hormones in no way addresses the fact that its completely unreasonable to expect anyone to be so on guard 24/7, even in the privacy of their own bedroom with their own girlfriend, that they have their eyes peeled for an impostor even there.

In fact, imagine what the others would have all said if Dick hadn’t slept with Mirage that night, or else had confided in them later that it felt not right, that something was wrong, at some point BEFORE Mirage entered and told Dick in front of everyone that it had actually been her. How likely do you think it would have been that instead of taking Dick at face value, many of them would have instead viewed this as just another time Dick was exercising “Bat-paranoia” rather than allowing himself to be intimate with a loved one the way normal, non-Batfolk do, y’know? Do you think they would have automatically agreed with him that there was something up and he had reason to feel that ‘something wasn’t right about Kory’ when Dick probably still would have had no idea what for sure he felt was off, let alone that it wasn’t ACTUALLY her? Or would they have gotten on his case about how this is just him self-sabotaging again and letting his issues come between him and someone he cared about?

Tbh, one of the things that was greatest about Dick and Kory’s relationship IMO was that she was one of the best at getting him out of his own head. With Kory, when they weren’t both being jerked around by brainwashing plots and the like, Dick was better at just....letting go and just being himself around her. He didn’t feel like he had to constantly be on his guard or waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ironically, IMO, Dick DOES have a tendency to self-sabotage at times and let paranoia or other issues keep him from totally dropping his defenses and letting himself be vulnerable with other people.....meaning he probably would have been MORE likely to cue into something being off, if it had been anyone BUT Kory he’d been dating when Mirage replaced them.

So bottom line is, you can’t actually fully blame the writing for the others’ reactions to this story. Because whether they ever actually acknowledged it or not, for a good ten to fifteen issues up to the wedding, the writers pretty consistently depicted Dick as someone who was and felt victimized, even if he didn’t consciously realize it yet himself, let alone why. There were repeated moments between Kory initially breaking up with him after it happened through this proposal above, where it basically reads like Dick yelling “Ask me how violated I feel! Go on, ask me!” Except he never really got the chance because he was too busy replying to everyone around him that he hadn’t cheated on Kory, he thought he was WITH Kory, and that was the ONLY reason he had sex that night.

Slight tangent - this btw, is why I can never even get worked up enough about Nightwing Annual #2 to be like, defensive about it. That was the flashback issue written YEARS after all these events, where retroactively Andreyko inserted at some point between this proposal and the wedding - without changing anything else or the events he wrote ever being brought up or acknowledged again - a story where Dick went to visit Babs to personally deliver her wedding invitation....but only AFTER they slept together. And then when he gave her the invitation and she got furious about what had just happened, he just blithely said oh Kory won’t mind, and Babs was like yeah well I MIND!

Which was a totally valid reaction for Babs to have to those events as depicted, its just....I can’t remotely take them seriously, not when I’ve actually READ the events that by Andreyko’s own admission are meant to bookend that story. So you’re telling me, that right after Dick proposes to his longtime girlfriend SPECIFICALLY because he’s desperate to convince her he loves only her and would never willingly sleep with anyone else......he would go and sleep with someone else between then and the wedding? And then just without a hint of remorse say oh what’s the problem, Kory would be fine with it - when literally everything else about the wedding even HAPPENING was based on the fact that he knew for a fact that Kory would NOT in fact, be fine with that? Umm, make it make sense, except you can’t, because that story and the point where it makes sense are in two entirely different galactic quadrants. Green Lanterns couldn’t make it from Point A to Point B. So lol, sorry not sorry, I’m gonna stay not taking that story or claims that Dick is ACTUALLY a cheater, like, remotely seriously. I mean, your mileage may vary, but I especially don’t think anyone who can make excuses for Bruce’s many transgressions being OOC like, has any business trying to pass this particular story off as in character, but WHATEVS. Like, you CAN do it if you really want to, but I mean, I’m just gonna think that’s silly. I’ll be like OMG you’re so silly. Why are you so silly, can we just stop with all the silliness. And then like, I’ll go do something else or whatever.

(Oh and for the record, the wedding was the issue after Dick proposed, but it wasn’t meant to be like, the day after or anything. BUT we do know it was still pretty damn soon after, like at most a week or two....because the concurrent storyline was Roy being upset because the government was trying to shut down the Titans and said they would unless Roy took leadership from Dick and ousted him, which Roy understandably was NOT keen to do, even and especially with everything going on as the Titans were a family first and foremost and he was stuck between trying to preserve them and keep them going and betraying everything they stood for by basically instigating a vote of no confidence in Dick’s leadership.....but point being, Roy kept stalling the government agent asking for his answer......when said agent was very impatient, and asked repeatedly both in issue #99 AND issue #100. So you’re never going to convince me Roy managed to stall said agent for months or whatever, or any longer than a couple weeks at most, to allow for Dick and everyone else to put together a shotgun wedding for him and Kory. Which just further adds to the make it make sense aspect of the above mentioned Annual, but I absofuckinglutely digress).

Anyway.

NOW, let’s bring it back around to when I said like, don’t do the thing, don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, don’t you do it? /paraphrase

Yeah. So we’re there at that point now, and I reiterate once more for the court, like, hey, what if you just don’t? Y’know? Even if you’re looking at her dialogue in the above page I posted and are like, I’m feeling the urge, the urge to.....idk something that rhymes with urge but is bad I guess? Whatever. Just like. Don’t do it. Say nasty things about Kory because of this story three times in front of your computer and I will totally like, be conjured by that and crawl out of your screen all creepy girl from The Ring style. It will NOT be pretty. I am NOT meant to fit through there. I can NOT make it look good. You have been warned.

Okay so like, the reason I say none of this is on Kory even though I don’t make the same distinctions for the other Titans is threefold. No, lbr, its probably more on account of I can’t count and I’m always wrong about this shit. But let’s start with three.

1) The first thing we need to address is the fact that Dick WAS acting erratically and out of character through all of this time, even before what happened with Mirage. This was still in the near aftermath of Titans Hunt, and he was still reeling from that, and holding himself totally accountable. People who’ve followed me for awhile have probably seen me fixate on Titans Hunt before, but I honestly don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the full extent of comics from that storyline all the way through like....The New Titans #115 or so, like.....truly grasps the extent of just HOW much that single storyline affected Dick. He was at rock bottom because of it in a way that is probably only truly comparable with the Blockbuster storyline, but for even LONGER. Like the span of comics I referenced just now covers probably like....almost fifty issues.

That’s fifty issues where Dick consistently brings up his failure to stop that and how much Joey and Charlie and Arella and everyone else’s deaths during that like, just weighs on him, and fucks with his confidence and just.....his overall sense of purpose and self. He WAS lost and aimless for a lot of that time. And he DID absolutely even recognize HIMSELF that it was affecting him. Like ten issues or so after the crashed wedding, when he’s on his own journey of self-discovery while looking for Kory in the Amazon (uh yeah, that’s a thing. I’ll get to that)....like, he acknowledges to himself that ever since the Titans Hunt he’s been getting crazier and more demanding (his words) and he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore...and he attributes all of that to not having come to terms with their deaths and his inability to prevent them.

Now, notably, he DOESN’T ever at this time acknowledge that his behavior took an INCREASINGLY downward spiral ever since Mirage and specifically due to everyone blaming him for what he deep down felt wasn’t actually his fault but was losing conviction in. And quite frankly, even though he SAYS at this point he’s ready to move on from their losses, I don’t think that actually happened, but I’ll get back to both those things. First, the important point here, in terms of Kory, is that from her perspective, Dick had been increasingly unpredictable and not himself ever since the losses during Titans Hunt. Actually, given that she was the one who went with him to the Manor after Jason’s death and the only one who saw him come in and out and who thus knows the full extent of what transpired there - with this all happening not long before Titans Hunt - you could additionally say her awareness of that also has her almost prepared to expect the totally unexpected from Dick at this point.

Does that mean its right? No. But it does mean that its there.

2) Next. Kory was not actually offered the chance by the storyline to internalize what happened between Mirage and Dick from a stable, grounded headspace. Mirage KIDNAPPED Kory and replaced her before she slept with Dick. In the grand scheme of things, what happened to Kory specifically here is probably far from the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, but it couldn’t have been pleasant and I’m the first to yell NO TRAUMA OLYMPICS so in that spirit, fuck whether it was as bad as it COULD have been, and again, just acknowledge that it happened, and its reasonable and expected that it would have a negative effect on Kory. She was targeted and victimized by Mirage too. Not in the same way as Dick, but add that to the fact that unlike the other Titans, she was the one IN the relationship with Dick and thus the only one besides him that had a stake in what Mirage’s actions served as a catalyst for in that regard, like....she was not an impartial bystander to all this, and that needs to be considered. She was PART of it. It was her life that was hijacked by all this too.

3) Third.....it is extremely extremely EXTREMELY important here to acknowledge that Kory is herself a rape survivor. She has extensive trauma from her childhood in the Citadel, and that is bound to color her perceptions of what happened here, at least initially. I am 174% soooooo not here for vilifying another rape survivor in defense of a different rape survivor. Like, I’m just saying.....do not throw Kory under the bus for not acknowledging Dick’s trauma and trauma responses as a rape survivor in this story if you’re not also YOURSELF acknowledging Kory’s OWN trauma as a rape survivor.

This is key not because it says any opinions she had at this time don’t count, but rather that they simply don’t come from the same place as the VICTIM-BLAMING that is the central issue with others holding Dick accountable for his own rape. In Kory’s case, we have to consider the issue of projection. The ways in which her own experiences and how they’ve informed her DEFAULT perception of something that deeply affected her, might skew her initial reaction to experiences which share a LABEL, but not specific ELEMENTS.

What I mean here is both Kory and Dick, as of this point in time, are rape survivors. But they survived very very VERY different kinds of rape. Both were abundantly clear that they DID NOT WANT what happened to them, that they were not willing parties to what actually transpired....but what springs to Kory’s mind when someone says “I didn’t want the sex that happened” is understandably going to look VERY different from what Dick was describing when he said “I didn’t want the sex that happened.” So its not really all that unreasonable for Kory to hold those two things up in her head and say these are not the same, and from there jump to the unfortunate conclusion that Dick HAD wanted it on some level, else it would have looked more like her own experiences...especially because others around them were already voicing and affirming this opinion in various ways.

Again, is this fair, or deserved? No. But I talk all the time with other characters and with Dick himself about how its just not reasonable to expect characters - especially ones with highly CHARGED emotions related to their own parallel experiences - to act from an unbiased state or POV and thus leap to the most ideal conclusion without at least first stumbling through some other ones. So with Kory, her own context with rape simply CAN NOT be divorced from the fact that recognizing the central issue of this later moment in time was that it was a rape. Her own experiences and the likely projection of them onto the moment at hand add a degree of context to conclusions she arrived at that other characters simply do not have....and thus, again, its not okay to paint her with the same brush as all those characters. And unless you’re already somehow making a distinction as to why her reaction is different from others despite superficially appearing the same......then like. You need to be. LOL.

4) The other factor that’s important to consider here is that just like Kory was never offered the chance to RECEIVE information of what happened from a relatively grounded place and headspace....the stories never gave her any real time to think things through, process over time, and arrive at different conclusions from her earlier ones. Again, I talk all the time about how Dick’s experiences with the Titans pre-his time in Bludhaven were colored by multiple instances of brainwashing and his head being fucked with and being personally targeted and jerked around in a ton of ways? The same is true of Kory, and it needs to be given equal weight.

Their wedding was crashed by ‘the dark soul self’ of Raven - who they thought was dead - as she infected Kory with what she called a demon seed that was going to grow a new demon inside of her. Due to her possession, Kory spent weeks in a mental institutition, trying to overcome the entity inside her (with Dick sitting by her side and holding her hand through all of it, just FYI). When she finally did purge the entity from her, Kory took off and ended up in a village in the Amazon, with the ordeal having given her amnesia. Dick went after her, but he’d only just tracked her down when she took off again to foil an alien invasion using radio waves that she was uniquely suited to recognize due to being familiar with their tactics, but which pitted her against most of the rest of the world in like, the Ultimate Gaslighting Showdown as everyone kept telling her she was crazy (she was wearing a tinfoil hat to protect herself from the transmissions, the writers were deliberately not doing her any favors).

Only after that was foiled did she regain her memories, and while off the page she agreed to meet with Dick to talk about their failed wedding and everything that happened afterward, as he’d returned from the Amazon by now, where he’d ultimately come to his own self-realizations about everything (or what we were told to accept were his realizations)....in the end she took off for Tamaran without meeting him, leaving him waiting where they’d agreed to rendezvous. Again, I say this not to vilify Kory, because I absolutely think she made the best choice for herself at the time, and should have, and I don’t think Dick has ever blamed her for that and tbh they both separately came to the same decisions about needing to be apart to recollect themselves and figure out who they were and where to go from here, like, without having to actually talk it out to arrive at the same point. I DO raise this point simply to put out there that in contrast to many other things I’ve seen said about the break up......they....never technically broke up?

Like I mean, don’t get me wrong. They DID. They both considered themselves broken up and eventually moved on with other people, Dick with Babs, and Kory with a general who she married back on New Tamaran before it was destroyed by the Sun Eater (again, Kory went through some SHIT after their break up. Dick wasn’t the only one.) But I just mean like.....it was LITERALLY the most mutual break-up that is possible for a break-up to be, because neither one of them ever actually communicated their intent to the other in order for them to both CLEARLY be on the same page. There was no “Dick called off the wedding” - that never actually happened, it was just....never revisited. There was no “Dick told her he no longer had feelings for her” - that was something that happened later, and yes, I’ll get to that too. OMG shut up me. But also shh I’m talking.

But yeah like.....their break-up, despite being almost universally claimed as Dick’s choice and responsibility, with zero mention of Mirage’s role in it in any official accounting of it I’VE ever seen, and with Kory painted as being the victim of Dick’s wandering ways and not knowing what he wanted in the distant aftermath of their break-up, as it was said that due to being Tamaranean, she loved for life and thus would always be in love with Dick even though he after her return claimed he no longer loved her (like, I don’t blame Kory but I also don’t like takes that act like Dick DID all this to Kory somehow. Like that’s literally the entire point here, neither of them needs to be to blame or each other’s victim according to how the story ACTUALLY went).....

But yeah, despite all that.....it really was the most mutually arrived at decision ever, because neither one of them actually EVER EVEN SAID ‘WE NEED TO BREAK UP’ to the other. They both just....ended up there on their own.

(And also because DC wanted them there in order to secure the rest of their push to put Nightwing solely back in the Batbooks for the next several years. With, don’t forget, this all coinciding with the government forcing him out of the Titans and putting Roy in charge and with this all culminating in Dick having his initial adventure in Bludhaven at Bruce’s ask, and then deciding to make that his new base of operations and kinda reinvent himself there, at the start of his solo title. Again, shout out to the myth of “Dick Grayson always runs from things because commitment issues” - not only did he NOT flee to Bludhaven because he just changed his mind about the wedding and said whoops sorry Kory, it wasn’t even his CHOICE to leave the Titans, even if eventually he agreed it was for the best right now. His ex went back to her home planet and he was asked to leave his team. Why the fuck WOULDN’T he go somewhere else?)

NEXT. (jfc he mumbled to himself under his breath. what the fuck did I start here).

Circling back around AGAIN, this time back to Dick’s STATED reasons for deciding things were over.

Two...umm, fuck it, ‘a number that is more than one’ things that need to be kept in mind HERE:

1) The most crucial bit of context when examining Dick’s journey of self-exploration in the Amazon while searching for Kory and what he comes to say and think about everything that’s happened and his own behavior....

Is that he is an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator at this point in time. Y’know how we talk about Dick having that tendency to take on more accountability than is actually earned and is way quicker to view himself as in need of apologizing than he is to view others needing to do that for him?

Yeah I mean, that’s a thing, I definitely have like a billion citations ready to go on a moment’s notice, but point is, being aware of that tendency means absolutely nothing if you don’t actively APPLY that awareness to Dick’s periods of self-reflection and like....compare and contrast what he THINKS about things he’s said or done with like....what he’s ACTUALLY said or done.

For instance, on the way to his so-called epiphanies about all this, he makes the claim that the entire time Kory was dealing with the demon entity inside of her, he was being so selfish because all he was doing was wishing she would wake up or be free of it so that she could help him with his problems instead. (And just for the record, I can provide actual panels for everything I reference in this post, I’m just limiting myself to a couple because I’m just trying to NOT beat War and Peace’s pagecount as it is. Will I succeed? No. Did I try? Yes.)

Now, Dick spending his time at his possessed fianceé’s side doing nothing but wishing she would snap out of it and focus on his problems instead.....is that selfish of him?

Well, yeah.

But is it TRUE?

I mean, you tell me:

This is right smack dab in the middle of that whole storyline, set only a few issues after the crashed wedding, and before Kory successfully evicts the demon entity and loses her memories. This is literally what Dick was ACTUALLY like the entire time. At the TIME, every single thing he said and did was focused on her.....the CLOSEST he came even in his internal monologue, to making it all about him, was him thinking about how this has shown him just how much he needs her.

Do people helping a loved one through something traumatic occasionally have selfish thoughts where their awareness of their own troubles momentarily supersedes their focus on their loved one? Yeah. Does this actually make them selfish if their ACTUAL focus and actions and words are aimed entirely at their loved ones the whole time, with no single actual detour to “hey, while you’re up, can we talk about me for a sec”?

Mmmmm....I feel like no, but I am open to you drawing other conclusions as long as you are aware that they are wrong and mine is right, kay. I mean okay, fine. You can disagree with me here but I’m still gonna disagree about your disagreement there and its just gonna be this whole big thing and its like, ugh, whatever, y’know?

But hey, you do you.

ANYWAY, point is, unless you draw the wrong conclusion here in which case PTTTHB!, like, I think its safe to say Dick thinking in the midst of his self-awareness deep dive that he was being nothing but selfish during that whole story and thus didn’t deserve Kory, like....whether or not the writers are actually AWARE of it or not, I mean......that’s still a pretty good context clue that his internal monologues at this point in time are maybe a little bit skewed towards being more about accepting blame than reflecting reality, right? Yes, no, maybe so?

Well then again, if you agree with me, then add to that awareness the added bit of trivia that every single other one of Dick’s ‘ultimate realizations’ (he just wanted to get married because he thought it would bring stability to his life, it would help him grow up, hit one of those aforementioned milestones, etc)....like every single one of them.....was an opinion that was FIRST offered by one of the other Titans.

Every. Single. One.

(Wanted to get married for the stability was something Donna said she thought was his reasoning, to the other original Titans. The bit about thinking it would help him grow up was unfortunately ALSO Donna, but said to Kory before the wedding when Kory asked if she thought this was a mistake and if she thought Dick had proposed for the right reasons. The milestones thing was said by either Roy, Garth or Wally, I honestly forget which, but it was when the three of them went out to discuss the pending government takeover of the team and how to break this to Dick with everything else going on).

And with not a SINGLE one of these opinions present in ANY of Dick’s internal monologues BEFORE the proposal, hinting that they were anywhere near being on his radar at THAT point.

So....which makes more narrative sense? That Dick ultimately just realized that everything he THOUGHT was motivating him when he proposed was NOT true and that it was only his friends that clued into his actual reasons, which he must have overheard at some point and internalized in order to have replicated said opinions in his thoughts so exactly? Again with ZERO mention alongside any of this, that peoples’ views of what happened with Mirage was at ALL a factor in his thinking?

Or.....does it maybe better track, that over the course of Dick repeatedly expressing that he didn’t know it wasn’t Kory, that he never wanted to cheat on her, that he loved her and only her and would never knowingly do that....with NO ONE budging and everyone from Kory to all of his best friends acting like his adulterous guilt was an over and done with conclusion and they’d already long since moved on to the point of how willing or not they were to forgive him, based on everything else he’d been going through.....and with Dick thinking that how remorseful he appeared to be and how willing to ACCEPT accountability was likely to play a part in how much people were willing to look past all his recent fuck-ups here.......

Does it maaaaaaaybe actually make a little bit more sense that Dick’s total 180 into taking full responsibility and coming up with all these rationalizations for his actions that essentially just mimic theories everyone else had for his behavior has more to do with his deeply internalized acceptance that nobody was listening to his side of the story or what he was actually trying to say (without even real SELF awareness at the time that what he was feeling wasn’t just ‘I’m innocent of what you’re accusing me of’ but ‘I was violated and used’)?

That it was more about him finding ways to justify to himself getting on the same page everyone else ALREADY seemed to be on in regards to him and his recent behavior, as that seemed to be the only way to move forward, that he was tired of fighting everybody and feeling like he was in the wrong for it so honestly, maybe they were right?

Because from there.....

Its only a veeeeeery short hop, skip and a jump from “well I guess I DID do what they say and I SHOULD have known it wasn’t Kory”.....to.....”since the only thing I kept clinging to for how I couldn’t know was my insistence that I truly loved Kory, and it turns out that I still SHOULD have known anyway......doesn’t that mean that I didn’t really love Kory the way I thought I did? Or as much as I thought I did?”

“Did I never really love Kory as much as she deserved?”

Cuz uh, remember earlier when I talked about it being significant that Dick never ACTUALLY claimed during this time that he didn’t love Kory anymore or fell out of love with her or anything like that, but rather that his precise claim was “I didn’t love her AS MUCH AS SHE DESERVED”?

Aka.....”enough that I would have known it wasn’t actually Kory that I was with?”

Yeah. Uh, that. That’s the significance there. Yeah. So....

2) Now as to something else to keep in mind in regards to Dick’s eventual ‘self-realizations’ - this calls back to when I said earlier that Dick WAS acting erratically during this time, stemming all the way back to the Titans Hunt aftermath. He was overly aggressive, he was ready to fight anyone at a moment’s notice, he was tunnel-visioned.....in short, he was actually quite a lot how the fanon interpretations of his temper I rage about usually depict him. But the key thing here, and the reason why I wouldn’t have a problem with people drawing references from THIS time when talking about him behaving this way.....

Is that much like when Dick was behaving erratically during the Brother Blood storyline, it was with NARRATIVE INTENT.

There, Dick’s behavior led to the reveal that he was lashing out because he was fighting the Church of Blood’s mental conditioning. Here, Dick’s behavior is directly tied to his downward spiral resulting from the trauma of Titans Hunt and his guilt from that.

In both cases, I’d have zero issue with people referencing specific instances of this behavior....

As long as they ALSO reference and acknowledge the specific narrative context that was directly CONNECTED to that behavior. Its not about whether or not it excuses any specific thing he does, its about the fact that while these behaviors did happen, they shouldn’t be depicted as indicative of his OVERALL characterization, because they were specifically and deliberately written into his actions WITH INTENT by the writers, who were trying to use his DELIBERATELY out of the ordinary behavior to arrive at some narrative point or conclusion.

And here, for Dick, that was the eventual realization that he’d never fully dealt with his feelings about the losses during the Titans Hunt.

I don’t like how he acts in a lot of the issues around this time. Its ugly. But its MEANT to be ugly. I don’t like Dick’s fight with Roy when he tells him about taking over leadership because of the government’s interference. I don’t like it AT ALL.

But what I DO like is how the very next page after the fight, after Donna follows Dick out of the room, Dick turns around and acknowledges how out of control he’d just been and said he felt it proved that everyone was right, things HAD gotten to him more than he’d realized or admitted to himself, and it probably was a sign he needed to take a step back, and besides, Kory needed him more than the team did right now anyway.

THAT’S one of the core things I like about Dick Grayson, that almost without exception, his worst actions or behaviors are almost immediately followed by his realization of this and a tangible action or change in his actions to address it. That’s not something every character can claim - in fact, its unfortunately pretty damn rare.

But here’s the problem with that, in this specific scenario:

Dick WAS spiraling, he DID act out in ways he was right to be called out on and to feel guilt about, and there WAS basis for him acknowledging that there was stuff he needed to address in his life and his head, and to take responsibility for.

Thing is though, nobody else at any point ever stood up to point to where in his willingness to hold himself accountable for his mistakes and try and do better in regards to his friends and teammates and overall relationships....

He additionally took on guilt that WASN’T deserved. Because the other Titans were the ones who in their overall rush to judgment about his behavior and the reasons why.....still erroneously lumped in with the rest, their conclusion as to how the situation with Mirage should be viewed.

And frankly, though this doesn’t make them look good, there’s plenty of places you can go with that which don’t make them heartless monsters either. They were wrong, not to listen to him about Mirage, and I maintain that this tangibly WORSENED his already existing downward spiral from Titans Hunt, because that was already stuff he really could have benefited from support for the others from....and then this other thing happened that he additionally really needed support about, rather than blame.

Problem is, the overall impression given off by the other Titans was that they thought they already WERE doing their best to be supportive, by being so willing to look PAST ‘what Dick had done with Mirage’ and FORGIVE Dick for that, make allowances for why it and other decisions they didn’t agree with, like his rush to marriage, might make sense based on what they were attributing as the reason for his out of character behavior....the fallout from Titans Hunt...but ONLY that.

Like to be clear, I’m aware that there is a flip side of things in fanon, where some stans overcorrect on Dick’s behalf and act like the Titans all universally slut-shamed Dick and were terrible to him. No. That’s not what happened either. There was ONE slut-shaming Titan and ONLY one....and that was Pantha, who to be frank, like.....she was literally written to be the button pusher in regards to everyone. She likely would have said the same thing no matter who was in that situation, because she honestly didn’t care, she was just interested in making the cheap jokes at their expense.

The other Titans though did not adopt a slut-shaming stance against Dick...just a victim-blaming one. Which makes some things better, but some things worse IMO.

Its easier to understand how they could have all fallen into this trap despite all being seasoned heroes who should have known better than to view these specific events the way they did....if you consider that their fatal flaw here was ironically that they were SO quick to try and find a reason that Dick might have done this that they felt they could forgive....that they never actually thought things through long enough to recognize how quick on the draw they’d been in their reactions. And then they failed to listen to Dick’s side of things because they’d kinda convinced themselves that they were ALREADY doing him a favor and hearing him out by having decided to look past what he’d done and make allowances for it....and so they kinda filtered everything he was saying through a lens of like...waiting for him to catch up to what they’d already decided had happened and onto the part where he did the Dick Grayson thing and apologized and accepted responsibility for it....at which point they, as his friends, would be honestly able to say “already forgiven, dude.”

You could additionally factor in the idea that their very respect for his capabilities and high opinion of his overall ‘on the ball-ness’ made what had happened easy to view as something that’d just slipped past his radar, a rare oversight that again, he could be forgiven for, rather than what it was....again, something that he should never have been expected to ‘catch’ in the first place, any more than they would have been.

Either way, the real problem was always just that they failed to support him in the ways he actually needed, because they were already busy forgiving him for things he didn’t actually need forgiveness for because they were never his to accept blame for in the first place. But then BECAUSE Dick was already primed to accept the blame for what he WAS right to accept responsibility for, he overextended and took on everything that was held against him, rather than first differentiating between where a mea culpa both was and WAS NOT due.

No matter how you slice it, the Titans WERE wrong on this front, and Dick absolutely DOES have canon grounds to nurse some bitterness and resentment about, towards them. Again, with a lot of ways that can be approached. Personally, when I think about fics tackling this subject, my big want is always gonna be like.....confrontation fics? Like that’s what I’ve always really wanted to see here....like there’s a lot of obviously valid catharsis to be had in fics that have someone walk Dick through what a more objective view of what happened back then and let him finally unburden himself of all that unearned guilt there...BUT all the focus there is typically on that realization of the truth for DICK, that like....there’s almost never any follow-up where that realization is further pursued and extended to the relevant Titans? And tbh, I’ve always viewed that as the far greater ‘crime’ this story executed in regards to Dick’s character....not an overall obliviousness to his own victimization, period, but the fact that he was basically pushed into ACCEPTING a culpable view of events when actually, he’d always KNOWN on some level that it wasn’t really his fault and he had every reason to feel repulsed and angry and violated.

Like, I do obviously view Dick as someone with a large degree of self-awareness, in no small part due to how often he DOES do these introspective deep dives and reflect on events and actions and behaviors, and even though I understand the viewpoint that things look different when applied to yourself than to others, I do think its perfectly likely that Dick would at some point come to his own realization about what had actually happened with Mirage and why he’d initially felt the way he did about it. Maybe not before the events with Tarantula, but in the aftermath? I think he absolutely would connect certain things then, even if just because of how FAMILIAR everything felt to that earlier time post-Titans Hunt. The Blockbuster arc was like, the most rock bottom Dick had ever been SINCE that point, and various similarities could have definitely been pinging all over for him....the losses he suffered reminding him of his guilt for the fallen Titans, the end of Dick and Babs’ relationship, while based on more reasons than just Tarantula kissing Dick, like, still including that as a reason and so thus bearing an uncomfortable similarity to the last time he was held accountable for his rapist and now eventual rapist’s actions, etc.

And I do think that Dick having some realizations of his own post-Blockbuster could explain a LOT about his later interactions with the Titans, who I honestly don’t think he was ever quite as close to again?

Which makes a ton of sense if you view the 1999 series, and how difficult it was for them to get Dick to join up, and how he was plenty ready to leave at any point...like, that makes a TON of sense if you consider that Dick might have at this point been quietly nursing hurt of his own that everyone was so eager and willing to let bygones be bygones and ‘forgive’ his mistakes of the past, that nobody still had ever realized what he’d had to realize all on his own....that THEY all had a perception of events and like, their friendships, that included forgiving Dick for a betrayal that Dick NEVER ACTUALLY ENACTED. Where its like, thanks, but I didn’t actually need that, what I needed was someone to listen to me. But at the same time its totally understandable why he wouldn’t ever want to bring that up himself....because he’d already TRIED expressing himself on this matter years before, and been shot down, and its totally reasonable that he worried history would just repeat there rather than bring him the closure he WANTED on that front. But again....the distance he keeps a lot of the Titans at after his return to the team pairs pretty damn well with him being both quietly resentful of forgiveness he never needed and wondering when it was everyone else’s turn to accept the accountability for wrongs done that everyone was always so quick to demand from him....as well as why the last thing in the world he’d want to do is bring this all up again himself.

Similarly, this is why I think he always expressed to Kory, ever since her return to Earth, that he wasn’t in love with her anymore.....I don’t think its necessarily true that his feelings ever fully went away, and I also don’t think he’d bear the same resentments towards her that he did the others, even though Kory too ‘forgave’ him for something he never needed absolution for. Because I think at the same time, he’s more aware than most of Kory’s own history, and he has too much empathy for what all that likely stirred up for her at the time as well as his awareness that she really did love him and always had and that she’d mourned their relationship just as much as he had.

So I truly don’t think Dick blames her, in ways that can’t be said of the others, and I don’t think it was truly that he didn’t love her anymore, or that there was no longer anything there....I think he always just said that in order to protect himself, because he was still hurting from everything that had happened back then and how everyone had always painted it as his fault ever since, and his own traumas had only compounded those very specific feelings with later events like Tarantula and her impact on his life, and its just like......I think if it ever came out via someone else re-raising the issue, Dick would be like okay, yes, absolutely let’s finally talk about this....but I totally understand why Dick would never want to re-raise it himself because....he definitely did TRY to express his violation way back when. Why should he be the one to have to essentially.....retry his own case with his friends in order to finally get the verdict he should have had all along, y’know?

Its one thing to get that its probably never going to happen without initiating it himself, but its another thing for that to get you past the hump of just not wanting to relive some of your worst moments when your best friends not believing in you or being so willing to believe something about you in some ways did just as much damage to you as the actual initial violation.

But again, all that said, I would absolutely like, rob the Louvre (Okay I’d also rob the Louvre just for money but like. You get it) for stories where one of the Titans has an ‘oh shit’ realization about everything with Mirage years later. And they tentatively try and bring it up with Dick in the hopes of ‘fixing things’ by correcting the damage they’d done when making him feel it was his to accept blame on.....and for Dick to just be like. “Yeah, uh, I was there. I figured all that out a long time ago, I just didn’t see the point in trying to convince everybody twice.” And them like....being like oh crap we have to figure out a way to make things right, like all this time we’ve thought things were kinda broken between us because of what Dick did but actually it was the other way around and about Dick’s feelings about what WE did.

Okay now like....don’t laugh but I’m literally still not done, because I had this whole other thing about how now we needed to finally talk about the Zitka in the room, which is that IMO its always been kinda backwards to view Tarantula as the focal point of Dick’s traumas here and what happened with Mirage as some kind of footnote kinda....personally I think it should be the other way around. That its Mirage that weighs on Dick the most because what she did was premeditated where with Catalina it was a crime of opportunity. With Miriam though, it was always going to happen no matter what, because it only happened because she MADE it happen. She like....stalked Dick pretty much from the time of her arrival in this timeline (or at least how that initially was viewed - the timeline thing, not the stalking thing. Forget it. Weird story is weird. Doesn’t matter). But like....Mirage went after Dick with intent. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was willing to do whatever to make it happen, up to and including kidnapping Dick’s actual girlfriend and taking her place.

With Tarantula, like, she was more than quick to seize on the first opportunity to make it happen, but like...that’s still a different thing IMO from like...KNOWING that someone literally plotted out and premeditated one of the most disruptive traumas of your life without any care for what it would DO to your life, and you later carrying all the blame for that in everyone else’s eyes without anyone ever acknowledging what it did to YOU....even though MULTIPLE people know and its even affected your overall reputation. With Tarantula....I think that trauma absolutely compounded everything else that happened with Blockbuster but it was hardly limited to just that, but again with Mirage....that one specific act pretty much derailed the entire course of Dick’s life at the time. Because again....while you could absolutely claim that there are other issues Dick and Kory might have broken up because of later, even without Mirage’s actions, like....you have to MAKE the case for those reasons. You can’t just attribute their breakup to rushing into marriage, when again....Mirage was the literal catalyst for Dick proposing when he did.

Which again, to bring it all back to the start.....that’s why it will forever make me channel Gar Logan and turn into a green-hued screeching howler monkey every time people are like I absolutely agree that its not okay to blame Dick for his own rape at Mirage’s hands....but then turn around and be like okay, but Dick and Kory did break up because Dick rushed them into marriage before they were ready.

Cuz.

Like.

THEY’RE THE EXACT SAME THING!

The one is just the other but described from a different vantage point.

faslkfhaklfhaklfhkalfha

I get if people didn’t know that before now, but please please please can we like....push back against the misinformation on this particular topic because omggggg is it unpleasant to repeatedly hear people contradict themselves in the same paragraphs half the time because they literally don’t know that they’re talking about the same events in both cases.

Believe it or not, I actually had a lot more about Mirage and about other ways things could have gone differently for Dick and Kory if he’d had even just a little more support from someone else at the time, whether from Bruce or even just one of the Titans, like all it would have taken was just ONE person to try and view things from Dick’s perspective and be like okay everyone hold up, some bad fucking conclusions have been arrived at here.

BUT I am tired and this is long and literally just...whatever. I’ll do that some other time. LOL. And I bounce.

#first person to try and tell me the wordcount of this is getting blocked I swear to fucking god

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crimefightrmoved · 2 years

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Just a collection of headcanons and a bit of a study as well on Bruce’s canon behavior re: autism, ptsd, etc.

Childhood:

Bruce had always shown signs of being on the spectrum as a child. But most of it was reasoned to him being a rather precocious child, which he was to a certain extent. And Thomas and Martha occasionally being preoccupied by their important work and position in society to really double down and notice at first.

It also didn’t help that the majority of Bruce’s childhood interaction was really with just his Mother and Alfred. Mostly his Mother who he found the easiest comfort in. ( Yes, big old Mama’s Boy. To be fair, his mom’s great. )

They were going to take him to a specialist sometime after his 8th birthday when things had calmed down for Thomas.

So strictly his most apparent struggle was trying to make friends, trying to understand the nature of actually socializing with kids his age.

He absolutely lived a sheltered childhood enough that he could sense when moods shifted but he didn’t necessarily understand them ( something he still struggles with today. )

Other signs that were noted throughout his childhood was his obsessive interests ( not only in random puzzles and mysteries but especially the murder of his parents which was also easily presumed to be part of his PTSD. )

His unusual eating and sleeping habits only worsened after his parents’ death. While he would often stay up late or just have general problem with sleep, his parents were usually there to calm him down. His mother being particularly adept in outsmarting a 5 year old that would spend most of the night asking why there are moons and bats and whatever question he could come up with next.

Eating too was sparse. Sometimes because he was a picky eater. Sometimes he forgot to pay attention to his own body telling him he’s hungry. Or sometimes, he’s too focused on something else to really pay attention.

Anxiety is kind of Bruce’s nature, even before his parent’s murder. He especially didn’t like how he would be dragged to events and to parties to participate and have to talk to people. There’s always this overarching sense of dread. Martha and Thomas has always helped him by talking to him like an adult during these situations, give him perspective. But with it also came the haunting responsibility of a legacy a century old on a young boy’s shoulders with the Waynes and the Kanes so deeply ingrained in Gotham’s History.

Post-Wayne Murder:

The Bruce Wayne Death Stare - Less behavioral but more of like a pivotal change in Bruce Wayne’s ees can really be noted after his parents death. It’s metaphorical when we say you’ve watched the innocence die in someone’s eyes. But for Bruce, it can be something you can feel especially if you’ve known or met him before his parent’s death.

Some of the symptoms of autism kind of feeds into his symptoms of PTSD which majorly make the first two years after his parent’s death a struggle for Alfred and Leslie namely. Since they were really the only people he would interact with to some normalcy. And it was around after his parent’s death that he’d lost contact with Tommy, one if not his only ‘trusted’ childhood friend.

These symptoms namely being his insomnia. He absolutely tried to avoid sleep as best as he could during those first six months because he’d constantly find himself going back to that night in the alley when he closed his eyes.

There’s a hypervigilance in him too that pervades from that moment that never really went away even as he grew into it as an adult. But especially for those first few years because they never really found Joe Chill until years later after he’d come back as Batman.

One major blow back as well from his trauma is his difficulty with affection. Both receiving it and giving it, no matter how minimal it was in the beginning. Because so much of his affection was poured into his parents and so much of his calm and comfort was built around the presence of his parents, it just wasn’t something he could re-learn on his own. He was a child.

All of it definitely put him in such a state that he had problem going back to school. He had trouble focusing, would get into severely violent fights at 8 that would genuinely just get worse ( even if they were few and far in between ) as he got older. And just kind of shut down.

And while school in itself had never been his strongest suit, just someone that really worked better on his own or through Alfred’s guidance, none of it helped. As he would still be preoccupied with his parent’s death nearly six years later.

Teen Years to Adulthood:

Something that needs to be said, Bruce has always been angry. And that anger for him absolutely easily translates to violence because it’s very white man of him. It’s the same rage and anger that he would see in Dick and Jason primarily. Not necessarily part of the study, but i just like thinking about it.

Seemingly blunt or rude or not interested in others without meaning to is also considered to be a sign of autism in adults but for Bruce, it can be a rather fickle rule. Because he favors directness when it comes to conversation and genuinely sometimes does not mean to sound like a jackass when he speaks the way he does. But sometimes, he absolutely is just a rude jackass. So this one might just be a personality trait.

Like, Yes, Bruce is also easily one of the kindest and most compassionate person you might ever get the chance to know if he lets you. But also he’s also just an ass.

And Bruce, by reason, is just a survivalist. He knows how to make weapons with his fists and his words and his intellect just as well as his money if needed.

And as his depression only got worse, out of desperation to get the vision of seeing his parent’s death haunting him everywhere, he sought out an illegal session for Electro-Shock Therapy. But not only at the risk of losing his mind, literally as an after effect, but losing his memories of his parents in the process as well, he couldn’t go through with it.

A great majority of his struggle absolutely did not go away even after his disappearance and training. Some did majorly improve to at least a tolerable degree ( for him. ) He just learned to adapt the struggles with the skills he mastered through his training.

Mainly his Anxiety. His training with the monks at Nanda Parbat did help him a lot in addressing a lot of his overthinking and worrying and just mainly focusing on centering himself. While also something he does have prescription pills for, although that too he doesn’t take religiously.

Is him being absolutely covered in a suit for nearly half the day also a metaphor that he does not want to be touched? Yes. Bruce absolutely does not like to be touched without permission. By anyone.

Masking. I can really go how this is both metaphorical, philosophical, etc. but let's go with mostly the psychological term. It’s definitely something not only he learned as a way of adapting but as necessity would require with him being who he is in the eyes of Gotham and other people.

Through the years, it has definitely gotten easier. Because Bruce Wayne as he is to the public is not the same as Bruce Wayne, man behind the cowl. And a lot of the time this does lead to a certain struggle when it comes to his relationships.

One of the best way to look at it is his relationship with Talia and Selina, at this point in time, where there is an absolute level of honesty between him and them that there’s no more reason to hide. And they understand him better now in a way that sometimes even he doesn’t understand himself. So relationships with other people, especially those that he likes, still have that middle ground of him being nervous and awkward and absolutely uncertain on how to approach things. But if there’s a level of intimacy that is the same with Talie and Selina, that awkwardness and nervousness slowly disappears. And honestly, if he’s not even a little bit nervous ( even if he hides it then he probably doesn’t care as much as he thinks he does. )

Bruce to this point is definitely still officially undiagnosed. But he is definitely in therapy with Dr. Chase meridian and trying to talk and discuss these things better.

Also absolutely just my headcanon, Damian is also on the spectrum. Like Dad. Like son. I just like it.

#CLASSIFIED 〉study .#personals dni.#long post tw #death mention tw #i also dk if this makes sense but i wanted to get it written down now at least so i can go back to it too

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bl-garbage · 3 years

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to dance is to unshackle

um, okay—how else do i express this buoyant happiness that Gaya sa Pelikula has awoken inside me? i’m in complete and utter awe. i did not expect a drop of what the sixth episode has brought us. more than satisfying, it’s utterly fascinating. this is quite a lengthy post, but if you have the time, please bear with me. and since we’re already here, let’s fucking dissect the shit out of this:

right off the bat, it’s sweet how consistently written Vlad was the entire time of the show. at the start of the episode, for one, he was concerned with Karl’s disposition, saying, “anong iniisip mo (what are you thinking)?” and, later on, as we know, he pops that question again in this episode. what are you thinking? always in limbo. true, it’s considerate, yet more than that, it’s always a sign of waiting for permission. Vlad has been like this since the beginning: observant and willing to reach out, confident on the surface, yes, but always afraid of going overboard.

that is not to say that Karl isn’t. in fact, the whole dynamics of their relationship rest on the fact that they can lean on each other and just be honest. many moments show this: Karl’s desire to shift; Vlad not getting into the film lab and Karl knowing something was up; the entirety of Vlad’s birthday; Karl and Vlad’s reticence to open up to Anna, in contrast with how comfortable they feel with each other. in a nutshell, they’re each other’s homes. more on this later.

the part i was most frightened at with this episode was when Karl finally told his parents his desire to shift. to be honest, personally, i wouldn’t know exactly how that pressure on Karl feels, as i was able to study the degree i wanted. yet, back then, i had already known that my parents, who wholly supported me just the same, would have wanted a degree that leaned on science or engineering. that still sucked to know. Karl’s situation is much more complicated. his desire to shift to another course is to make up for lost time, a sense of hurrying before it really becomes all too late. this was a heavy lot to take in. the disappointment and anger in his father’s face when he dropped the bomb was too much to handle. Karl had expected it, yet its impact still hurled shrapnel that he was not able to dodge, sustaining him with several wounds. it would be curious to see how his parents come to terms with his confession. i am certain that a number of people have connected with Karl here.

which brings me to another point. Gaya sa Pelikula creates these characters with their own agency. it’s touted as a BL series, yes, but our two main characters’ point is actually not to fall in love — but to live, part of which is to fall in love. they have their hopes and dreams and own burdens to carry, and while falling in love takes centerstage here, we see how they can stand alone, on their own two feet. falling in love is central to their growth, but it is evident that love is not the whole point of their existence.

speaking of which: ate judit. ah, yes, where do i even begin to explain the exquisiteness with which ate judit was written? how, after all of five episodes, it was only now did it make sense why judit was overly, unnaturally caring and protective, a mama bear that would not let anything happen to his little Vlad. now we know why: guilt.

imagine that. being told you were the reason why your whole family went into shambles. there is much vindication in Vlad’s line of questioning, “why would you say that to a child?” (god, i’m tearing up even as i write this.) this was a pivotal scene, with a focal point on judit, the likes of whom we cannot entirely fault for not knowing any better. the fact remains that we are still in an era that fails to understand the spectrum of gender identities and the far utopia that we seek, where gender and sex would not be a damning classification anymore. and for true allies, it is in admitting that they “didn’t know then what [they] know now” that their support gains more strength. it is in confessing where they got wrong, how harmful their actions were, and in the commitment to do more, that their promise is made good.

parenthetically, can we talk about Vlad’s mom as well? have you all noticed how her voice broke when she said, “siguraduhin mong hindi ka na itatanggi niyan, ha (just make sure he won’t deny you, okay)?” was that pain, or guilt even? i wonder if we’re ever going to see her. it would be a regret not to. for so long Vlad had thought that he was the reason his father left, and that his mother was mad at his queerness. i wouldn’t want this simple call to be the resolution that the show had for him. at any rate, we have two more episodes to await, so i am not going to strike my gavel on this judgment just yet.

but whereas Vlad found his longtime coming reconciliation with his sister, Karl had no one to turn to. his call to Vlad was a cry for help. it was heartbreaking to see him like this. Karl had always put up a fake smile against any adversity that had come his way. to him, these were trivial matters that would pass, and they did so — until now. after all he was, as we would later come to know, living a script that had been prewritten before he even came to being. that explains his nonchalant demeanor toward life, the seeming discontent behind those dead eyes, and a repeated hinting that he was always yearning for so much more. at the end of the call, Karl instinctively goes to the closet - and his proverbial closet - and sees the skeletons he had hidden inside, drop in a mess.

that it was Karl’s brother who was in the photo shook me. that past was so well thought out. things made so much sense in this episode: why Karl tried to fit in, why everything seemed so fake. why he was so discomforting to watch, even! that made sense now.

and what do you do when everything has become a mess? the once seamless film that had been rolling without any glitches now sprawled on the floor, entangled in a hodgepodge well beyond fixing. when that happens, what do you do? well, you dance.

i have so many things to say about faux masculinity. it is a fact undisputed that in this society, gender roles are still very much pillars that we have yet to dismantle. our genders have been geared toward performativity, and our consolation is the external validation we receive through the acts of fitting in. in the process, we lose sight of what we really want. we blur the lines between what is and what should be, in favor of what society has demanded upon us. Karl took that role and lived by it religiously. yet, those things has gone haywire in this episode. more than his parents, it was to himself that Karl has finally admitted that the act can be dropped now: the fixed posture, those rehearsed lines, that painfully faux masculinity, on guard all the fucking time. all of those things were dropped.

that is not to say that Karl was faking all of it. there is no denying that Karl has been a masculine person most of the time. but the show portrayed before us a discarded femininity that Karl had been trying to bury deep inside him — one that all people who have been and who are still in the closet know by heart. the thing is, all of us have masculine and feminine sides, the expression of which vary at different levels in different situations. sadly, we have been preconditioned to believe that male persons must be masculine, and female persons must be feminine. Gaya sa Pelikula acknowledges this hegemony, and then throws it away all the same. true, Karl may very well be comfortable in his masculine expression, but his femininity must also be allowed to grow. one cannot be complete without embracing the entirety of who they are. many have died — been killed — for simply living who they are. society has long been a vicious environment. but people have also long fought for their fundamental right to perform these things, and through them, we know that things can change. that things are changing.

it is against this context that imprints more meaning, more gravity to when we finally, finally see Karl dance. in every sense, his dance was the show’s climax for me. it is, quite emphatically, freedom incarnate.

when i say i fucking bawled at this scene, you best believe it.

quite important to note: when Karl sees Vlad, he stopped abruptly, only for Vlad to signal to him, in an OK sign, that what he was doing was perfectly fine. that Karl could be effeminate all he wants, and who the hell in this earth should care? this allowance has given Karl all the needed validation he will ever need, at least, for that one night where they could bare it all. it was only the two of them, but the house has never been more crowded, because their feelings have seemingly exploded and have been overflowing in a glorious climax for all of us to witness. in this scene, Karl has unshackled the chains with which he had been bound all that time, and it was Vlad who helped him finally break the last of those chains. in this moment, there was only pure bliss.

(that the song playing here was Ride Home by ben&ben is the perfect giveaway. for non-Filipino readers who have only listened to ben&ben now, check this band out. it’s one of the best bands to have ever come out of the Philippine music industry.)

and, of course, in this waterfall of emotions, it is only perfect to time the moment of their first kiss. they have accepted each other, haven’t they? in a meaningful act (the gravity of which we will only realize in full later when Vlad tells the story of his dad), Karl rumpled Vlad’s hair, but only after Vlad had already consented to it. then, afterward, it was Vlad’s turn to ask, what are you thinking? to which Karl had this—and i know we all expected it, nevertheless—to say: i don’t want to think anymore. then they kissed.

i swear to god. i only watched this for the 92432475781 time.

the denouement was so well put, too: now everything is put back into its own place. Karl’s brother. his death. his parents’ expectations. the substitution. Vlad’s father. his parents’ expectations. the horror of realizing one’s difference. the abandonment. in these stories, it becomes more and more permissible to believe that Karl and Vlad have easily found comfort in each other. to say that they are soulmates (as the creator, juan miguel severo, told on his twitter) is not an exaggeration.

and, make no mistake: Karl and Vlad did not find each other’s embraces out of pity. no. it would be unduly harsh to view them that way. rather, they found solace in each other’s embrace and warmth, but it is still they who will muster the courage to face their own demons. the only difference is, they now have each other to find some sort of release. they are not destructively dependent on each other; instead, they help each other grow into the versions of themselves that they can be proud of.

finally, a couple of small things: look at the way Karl was inviting Vlad to lie in bed with him. that simple gesture harks us back to the early days of their dynamics: Vlad had expressed that it was okay to share a bed, but Karl was adamant that they do not. Karl had once dreamed of Vlad joining him there, and that scared him shitless. in contrast to that, now we have this: Karl himself inviting Vlad, and Vlad accepting for Karl’s wholehearted invitation. the moment this happened, there was a consummation of the expression of their love. if they had their doubts prior to this, those could not have been more obliterated now.

needless to say, i fucking, fucking loved this. as one who has only ever written three fanfics (2gether and History 2!), all of which seemingly related to sleeping (what the fuck, do i have a sleep fetish or something), this ending to episode 6 is just the cherry on top.

their lines by the end particularly strike me. here we have Karl who wishes to create his own stories. on the other hand is Vlad who wishes that he be in charge of the endings, too. how do they do that? who knows? but the certainty that defines their pact is that they shall do it together, unbound and free to dance to the song they have chosen of their own accord. and that simple promise, made in each other’s tight embrace under artificially warm lights amid that early january weather, with no certainty at all of what tomorrow has to bring, has made all the difference.

in 34 minutes, Gaya sa Pelikula has, yet again, done more than we could have ever expected.

i just checked and this reached 2k words. i’m not even gonna attempt to proofread this anymore. anyway, this is all i have to say for now. i just simply cannot let go of the best episode i’ve seen in this show without expressing my own reaction to it.

(also: i’m thinking of writing a fanfic; that is, the morning after. just a one-shot, hopefully a cute one. as usual, an introspection of these characters, and what lies ahead. hope i actually get to write it!)

thank you so much, Gaya sa Pelikula. you are proof that things do change.

#gaya sa pelikula #ian pangilinan #paolo pangilinan #juan miguel severo #fanfic ideas have been brewing inside me #char #bl series #philippines #philippine bl series

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toomanybruises · 4 years

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portia route book xiii theory

this post contains spoilers for portia’s route up to book xiii, please refrain from reading if you haven’t read the chapter yet. (❁´◡`❁)

after reading book xiii, I have a theory about tasya’s motives and plans.

okay firstly, we need to establish that tasya killed/attempted to kill the devorak family straight off the bat. as soon as she was denied her brother’s shipment fleet, she so happened to accompany them on a voyage that eventually drowned portia’s parents.

we know she wanted the fleet, and in book xii we know that she values her influence and power over others through manipulating valerius and vlastomil. she gets what she wants, when she wants it. and she didn’t get the shipment fleet. so that gives her motive to kill her brother and his wife. (i’ll explain how exactly she manages to pull this off later i promise-).

but the thing is, if she killed her brother and his wife, the shipment fleet wouldn’t go into her name, it would go into julian and portia’s name as they are the direct descendents of tasya’s brother. and who also happens to be on the ship when it gets shipwrecked? julian and portia. only they survived.

and in book xi, we are told that tasya had no idea that the siblings had survived. I have no doubt about that she believed they were dead at some point but i don’t believe it lasted long.

think about it, what would tasya, who wanted the merchant fleet in her name shipwrecks the boat out at sea with no survivors apart from herself, do straight after making it back to land? try to claim the company for herself and the fortune that came along with it.

but she can’t because the devorak siblings are alive. (or she does get it in her name for some time before it is revoked when the bank finds out that siblings are alive and did survive the shipwreck)

either way, tasya is mad and wants to kill them off to get the company/wealth for herself. however she needs to pinpoint where they are. which is quite tricky due to them living in the small town of nevivon for some time and julian going on his countless adventures across the world.

it is only when julian devorak is announced to be executed does she find the eldest’s location. now, I believe that she didn’t realise portia was also at the execution and was in attendance to make sure that julian died this time.

until she realised that portia there and that. she would have to kill them both.

(also I forgot to mention but just imagine the time between the shipwreck and the execution, tasya is investing and building her connections to be more influential and affluent).

now, tasya finds a way to get more power while in vesuvia (which i will also explain later i promise—) and realises she can obtain more power while also killing off her niece and nephew at the same time.

she needs to see both julian and portia die, and she cannot get close to portia if she lets her older brother die. so she intercepts the execution and convinces vlastomil to change the verdict through corrupt means so she can get close to the siblings so she can betray them and make sure they are dead.

and you know how I said tasya had made a plan to gain power and influence in vesuvia? well she did that by financially aiding the city projects by helping rerouting the canal. many people needed this which would give her power and support from the people for all the work she had done. but I find it suspicious that a power hungry woman like tasya would pour so much of her wealth into rerouting the canals unless it benefitted her.

which leads into my next point, tasya intentionally brought the palace down to the ground, in the process killing julian, portia and several members of the prakan royal family, including the countess.

now it is common knowledge that Muriel’s, Portia’s and Lucio’s route show a drastic different perspective than the main three and are a lot darker (like the character deaths in muriel’s route).

i believe that some major characters will die in the next book. maybe a certain countess that runs the place or our favorite himbo doctor? (which will serve as a pivotal turning point for portia’s character alongside the destruction of the palace!) and it wouldn’t be out of place due to the tonal shift the new three stories are expected to go.

anyway, I believe that by killing the countess off, tasya would be able to work her way into becoming the leader of Vesuvia. let’s think about it. she only does things for her own gain and if her plan all along was to capture nadia’s position, it would make sense why she was throwing so much money to solve the canals if she knew she would rule over it in the near future.

and by helping the city immensely, she has already got a good reputation going for her. if nadia is killed and Lucio is nowhere in sight, who will vesuvia turn to? an icompetent court or tasya who has helped improve the city and the livelihoods of others? also the fact she has a nobility title of baroness puts her in higher power than the courtiers so that’s something to think about. (and) it makes sense why she wants the palace as we have established before she is power hungry and wants money.

and the fact that portia and julian die in the process is an added bonus for tasya.

now one small detail in book xiii had me wondering. how did tasya know about asra stealing lucio’s body to resurrect the apprentice? only three people know about this. asra, who stole the body; Lucio, whose body was stolen and the devil; who was giving the body to lucio.

we know that she didn’t get the information from asra since he was surprised at her accusation. it doesn’t really make sense if the devil told her. even if they made a deal together, it would not benefit the devil to share that information. but learning from lucio makes perfect sense.

tasya was probably well acquainted with Lucio when he became count or in the very least, came across him in his goat form. we know that tasya is slightly magically talented so it is possible that she could communicate with him.

now, we know goatman lucio’s motives are getting a new body and he will do anything to be able to get it back, willingly to bargain with or sabotage someone else for it. and what if tasya bargained that she could get him a new body from the apprentice for him if she could take his place as vesuvia’s leader? or perhaps even helping him to reclaim his position as count as his new betrothed and then later betray him (or you know, just marry Lucio and be happy together, whatever floats your boat).

now you’re probably wondering how tasya managed to pull this off. well i briefly mentioned and believe that tasya has magical abilities. it is one of the only ways for her to plausibly do all this destruction if she was behind it all.

tasya could have taken the wheel of the ship and steered it into a tidal wave or into sharp rocks but wouldn’t the crew know what she was trying to do and make a commotion? wouldn’t the siblings have heard if they were being steered into the wrong direction on purpose? wouldn’t they be able to disarm tasya?

so i think that tasya has a magical affinity with water or/and air and created the storm herself to kill everyone on the ship. the crew wouldn’t expect it to be foul play/magical since it’s a storm, something that is a common occurrence out at sea. and it had to be either water or air since we know it was a storm (which are vicious winds and water) that led to the shipwreck and the eventual drowning of the crew (again too much water and not enough air). and it would give tasya a higher probability of surviving the shipwreck if she had magical powers to shield her from drowning.

now, I want to divert your attention to the main 6’s arcana patrons. all except portia have made a deal for magical abilities with one of the major arcana. however, it canonical that portia has a patron and it is the star. now, I want to dissect the star. she and portia have much in common. from physical appearance to their personality: their happy-go-lucky nature, their optimism, extraverted nature, etc. but one thing strikes me the most is the fact that the star’s symbol is water. we see her holding a jug of water, and the fact that when split, the water just floats. water being held by air. water and air.

maybe the star isn’t portia’s patron but both hers and aunt tasya’s? it would make perfect sense that tasya bargained with the star for air/water powers so she could be able to shipwreck the devorak’s. and I’ll go one step further, water has been symbolically used a lot in portia’s route, especially in book xii and book xiii book. there have been heavy storms since Julian’s trial that semi-cancel the masquerade. where does tasya invite portia and the apprentice to? a magical room that is filled with breathable water that she personally installed!

and I don’t believe we have heard the last of tasya, because I believe that she purposely brought the castle down. that’s why she holed herself up in the water room she personally installed, so that she could protect herself from the damage and herself alone.

and from reading the scene of the palace crumbling, words like “thunderous boom” and “shards of glass raining down” and “magic that tears through the air” which can allude to tasya using her water and wind magic to tear the palace down. it even says that the apprentice recognises it as “arcane” magic. so yeah.

another thing i want to point out is that i think that portia will later make a pact with the star (I don’t totally think she’s 100% tasya’s patron and hers only) in order to be equal/overcome tasya and the situation at hand. I think that portia will either get magical powers or find newfound hope and courage to face what challenges her and her happiness. make sense to why the star is portia’s patron- we are going to see her connection to the star in current time, rather in flashbacks and recollections.

this theory I thought up in a whim and has many plot holes so feel free to add to this or suggest your own theories, I’m just distraught after the end of the book xiii I need to find some semblance of explanation to why tasya is being tasya.

also I forgot to mention that tasya’s got another motive to make people immortal which kind of throws my theory out the window/changes it drastically but you know what? I’m not going to try sorting into the theory I made, I just need a hug, a hot cocoa and a nap to reassure me that portia and her mental health will be okay in the next book.

TL:DR:

Tasya wanted the Devorak merchant fleet for herself and used her magical powers from the pact with The Star so she could drown the Devoraks. Realises that the siblings didn’t die and sets off to kill them for good by collapsing the palace, taking the leadership of the nation for herself I the process. Portia may or may not make a pact with the Star in the future.

#portia route #portia route spoilers #the arcana theory #tasya theory #portia theory #nix hydra why did you do this to us #we want portia to be HAPPY #not depressed and feel like all of her hard work has been wasted and that she cannot trust anyone

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ts1989fanatic · 4 years

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Taylor Swift And The End Of An Era

Love her or hate her, Taylor Swift embodied the contradictions of the decade in pop music

“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can,” Taylor Swift sings in the chorus of “The Man,” a song from her latest album, Lover. She chose the up-tempo tune to open her “Artist of the Decade” medley at the AMAs last month, and it’s a return to familiar Swiftian themes; she claps back at unspecified, sexist critics who fail to acknowledge her “good ideas and power moves.”

Whatever one might think of Swift’s underdog complex, it’s not surprising that the end of the 2010s finds her exhausted. Her transformation from tween country sensation to tabloid-friendly pop star to polarizing Twitter talking point and, finally, to celebrity supernova, required — at the very least — plenty of stamina.

There’s no question that straight white femininity still occupies a privileged place in the cultural landscape, which helped pave the way for Swift’s rise and decade-long pop dominance — even as she became a zeitgeisty symbol of that privilege and a target for those seeking to contest it. Yet as many of her similarly situated peers have faltered, she has endured as one of the last pop behemoths of her kind.

Time and again Swift strategically read and rode the decade’s cultural waves, deciding not just which trends and genres to jump on but, perhaps more importantly, what to pass on. As pop music became feud-centric reality television, there was Taylor; as stan culture transformed the way listeners interacted with performers (and each other), there was Taylor; as artists’ rights in the streaming era entered the conversation, there was Taylor; as politics infiltrated music, there was (sort of, eventually) Taylor.

There are definitely plenty of other contenders for Artist of the Decade (a title both the AMAs and Billboard recently bestowed on Swift) — artists who have hugely impacted pop music over the past 10 years and managed to ride out the seismic, industry-wide shifts they’ve contained, from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga to Kanye West. But you don’t have to think Swift was the “best” or even most significant artist of the decade to acknowledge that her cultural domination, and her ability to pivot and reinvent herself, captured many of the defining tensions of pop music over the last decade.

It’s hard to remember (in internet years) that before 2010, Swift was just a teen pop star and not yet a cultural lightning rod. She was already taken seriously as a musician and had plenty of cultural capital coming into the decade; in 2009, having already won Artist of the Year at the AMAs, she was about to accept a Video Music Award for Female Video of the Year when Kanye infamously interrupted her speech. In early 2010, she won Album of the Year for Fearless at the Grammy Awards, beating out Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

Her early stardom revolved mostly around the fact that she was a precocious young country artist who wrote her own songs, without the risqué edge or sexy-but-wholesome cognitive dissonance of someone like an early Britney Spears to worry white parents and inspire pearl-clutching tabloid magazine covers. And it wasn’t really until Speak Now — when Swift was already a mainstream star but still categorized as country — that she began teasing the media and her fans about the ways her autobiographical lyrics mapped onto her real life, especially regarding the men she was dating.

People are still wondering whether Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” is about Uncle Joey, so it was startling for a young woman songwriter and musical celebrity of her commercial reach to use her songs to consistently craft such intimate stories about such equally public men, including Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, and John Mayer. And there was something uniquely bold about the way Swift started using her confessional songwriting and melodic sensibility to “get the last word” on her relationships, as People magazine framed it in her first cover story.

People hardly batted an eye in 2018 when Ariana Grande’s first No. 1 hit, “Thank U, Next,” literally name-checked her list of ex-boyfriends, and that’s in no small part because of Swift. Because even as reality TV stars like the Kardashians and Real Housewives were figuring out how to create multiplatform storytelling through social media, Swift was already pioneering the strategy in the big pop machine. Yes, she opportunistically used this to shame exes, create fodder for talk shows, and garner magazine covers; and even then, it raised some hackles about the way she was using her power. But it was undeniably compelling theater, and even nonfans were watching.

That multiplatform mixture of music and drama wouldn’t have succeeded without the undeniably catchy earworms Swift’s diary entries were wrapped in, or without the devoted fanbase of Swifties that she cultivated online. This all helped her break chart records with her most explicitly pop albums, including 2012’s Red and 2014’s ’80s-inspired 1989. The latter garnered the biggest first-week sales for a pop album since Britney Spears in 2002, helping Swift keep the tradition of the monocultural pop star alive.

But as Swift’s music saturated airwaves, and her willingness to tease behind-the-scenes details of her life in her songs moved beyond ex-boyfriends like Harry Styles (“Style”) into swatting at other pop stars like Katy Perry (“Bad Blood”) the public began to sour on Swift’s strategic use of her personal life in her music. (To Swift’s credit as a performer, no other pop star could sing the lyrics “Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes” about a dispute over a backup dancer with a straight face.)

Juxtaposed with Swift’s self-celebrating “girl squad” feminism, her opportunism — and seeming hypocrisy — started to rankle. By 2015, even racist sympathizer and critic Camille Paglia came out of the woodwork to anoint Swift a “Nazi barbie,” calling out her tendency to treat friends as props. And all these contradictions of Swift’s persona would come to a head when Swift’s seemingly buried feud with Kanye came roaring back the following year.

It makes sense that her clash with Kanye and Kim Kardashian West became the first time she experienced a real backlash. Unlike the drama around her dating life or with Perry, it was the first time Swift was up against equally savvy adversaries — celebrities who, like her, were professionals at merging their public and private lives.

The fight was a meta moment by design, inspired by West’s song “Famous,” where he raps: “I made that bitch famous.” In retrospect, it seems clear that West, as much a publicity-seeking pop diva as Swift, was trying to get the last word after going on an apology tour about the interruption heard round the world. Swift claimed to be annoyed over what she saw as the song’s credit-taking message, and she tried to make it part of her own narrative. “I want to say to all the young women out there,” she intoned in her speech accepting a Grammy for Album of the Year in February 2016, “there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame.”

In another era, Swift’s storyline might have won the day. Her publicist denied that she had approved the line in the song, despite Kanye’s claim that he had checked with her before releasing it. But celebrity narratives, to some degree, were no longer being decided just by white-dominated mainstream media. Black publications were the first to tease out the racial undertones of Swift’s lie in the ensuing “he said, she said,” specifically as a white woman playing on the ingrained sympathy and benefit of the doubt that white women are given in US culture.

Still, it wasn’t until Kim’s Snapchat leak that July — where Swift could be heard approving the song — that the Swift-as-victim narrative became a framework for understanding her entire career. Contemporary white pop stars like Grande and Miley Cyrus had faced musical appropriation backlashes, but this time it was Swift’s entire persona — not just her music — that were under scrutiny.

Swift’s memeable response to the leak — “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative” — was followed by her own disappearance from the media landscape. By the time the 2016 election happened — amid the chatter about white women’s complicity in electing Trump — Swift’s refusal to take a political stand solidly cast her as a cultural villain, and her symbolism as an icon of toxic white womanhood was sealed.

If the clamor of social media (especially Twitter) was central to the Swift backlash, it was also central to her eventual resurgence. Over the past decade, social media (especially Instagram) has tipped the scales in celebrity coverage and helped celebrities tell their stories on their own terms, almost without intermediaries. Swift knew how to use that to her advantage and decided to play the long game.

By refusing interviews for 18 months, wiping her social media clean, and focusing on cultivating her Tumblr fanbase, Swift removed herself from the cultural conversation for a beat. This kind of brand management helped her keep an ear to the ground while in a self-imposed exile. But it’s as if the culture couldn’t stop conjuring her; rumors about her absence spread, including that she had traveled around inside a suitcase.

In August 2017, she wiped her social media clean and reappeared with a snake video — reclaiming the serpent emojis — in what was ultimately the announcement for her Reputation album, and which remains one of the most iconic social media rollouts ever. “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single, was endlessly memed — Swift couldn’t come to the phone, a perfect metaphor for her cultural disappearance and, perhaps, a kind of ghostly remake of the Kanye call. The album succeeded because it seemed as though Swift was finally open to owning her melodrama and messiness. She subsequently broke records with the tour and album sales.

Still, her political silence was affecting her image and music. By 2018, insipid corporate wokeness had become the order of the day, and Swift Inc. again pivoted musically and culturally. Swift came out for the Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms, framing her support in terms of LGBTQ rights and racial justice. And this year, the second single from her latest album, Lover — “You Need to Calm Down” — was a perfect encapsulation of her politics of messiness, conflating anti-gay prejudice with Twitter drama. (And somehow turning the video into a celebration of pop queens supporting each other). This fall, she has made sure to include über-stan–turned–pop star (and video coproducer) Todrick Hall at her awards show moments, attempting to expand the range of racial and sexual identities included in what used to be her mostly straight white “girl squad” feminism.

For all of Swift’s success at updating her persona, she’s never quite regained her massive radio dominance — but no pop star can depend on the success of singles for over a decade. In fact, Swift is one of the most interesting figures of the decade because her stardom is caught between the old-school era of album buying and our current streaming moment.

And, inevitably, Swift has turned her own industry issues around streaming and artistic ownership into a wider commentary on artists’ rights — which happens to work as a canny form of further brand management. She framed herself as an ethical businesswoman when she called out Apple for not paying artists, and she battled with Spotify over streaming royalties but without really pushing for wider systemic industry change.

Earlier this year, Swift started a new artist-versus-industry fight about her music masters being bought out from under her by nemesis Scooter Braun. It’s a complicated story, one that Swift has framed as being about “toxic male privilege,” and the fact that Braun mocked her during the Kanye era — once again blurring, in her trademark mode, the personal with the public and the systemic with the individual.

Instead of being seen as opportunistic, Swift seems to have succeeded in framing her campaign as a fight for unsigned and less powerful artists’ rights, which has resonated at a moment where content creators are all pitted against the 1% of the tech and corporate worlds. This time, even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a squad member any star would envy — backed her up.

Swift’s response to being anointed Artist of the Decade by the AMAs and Billboard provides interesting insight into how she sees herself now and where she thinks the next decade is going. She chose Carole King, one of the preeminent symbols of pop music authenticity, to present her AMA, squarely placing herself in a genealogy of great women singer-songwriters. She also enlisted shiny next-gen pop stars Camila Cabello and Halsey to join her during her performance of old hits.

In her Billboard speech, Swift name-checked newer stars like Lizzo, Becky G, and Billie Eilish as the future of the industry. Tellingly, they are women who, so far, have not played into the tabloidy pop dramas that dominated the 2010s. If this decade has shown us anything, it’s that blurring public and private through music can reap big rewards, but it also opens up stars — especially the women of pop — to more intense scrutiny and a higher degree of personal accountability.

In a Billboard interview looking back on the decade, Swift spoke about her relationship to fame and learning to hold things back. “I didn’t quite know what exactly to ... share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade,” she said. “There was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music.”

Like Lana Del Rey denying she ever had a persona, or Lady Gaga stripping down with Joanne, there seems to come a point when white pop divas need to declare themselves authentic and all about the music — as if their ongoing narratives aren’t part of the show. But the way Swift used her image and the never-ending soap opera that swirled around her to make space for her music in an increasingly saturated attention economy was itself a kind of art. ●

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spiltscribbles · 5 years

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All The Lights Are Sparkling For You | Part I

~*~

“So a sixteen ounce almond latte with a pump of lavender and honey?” The barista chortles, flipping her pretty ginger hair and batting her lashes.

“Precisely gorgeous,” Kit says with a smile that makes her flush.

“Cool, that’ll be right up.”

“Brilliant!” Kit gives two quick wraps of his knuckles against the countertop before pivoting around and sliding into the seat across from Ty, pretending as if his chest doesn’t seize at the sight of his insanely intense sea glass eyes and the pedal soft curve of his cheek.

“She likes you,” he says in that stripped down way of his before taking a bite of his sub, a bit of mayo getting on his cupids bow, and thanking Kit when he passes over a napkin.

“You flatter me Tiberius,” Kit snorts before snatching the other half and eating it himself, only partially curious of how much it might look like a date from the outside, and entirely ignoring how much he wouldn’t mind if it was.

“Everyone likes you,” Ty shrugs, blasé.

“They tell me it’s the smile.”

That makes it so Ty lets out a breathy, little laugh, and Kit can’t help but liken it to the most beautiful instrument. He’s always so proud whenever he can make it so Ty’s eyes go incandescent and there’s the slightest dimple right on the apple of his cheek, when Ty looks effortlessly beautiful and happy to be here.

Kit knows that this sleepy Oregon town on the coast is as far away from LA— where Ty was brought up— as anything could be. He knows that Ty choosing to go here for University was a way for him to strike out on his own, apart from the huge Blackthorn clan that Kit’s only ever seen pictures of, but has been exceedingly jealous of ever since. Kit knows that Ty has never really fit into his own skin here, that if it wasn’t for Kit’s constant insistence that they spend days on days together at the start of their freshman year that Ty would’ve been perfectly content keeping to hisself for the four years he’s here until he could go back home. But still, Kit also knows that they were meant to be in each others lives, in some major capacity.

He thinks back to his mother— her pale gold hair and the twinkle in her eyes— She use to always croon that the stars were set out for us, that kismet and providence would lead us to the people we’re meant to be. Kit was a little boy then, one who was to busy making a ruckus wherever he went to spare any of his time to understanding what she meant with those sort of proclamations. Even now, so many years divorced from her death, Kit doesn’t think any of his decisions were chosen before he ever knew the options, but a small part of him does like the idea that some peoples stars were lined up in the exact right breath that they were destined to cross paths and to create an entirely knew one for just the pair of them. One that was glowing and glimmering and perfect.

Kit’s sure that Ty’s one of those people— maybe the only person save for Tessa and Jem— And if he could make Ty even slightly happier than he was, then Kit considers it a job well done.

“Order up,” the barista from before chimes as she slides across the coffee and a slice of the lemon loaf. “On the house handsome,” she winks before strutting back to her post.

“I’ll take that,” Ty says before plucking the dessert from Kit’s non suspecting hand.

“Rude.”

“Life can be like that,” Ty just reasons before picking up his chirping phone, face grimacing at the sight of the text.

“Everything’s okay?” Kit asks, tentative.

“’s just Livvy.”

Kit can feel his face scrunch up in confusion. Every time Ty even alludes to his twin sister— a pixie sized, beautiful brunette with eyes that are a mirror of Ty’s own— he’s only ever beaming with light and glee and it’s probably the only times Kit looks at Ty and he seems totally whole.

“Is she alright?”

“Wonderful.” Ty intones, tossing the device to the side and sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, delicate hands beginning to tap and flutter around the table in a nervous sort of tension.

Kit’s becoming even more nervous than before.

“Don’t leave me in suspense Tiberius, what’s going on?”

“Nothing… Erm ah, nothing really.” Kit levels him with his patented are you shitting me grimace. “It’s just, my older brother…”

“Mark or Julian?”

“Julian, he’s getting married.” The locomotive sized weight on Kit’s chest suddenly dissipated and he swats Ty on the forearm.

“Hey! What’s with the frown you ass! That’s great news! It’s with that pretty blonde right? Emma?”

Ty nods, still impossibly glum looking.

“Ok Tiberius, I’m really confused to the whole woe with me thing you’ve got going on right now.”

“Livvy’s designated herself the head wedding planner.”

“Alright… and the problem?”

“I just know that Dru’s bringing her boyfriend Jamie, and Helen’s bringing her wife Aline, and of course Mark’s got his Kieran and Christina-“

“Okay man, i’m seriously not following any of this but we’re going back to the bit where Mark’s got two partners apparently? Which I personally find unfair and a bit elitist.”

Ty ignores him and just continues rattling off these names that Kit only slightly recognizes.

“Magnus and Alec are gonna be there and like just stand around being better than everyone! And Jace and Clary! Definitely Isabell and Simon too!”

“Am I having a stroke? Ty as my best friend you’re obligated to tell me if I’m having a stroke.”

“You know this’s all just a big ploy by Livvy, right?” Ty charges, mouth curled.

“This wedding… The one between your brother Julian and his long time girlfriend Emma, is a ploy? A ploy by Livvy?”

“She’s worried about me! She’s always worried about me! She thinks that I’m sequestering myself here, was mad when I came home over the summer and told her I hadn’t gone out with anyone all year.”

Kit spreads out his hands, very narrowly misses toppling over his drink. “Sisters am I right?… Actually am I right, I was an only child growing up and Nian has only just begun learning her shapes so I doubt she’d be much of a comparison.”

Ty’s expression goes very, very flat.

“You’re so ridiculous.”

“And you’re so serious.”

“Look, I know Livvy, okay. This’s just part of her grand plan to finally pair me up with someone!”

“A grand plan… Kit repeats, slow and confused.

“She’s worried about me, she thinks that everyone needs like a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever to be happy.”

“I see.”

“She’s gonna try and pair me up with like somebody I don’t even know for the entire wedding! Like some way worse version of a blind date. Just you watch!”

“Aren’t weddings like only a few hours?”

“Not in Blackthorn standards,” Ty bristles, begins to spin his phone with the pop socket Kit had gotten him a couple weeks ago because it had his initials and it was a cheap version of getting something actually monogrammed, which in all his dorkitude Ty actually loves to have, has got all his pencils imprinted with his first and last names, and middle initial. It’d all be infuriating if it wasn’t so cute.

“Yo man I’m sorry, but Livvy’s got your best interest at heart, you know that.”

“I know,” Ty sighs, runs a hand through his dark hair . “I just wish she didn’t feel like responsible for me all the time.”

Kit purses his lip in discomfort, suddenly feels an intense kinship with Ty’s twin whom he’s never met. He’d like to tell Ty that it’s not a feeling of responsibility but a gesture of love. She wants to make sure he’s taken care of because her heart wouldn’t feel complete if she wasn’t doing that. Kit wants to tell him it’s not because he’s a weight on her shoulders but because he’s the first person to look at him and make Kit feel like he’s being seen. The first person to touch him softly instead of automatically assuming he’s been cut from metal and steel and brimstone. The first person to have caught and effortlessly kept Kit’s attention, the only one who’s ever made it so Kit’s skin feels like it’s been lit on fire with every surreptitious glance.

Oh, erm— Ah, but that’s all completely from livvi’s hypothetic perspective, not from Kit’s. Not at all, not even slightly.

“Mmm,” Kit clears his throat, trying to clear his head of all those sorts of thoughts, less he risk the best friendship he’s ever known. “Well Livvy obviously just wants to make sure you’re happy, I bet if you just told her that you’ve already found a date for the wedding she won’t bother to try and play matchmaker.”

Kit’s taken aback when he sees an all too familiar gleam in Ty’s gorgeous eyes and his head popping up in sudden, acute excitement.

“Yes! Brilliant! Totally! Watson you’re a genius!”

Kit can’t help but preen, feels a warmth coiling deep inside him at the sparks Ty’s quite literally radiating.

“I’m glad you’ve finally came to the light Tiberius.”

“You’ll come then?”

“Oh, ah, what?”

“To the wedding! You’ll pretend to be my date, in a romantic sense I mean.”

“Ahh,” Kit feels like he’s been succor punched, is especially confused to this parody of what he’s been privately wishing to hear for over a year now. “Run that by me again?”

“you’re a genius!” Ty crows, fists clenched and smile bright. “It’s not even that large of a leap! You’re the only person I tell them about and I bet if I tell her now that we’ve begun dating she wouldn’t even prod when I bring you to the wedding in January!”

Kit still feels very much so out of the loop.

“THey’d probably want you to spend Christmas with us too, would that be alright with you? You guys don’t really celebrate right? Jem’s a Buddhist and you said Tessa is atheist right?”

“Ah… yeah?”

“Oh awesome! I’ll call her and tell her now!” Ty leaps out of his chair, gathers Kit in for a tight hug before scurrying off to a quieter corner of the union to chat with Livvy.

“Wait, what just happened?” is all Kit can manage out, blinking owlish in Ty’s wake.

#Kit and Ty #Ty and Kit #Tiberius Blackthorn #Kit Rook #Kit Herondale #Spilled Ink #The Shadowhunter Chronicles #Will never figure out their ship name lol #spilt ink

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gojiayiblog-blog · 4 years

Text

“culture Hybird” --A workshop about making shortbread

Critical thinking

Through this social practice in B16, I re-understand art. I always think that the creation and display of art is in a place with a relatively "ceremonial sense". For example, we will create in a studio and display works in galleries, museums and other formal places. However, in this event, art was directly transferred to people's daily lives. Artistic language and artistic methods have become simple, they are extremely close to people's daily lives. It is because of this that there is more space for the development of artistic thought.

Firstly, art comes from life, whether it is "game theory", "labor theory", "witchcraft theory" ... In fact, it is essentially an activity that occurs in life. This should be a feeling of my coming to Birmingham to study, especially after this activity. In China, everyone only accepts works of art in the school system, and people rarely value the art of life. However, this practice in B16 made me feel that everyone who participated in the "shortbread" event had their own unique ideas. They had serious thoughts on what to express, and their attitude towards this little cookie was serious too.

Secondly, art is the combination of simple individuals. No matter how large a work of art is, it is continuously completed step by step. Even great art ideas are promoted by small ideas. The average production time of everyone was only about 10 minutes, but the short time recorded the thoughts that flashed in their minds. Joseph Beuys said, "Everyone is an artist." In reality, not everyone is an artist. I think it is because the artist is good at recording every simple and small thought in his daily life. In the end, these small thoughts are enough to become a work, from quantitative change to qualitative change.

Finally, the art of life is the more real. Towards the end of the event, when I delivered the baked "work" to each of them, they did not simply pick up and eat it like they would treat a biscuit. Almost everyone held up the plate and looked at the shortbread carefully, and when I interviewed them and asked about the meaning of the pattern, people also looked very excited. In their opinion, this shortbread has a special meaning. In my opinion, this may be a rare self-creation in their life, and I designed this event to have the honor of witnessing their occurrence. People's feedback has also impressed me greatly.

This time, although it was carried out for the purpose of cultural exchange, let the participants know some information about the culture of Chinese ancient characters. However, what I saw at the event was not just the sharing of foreign cultures. It is a strong response from the participation of art in social practice.

General idea about the course

Linked to the practices of art participating in society, I suddenly thought that during the Spring Festival in China, almost every community will hold activities for artists to write Spring Festival couplets and send blessings. Therefore, I decided to hold a cultural sharing and exchange activity in B16.

Inspirations (1)

In the UK, my major course is contemporary art China, and the element of calligraphy is more and more widely used in contemporary art. Famous contemporary Chinese artists like Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, Zhang Huan, etc. are all frequently use calligraphy elements to create their works. Actually, I've always been confused that as a person whose first language is not Chinese, how do they appreciate calligraphy works? Until I came into contact with some works of the American abstract expressionist painter Franz Kline (1910-1962), such as New York, NY 1953, Crow Dancer, etc. it can be simply said that without techniques and cultural background, calligraphy is a kind of black and white Art, frame and space art. Therefore, calligraphy is not as esoteric as I thought in my mind, nor is it inaccessible to everyone. Calligraphy can show its simplest and most essential charm in other countries.

Xu Bing, Happy Chinese New Year.

Zhang Huan, Family Tree.

Franz Kline, New York.

Franz Kline, Crow Dancer.

Inspirations (2)

In China, my research direction is calligraphy, and my interest is about Chu Jian. Chu Jian appeared in the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period over two thousand years ago, an ancient character written on bamboo pieces. Of course, choosing it as the basis for this social practice is not only related to my interests. I also think that this type of text not only inherits the pictographic characteristics of the original text (Oracle or Bronze Inscriptions), but also lays the foundation for the development and evolution of Chinese characters today. Chu Jian's fonts are changeable, and the structure is diverse. It is easy to innovate and change it.

Chu Jian

About B16 and own thought

Based on these cognitions, I further thought that since I want to share the Chinese culture with the residents of ladywood, what can I show them differently? Relay on the information and field investigations, I pay attention On B16's Edgbaston Reservoir, this reservoir is a feature of B16. And the origin of human civilization is the river culture, so I think water plays a pivotal role in our lives. Therefore, I chose the shape of the word "水"（water）as the base image and decided to let the friends at Neighbor Night try to use this image to describe the B16 in their impression. Of course, based on Chu Jian's high plasticity, this " "Water" can be deformed and placed anywhere. Like "浴"（bath）, the character ‘water’ can be placed below and left; Like the character "酒"（wine） deforms “water” into two curves; The word "渊"（deep water） puts the word "water" in the middle.

“浴”

“酒”

“渊”

Tutorial ideas

After discussing with the teacher, the teacher gave me a lot of opinions and asked me to refer to a project called "Daily Bread" by artist Onkar Kular, (http://www.onkarkular.com/index.php?/project/bread/) which is a project involving children. First, introduce children to the history of bread, teach them how to make bread and taste different breads from around the world. Then, the children design breads with different recipes for different uses. Finally, bake these designs out.

After referring to this, I think that to better spread the art of calligraphy, I must turn it into something ordinary in life. Therefore, I decided that the "logo" that everyone has designed can be made into food, which will also increase the fun of this event. The teacher gave me a good opinion is that food can choose "shortbread", this is a traditional Scottish biscuit. I really agree with that which on one way it is a traditional food, and it can be a represent of British culture; on the other hand, it is easy to shape some patterns.

Own practice about B16

At the same time, I also designed an example of a "logo". My design inspiration comes from the "渊" (deep water) of Chujian characters. This is a wrapped Chinese character with a character means water in the middle. It reminds me of the space b16 on the map, which is similar to this word. Edgbaston Reservoir is in the middle of B16, occupying a small seat. The outline of B16 is very similar to a bat who wants to fly. According to the data, the reservoir is surrounded by woodland and grassland，and the area supports a valuable city site for animals such as newts and bats. So, this simple logo I designed is a Chinese character with a bat shape and a "water" in the middle.

After all, I don't know much about the local culture, and I can only express a regional feature here. I believe that the local people know and feel much more about this than me, and they can design a logo with more local characteristics. This is also the original intention of my organization of this workshop. I hope that there can be sufficient collision and communication between different cultures.

Event final content

One week before the event, after the teacher discussed with the person in charge of B16 "Eat, Make, Play ", I was allowed to use the on-site oven, which ensured that my project could be carried out smoothly. And I confirmed and organized all the procedures of the event with Dem again: A workshop about making shortbread to create a hybrid between calligraphy and B16.First step is using Ancient Chinese character“水”(water) as a basic image to create individual shapes by participants. The second step is to carve their design on the made dough and bake it!

My plan had to make a small adjustment once again, because the time was only 2 hours, and there were 7 activities on site at the same time. In other words, there is a plane B, which is to select some iconic words that are closely related to the community in advance, and let residents refer to the sample to cut out shapes. Although this step lacks the step of independent design, it is also a good idea to let them feel Chinese culture when doing shortbread. After all, it only takes 2 hours.

D-day prepare

In the afternoon of December 4th, I made some shortbread of Chinese characters in advance, including Chinese ancient characters such as "爱"（love）, "和"（peace）, "人"（people）, etc. These are some beautiful words to describe the community. I hope that residents at 6pm will like these shortbreads in the form of ancient text. At the same time, in order to save time, I prepared the dough that I was going to knead on site.

Happy Neighbor Night

In order to be fully prepared to welcome the residents of B16 who came to Neighbor Nigh, we came to the Christ Church in advance, and I took the time to place my "baked examples" in advance. As the teachers introduced our projects one by one, the residents cheered, and the event has started!

On site (1)

At the beginning, everyone felt very novel and kept sighing "This is a Chinese character? " "This is so interesting!" “It’s not like Chinese characters, it’s more like a pattern.”

Soon, a resident came to me with great interest and designed his own shortbread, which is also my first shortbread today. I explained to him that this is an ancient Chinese word for water, but he explained to me while he was portraying that I didn't think it looked like a river or water, and I felt that the form was like steam, and an "X" was marked below to indicate negation, and a love was drawn on the entire picture. He said he hopes that the world can pay attention to the issue of climate warming, and also hopes that the problem of climate warming can be improved.

On site (2)

There is also an American friend who came to ladywood shortly after. She said that she did not think much when drawing these patterns. She just felt that there should be a lot of fish jumping on the water, so she designed this picture and used the extra dough to make a fish look，and hope everyone can pay more attention to environmental issues.

On site (3)

Towards the end of the event, I found that everyone seemed very reluctant to be restricted by the B16 area. Residents reflected issues such as climate warming, environmental pollution, and personal interests on the image of "水"（water）. Everyone wants to express their feelings. I originally thought that there would be no time for everyone to design the patterns themselves, but everyone seemed to have the desire to create, saving the time of designing on paper and engraving the patterns directly on the dough. A newly moved resident even thought about 3 minutes before he started engraving it.

In the end, a little girl walked in front of me and portrayed one. It is demanding for a child to have some knowledge of this place and the world. So, I did not require her anything. When I asked her what was carved, she said "Pokemon" in a small voice, and when I asked further, she didn't give any more explanation. This should be the smallest participant in my activity today.

“Episode”

I was infected by the atmosphere at that time, and I participated in the activities of other friends on the spot.

In the meantime, a resident came to me and exchanged her shortbread. She thinks that my idea is very good to make Chinese characters in this form, and she generally makes shortbread into traditional shapes, and may only make some changes in taste at most. Actually, it's really easy to make life art.

The end

The event is over. Although some of the residents' designs have nothing to do with ladywood, they are the truest reactions to their lives. I think it is also very good. They extended the questions to be answered and the ideas to be displayed beyond B16, which I did not expect. I am still very satisfied with the results of the event, and everyone is actively participating in my event. Let me have a new definition of art. Art does not have to be so great and extraordinary. Art can also be simple and ordinary. Only when art participates in life can it magnify the meaning of art.

After the event, I shared the activity of the day and my first experience of combining community and art with my roommate. She also showed great interest. Since this event is mainly based on people’s feelings and the word "水"（water）. Then I decided to invite her to also design a shortbread about "水"（water） as a small extension about this activity. She said that she would think of "fire" when she mentioned water, so she wrote a Chinese character "fire" with flowing lines of water. I told her that there is an idiom in China called "水火不容" （Water and fire cannot merge with each other），which is a metaphor for the bad relationship between people. She suddenly appeared very confused, and then deducted the two points of "fire" into two hearts, indicating Water and fire can merge with each other，which she named that people should live in harmony with each other. The energy carried in the small pattern is huge. A seemingly ordinary social activity has a different impact on participants and me.

Who says calligraphy culture can only be displayed in writing brush, Chinese ink, Chinese paper, and Yantai? Shortbread is also very acceptable. Who says art can only be presented in exhibition halls? An ordinary church is also possible.

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grimelords · 6 years

Photo

My September playlist is here, 37 songs from opera to bossa nova to a song about marrying Tom Collins to thank him for the sips. I’m hopeful there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ll enjoy

Been Drinkin’ Water Out Of Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: I love this song because every other version I’ve ever heard sings it as ‘I’ve been drinking muddy water, sleeping in a hollow log’, but straight up drinking out of the log sounds so much better. Also I just found out that this version I’ve loved for years was the original Alan Lomax recording and not a later one like I’d assumed, which is nice!

Tom Collins - The Sloppy Boys: I have not been able to get this song out of my head since I heard it. “I sent an edible arrangement to my travel agent because they had free booze on the carnival cruise” is a masterpiece of rhyme and the way he screams “hold him in my grips!” is just perfect.

What Means Of Witchery - Gospel: This is a perfect song. I think it’s criminal that Gospel aren’t more widely known and I think I’ve decided to make it my life mission to spread the word. The gospel of Gospel if you will. You don’t have to. I had a long daydream a little while ago about transcribing the drums in this song, which feels like an unresolved brain problem but exemplifies just how much I love it.

A Saint Among Madmen - Helen Of Troy: This is the band the drummer from Gospel was in before Gospel and they’re really really good. This sort of spoken word song is hard to pull off without sounding totally corny and I think him being so low in the mix really helps. It reminds me of some early At The Drive-In instrumental wise. The way it finally kicks off, and the sort of yelping desperate tone to the screams in the second half is just so satisfying.

shimripl casual - Autechre: Another cut I enjoyed from Autechre’s immense new album as I work on comprehending it. I like this song because it sounds like a field recording of a prototype mechanical swamp.

New Rules - Dua Lipa: This song feels like it deserves a marching band. There's just so much going on rhythmically, the dancehall rhythm at the centre of it is constantly augmented by all sorts of other percussion, the great snare work throughout, the perfectly formed tiny fill that introduces the chorus, it's just an absolute feast. I only found out the other day that the guy who produced this, Ian Kirkpatrick, also did Bad Liar - what a year for Ian!

My Girls - Tears For Fears: Hey Tears For Fears did a cover of My Girls by Animal Collective and this might be controversial but I think it's better than the original. It tightens up the structure and differentiates the sections a bit, so that it changes from a slow building jam into an odd pop song. They also draw out the harmonies more so that you really notice how funny it is to sing 'my father's graaave' over and over in a big bass under everything.

Crosses - Zero 7 and Jose Gonzales: Sia's career from before she was world-famous Sia is so interesting because she had like a full 15 years of being notable around the world in a bunch of different ways before it all coalesced into Big Sia. She was a backing vocalist in Jamiraquai's band for god's sake. She also was the de facto vocalist of this downtempo band Zero 7 for three albums, but she's not on this song but Jose Gonzales also sang on about half the songs on this album is! This is a remix/cover of his solo song Crosses but this version really shows the song in a whole different light to the original.

Napoleon Solo - At The Drive-In: Years ago in high school one of about 5 videos I had on my iPod was this version of Napoleon Solo from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nlfmqsx1r0 and I would watch it over and over and over. It's also a good example of why Cedric's lyrics are like they are. He just talks like that. He says things like 'they had the acme weight dropped on them' to describe his friends who died in a car crash and you just have to go along with it.

Act Three: No. 27 - A Real Slow Drag - Scott Joplin: Did you know Scott Joplin, the man behind everyone's favourite song The Entertainer, wrote TWO operas?? Because I didn't. One of them is unfairly lost to history but the other, Treemonisha, was written in 1911 but not properly performed until the Joplin renaissance in 1972. This is the big finale and it's partly because of the performance but partly because of the way he wrote it but it feels a lot more modern than any other operas I've heard from the era. Even though it is mostly a march, it feels like melodically and structurally he's drawing on pre-blues and gospel music in a way that presages rock and roll and the influence it's had on all music since - it feels more like a musical than an opera.

Celia - Cults: Cults have a new EP and it's an entirely different sound for them. Pounding, dark, Ochestral Manouveurs In The Dark type synths under their best lyrics in a long time.

Sharp Dressed Man - Xiu Xiu: Xiu Xiu did this ZZ Top cover for The AV club and I absolutely love it. It sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age if Josh Homme’s charisma stat overflowed and reset back to 0. This recording they did later is is great but the original video is even better https://youtu.be/0SG6yDSbtxULazy

Nina - Greg Phillinganes: This was a recommendation from my friend and yours @megapope and thank god he did because I've had it stuck in my head all month. Written by Donald Fagen from Steely Dan for Michael Jackson's keyboard player's solo album, a true behind-the-scenes hit.

Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros: I was thinking about how after Takk Sigur Ros got so big and famous and rich off advertising money for their beautiful music and then made the best move possible and pivoted abruptly away from ethereal graceful floating melodies hung from the moon by a gossamer string to good old fashioned stompers made of wood. This is another in my very short playlist of songs like this and The Dodos first album where the driving rhythm plus acoustic guitars are the centre of it all. A little genre that I think has a lot left in it to explore.

Betty Dreams Of Green Men - Guerilla Toss: This feels like the energy drink version of Aqua by Eurythmics from last month's playlist. This sounds like BATS to me and I'm excited because there's not enough music like this around. Extremely energetic power music about some kind of 1950s alien invasion.

#NeverUseTheInternetAgain - Homeboy Sandman and Edan: I love this song. It starts out with a sentiment everyone can agree on (facebook sucks, the internet is bad) and quickly veers into 50 year old man gripes (GPS has ruined everyone's sense of direction? you should order pizza over the phone? match.com??) but it's got such conviction in the hook that I'm sold anyway and have pledged to #neverusetheinternetagain.

Vanishing Hour - Helen Of Troy: This is another Helen Of Troy song but it basically sounds like an unheard Gospel song, which is incredible new for me; the guy who will never stop tracking down every cassette and live recording they ever did. I don't know how the membership of Helen Of Troy went beyond sharing a drummer but the vocalist of Gospel is unmistakably in the mix here and it sounds fantastic.

Canon x Love S.O.S. - Justice: Another great cut from Justice's new sort of live album. This whole album has really made me appreciate Love S.O.S. a lot more. It comes back two or three times and I'm grateful every time. It's a perfect glam rock sentiment. Sending a love ambulance because there's a love emergency happening.

Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey: I feel like we don't deserve new Lana yet. I'm so grateful but I'm still getting over Lust For Life and she's going to do this to me? Amazing.

I Got Cash - Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Another @megapope find. Perhaps the most powerful song I've ever heard, in the sense that I feel like I'm being personally admonished throughout. The power structures at play here are towering and the beat.. it's funky.

Pray - Jungle: Jungle flat out released five (5) singles before their album came out and they were all so amazing that I was worried they wouldn't have anything left for the actual album but guess what: the whole thing is absolutely gold, and especially this last song Pray. The feeling I get from the hook into the big drop feels like being dropped bodily into a big tub of honey, if there was a way that that could feel good instead of terrifying. It’s just luscious.

Sad Rude Future Dude - Ball Park Music: I googled “haven’t had a friend in years” trying to remember what this song was called and became instantly suicidal at the sheer amount of reddit threads that phrase returned. Which is I suppose exactly what this song’s about: posting on reddit about how the internet has ruined my relationships and brain, but in a very upbeat, singalong way. This song is a good example of how a dynamic drummer can completely elevate a song to another level.

Knuck If You Buck - Crime Mobb: Knuckle up if you're buck wild it's Crime Mobb. The best named crew since Ruff Sqwad. The two women in this (Princess and Diamond) absolutely carry the whole song. Everyone else has got such a mopey boring flow but they both come in so lively and so aggressive you cannot get away from it. Is there a more powerful opener than "I come in the club, shaking my dreads, throwing these bows and busting these heads"? Is there a better line in general than "Crime Mob, it ain't no stopping, it be like Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden"?

Deixa - Toquinho: I'm quickly becoming one of these 'the end is near' sandwich board guys grabbing people on the street and yelling at them except about bossa nova. It is criminal how much this whole genre has been reduced to funny elevator music or The Girl From Ipanema as ironic intermission music when it has stuff like this to offer us. I really recommend this whole album, I've been obsessed with it over the last couple weeks and it's just breathtaking start to finish.

The Way - Friends: This band's spotify page is good because it's full of absolutely no-name recordings of Blank And Friends that have fucked up their tagging. Anyway I have never heard a song like this, and I didn't think it was possible to use big 80s pinch harmonic guitars like this but they pulled it off in an absolutely beautiful way.

Mass Grave - Health and Soccer Mommy: Corrin Roddick of Purity Ring produced this new Health song which brings the degrees of separation between Health and Katy Perry down to a thrilling 1 since Purity Ring did two songs on her new album. This really does sound like Health covering a Purity Ring song and that's excellent news in my book. I don't know much about Soccer Mommy but this song has definitely inspired me to check her out so I'll undoubtedly report back on that next month.

(two circles) - Boredoms: I only just made the connection that Yamantaka Eye from Boredoms is the same Eye from from Hanatarash who famously drove a bulldozer through the back wall of a venue as part of a performance. Which I mention only because it really exemplifies just how much of a change of direction Vision Creation Newsun is from all that, just ten years later he's in a totally different direction of building something beautiful instead of tearing music (and buildings) apart at the seams. Nobody knows how to describe this album, it's space rock it's post rock it's experimental but it has something that a lot of that music doesn't - positivity. This whole album is a sun-worshipping positive fever without ever feeling lost or meandering.

Centreline - Ava Luna: I'm mad at this song. At about 1:15 they do an extremely satisfying thing sing the 'line' in 'centre line' in a deep bass and it sounds great. Then every other time that section comes around they either don't sing it or there's something else going on that obscures it and it blueballs you for the whole rest of the song. Other than that it's good, but i'm at war with this song.

Venice Bitch - Lana Del Rey: I am so excited that Lana Del Rey is finally embracing the most often ignored part of americana and facilitating a jam band. This is the last thing I would expect from Jack Antonoff but he did amazingly. It sounds closer to Ultraviolence era than anything else she's done and I'm just plain excited to see what the album is going to be like if this is any indication.

Act 1 Scene 4: This Is Monstrous, Wozzeck! - Alban Berg: I found an english version of Wozzeck and it's one of the best opera recordings I've ever heard. It's just plain mixed and recorded well, which is a rarity when a lot of opera recordings seem like they just hung a single mic somewhere at the back of the theatre and pressed the button. Anyway here's the good bit from Wozzeck where Wozzeck goes to the doctor and the doctor yells at him for "Pissing! Pissing there on the pavement!" See, opera’s fun!

Pop Roll Flow - Clypso: I heard this song on Unearthed when they had Nick Littlemore from Pnau guest programming and I love it. It feels brand new and very familiar at the same time, every sound in it is in absolute hypercolour, and the verse vocal sounds like a cool insect is singing at me. What's not to love!

I Might Survive - Architecture In Helsinki: I always feel like Arcitechture In Helsinki are poised to make like Portugal The Man and have an international superhit off their seventh album. They have been consistently reinventing their brain of weirdo-pop every single album for 15 years now and it feels like they've still got so much more to give. This song especially deserved to be a hit in my opinion, it's pop perfection and I've come around from hating to completely loving the little 'than alive baby!' adlib near the end.

Angels - The xx: My two best friends got married to each other this month and it was beautiful. What's more, she picked the perfect song to walk down the aisle to. I'm so happy to see two of the people I love the most in love with each other, and also when I drove them to their suite after the reception my phone accidentally started playing Merzbow's new album which was good.

Jesus Was A Cross Maker - Judee Sill: I'm so glad I found out about this album. Judee Sill had a crazy life, and her wiki page is a ride but unlike a lot of musicians with a back story her music stand alone - unique, rich and beautiful. Tightly structured and thoughtfully composed for such hippy-dippy christian mythology themes, and melodically beautiful even when her voice isn't quite up to the task. It really does feel like the spirit was moving through her. This song in particular is amazing I have been straight up listening to it on repeat. The phrasing is insane, the self-harmonised vocals sound like they're phasing in a very cool way, the violins break into a Bach figure halfway through - it's just amazing. I cannot stop listening. I've also started a playlist of this, Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker by John Fahey and Jesus Came To My Brithday Party by The Middle East so I'm absolutely 'on one' as the kids say.

Rappers Convention - Harlem World Crew: another thanks to @megapope for bringing this incredible moment to my attention. A very early rap song that was recorded in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis and helpfully gives a complete breakdown of the situation in the opening verse before getting back to basics and detailing how much they love partying for the remaining 5 minutes. Music is truly incredible.

I Need A Lover - John Mellencamp: I'm learning a lot about John Mellencamp this week. Apparently this song was originally on the album 'A Biography' in 78 that didn't get a release in the US because his first album did so badly, but I Need A Lover was a top ten hit here in Australia and was thusly included on his next album a year later and blew up in the US. The other surprising thing is the album version, this version, has a fully two minute long intro before it gets to the song.

High (feat. Elton John) - Young Thug: The Lil' Nutsack song that makes Dewey Cox famous again in Walk Hard is real now and it's good as fuck.

listen here

#playlists

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ahbequiet · 5 years

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There’s a scene in 500 Days of Summer which I identify on the deepest of levels. It’s one of my favorite movies and I’ve probably seen it a handful of times, which is saying a lot because I don’t watch movies more than once, even the ones that I like. It’s the same with books, and TV shows; once I know what’s going to happen (even if I’ve mostly forgotten whats coming next), if there are parts that I vaguely remember I can’t stand to have the suspense broken.

In 500 Days of Summer, after Tom, one of the main characters becomes an item with the other main character Summer he leaves his house and is walking down through town. I identify with the moment he’s having, where the whole town and everyone in it seems to be on his side. He dances through the streets in a wild frenzy as local onlookers join into the carefully created chaos. They sing and dance, Tom bats at an imaginary baseball, in a metaphor for the “home-run” sexual encounter he’d just had with Summer. A cartoon blue bird lands on his finger and then tweets away, upon looking in a car window he sees himself as the ever so handsome Hans Solo.

His strut is on point, full of confidence and flair- he owns his world, and it really is HIS world. He greets every passerby, seemingly by name and with genuinely, happy-to-see-you handshakes, almost as if he’s known them all his life. For all intents and purposes, the world really is his oyster and he’s the man of the hour.

I have moments like this. No, I don’t hear music playing out loud in the streets and I don’t break out into song and dance. There’s also the fact that “You Make My Dreams Come True,” by The South Street Band doesn’t play in my head, but there are other songs I can hear in the back of my mind if I’m being honest. They’re not auditory hallucinations, but I can imagine songs quite clearly and sometimes, yes I’ll do a little dance out in public when I’m in the right mood, the “Tom just got laid” type of mood.

I have days, sometimes full weeks where everyone is on my side and I just can’t go wrong. Even when I do make a misstep, everything still seems to fall in line. I believe it’s mostly about my paradigm. I’m more readily to accept mistakes and failures at this point in my mood because I’m what I like to call “up.” The feeling when nothing can get me down and I’m flying through life, and it seems like every person I meet is going to be someone special to me in some way or form.

I am quite often very animated in this state. I’ll talk to anyone and everyone, telling them things that to most people seem boring, unimportant, or even embarrassing, yet to me every detail that I manage to put together into sentences makes perfect sense and are things that in my mind are worth sharing with the world around me. I’ll tell stories about my day, week, or year and get things off my chest that maybe I didn’t realize were on there.

I hope you realize at this point that usually I’m talking to complete strangers, possibly cashiers or any passerby who perhaps has nice style and perhaps I wanted to give them a compliment- which usually turns into a two minute dialogue about my day.

I can also have quite a vested interested in the lives of others around me. When I ask how your day is going, I’m not just asking to be polite, I honestly want to know about your day. Deep down inside, I want to know all the intricate in’s and out’s of people’s moods and how they came to be at the one they’re currently experiencing. I yearn to understand other people on a much deeper level then “acquaintances.” This can certainly be uncomfortable for people, as curiosity without judgement is not a normal trait for a lot of people to naturally have so I’ve found, yet I’ve got it in spades.

One would think that having someone you love ask you “Is that really necessary?” Or “Do you really need that?” Every time you pick something up would be helpful. However most of the time It can turn into an intense power struggle between the part of my brain that wants to acquire and the part of my brain that says; “No one puts baby in a corner” repeatedly. My subconscious can be stubborn and it takes more than a few minutes for me to recover and think logically with my financial goals in mind.

Most of the time, my subconscious wins and I’m left to deal with the overwhelming guilt as soon as I come down off that “up” state. I’m always wondering why I do these things, shop when I’m in too good of a mood, or share my life’s story with my local pharmacist. I wonder why, knowing that I don’t have the money to pay for said merchandise, I still find myself excitedly moving from product to product on the sales floor, examining each item with wild eyes and a fiery conviction while trying to figure out if it’s exactly the thing I’ve needed in my life. Usually it is, and goes home with me despite reality and the fact that I can’t afford it and the gleam wears off some time shortly after I make the purchase and then the guilt sets in.

This is the reality of my life. I’m constantly learning to deal with impulse control and trying to find new and different methods of containing it as you would a desert fire. Good moods can be both a blessing and a curse even on the best of days.

I’d still rather be dancing down the street, batting a thousand with the whole world carrying me to a World Series win than on the flip side when Tom walks into and then out of the elevator. This part of the movie marks a pivotal moment for me as I experience it, seemingly each time I transition from one of those “up” moods into a “down” type of mood.

Anything can make this 180 degree change in my mood; it can be something so slight as I’ve noticed something in the air (seemingly imaginary, or something that no one else seems to pick up on), to something much larger and more apparent like the (real or imagined) negative tone or facial expression on the person whom I’m talking to. I can go from feeling like a million bucks, to Tom in that scene walking out of the elevator, despondent and morose. Although, I typically try to hide these feelings as it’s the social norm to be cheery. I seem to be able to put away negative thoughts until I’m in my own space and play the cheery girl everyone’s come to know.

On the flip side of happy there’s depressed and agitated, things tend to set me off effortlessly. I tend to see people in a much more magnified way, their words and actions affect me and I tend to pick up on even the smallest of changes in tone or body language and in my head I break them down into subsections of different ways in which I’m affected in a (usually) negative way.

It seems as if I’ve got a distinct talent in picking out subconscious ticks that motivate people to say or do different things. I usually feel like I can see through dishonest words and any kind of evasion on every different level, especially when they don’t seem to add up to the body language and facial expressions expressed.

Now, wether this talent is real or imagined is debatable, especially when I’m in an extreme type of emotional disposition. In a depressed or agitated mood, I often find myself in the middle of a disagreement that can range in severity from minor to all out yelling and screaming drag-outs that usually end up with me putting myself in a “time-out” or medicated nap.

I tend to run into this problem often. I often find myself in deep conversation about true intentions and the unconscious reasoning behind why people do the things that they do. Often enough, I tend to read into things that other people seem to miss; or on the other hand they would say I imagined these insights, since what I pick up on is usually very small details and a facial expression can’t be explained, only seen, understood, and reacted to.

Usually, people think I can be a bit unzipped with how deep into the nature of people I can get yet tend to believe I have a gift in understanding society. Either way, I find myself on the thinking end of personality traits and how they affect people and color all of the ways they interact in the community in which they live. Of course it bothers me when a close friend (or even acquaintance) brushes me off, saying I’ve imagined such events and I would love to learn how to take that in stride, or not let it affect me down to my core.

I haven’t yet learned the art of not talking about the things that I think or feel when the urge strikes, or not letting Josh’s attitude influence my own mood. Knowing my audience would be half the battle, finding the right crowd to chat with about the things that interest me, like people and their motives would be helpful but in my head I don’t make those decisions properly. When I’m not in the moment, I can see very clearly what I should have said, or when I should have walked away from a situation. However in the moment it can be difficult or even impossible to distinguish someone who is very interested in the highlights of my morning, or every detail of my intense car ride on the way to getting where ever I’ve come from.

Not being able to physically distinguish someone who is interested vs. someone who doesn’t care to hear it is one of the things that sets me apart from most people. One would think I could just keep my thoughts to myself because (most likely) no one wants to hear about my life, I am actually physically unable to make this distinction. I can read body language like a pro (or so I think), yet I can’t figure out the whole “right crowd” for half the things that come out of my mind.

Then at times, I start to wonder if I want to work on that at all. It’s become who I am, that girl who gets lost in thought at random moments no matter if I’m talking to a stranger or close personal friend. I’m also the girl who will tell you just how beautiful you are, or that I like your style to random people walking past me.

It’s all very exhausting, days where I’m soaring on top of the world take their toll, as I am usually so productive that I’ve got a long list of to-do things to cross off and add more as I think of more to add. I skip from item to item crossing them off and running all over town doing all of the things I’ve deemed necessary for the day or week; however this is usually followed by several down days of complete rest, where I’ll sleep for most of the day. This can go on for weeks. Once, upon realizing I’d been sleeping for something at least 15 hours a day (when I wasn’t working or actually busy) I begun to notice the pattern. I began to wonder if my iron count was low and then was absolutely surprised when the tests came back negative.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that my brain’s subconscious had been working overtime with all of the ultra-happy moods I’d been experiencing lately and that coming down from that, I’d apparently needed months to recover. Once I’d recovered again I was back to sleeping two to four hours per night and waking up at all hours even though I’d taken my sleeping medication, feeling refreshed as if I’d been asleep for a full night. This is a daily occurrence for me.

The biggest highlight of my mood-issues, is when that magical time comes between transitioning from being depressed and piqued back to an “up” mood, or even a grey-area type of mood where I’m in the center, neither too happy or too sad. Usually shopping does the trick, however I put in a lot of effort not to use that in order to change my mood because not only does it comes with major disadvantages which are always quite obvious, but it tends to lend me into a spiral of manic emotions. While shopping can unhealthy in my good moods it can be down right dangerous when I’m depressed.

When I’m in a dejected mood, I don’t tend to ask myself if I really need that, or employ any of the other techniques I’ve learned over the last few years in order not to make impulse purchases. I simply go with the flow and buy what ever seems to brighten my spirits no matter the emotional price I’ll pay later on.

I tend evaluate my sense of self quite often, trying to see patterns that perhaps aren’t there. I’m always trying to understand myself better; however, if you really want to get a clear picture of what it’s like for me in my daily life watch 500 Days of Summer and imagine that I am experiencing the up’s and down’s that Tom does however with one main difference. Instead of a time line that jumps around throughout the movie that is my life, I’m living them, shifting back and forth in my mood, which swings like some sort of broken pendulum which swings defectively and in every way instead of in a controlled rhythmic manner.

The way in which I interact with the world is different and intense. It can be overwhelming most of the time and even though it can be hard to relate to people, even though I’m always trying. It’s one of the positive things about my personality, is that even though I tend to withdraw from the world into my own special place in which I can really relax I’m still always seeking out people at some point.

I tend to meet people and am very sociable and have the outlook that everyone you meet could possibly be the best friend you never had. I’m always attempting to make best friends for life, and am terribly affected when “friends” leave my life. I’ve lost quite a few friends because my, for lack of a better word, manic state has led into some very questionable choices, or because in that state I’ve said things that I couldn’t take back.

I’ve lost friendships that I still pine over because of this and am still learning how to live with the fact that I’ll always somewhat different than those around me. More emotional, unbalanced, and ready to experience the world in a very rich dramatic way. It’s both a blessing and a curse, but in the discussion of lost friendships, I wish I’d had the knowledge then, that I do now. I wish I’d known then at each point where I’d lost those friendships, ways to explain what’s going on in my mind because it really isn’t visible on the outside to everyone. All they saw was me, messing up and completely setting my life on fire, then proceeding to burn it to the ground. I wish I could go back and re-live those experiences with the coping mechanisms I have today.

I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but I’ve learned to live with them. I’ve been someone who was hard, if not impossible to understand and that’s no one’s fault, I don’t blame myself anymore, I’ve come to terms with it and simply strive to be a better person then I used to be and continue trying understand where I’m coming from when I hit one of those extreme moods. I can only take it one day at a time and forgive myself while trying to remember that not everyone is out to get me.

Life can be a daily struggle mostly when I’m navigating intense mood swings and emotional issues, but it seems to make life interesting.

#writing #bipolar #bipolar disorder #my mind #how my mind works #my writing #writers #writeblr #my journal #journal entry #500 days of summer #ups and downs #about life #thoughts #thoughts about life

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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I’m still thinking through names I like for Cass better than Orphan or Black Bat (which I don’t hate like I do Orphan, but I’ve always felt that the name Black Bat came more out of just ‘come up with something franchise themed’ than trying to find something for Cass specifically), for when she’s not Batgirl or Steph is instead. Not for any particular project or anything, I’ve just been stuck on that train of thought since falling onto it the other day.

I think I’ve given up on it being Red themed lol. My dreams for Batfam symmetry are doomed to come to naught. C’est la vie.

Currently though most of the ideas I have are all central to or revolving around communication or connection, because I honestly think those are thematically so PIVOTAL to who Cass is.....but the danger is something like that coming across as ironic due to Cass not being particularly talkative in a lot of peoples’ interpretations or views, and its absolutely not meant to be, not for the reasons I’m thinking.

Like because the thing about her childhood is....there’s so much to focus on that was fucked up about what David Cain put her through, its impossible to have a specific place to ‘start’. But I think something that definitely at least has to be way up there is the isolation he forced her to live most of her early life in. Deprived of even the POSSIBILITY of connection to others. Because connection is so fundamental to what makes us human. As well as to what makes Cass “Cass.” Cass THRIVES due to the connections she chooses for herself. Don’t get me wrong, she’s fully capable on her own, its not about suggesting she’s reliant on them.....for me, its more about the triumph of her having the freedom and CHOICE now to connect herself to as many people as she chooses, when originally her father had meant for her to basically exist APART from society. Emphasizing the importance of connection and communication to Cass is like, a definite fuck you to her dad and his plans for her, a symbol of her freedom and independence.

But also its not JUST that, because its also just about the sheer joy of connecting for Cass, because its the fulfillment of dreams she never really expected to become reality. Because as much as her life with David defined a large portion of her childhood, she was also shaped in no small part by the years she spent on her own....where even though she was out from under Cain’s thumb, she was still influenced by the specter of him and everything he’d ever said to her. She kept herself apart from society for the most part, even though now technically she was free to mingle among it if she chose....because she felt guilt-ridden over the death she’d been party to though it had never truly been her fault and she was very much Cain’s victim there as well as the man who died, rather than him being her victim.

But the point is, a lot of the second half of her childhood was spent in silence as well, albeit self-imposed silence....except also no, fuck that, it wasn’t self-imposed because she was still suffering from the trauma of her worldview being so heavily shaped and influenced by her abusive fucknugget of a father, who’d essentially spent years convincing her that words weren’t for her, that communication, that connection, those were things for people other than her but would forever elude her because she just wasn’t BORN to partake in those things. She stayed outside of society, made no real effort to figure out if she COULD learn to communicate like others did, because her abuse in no small part had revolved around making her believe it was just her place to be silent, her role. That a weapon didn’t need words.

So in the family and fulfillment Cass found later in Barbara and Bruce and Steph and others, like.....it wasn’t just about her finding companionship or even a sense of purpose or direction......she found a voice. Even if she speaks more with sign than out loud or even if she has trouble translating her thoughts into words or sign language due to learning disability or the like, Cass very much COMMUNICATES, she connects, she has things to say, and she more than anyone understands the importance of a voice, whether spoken or written or signed, of the power inherent in just being able to use it and express oneself.

And its equally key that Bruce and Babs and others didn’t GIVE that to her, because how could they? It was something she had all along because the reality is no matter how hard he tried, it was something Cain couldn’t truly take from her. All he could do (and make no mistake, I use “all he could do” to emphasize the ultimate failure of his attempts to control her rather than to dilute the extent of trauma his abuse did inflict) - but even his attempts to cut her off from people and isolate her via an inability to communicate.....they relied wholly on denying her the tools and opportunities to learn how to make use of her voice, of the things she wanted and needed to say.

So its not a gift that Babs and Bruce bestowed on her, because it wasn’t something anyone COULD give her anymore than it could fully be taken from her. But they did help her find that she had things to say and she had ways to say them. That she deserved to be heard and understood as much as anybody, and that she had so much in her that had just been waiting for someone to tell it to and ways for her to do that. They helped show her how to connect her voice to the right audiences for it, to communicate to people who would hear her and as Batgirl and Black Bat.....to people who NEEDED to hear her. For whom the things she could communicate via her actions and protection as much as anything else.....like that was a message they needed to hear themselves due to the abusers and villains in their own lives.

And I just see that as so.....triumphant for Cass is the word I honestly keep going back to the most.

I’ve called Dick’s approach to vigilantism his form of performance art. Carrying something that holds great importance to him even if others might overlook its significance, into what he does as a vigilante in ways that everyone he helps benefits from. Even if they don’t realize that his light-hearted performances even while sweeping them out of the path of danger is as much to help buffer them from the trauma of what is happening to them and how much they’ve already suffered.....those are as much a part of his aim to protect and make peoples’ lives better as his actual martial arts.

In the same sense, I consider Cass’ approach to vigilantism her form of connectivity. Its her message to people who need to hear, to see, to believe that there is help for them out there, that there is someone who wants to come for them, someone who wants to bring them out of whatever hole or isolation or danger they’ve fallen or been forced into....they need this as much as Cass needs it to be able to say look at me, look at my actions, I did that, I said that, that was ME.

For Cass, I feel vigilantism is about finding her voice, finding ways to put into message form others can understand even on a primal level the things she wants to communicate, that she wishes had been communicated earlier to her...that everyone deserves to be connected, to have connections, and to just....speak. In whatever form they can or choose to.

Its about the ability and freedom to use her voice, to impart her messages....and see those things have IMPACT. Be heard. Seen. Communicated.

And for those reasons I keep coming back to something like Songbird, but its ugh....its such a Catch 22. It would be so easy to misconstrue, but honestly I think it fits what I’m describing so well and like.....whatever, ultimately it doesn’t matter since this is just a headcanony thing anyway and not going to actually change anything, but like....I am The Undecided.

(Also I know Marvel already has a Songbird, but a) I dont care, like Marvel is stupid so umm why would that even matter yeah thats what I thought and b) I mean Songbird is an easy name to attach to any color one wants to make part of her name and ascribe particular significance to. Like she could be Red Songbird? Scarlet Songbird? Yes? No? Give up the dream Kalen, Big Red, Middle Red and Lil’ Red just ain’t it? Ugh, fine. Booo.)

But anyway, that’s what I’ve been musing on.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Batwoman Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Survived Much Worse

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This Batwoman review contains spoilers.

Batwoman Season 2, Episode 8

This season of Batwoman has focused a lot on the question posed in the season premiere title: What happened to Kate Kane? Despite what could have been an open-and-shut, neatly wrapped-up character exit where Kate Kane dies suddenly in a plane crash, the writers felt it was important to keep Kate in play and reintroduced the possibility of her survival in Episode 3 of the season, “Bat Girl Magic.”

Then, I was annoyed by the show’s choice to recenter Kate, perhaps because I suspected there would be no satisfying follow-through—like Ruby Rose making a cameo appearance—perhaps I was wrong. Ever since Safiyah told Alice that Kate was alive on the island, getting to Coryana to retrieve her has been the primary focus for Jacob and Sophie, Alice, and the Bat Team. In this week’s episode, Coryana has finally been found and Kate may be within arm’s reach. Except— surprise!!!—Safiyah lies. Kate was never on the island, and the entire thing was an unnecessarily elaborate ploy by Safiyah to get revenge on Alice and Ocean for their betrayal. Mess.

I should state now, before I get into it, that I love what this episode does for Batwoman. It gives everyone things to do, even Julia who returns just in time to deliver the bad news that Kate Kane is actually, definitively, verifiably, no longer among the living… according to her body parts what washed up in Bludhaven. This episode solidifies Sophie as a potential change-maker within the Crows organization. It allows Alice to introspect on her feelings towards her sister, and confront or at least acknowledge her victimhood at the hands of Safiyah. This episode also shifts the relationship dynamics between Batwoman and the Crows, making room for more cooperation in the future, or even potentially allyship. Luke still cares about Kate, but he also cares about Ryan, and the team feels solid. And Ryan continues to prove she is a worthy successor to the Batwoman mantle, saying iconic lines like, “I am saving them. I am saving Kate. And I’m saving my damn self.”

That said, I am miffed by choices Batwoman writers made in service of this story. First of all, a lot of good sense had to be thrown out in order for these characters to end up on Coryana in the first place. Safiyah is notoriously ruthless and self-serving, yet is immediately believed when she produces the smallest evidence of having seen Kate. The open acceptance of her premise that Kate is alive and captive goes against everything the show establishes about her, and everything characters like Alice and Julia know to be true. It forces a lot of supposedly smart people to lose all their discernment. When Alice is taken to “Kate’s” room on the island, and finds hundreds of duplicates of Kate’s necklace with the red gem, it is supposed to be A Moment. But it is obvious to the audience she was never there, and should’ve been obvious to Alice. What redeems this scene is how Alice responds, by burning the field of Desert Roses.

Second, this episode weakens Safiyah in a lot of ways I’m not sure are intentional. What made Safiyah cool, as a villain we only knew by name, was the fact that she was so powerful and present without having to be on-screen. Seeing her reach, and knowing she had the resources to be everywhere and get to anyone made her frightening. Batwoman introduced her as a ruthless, calculated, and capable antagonist but reduced her to a petty, vindictive woman. Tatiana plants the idea in Alice’s head that Safiyah took down Kate’s plane, so that Alice would respond in kind, stoking hostility between the two women. Safiyah takes advantage of the situation to orchestrate a revenge plot wherein Alice kills the man she loves, but doesn’t remember. Safiyah does the absolute most to get back at Alice and Ocean for falling in love and trying to leave Coryana, and what she sees as betrayal. Safiyah’s entire relationship with Alice is framed as “if I can’t have you no one can,” which is dull. And worse, everything she’s done this season has been to enact revenge on people who are literally over it because she’d already erased their memories and sent them into the world broken. Again, sense… where is it?

What I did love to see was Sophie challenging Jacob on the false narrative that Crows are not above the law. Like Batwoman, the Crows operate mostly unencumbered by traditional structures of authority. The difference is, the Crows get paid to do it. An exchange I find hilarious is when Tatiana reveals Safiyah’s interest in having Sophie stay on the island. Sophie asks, “why would I join an army of ruthless killers?” To which Tatiana replies, “Cause you are already part of one.” This is a thread I hope the writers follow. My favorite moment though comes when Sophie finds Batwoman dying, and stays with her because she doesn’t want to die alone. This is a beautiful, tender moment that reminds us of these characters’ humanity. There is compassion and a genuine connection between them. I hope Ryan and Sophie become close, platonically or romantically, because without their uniforms, they align in a lot of ways, and they both deserve to love and be loved by someone who sees them.

I had hoped this episode would be the final word on Kate Kane, but it seems Batwoman may not be done with her yet. At the very end of the episode we see a body wrapped in bandages wearing Kate’s necklace. Kate is alive and has been recast (with Krypton‘s Wallis Day), and it seems her story has only just begun. What this means for the show going forward is hard to say, but I’m wary of how much the focus might pivot back to Kate. My hope is that however Kate returns to Gotham, her reintroduction doesn’t take any time, energy, or focus away from Ryan. I love creative solutions to a cast member leaving but I don’t want that to come at the expense of other characters. Kate is important, but Ryan wears the Batwoman mantle now, and she has earned the right to stand on her own.

Additional thoughts.

Angelique gave Ryan a Desert Rose, unbeknownst, which Ryan has been nursing for years now. As far as we know, Ryan’s plant is one of the few that survive now, which might make her a new target of Hamilton Dynamics and Safiyah.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Let the record state that I emphatically ship Ryan and Sophie.

The post Batwoman Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Survived Much Worse appeared first on Den of Geek.

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos

In Huntsville, Alabama, there is a room with green walls and a green ceiling. Dangling down the center is a fishing line attached to a motor mounted to the ceiling, which moves a procession of guns tied to the translucent line.

The staff at Arcarithm bought each of the 10 best-selling firearm models in the U.S.: Rugers, Glocks, Sig Sauers. Pistols and long guns are dangled from the line. The motor rotates them around the room, helping a camera mounted to a mobile platform photograph them from multiple angles. “It’s just like a movie set,” said Arcarithm president and CEO Randy E. Riley.

This process creates about 5,000 images of each gun floating ethereally. Arcarithm’s computer programmers then replace the green backdrop with different environments, like fields, forests, and city streets. They add rain or snow or fog or sun. A program then randomly distorts the images. The result is 30,000 to 50,000 images of the same gun, from multiple angles, in different synthetic settings and of varying degrees of visibility.

The point of creating this vast portfolio of digital gun art is to feed an algorithm made to detect a firearm as soon as a security camera catches it being drawn by synthetically creating tens of thousands of ways each gun may appear. Arcarithm is one of several companies developing automated active shooter detection technology in the hopes of selling it to schools, hotels, entertainment venues and the owners of any location that could be the site of one of America’s 15,000 annual gun murders and 29,000 gun injuries.

Among the other sellers are Omnilert, a longtime vendor of safety notification software, and newcomers ZeroEyes, Defendry, and Athena Securities. Some cities employ a surveillance system of acoustic sensors to instantly detect gunshots. These companies promise to do one better and save precious minutes by alerting police or security personnel before the first shot is fired.

They are all maneuvering around a problem: Algorithms, at their most basic level, collect data that is categorized, so they can independently determine if something new is of that category. In the tech industry, it’s generally believed that more data means a sharper algorithm. For companies that want to detect gunmen, therein lies one dilemma.

Screenshot from a promotional video for Omnilert's Gun Detect software

Visual detection machine learning has been developed for a wide range of uses, including diagnosing medical conditions and identifying pedestrians in a roadway. Researchers behind those efforts have access to nearly limitless pictures of tumors and inflammation and videos of joggers or dog walkers.

However, due to sensitivity, little footage from the start of shootings is readily available, certainly not enough to program a system that is supposed to differentiate a gun from a cell phone or a hairbrush reliably hundreds or thousands of times a day. Such footage is scrubbed from all but the darkest corners of the internet. There’s no inventory of it on Roboflow, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and other libraries of images for machine learning (though Roboflow does have a supply of still photos of guns).

The reliability of gun detection systems is of serious consequence to the people they monitor. This year, the Lockport City School District, in Upstate New York, implemented an algorithmic system to recognize faces and detect weapons. The technology misidentified black children at a higher rate, and emails between employees of its creator, ST Technologies, show the Canadian company was struggling to stop the system from mistaking broom handles for guns after it was implemented.

“I have concerns about the reliability of the object detection system and that system misidentifying a student holding a baseball bat and [police] will go and harass that student with a baseball bat,” said Daniel Lawrence, a researcher at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, who has studied technology in crime detection.

Alternatively, Lawrence said, police tend to take these alerts less seriously if they are always detecting low-priority activity or making false positives. “Everything depends on accuracy,” he said.

To train a computer program to recognize a gun as soon as it’s drawn—and then to test that program—companies have to get creative. And a bit weird.

Arcarithm, founded as a military and security contractor by three former Lockheed Martin employees, started by programming cameras to detect drones overhead. A client challenged them to come up with a system to detect guns. “If we can do drones, we can do anything,” said Riley, “so we spent the next ten years trying to tell if a guy has a gun or a broom and it turns out we can.”

Theoretically, the vast array of distortions and alterations in images feeding Arcarithm’s algorithm would account for ways a gun is obscured in real footage—by hands, by climate, or by distance. Through seeing so many common guns so many ways, the algorithm would supposedly become so familiar with guns, it could spot one instantly.

To test if their algorithm responds to the intended stimuli, Arcarithm staffers have staged armed invasions of their own headquarters using airsoft guns, which use condensed gas to shoot tiny, non-lethal plastic pellets. They’ve also taken to a nearby field to record themselves. It is programmers and desk employees cosplaying as criminals or militiamen. “All the guys are doing it,” said Riley. “They usually work on the development end.” He adds that they warn the sheriff’s department, which usually sends an observer.

Arcarithm has not found any buyers outside the U.S. military, which seeks an alert system for armed people coming towards a base. Riley said he has approached the operator of a theme park and a school system near Huntsville.

Of the other U.S. companies selling gun detection technology, Athena did not respond to an interview request from Motherboard, and seems to have pivoted to making a dubiously marketed technology that monitors people’s temperature amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for ZeroEyes said its technology is proprietary so they would not discuss it. A representative for Defendry said the company declined because it did not want its name in an article published by VICE Media.

Omnilert has supplied notification systems, mainly to colleges and universities, since 2003, and unveiled its Gun Detect software in October.

CEO Dave Fraser describes a kitchen sink approach to the data-to-feed-the-algorithm problem. His company has used technology made to produce video games to create CGI simulations of the first moments of hold-ups and shooting sprees. They’ve trained the algorithm on Hollywood movies (he named John Wick). And there is also what Fraser dubbed “pajama videos,” homemade clips of employees walking around with guns (real and toy) recorded in their homes during the COVID-19 remote work months. He’s also outsourced the task to a few video content creators.

“We’ve built up an internet database of ourselves and our contractors brandishing guns,” said Fraser. “We have thousands of hours of data we created and we own.” Homemade videos are used to both feed and test the algorithm.

The videos fill up the company Slack channel, he said. And programmers and other desk employees are tasked with creating them.

Even their public director of marketing, Elizabeth Venafro, has contributed self-filmed clips of herself marching through her home toting a toy rifle, which “felt very weird, as a non-gun-owner,” she said.

A graphic demonstrating Arcarithm's Exigent-GR gun detection system

Experts in academia say that machine learning can now identify objects, even from a distance, but the process hinges on sufficient data.

“Today, we are much better than we were five years ago,” Ali Farhadi, an associate professor at the University of Washington working in computer vision and machine learning, told Motherboard. “We can detect objects fairly reliably.” Each year, smaller and more specialized objects are detectable and computer scientists can program algorithms to identify the body motions and context around them. “Not only can we see scissors but we know how people act when they are cutting things,” he said.

Visual identification requires a vast amount of varied data. Even differences in the sun path between the northern and southern hemispheres and subtle differences in background scenery can cause the program to be less effective, he said. “You want something that works as well in American cities as Indian cities,” said Farhadi. It’s even best to get footage from the types of cameras one expects to be in the field obtaining the feed, he said.

Karthik Ramani, a professor in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, completed a project that trained computer learning to identify mechanical objects so as to help engineers find exact matches and replacements. Machine learning is capable of identifying detailed objects, he said, but synthetic data is no replacement for the thing.

In CGI-created images, “I was seeing a loss of energy,” said Ramani. “You don’t get the real-world noise and reflections and metals are shiny and things can get confused. As humans, we see this and we get used to it. The machine doesn’t know these things yet.”

Some false positives are inevitable, Fraser and Riley both conceded. But both claim the technology can give first responders a few precious minutes, or seconds, to save lives.

Lawrence, of the Urban Institute, said once any surveillance or analytic technology comes into the hands of police departments, it's inevitably used to target poor, minority areas. “It is over-applied in communities with persons of color,” he said. Such neighborhoods are disproportionately policed, and the use of technology like predictive policing is a major driver of those statistics, creating a feedback loop.

“This technology is very expensive and it makes no sense to have it applied to the entire city,” he said.

However, Lawrence does not think cities will buy gun detection software in the near future. The summer racial justice protests and the “defund the police” movement have caused cities to shrink from buying expensive, futuristic equipment for police purposes. “I think as a society, we are redefining what policing is and how much money should be allotted to what and how much money should go to the police,” he said. “I think we are on the precipice of using money to combat crime and the causes of crime in a different way.”

He thinks the buyers of the next generation of gun detection software will be private companies, but once a gun is thought to be detected, “the call will go to the police.”

It is widely acknowledged that the ubiquity of guns in the United States is one reason the number of police killings in the U.S. dwarf those of other countries. Police shootings of Black people sometimes begin with the excuse that the officer thought the person had a gun, including the deaths of Casey Goodman, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, and Amadou Diallo. During a traffic stop, Philando Castile informed an officer he possessed a legal gun and the cop immediately opened fire.

Like many companies who make automated systems, Omnilert defends its gun-detection technology by noting that the final decision is made by a human being. “It could automatically lock the door on a suspect,” said Riley. “Now it’s up to the police to show up and see what this person does.”

As for a police overreaction, Fraser said, “It’s a possibility. We tend to look at this as ‘no technology is perfect.’ We tend to think it’s a positive to put this technology in our customer’s hands rather than have them rely on hearsay or gunshots when it’s too late.”

The possibility is enough for Meredith Whittaker, faculty director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, to reject the use of the technology outright. Whittaker and other AI ethicists and scholars have noted that all algorithmic systems contain bias, and this fundamental flaw can't simply be fixed with more data or a software update.

“They shouldn’t purchase anything like this,” she said of those who would buy gun-detection technology. “There is no dataset that would make this work. They are flawed, they are racist and they are being put into schools.”

Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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sudanesestoic · 6 years

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A Fleeting Fortnight

Oftentimes we visit places, meet with people and, by mere happenstance, encounter events which occupy a short space of time, yet they eerily inhabit exceptional spots in the far reaches of our memories. Rarely invading our awareness, whenever these ephemeral past moments come to the fore, whether involuntarily or by whatever triggers their recall, we can be forgiven for mistaking them for figments of our own imagination before the switch is flicked in a fraction of a second to realize that they actually took place in that illusory part of our consciousness we refer to as the past. Intriguingly, they trigger an even more acute nostalgia than our long term life-defining experiences. A mere glance at a photo steals us away from the present to relive a moment that lies buried in the distant past with an imperceptible sense of longing. And even though traversing the path that lead us back to this moment then becomes truly appealing, an implacable sense of wistfulness strikes us to counterpoint the genuine desire to succumb to it. Upon discerning that those moments and the way they made us feel then are long gone, an overwhelming gloominess haunts us; specially if the people involved are no longer around or the venues, for whatever reason, won't be seen or visited again. And so as a hedge against this wistfulness I have subconsciously developed a penchant for keeping my past locked away and just staying in good terms with the spontaneity of life right where my 'present' cursor is pointing at. At this very moment, however, an air of valiance surrounds me as I am about to take the audacious step of reliving a bittersweet experience and willingly bear its inherent melancholy: a two-week trip to Thailand to meet with my Thai ex-girlfriend which, according to what the inexorable rigidity of the mirrors of my past reflect, happened for real. Obviously, it will be a burdensome task to conjure up, at length, years of a long distance relationship. Hence I feel it will suffice to provide an abridged account, if you will, of this tempestuous relationship by revisiting its landmarks and turning points and then segue to the lowdown of the only trip I took to see her in the flesh.

💠💠💠

As it is superfluous to point out our inability to foresee the coming to existence of the myriad experiences that would later coalesce to shape our lives, little did I know that this arbitrary encounter would pivot me towards something deeply profound.

It was a quiet evening in the winter of 2012 at my friend's apartment in Chennai, India, where I had spent five years as a student and earned my bachelor degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering. Out of sheer boredom I whipped out my cellphone and started browsing through my facebook feed. Contrarily, I never was a facebook admirer; as a matter of fact, I despised it to the point that I eventually deleted my account. But it was a time when social media started to get rampant, perfectly coinciding with the outset of the smart phone era and thus being excited about my first ever smart phone, I didn't mind using it for whatever purpose merely for the sake of holding it in my hand. Ironically, it – facebook – proved instrumental in bringing about one of the most notable highlights of my life.... I digress! While scrolling down I paused at a post from a page — I vividly recall its name to be 'positive thinking' — that I was following at the time. I posted a comment and went through the already posted comments before hers in particular caught my attention. I instantly gave it a 'like' and sent her a friend request as I had a feeling she could make a perfect acquaintance. Shortly afterwards she accepted my request and started texting me on my facebook messenger. She seemed rude right off the bat – or feigned rudeness as I could tell – to which I was nonchalant; It actually struck me as funny more than anything. I shrugged off her discourteous remarks and kept responding in a rather cool and indifferent manner. My patience was rewarded though as the convo picked up and before I knew it her manner shifted to one of personable and we started to get along pretty well. I had learned that she was originally from Thailand but resided and worked in Australia (she still does). We came to know briefly about each other and went on to share our thoughts and views in some random topics. We connected sporadically since then but the eagerness to check in and catch up was evident regardless of who reached out first. Five months had elapsed since then. Feeling too gung ho about finally reuniting with my beloved ones after a period of separation that stretched to five odd years, I made my anticipated return to my home country, Sudan, on May 2013 only days after I had obtained and attested my certificates. As it is superfluous to point out our inability to foresee the coming to existence of the myriad experiences that would later coalesce to shape our lives, little did I know that this arbitrary encounter would pivot me towards something deeply profound.

A few weeks after my homecoming we exchanged our contact numbers and other social media accounts and the intimacy between us started to deepen at a rapid pace. There was a burgeoning enthusiasm to chat for longer hours, letting each topic resolve of its own volition before switching to the next one without a trace of boredom. There was a sense that what was going on between us was starting to morph into something which is more than just a mere acquaintance; a subtle uncontrollable attraction. We both seemingly had a visceral conviction that something profound was unfolding judging by the progression of things. A sufficient period of getting to know each other and allowing our feelings to fully mature ran its course before we built up enough courage to open up to each other about our feelings which were equally, and not surprisingly at this point, reciprocated.

And so throwing caution to the winds we took things to the next level. A full-blown long distance relationship finally materialized precisely a year after we first met online. Falling head over heels for each other, despite the seven-hour time difference we would text or video call for hours on end completely oblivious to our surroundings until she would realize it was an hour or two past midnight on her end and that it was time she went to bed (not before saying to each other 'I love you' a multiple times). Likewise, I would stay up past midnight so we could catch up and confab for sometime before I went to bed. The quintessential honeymoon phase that most relationships go through in their nascent stages — an overwhelming excitement amplified by the state of being half-way around the world apart and yet yearning to be within an arm's reach.

• • •

Twists And Turns

Like being awakened all of a sudden in the midst of a beautiful dream by whatever damnable reason, the honeymoon did not last long before a downside to this relationship began to manifest. I was utterly discombobulated as I noticed her demeanor change as suddenly and as unexpectedly. She became temperamental and volatile in a way I would have never imagined she would as if this side to her was obscured by her alluring facade all along, laying in wait for the right time to be unleashed. I was increasingly driven up the wall with her inexplicable immaturity and my attempts to placate her were virtually futile leaving me sometimes with no other option but to ignore her. It was only when I reached the end of my rope, which was more often the case, did she switch back to her charming mode. What truly perplexed me was that after all the frustration she put me through she could always ever so cunningly make me feel good — as though she knew she was my weakness — and my goodness was she industrious when it came to that. I could have sworn she drew pleasure from roiling things deliberately just to keep me perturbed and exasperated. At times I felt the urge to give her a piece of my mind but instead ended up biting back my words as a tradeoff for the contentment I felt from the consolatory recognition that things were back to normal. In retrospect, by doing so I had unwittingly pedestalized her and gave her permission to step all over me. I never looked at it this way until I was later bit by the sobering reality that she was not anything like the picture I painted for her. Anyway, I grew impatient with her incessant emotionally draining gear-switching and reached a point where I was stuck in limbo unable to decide whether I should exert more effort to fix our issues or just take a break from the relationship with a scant hope of rebuilding attraction. Far be it from me to blame her, but her relentless uncalled-for discourtesy made it difficult to resolve what I can only regard, at worst, as misunderstandings – which usually didn't even amount to much to antagonize her. That being said, through the unceasing clashes and reconciliations my love for her was maintained in the backdrop and the hope that things would settle in due time never dissipated.

In the midst of this turmoil — and I wouldn't have asked for a more suitable timing — an unbidden grace happened out of the blue when I finally secured my long-awaited position in my own field of study in a Dubai-based contracting and maintenance company on October 2015 after having spent two arid years in Sudan as a freelance teacher in Maths and English. To my delight, not only was this development a palpable enhancement for me career wise but it also enlivened the relationship and got her ever so thrilled after an eternity of fogginess had taken its toll. The erratic and inconveniencing hot-and-cold patterns suddenly turned into an overdose of charm and sweetness (conspicuously as a reward for this achievement). The honeymoon was resuscitated, only this time it was more intense and lasted a little longer. With this significant step in my life, it is reasonable to think that the relationship must be on the right trajectory now that I was on the way to becoming financially more stable, which should rationalize more maturity from her end so we can seriously start planning our future together. The only thing is, I always seemed to be blinded to the fact that as far as she is concerned no matter how amazing things might appear to be, the shit might just hit the fan at any moment.

Alas, that is exactly what happened!

Only two months into my new job in Dubai another dramatic episode struck and rattled my world. Even though I was in a state of utter shock my thought process was "Well, it is par for the course", while adopting a sanguine mood as a coping mechanism to tackle my disillusionment. Unlike the customary narrative of our previous arguments, I allowed myself this time around to put my foot down and show some fierceness, thinking that a deep conversation where everything is laid out on the table to be dealt with once and for all might just go a long way. Strangely enough I was not surprised by her lukewarm cooperation to reach a compromise. After a sour dispute caused by yet another trivial reason I tried to play things down but she was too stubborn to let go and in just a couple of days I was in for a big surprise. She caught me off-guard when I found out, while I was on duty, that she actually blocked me. To say I could feel the blood in my veins wouldn’t begin to describe the state of lividness that overwhelmed me at the time. "This is just about the last straw", I thought to myself. For the first time ever I had truly contemplated a breakup, having endured a lot already, with no intention whatsoever of reaching out to her as a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship. Besides, I knew full well if I called her she would not pick up. In fact, if anything, she owed me closure since she was the one who pulled away, but that too seemed far-fetched given her disposition.

Paradoxically, despite my resolute stance of not pursuing her, a part of me hoped that she would reach out sooner. Facing up to the fact that it might well be the end of the road for us admittedly left me beyond shaken up and despondent, specially after how we had so naively romanticized our future. Almost two weeks of unyielding silence mixed with an agonizing wait for her call or text message, I conceded that it was a reality check. I somehow convinced myself it was about time anyways and parting ways was perhaps the most optimum resort now that the relationship had seemingly reached a stalemate. Keeping a stiff upper lip, I removed her contact number, our chat threads, photos, voice recordings, videos and pretty much everything that reminded me of her from my phone. I consider myself blessed to have the mental strength that enabled me to assert myself with the belief that she was not the be-all and end-all and thus making it easier to leave the disenchantment behind me and move on.

• • •

An Unforeseen Return

Just as I resigned myself to the fact that I might never hear from her again in this lifetime, she appears as abruptly as she cut me off!

Separated by the width of an entire continent, it will be fitting to assume that my feelings for her will slowly but surely fizzle out and in time I will be well over her. Completely subsumed in the fast metropolitan life — the challenges at work, the commutes, the quotidian indoor and outdoor activities and the occasional convivial social activities — seven months were sufficient to erase any lingering thoughts and memories of her. I seemed to be doing pretty well getting myself accustomed to being single and enjoying life with a sense of freedom whìch was marred by the disquietude that I had endured for most of the time we were together. Things stayed that way until one evening when the unpredictable happened. As I was on the metro on the way back home from work, all exhausted, leaning against a pole and looking out the window with my headphones on, my phone rang. I looked down at the phone screen and raised an eyebrow when I observed that it was an unknown number starting with +61. I was completely flummoxed knowing that the call was definitely from Australia. "Is it her?" I asked under my breath, "who else could it be? I do not know a single soul in Australia other than her". I froze for a few seconds before I hesitantly took the call. My heart skipped a beat when she cleared her throat and said 'hello' in a low voice. Just as I resigned myself to the fact that I might never hear from her again in this lifetime, she appears as abruptly as she cut me off! The timidness in her voice was evident and she spoke with intermittent pauses between her words. Although deep down there was an obscure satisfaction, I tried hard to sound cold and unfazed. I blamed her for the way she ghosted me to which she offered an unconvincing justification. But that did not matter much to me as I could tell from her tone she was desperate to patch things up and be back in my good graces. She made it clear that she still loved me and thought about me throughout the whole time we were separated and that she was more than willing to pick up where we left off. I must admit that was enough to make me feel vindicated and triumphant. Despite the hard feelings that swept me in the past, she managed to talk me into turning over a new leaf. I guess afterall I had fooled myself into believing that my feelings for her must have subsided when in reality I was viscerally missing her, but that subtle feeling was numbed by the day-to-day hustle and bustle until this call happened only to rekindle what was buried deep inside of me.

After almost two hours of talking — starting from the moment I was on the metro, all through the fifteen-minute walk to my building from the metro station and having to stand outside the building for more than an hour — she succeeded in stabbing her hooks into me. Unable to resist the temptation of winning her back, I took a leap of faith and decided to give her a clean slate for which, in hindsight, I consider myself a sinner. Looking back at this decision, I resembled a rehabilitated drug addict who pined for one last dose when it became in their reach. The fact that she could lure me back so effortlessly after having ghosted me for months speaks volumes of how manipulative she was and how I always played second fiddle when it came to determining the flow of the relationship.

Lo and behold, the reconciliation proved different this time! She showed great zeal to take the major step of meeting up which made me believe that she came back with a serious consideration to fully commit. Also, the realization that our feelings, against all the odds, were still very much alive lead me to the firm conviction that we were definitely meant to be together. With my annual leave looming, she suggested it would be the perfect opportunity. We vacillated at first as to whether she should apply for me to visit her in Australia or whether she should fly to Dubai. We finally agreed to meet halfway in her home country, Thailand, as in doing so we would tremendously economize on our travelling expenses. We coordinated to arrive at the same day and we were fortunate enough that the arrival, at Bangkok, of the flights we booked were only about forty minutes apart. I had successfully obtained the visa three weeks prior to our scheduled flights — which were meant to coincide with the first day of my two-week leave. We talked over and over in the last few days leading up to our imminent meeting about how upbeat we were and how we could not wait for that moment to arrive. It was immensely astonishing how things escalated from months of absolutely no contact to actually travelling to see each other in a span of weeks.

• • •

The long-awaited moment finally arrives

Four years of an emotional rollercoaster boiled down to the evening of Friday, October 28th when we touched down at Bangkok International Airport. I recall it was around the time the king of Thailand who was highly revered by the vast majority across the country passed away and so, just as she asked me to, I donned a black shirt, a black suit jacket and a grey pair of trousers. I stood near the exit gate where she should be awaiting me (she arrived earlier than I did). To say I was at once excited and extremely nervous as I was looking around to spot her is one heck of an understatement... There she was! Sporting a black dress that accentuated her figure, she was fairly exhilarated as she crept up on me all of a sudden and hugged me while her cousin was filming the incredible moment. Her cousin then stepped up and put a garland around my neck as a welcoming gesture. It felt surreal. We were both thrown into a state of euphoria as if no one else was at the airport in that instant other than the two of us. Shortly after we snapped back to our consciousness we met with a friend of hers, a Sydney-based Thai-Australian transgender model, who also happened to fly in from Australia that same evening. To wrap up that spectacular occasion the four of us dined in a restaurant inside the airport. I relished every second talking to her and watching them schmooze in Thai while enjoying every mouthful of my noodles.

After the meal, we parted ways with her friend and took a cab to a hotel which she had already booked beforehand. Her cousin sat in the passenger seat. I sat by the right window while she was lying down with her head resting on my lab and her legs half stretched to occupy the width of the back seat. We didn't talk much on the way. It was more of making eye contact and smiling while I was caressing her brown to golden dip-dyed chin-cut straight hair. I suppose we were still acclimating ourselves to the reality of being able to actually touch one another after having gone through a seemingly endless abyss of gadget communications — characterized by a cycle of emotions that passes through the whole spectrum — made it difficult to envisage that this moment was likely to materialize. We reached the hotel in about fifteen minutes. Her cousin wished us good night and took off in the same cab to her home which is quite a ways from the hotel. As we stepped into our room, in the spur of the moment, we hugged tightly, plumped ourselves down on the bed and I proceeded to plant a long, passionate kiss on her lips. It was already nighttime, so obviously after a long journey and a constellation of feelings, bathing and a long sound sleep would do us good. Something else however - conceivably more likely to happen - was sandwiched between them. Apparently the craving we had for each other couldn’t be subdued by the exhaustion. The moment we came out of the shower we went to that cozy bed, failing to hide our uncontrollable desire for each other’s flesh, and started making love. It was worth every second despite the effect of the combination of exhaustion and excitement of our long-awaited meeting. That was just about the last thing we did in that dream-like evening; The first of what would later turn out to be a memorable fortnight. Here is the most intriguing part though, that fortnight was typically a compressed version of the three preceeding years during which we were distanced by thousands of miles. All the fascinating moments in this short vacation were cancelled out by intermittently recurring tensions and heated conversations. Not surprisingly though provided her disposition.

We spent our first three days in Bangkok. The first day in particular was the most notable. Accompanied by her cousin, we took a train to the city center, wandered around and then had an early lunch in a food court. I wasn’t familiar with the names of the places we've been to for all the signposts, the maps on the train stations and even the announcements were in Thai (and why bother much when she is around?). After the meal, we hit an aquarium which I recall to be just nearby where we spent hours on end - one of the most mesmerizing and captivating you can ever come across. Excitement was never killed for a second given the succession of things we did from boat riding, to watching the penguins swimming and shootig themselves out of water in terrifying speed and sauntering in a labyrinth of tunnels where glass barriers separated us from innumerable types of fish and mammals in basically all directions. We were ever so ecstatic, took pictures, held hands and even kissed. Hours passed before we realized it was time for us to return home, not before we loitered for quite sometime in the city streets and bought a few things though. It rained heavily just as we took the train back. Timely right!

The next day I invited her for lunch in an Arabic restaurant. You can very rarely come across Arabic restaurants especially in that region, but we were lucky to find one a few hundred meters away. Just as I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t meant to be pretty all the way. Her mood was far from right ever since we woke up. In fact, she was the complete opposite of the lively person she was the day before. Well, that is indeed par for the course. She blamed me for waking up late that morning and hence missing breakfast at the hotel's buffet. Only after we finished the meal and left the restaurant she started to interact with me normally. I seriously expected her to at least try to act nice and behave in a more appropriate way for the sake of this short vacation and above all 'our very first meeting'. But alas, expectations aren’t always met. She just cannot control her mood swings no matter what the circumstance or situation might be. I was shocked to realize how hostile and inconsiderate she could get, making a fuss out of trivial things and refusing to talk to me for hours (or even a whole day! It happened!), whether we were shopping, dining, taking a walk or even lying on bed!

On the third day she suggested we go to Rayong which is a four-hour road trip from Bangkok. The town where she grew up and spent most of her early years and also where her family’s business and some of their properties are established. We took a mini bus from the bus terminal around fourish and reached Rayong at night time. She made a reservation beforehand in a very decent condo where we spent the remaining days of our vacation. A period I may describe as exquisite and also equally stressful and dramatic. On the one hand, we saw places and did plenty of activities that I truly enjoyed. On the other hand, our quarrels were so heated that I decided to return to Dubai a week before my actual return date to end this nightmare once and for all. I made this rash decision because I couldn’t bare the incessant irrational quarrels. I went by myself to the agency and booked a flight back to Dubai on the evening of the very next day. Only while we were having lunch the next day, only hours before my flight, she made efforts to convince me not to go. She cried after the meal insisting that she was just being emotional and that she didn't expect me to react so fiercely and take the drastic step of leaving without a second thought. I am amazed how she could switch gears between her personalities and roil my emotions in the process.

I must admit her tears and confessions got me a little lenient and sympathetic and compelled me to retract my decision and continue staying for the remaining days of my supposed vacation. As she triumphed, which is usually the case, she contacted the agency and postponed the flight date for another week (the actual return date I previously booked) and of course paid the booking cost in consequence. This incident was a turning point I must say. And it happened unfortunately after a string of squabbles over silly matters spoiled moments that could add up to the remarkable memories. I fully reconciled myself to the fact that she would never change and in any second her mood might just swing the other way just like a pendulum to start another fuss out of the blues. Things started to get better and yet deep down I was still very cautious and alert around her. Anyone in their right frame of mind would agree that such kind of affairs is far from what is generally perceived as ‘love’ where a couple can reciprocate their feelings candidly while working out things together. I just couldn’t find my rhythm around her and felt like I wasn’t myself most of the time as though she is some sort of emotional vampire.

The following days amazingly passed without any trouble that I could think of. Not only were our daytimes wonderful, but even between the sheets we had mind blowing sex and cuddled and talked till we fell asleep. Not incidentally, as our quarrels significantly lessened, the inclination for sex intensified and even our climaxes got more pleasurable.

She took me to the plaza where their business is set up in a fine evening. A well-established electrical shop managed by her mom and sister-in-law and a repair shop run by her brother side by side. We then went to a quiet restaurant bar, along with her brother and two of his pals, in motorbikes (I rode with her brother and she rode with one of his pals while the other rode on his own), had dinner and heineken beer to wash it down and played some games to keep things interesting. It goes to show you that verbal communication isn't the only imperative means to having a meaningful connection between people. Afterall smiles and friendly gestures are part of the rudimentary universal human interactions.

The fact that the frequency of conflicts has palpably diminished was such a relief for me and allowed me to find more meaning in connecting with the person I traveled thousands of miles to spend time with. Although her mood swings could be a worrisome distraction, her spontaneity meant excitement was always in the air and coming up with ideas to occupy the daytime was never a concern; shopping in malls, buying fruits and vegetables from local markets, going out for traditional meals or simply strolling hand-in-hand and having dinner in a cozy wooden hut by the beach.

Of course the evening she hired a bike and took me for an exquisite dinner in a hotel perfectly situated in a hill is still and will ever remain fresh in my mind. It was a spectacular ride in an enchanting road that led to the hill. Eerily, we rarely came across a vehicle along that road as though we were heading towards some abandoned village uphill, giving her the freedom of turning around to flash a smile every now and then. Well, ruin was the complete opposite of what I saw when we reached. The entrance to the hotel was a museum of some sort where some old-fashioned cars were standing to the side. We proceeded through a long passage where antique pieces and pictures were kept in shelves along the way. The quietude and heavenly ambiance of that place almost felt like a temple that alters your consciousness altogether, so mesmerizing in a way that is tremendously suggestive of taking some snaps, which we did. The passageway led to a spacious dining area that is situated out in the open for the hotel residents with a different range of cozy dining sets overlooking the eye-catching heights in the vicinity, the lush greenery and a coastline (not sure what that body of water was exactly). As we sat, I took a moment to glance at the windows and balconies of the hotel rooms and saw no one standing in the balcony or any light emerging from the windows despite the fading away of the sun in the horizon. There was no sign that those rooms were occupied as though it was some sort of a ghost hotel. Had it not been for the several waiters standing outside I would have easily thought that the unoccupied tables around us are in fact occupied by ghosts. Perhaps the road leading to the hill and the hotel that evening were deliberately emptied out in anticipation of our visit to complement the lovely atmosphere with an undistracted romantic dinner.

Time – seemingly dilating and contracting with the succession of wonderful and stressful moments – passed and I was suddenly awakened to the fact that in less than 24 hours we will part ways. The next day would be my flight and hers would be a few days later. The one thing I regretted as I reached this realization is that we failed to have meaningful conversations through all these days, conversations that would decide our very possible bond in the near future. All we ever did was going out, eating, fighting, reconciling, having sex and sleeping. Fourteen chaotic days ended up with a quiet dinner and evening with the only exciting prospect of sex later on in our last night.

I always had the impression that the day of travelling is a short one bearing in mind the preparation time which always seem insufficient, the final packing, the trip to the airport itself and the check-in and departure procedures. Surprisingly, after days of serenity, squabbles erupted again in the dying moments as we were all set to start our journey to the airport. The last few hours I thought would suitable for a meaningful discussion were tainted by a meaningless argument over yet another trivial matter, just what I could do without. Throughout the journey she was picking at me and I was responding, a familiar vignette that was only intervened by brief moments of silence when she was well aware that a few hours are separating us from my departure. Her cousin met with us at the airport as soon as we arrived and we went to a cafeteria for some desserts and coffee. We were all talking, laughing and taking pictures but at the same time deep down I felt shattered and lost. Nothing sapped my energy and tortured me emotionally in my life as much as she did. Just how inconsiderate of her to ruin the atmosphere so callously and flagrantly and send me back home in such a miserable mood. Every time I looked upon her the only words that crossed my mind were “you are not the one for me! I deserve better than this”. I kept looking at my wrist, counting the minutes to start my check-in process, feeling so eager to say goodbye. I felt an inner peace as I hugged her, kissed her goodbye and gazed at her eyes that that was arguably the last time we ever touch.

A fine evening by the beach...

With an eye to the idiosyncratic way in which our paths have merged for a period of time and then diverged I wonder whether our past and current circumstances, the places we go to, the people we meet and our interactions with them came to exist by accident or by an intelligent design that forms the paths which we are peremptorily assigned to traverse. My firm conviction, however, is that whatever we shared - the lengthy phone conversations, the unstable long distance relationship that still managed to prevail despite the many arguments and uncertainties until we met, the things we did, the meals we had, the places we’ve been to, the very beds we made love on, and our final breakup - were all meant to happen as they came and in them are surely lessons to be heeded. That fortnight was an adventure unlike any other I’ve encountered. Nevertheless, it is but an illusion now just like last hour, my final year in university, and my tenth birthday. If life is perceived this way, then we can describe it as a series of grievances over dead experiences falling away like sheer cliffs. The aliveness of the moment, however - regardless of its beauty or dreadfulness - with our eyes fixated on the moments ahead, is a consolatory recognition that will perennially keep nullifying these grievances with newfound hope and drive for fresh experiences.

#memoir #thailand_trip #nostalgia #narcissitic ex #long_distance_relationship #ldr struggles #ldr

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zombiesbecrazy · 7 years

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Regular People

Summary: All sorts of people can enjoy a good sunrise over the city after a long night. Why should heroes of Gotham be any different? (Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon).

ao3

Robert Lee looked up and smiled.

It was just before five in the morning and he was walking to work, just as he did every day. Even though he lived quite a way out of the downtown core he knew that it had been a rough night in the city. He had seen some highlights on the TV while he drank his coffee, and even now he could still hear the sirens in the distance. There had been a big throw down on the East Side last night. Riddler or Joker or some other psycho did something that hurt a lot of people. Or was going to hurt a lot of people. Or something.

Sometimes when you live in Gotham you can lose track of which villain is doing what and why. You just always have to assume that there is something going on and to be prepared.

Robert kept a gas mask in his bag, just in case.

Seeing a few heroes together was pretty commonplace and over the years he had witnessed all sorts of team ups. The regular Batman and Robin. The shorter Batman and Robin. Nightwing and Red Robin. Batgirl and Black Canary. Red Hood and Catwoman, though even Robert thought that one was a little weird. However, everyone in Gotham knew that if you saw more than five vigilantes together that things were probably bad. Very bad. But they also knew that those caped crazies were going to do everything they could to keep them safe.

That morning he had seen from the TV that it was one of those battles, when all the masks showed up to work together. All of the Bats and Birds as local television stations liked to call them. He wondered what the group called themselves privately, like the Church of the Sacred Bat or something equally weird.

On early mornings after such an event like that it wasn’t uncommon for him to see outlines of two familiar figures sitting on top of Brown Bridge, watching the sun come up together. It was this that made him smile because he knew that it meant the city had to be safe, at least for now.

Nightwing and Batgirl only went up there after a battle was done and Gotham was safe again.

The location made sense in Robert’s mind. Nightwing now worked out of Bludhaven to the south and Batgirl seemed to be stationed in Burnside or Sommerset from what he could tell from the internet sightings. While definitely closer to Burnside, the bridge was sort of half way between the two.

Though the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had been seeing them on the bridge far longer than that.

Early on, when he first started the morning crew shift, he use to see Batgirl up there with Robin after a long night, her red hair and his yellow cape flying around in the wind. Robin gave way to Nightwing over time, and now Robert could no longer count how many times he had seen them up there, having a moment of calm after what was probably a long night. He had seen them sit close together. Far apart. Having what looked like heated arguments, chatting amicably or sitting in content silence. There had been a few years where he had seen Nightwing there by himself and it made Robert sad to see him sitting there solo, until one day Batgirl was back with him. Robert had felt like he was able to release a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. They were sitting closer than ever that day and it looked like Nightwing had his arms wrapped tight around her.

Once he thought he saw them kiss and part of him wanted to applaud but stopped himself before he spoiled the moment. It was a very private moment he was trespassing on, after all.

As he approached the foot of the bridge, he gazed up and saw them watching him, as they sometimes did. So he waved.

They waved back, as usual. They were sitting very close today. He hoped that they were happy. They looked it right now.

He had never mentioned these sightings to anyone, not even his wife. It felt like something secret and personal and not really anyone else’s business. What those heroes did in their downtime was their own prerogative and they deserved a bit of peace after a long night. He could give them that after all they did for him and the rest of the city.

Robert smiled and continued on his way to work. It was a good morning.

***

Dick and Barbara sat with their coffees on the beam over Brown Bridge, legs dangling beneath them. It was something of a tradition that they had been doing since they were kids after a long battle. As a young Batgirl and Robin this point was the farthest they were allowed to go from the cave while still being ‘in bounds’ according to Batman’s rules. It was far enough away that they felt independent but close enough that if something were to happen, they could make it to the closest safehouse. Now, it was pretty much halfway between their homes and it gave them the perfect place to catch up before calling it a night.

“I’m going to need some ice later,” groaned Barbara. She kept flexing and extending her left knee gingerly. She had tweaked it when she kicked one of the Talons during the fight; she hadn’t noticed then but it was protesting a lot now. “I really hate The Court of Owls.”

Dick gave a little smirk, “I’m starting to get the impression that they don’t like us too much either.”

“I think they might like you a little too much.” Barbara eyed Dick carefully but he pretended to ignore her comment. She knew he didn’t like talking about his connection to the Court and thankfully she pivoted the conversation. “That’s going to leave a mark.” She pointed to Dick’s jaw and he moved it slowly and grimacing at the large crack the joint made.

He raised his hand and touched it, wincing slightly. “It’s a good thing that a girl I once knew taught me how to use concealer so that I can stay pretty even after getting my ass handed to me.”

“We both know that Bruce is better at makeup than me and he taught you the secret art of contouring way before it became cool.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes and watched the city start to come alive as the sun began to light up the sky. It was one of Dick’s favourite things to do; watch the sunrise from up high and just bask in the simple sense of calm post fight with Barbara at his side.

Seeing a familiar sight below, Dick set his coffee down beside him. “Hey, Babs. Look.”

“Is it Robert? I haven’t seen him in ages.” Barbara turned her head to the direction that she knew he would be coming from and a smile broke out over her face when she spotted him on the dark sidewalk below.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve been here on a weekday.” Robert was a morning person, with an unusual spring in his step for a time of day that most people were still asleep. There was a little more grey in his hair than last time Dick had seen him, but he looked fit and happy. “He looks good. I hope he’s doing alright. His wife wasn’t doing well last time I checked.”

Barbara nodded, “I checked her hospital files. She’s in remission. All signs are good.”

“That’s great news.” Dick poked Barbara in the side, “Stop hacking hospitals, Oracle.” But he was glad that she had. It was probably strange that they knew so much about a man they had never met and didn’t have any ties to Gotham baddies. In all ways, he was just a regular man. But he was their regular man and they had to make sure he was alright.

The regular people were the whole point of their irregular night jobs.

“It was important,” she said unapologetically and then took a long sip of her coffee, “He’s our friend.”

“A friend that we’ve never spoken to. Or seen at street level.”

“He’s a friend that keeps our secret spot a secret. Has for years. As far as I can tell, he’s never said a word to anyone.” Barbara nudged his leg a bit with her own and he smiled back. “He’s watched us grow up, Boy Wonder.”

Dick eyes grew large at the thought of what that must have looked like from Robert’s point of view, the things he could have seen between them. “Do you think he knows that Robin grew up to be Nightwing?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Barbara reached over and messed up Dick’s hair, “Everybody knows that. Worst kept secret in Gotham.”

Dick wondered what other secrets the man knows about them from just a few glances over the years, besides codenames and hair colour. Not real identities, obviously, but does he know how much they mean to each other? How much it hurt when Barbara couldn’t join him up here? How he’s glad that she’s back in the field but terrified that something will happen to her again? How he’s head over heels in love with her but they could never get the timing right?

He sighed to himself. That’s probably the second worst kept secret in Gotham.

Dick leaned over a little so that his shoulder touched Barbara’s, placed his hand on hers and smiled as she squeezed back. He could see the small grin on her face as well.

Robert looked up as he crossed underneath and waved in greeting.

They waved back, smiling, still holding hands.

This was a good morning.

#batfic #dick grayson #barbara gordon #nightwing #batgirl #fanfiction #batman fanfiction

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lanadelreyfiles-blog · 7 years

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation With Lana Del Rey. On the eve of her fourth album, the pagan pop star sounds more content than ever. How did she get there? Interview by Alex Frank for Pitchfork. Famous artists are notoriously late, but when I arrive about 20 minutes early for an interview at Lana Del Rey’s Santa Monica studio, she is ready for me, offering a handshake and a smile. It is the week before her new album, ‘Lust For Life’, will be released, but she seems unhurried and relaxed; when I ask if she’s been busy in the leadup to such a big day, she says “no” with a laugh, as if she knows she probably should be. She is not dressed like the glammed-up mystic you see in music videos and photographs: her hair, long and brown, is tied functionally behind her neck, and she is in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, with cream canvas sneakers and white ankle socks on her feet. Right away, she invites me through a side door into the inner sanctum where her brooding songs are created. For Lana acolytes, this is a mythic place. She has recorded here since 2012’s ‘Born To Die’, her major label debut. It is a beautiful room filled with sun coming in from a skylight and two windows, the opposite of the average dank music studio. It looks a bit like how you’d expect Lana Del Rey’s workplace to look: vaguely and warmly retro, with dark wood cabinets and a mid-century-looking painting with interlacing geometric shapes hanging on the back wall. In the center of the room is a scratched-up leather club chair with a Tammy Wynette album cover facing it. (“I always have Tammy there,” she says of the country singer best known for her ode to everlasting devotion, “Stand by Your Man.”) This chair, and not the actual booth in the front of the room, is where Lana sits to record her vocals. “I get red light fever in the booth,” she says. She likes that the studio is by the beach, where she’ll sometimes go to listen to mixes of songs on her iPhone. The studio is owned and operated by Rick Nowels, her longtime producer. He has come down today to listen to the album with us, a pair of sunglasses firmly on his face. Nowels has more than 20 years on Lana, who is 32, and he inhabits something of an uncle role, making the songwriter a bit bashful when he sweetly refers to a ballad called “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” as a “masterpiece” for its lyrical message about the importance of finding ways to have fun, even in the Trump era. Gearing up to record what would become ‘Born To Die’, Lana had met with a number of producers who all tried to tell her what she should or should not sound like, with some encouraging her to ditch the breathy vocal style that would become her signature. When she finally met Nowels, he didn’t want to change a thing. “I went through a hundred and eleven producers just to find someone who says ‘yes’ all the time,” she says. “Everyone is so obsessed with saying ‘no’—they break you down to build you up.” Lana is a studio junkie—’Lust For Life’ is her fourth album in about five years. She says a day that she works is better than a day that she doesn’t. Nowels tells me that even though the new album isn’t out yet, she’s already making new music. “If I get a great melody in my head, I know it’s a gift,” she says. As we sit down to listen to ‘Lust For Life’, she is clearly at home: Like a good host, she offers me her comfy leather singing chair and instead curls up on a blue velvet couch nearby. She has a familial rapport with not just Nowels, but engineers Dean Reid and Kieron Menzies, who she credits again and again for making her work better, and the four of them ruminate on mastering, making jokes about Lana’s perfectionism when it comes to the final cuts of her songs. The album, like all of her work, is fastidiously and emphatically Lana in its sound and atmosphere: a haze of lazy pacing and flowery melodies, conjuring a foreboding backdrop for lyrics about summer and antique celebrity icons and dangerous, dissatisfying relationships. Front and center in the mix is her voice, which has a crooner’s tone and an especially wide range, from deep and low to high and sharp. Most pop stars rely on reinvention to retain relevance, but her output is remarkably consistent. She says her main criteria is whether or not a song sounds like it will transport listeners to somewhere else in their minds. On each album, the skeleton remains more or less the same while she infuses her work with stylistic elements from different genres, from rap to rock to jazz. ‘Lust For Life’ draws from folk and hip-hop, two genres that she says she loves because they both privilege real storytelling. The new record is a departure in key ways, though. In the past, Lana has become famous for themes that are, at times, hopeless: toxic romance, violence, drug use, despair, aging, death. This isn’t to say every song she has ever recorded is a downer, or that she hasn’t displayed a knowing sense of humor about her reputation. But her relentless obsession with the dark arts is a reason why her fans love her with an almost religious fervor; she’s had issues with people breaking into her house. “They want to talk,” she says chillingly. Her menacing themes have also led to resistance at certain moments from larger audiences who, perhaps trained to think of pop music as a tool of empowerment and empathy, just can’t face her nihilism. While ‘Lust For Life’ certainly has its share of grim moments, it is not as much of an avalanche of gloom, and perhaps offers signposts to a happier future. At times, Lana even approaches uncomplicated joy, like on first single ‘Love.’ The album also contains some of her first songs that deal with a universe larger than the tangled intensity of one-on-one relationships—there are tracks intended to be balms and battle cries for trying times, which, like many Americans, she found herself fretting over constantly during the 2016 election campaign. And for the first time on any Lana album, she’s also opening the door to a number of guest vocalists: A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, the Weeknd, Stevie Nicks, and Sean Ono Lennon on a Beatles-referencing song called ‘Tomorrow Never Came.’ “I FaceTimed with Yoko, and she said it was her most favorite thing Sean’s ever done,” Lana says.

After listening to the album, Lana and I peel off to a small office on the other side of the studio for our interview. Before we begin, she pulls out her iPhone to record the conversation along with me, a defensive move she’s taken up after years of feeling manipulated and harangued by the media. When answering questions, she is at turns thoughtful and strident, seriously considering topics like her attempts at a brighter life and how Trump has affected her love of Americana, and also entirely unafraid to bat away questions she finds boring or irrelevant. At one point, she laughs so hard at a silly sidebar in our conversation that she has a coughing fit and has to take a break. She says she binge watches ‘The Bachelor,’ and that while all of her friends now call her Lana—not Elizabeth Grant, her birth name—her parents are the two people who do not. She is wry about the new song ‘Groupie Love,’ in which she writes herself not as the star but in the role of a worshipful devotee: “Old habits die hard—I still love a rock star.” When I ask her if she is bothered by TMZ dating rumors, which have recently speculated about her relationship with rapper G-Eazy, she gives an unexpectedly goading answer: “They’re usually true. Maybe where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Which is to say: She’s kinda regular, not the hardened artist we’ve heard in her songs, but someone, it would seem, who likes to hang out and chat about life and music. Talking about good times brings up memories of rough ones, and when the conversation veers towards rocky terrain, she reveals an artist-and a person-at a pivotal moment. — A few years ago you were singing lyrics like “I have nothing much to live for,” and now you’re smiling on the cover of ‘Lust For Life.’ How’d you get to a happier place? Lana Del Rey: I made personal commitments. — Commitments to what? LDR: Well, they’re personal. [laughs] I had some people in my life that made me a worse person. I was not sure if I could step out of that box of familiarity, which was having a lot of people around me who had a lot of problems and feeling like that was home base. Because it’s all I know. I spent my whole life reasoning with crazy people. I felt like everyone deserved a chance, but they don’t. Sometimes you just have to step away without saying anything. — Your past albums often presented a claustrophobic universe made up of just you and one other person, but all of a sudden it’s like you’ve got your eyes wide open and you’re looking at the world around you. Developmentally, I was in the same place for a very long time, and then it just took me longer than most people to be able to be more out there. Being more naturally shy, it’s taken stretching on my part to just continue to integrate into the local community, global community, to grow as a person. Also, getting really famous doesn’t help you grow with the community. It’s important to have your own life. It’s hard with how accessible things are. Hacking? E-mail is just a no for me. I do a lot to make sure I don’t feel trapped. — Your fans are famously obsessive. Do they ever cross the line? They fucking have. Someone stole both my cars. All the scary shit. I’ve had people in my house for sure, and I didn’t know they were there while I was there. I fucking called the police. I locked the door. Obviously, that’s the one in one-hundred-thousand people who’s crazy. But I [had a hard time sleeping] for a minute. — Fame can be isolating, but you are making a real effort to not let it be. It’s going to be isolating. Period. Unless you stretch past it. But it takes so much footwork. Getting over the uncomfortability of being the one person in the room who everyone recognizes. The last few years, I’m out all the time: clubs, bars, shows. For years I was more quietly in the mix, always through the back door, do not tell anyone I’m coming. And now I’ve relaxed into it where I’ll just show up. I don’t need a special ticket. I’ll just go sit wherever. It feels a little more like I’m myself again. — If you’re happier these days, what do you think when you hear an old lyric from an old record, like, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” from ‘Ultraviolence’? I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing ‘Ultraviolence’ but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was 100 percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end. — Now you want to present a different face to the world on ‘Lust For Life’? No. I don’t care. I would just say I am different. And even being a little bit different makes me not want to sing that line. To me, it just was what it was. I deal with what’s in my lyric—you’re not dealing with it. I was annoyed when people would ask me about that lyric. Like, who are you? — Do you think you romanticize danger in your music? No. I don’t like it. It’s just the only thing [I’ve known]. So I’m trying to do a new thing. I never wrote better when I had a lot of turmoil going on. ‘Born To Die’ was already done before any of the shit hit the fan. When things are good, the music is better. I’m trying to change from the way I thought things were gonna be to what I feel like they could be, which is maybe just brighter. — But, even with some new perspectives, ‘Lust For Life’ is still very melancholy at moments. If you make sad music, which you’ve done for so long, does it necessarily mean you’re sad? Yeah. I think for most people, regardless of what they say, it’s probably a direct reflection of their inner world. With my first record, I didn’t feel upset. I felt very excited, and then I felt a little more confused. — After the release of ‘Born To Die,’ you faced a lot of criticism, partly around the issue of whether you were or were not authentic. Do you think of yourself as authentic? Of course. I’m always being myself. They don’t know what authentic is. If you think of all the music that came out until 2013, it was super straight and shiny. If that’s authentic to you, this is going to look like the opposite. I think that shit is stylized. Just because I do my hair big does not mean I’m a product. If anything, I’m doing my own hair, stuffing my own fucking stuffing in there if I have a beehive. Music was in a super weird place when I became known, and I didn’t really like any of it. — Did you ever feel like the criticism had a misogynistic bent? No. Women hated me. I know why. It’s because there were things I was saying that either they just couldn’t connect to or were maybe worried that, if they were in the same situation, it would put them in a vulnerable place. — You weren’t singing empowering things. No, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my angle. I didn’t really have an angle—that’s the thing. — Have you noticed that all songs on the radio are bummers now? That Lil Uzi Vert lyric—“All my friends are dead”—sounds almost like a Lana lyric. There’s been a major sonic shift culturally. I think I had a lot to do with that. I do. I hear a lot of music that sounds like those early records. It would be weird to say that it didn’t. I remember seven years ago I was trying to get a record deal, and people were like, “Are you kidding? These tunes? There’s zero market for this.” There was just such a long time where people had to fit into that pop box. — With all the flak you’ve received over the years, particularly after ‘Born To Die,’ some people would have thrown in the towel. But you doubled down and made an even more fucked up, almost hyper-Lana record with ‘Ultraviolence.’ I so double downed. [The early criticism] made me question myself- I didn’t know if it was always going to be that way. You can’t put out records if 90 percent of the reviews in places like the Times are going to be negative. That would be crazy. It would have made sense to step all the way back, but I was like, Let me put out three more records and see if I can just stand in the eye of the storm. Not shift too much. Let me just take some of the [production] off so you can hear things a little bit better; I thought people were maybe getting distracted. I did the same thing with ‘Honeymoon.’ Everyone around here heard it and was like, “It’s a cool record, but you know it’s not going to be on the radio, right?” And I was like, “Yeah. I told [record executive] Jimmy [Iovine] when I signed, ‘If you want to sign me, this is all it’s ever going to be.’” I was just so committed to making music because I believe in what I do. All I had to do was not quit. — So that ‘Ultraviolence’ woman who is so swept up in turmoil- is she still there on ‘Lust For Life’? We’ll see. That’s been my experience up until now, but, like, I’m trying. — Some of the sparer, really heartfelt songs on ‘Lust For Life’ reminded me of the ‘Ultraviolence’ song ‘Black Beauty.’ That’s a sad song. In that song—[sings] I keep my lips red like cherries in the spring/Darling, you can’t let everything seem so dark blue—that’s a girl who is still seeing the blue sky and a putting on a pop of color just for herself. But this [other] person—it was all black for them. And my world became inky with those overtones. [At this, Lana begins to cry, and we pause for a moment.] — What made you cry just now? In that moment, when I said “pop of color,” I was connected to that feeling of only being able to see a portion of the world in color. And when you feel that way, you can feel trapped. — Are you seeing the world in color now? [sighs] I don’t really know how to describe my perspective at the moment. — But you’re trying, and that’s what ‘Lust For Life’ is about? It’s not. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know what it is. — Is the album a way of saying that you at least want to be happy? No. It’s just that something is happening. — What makes you happy? I’m really simple. I love nature. I like hikes. Being by the water- I don’t always get in. I love the elements. Playing an outdoor festival. Love that feeling. — What bums you out? Feeling like going backwards. — Is there a storyline to the album? Yeah. — What’s the story? You have to figure it out. — Just a few years ago you were saying you didn’t care about feminism, and now you are writing protest songs and meditations on war and peace. Because things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up. Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control? Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently. The reason why I asked Stevie Nicks to be on the record is because she changes when her environment changes, and I’m like that as well. In ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,’ I wrote, “Boys, don’t make too much noise/Don’t try to be funny/Other people may not be understanding.” Like, Can you tone down your over-boisterous rhetoric that isn’t working? ‘God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It’ is a little shoutout to the women and anyone else who doesn’t always feel safe walking down the street late at night. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote, “Even when I’m alone I’m not lonely/I feel your arms around me.” It’s not always how I feel when I’m walking down the street, but sometimes in my music I try to write about a place that I’m going to get to. — Do you feel unsafe? I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard. When people asked me the feminist question before, I was like, “I’m not really experiencing personal discrimination as a woman. I feel like I’m doing well. I headline shows just like the Weeknd does. I got tons of women in my life, love women, support women.” I just felt like, Why don’t we talk about the music first? I can tell you that what I have done for women is tell my own story, and that’s all anyone can do. — Is it harder to be romantic about America when Trump is the nation’s biggest celebrity? It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing ‘Born To Die.’ It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now- it didn’t feel weird in 2013. All the guys in the studio—we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast. With ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,’ I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome? — Nostalgia can be really corny when it’s not done well, and you’re all about nostalgia. How do you try to get it right? I know I walk the line sometimes. [laughs] I saw comments that people said about my little ‘Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind’ song. I write that title and I’m like, OK, I know I went there. But I think it’s amazing. It’s on the nose. It’s so on the nose. But sometimes things just are what they are. I’m at Coachella for three days, and North Korea is pointing a missile at us, and I’m watching Father John Misty with my best friend, who’s his wife—that’s all I’m literally saying. It’s just like, Yeah, I’m a hipster. I know it. Got it. — You mentioned working with Stevie Nicks on this album, what was it like recording with her? She came in straight off a plane from her last show of like 60 cities, which I was actually supposed to open for. She had asked me, and I was like, “Oh my god.” But I couldn’t because I don’t want to do a 60-show tour. She flew through the door. Blond highlights, rose gold glasses, gold-tipped nails, rose gold lipstick, gold chains, gold rings, black on black on black. Very stylish. And meanwhile, I looked like a housewife of 15—flannel on flannel, because it was a cold night. And I was like, Why did I not dress up for Stevie Nicks? At the end of the track, she sings, then I sing, then she sings. I was kinda embarrassed. I was like, “I sound so little compared to you.” And she was like, “That’s good, you’re my little echo.” And I was like, Stevie called me her little echo. It’s a stupid little thing, but she was very nurturing in that way, and not belittling of the fact that I had a more breathy voice. Which I wasn’t even aware of until I was shoulder-to-shoulder on a track with someone with less air in their voice. I felt a little more exposed in that moment. But she was like, “That’s you. You just be you.” — Speaking of musical icons, can you tell me about performing at Kim and Kanye’s wedding party? It was a surprise for Kim. I hadn’t met her. I sang ‘Young And Beautiful,’ ‘Summertime Sadness,’ ‘Blue Jeans.’ Kanye requested ‘Young And Beautiful.’ The girls—the Kardashians—were so nice. There was only one front row, just them, right there. They were living for it. They started playing Kanye and Jay-Z records for the rest of the thing and it rained and everyone was just up dancing in the rain. I stayed for like 40 minutes and then I left. — People have made a big deal about that necklace you are selling that seems to have a coke spoon. Is it a coke spoon? Yeah. It’s funny. I have a flask and a lighter as well. I don’t do coke. — You’ve said in the past that you weren’t drinking either, and yet it turns up in your music. Do you drink now? No comment. — You sing about drugs and alcohol a lot. Not on this record. I well used to do a lot of drugs, but I actively don’t now. — What kind of drugs did you do? No comment. [laughs] But I think the coke spoon is kinda funny. I’m just like, Whatever. I don’t think it’s going to make anyone do coke. — Are you conscious of when you walk right up to a taboo in your work? Not really. That’s the one thing I don’t have my finger on. I am there, but there are times I don’t really know it. There’s certain stuff that I think is kinda dope that I know other people might be like, Okayyyyy. — Like singing about death? That’s real life though. Super real life. — You got a lot of shit for saying “I wish I was dead” to a journalist a few years ago. Fuck that guy, though. I didn’t think he would print it and make it the headline. I was having a really tough time. I had been on the road for a year. I was really struggling. I was just stupid, I was like, “I fucking want to die.” Maybe I meant it. I don’t really know. — Which of your albums is the most autobiographical? All of them. The last record- I listen to a song like ‘Terrence Loves You,’ and I just really feel for myself at the time. The person I’m singing about—[sings] You are what you are/I don’t matter to anyone—did I really just say I don’t matter to anyone? That’s fucking crazy. — Did you feel that way? I guess so. I sang it. — What makes you feel proud? My records. I love my records. I love them. I’m proud of the way I’ve put parts of my story into songs in ways that only I understand. In terms of my gauge of what’s good, it’s really just what I think. I have an internal framework that is the only thing I measure it by. My own opinion is really important to me. It starts and stops there.

#Lana Del Rey #Pitchfork #Alex Frank #Interview #Lust For Life #2017 #July 2017

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