#yeah i know he's not the self -referential type

[queenlucythevaliant]

So in That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis names Arthur, Barbarossa, Enoch, and Elijah as the only people never to have died. You know who he's (ironically) missing?

Reepicheep.

#yeah i know he's not the self -referential type #plus rhe space trilogy predates vdt #all I'm saying is that it /I/ made a 'people who never died' list Reepicheep would definitely be on it #jack #narnia #space trilogy

[2n2n]

I wanted to ask, did you ever see the AidaIro SASUKE tweet?

(Sorry, I am not sure if I can send links in tumblr asks!)

I wish Iro and Aida would do this type of thing more... stuff like hearing how the cast of Hanako would do on a game show is gold!! I need their headcanons NOW.

Anyway, more specifically, I was reading your post about Hanako's smile (and subsequently Amane's unnerving smile) and I was thinking about Amane and remembered this again... Aida and Iro are so damn mean to him, lol. "As usual, amane is useless"... is that really necessary!? (No,yes it is,bully him)

Anyway, I think it's natural to want to bully your characters no matter what, but it makes me think that Amane really IS not as innocent as the fandom seems... it's a bit easier to bully someone who actually deserves it. (And of course I'm just going to point out Tsukasa literally leaving the course entirely, just because I love him and he's great.)

They are so ruthless about Hanako, it's sooo funny!! I have seen this but I love to be reminded (THERE'S TOO MANY TWEETS TO CONSTANTLY CYCLE THROUGH!!) He's their little troublesome guy who is so difficult. I really think western fandom is a bit TOO pitying of him. I LOVE that multiple times they are like, "talk to people!!! FOR ONCE" and, as someone reading this manga, yes, couldn't all conflict be avoided if Amane just explained anything he's thinking ever to anyone. Omfg.

you love how pissy and called out he looks about this..... take your medicine, boy....

feels so cheeky. Ohhhh you don't have any experience..... be a big boy coooome on.

You know what else makes me feel like… this boy isn't… so sacred… is that comic off of the tea party …

oh we can just joke about this Amane, being horny and flustered?? THIS Amane isn't above being depicted as a horny idiot, HE IS NOT SOOO UNBEARABLY SAD HE CAN'T BE HORNY, and this is also our first reveal that Amane has a fetish for the very body part he's constantly mocking Nene for (to me, this is like if you constantly made fun of a girl's fat ass and made her self-conscious of it, but you secretly are an ass guy. Like, it's deplorable of him--!!!! AMANE, AN UNLOVED GIRL WHO NOBODY HAS EVER CRUSHED ON, HAS A COMPLEX, BE NICE!! My first response to this way like, YOU'RE KIDDING ME-- AMANE-- *goes to strangle him* you make fun of her legs defensively because they make you horny??? YOU ARE SO 13)

anyway bullying Hanako is just leveling the playing field isn't it. He bullies everyone else !! AidaIro need to balance out the universe by giving him a hard time firsthand. He's got two angels desperately calling his name and professing their love to him, he can take it, ok. It's also what makes me feel the resolution to all these emotions might be a little humorous in some way. I think it will legitimately be a heartfelt toilet comedy in its own way.

omggg Hanako's VA, Ogata, also once said "Nene has terrible taste in men" … its just, so funny. Everybody call him out.

You know … I will say… sometime I want Bird to help me transcribe/translate a dozen or so of AidaIro's old journal entries and tweets to post in a clump, cuz honestly, Iro …………………………………………… can be kind of a dick to Aida (in a way she clearly is amused by!) so, I kinda think dragging Hanako's fussiness and difficulty and rudeness is a bit.... self-referential, which is why it's so easy to point and laugh at him, and his dramatics? Like man. Iro. Sometimes I'm like, [scandalized] "IRO-SAN….!" I KIND of think Iro really doesn't want to let Hanako get away with anything! I really feel like we're going to peel Hanako apart at the seams and it'll be, in some way, cathartic. An expression of. Something.

OMG also tangent, but Hanako being called useless as always, sometimes I wonder about this vague through line where Hanako is … not as smart as people make him out to be, lol? Like yeah, he'll be useless on this game show … can't beat the Mokke at cards

claims his greatest weakness is a 100pt test

claims his fav class is health/PE

and while it's so common, well, he's bad at writing kanji

… not to put too much stock in it but for some reason he (and his twin...) hold a pencil like a 2 year old. Why?! Lol….

….I'm not so sure Amane ever had it in him to become an astronaut …. it's a little funny a high school teacher is the highest achievement....

#avvy's JSHK #man there's an old journal entry Iro talks about constallations waaay before jshk and it kind of makes me... emo #iro-san... moe....

[antigonewinchester]

15x10 This ep literally explores Chuck taking away Sam and Dean’s “plot armor / plot luck” as heroes, while metaphorically and metafictionally exploring the concept of Sam and Dean as protagonists in a dark fantasy story who don’t have to deal with real world problems because that would make for a boring TV show. Sam & Dean don’t have to deal with cavities because that doesn’t fit a monster hunting show. Sam & Dean don’t have to deal with money because the writers gave them a secret special credit card from Charlie so they wouldn’t have to figure out how they could always have the cash they needed. Sam & Dean don’t get sick unless it can be pulled into the plot. It’s something that would’ve probably impressed me when I was 15, and now seems blandly cute, for what SPN is, but not exactly mind-blowing. Guess it’s not Dabb’s fault I’ve already read / seen much better, more complicated metafictional stories as compared to this one. Also that I find myself increasingly bored by super self-referential, metamodern stories; they’re not bad in and of themselves, but they can feel tiring at times, and sometimes frustratingly insubstantial.

The Dabb seasons somewhat reminds me of superheroes / comics in how it frames Sam and Dean and their heroics, and right after I typed that sentence I got this part of the ep (not kidding): 

GARTH So, he’s a writer, and you’ve basically been the heroes of his story? SAM I guess, yeah. GARTH Huh. Well, what’s that make me? A supporting character? Special guest star? SAM No, Garth, it’s not like that. Oh, no, no, no. I want to be the guest star. Being the hero sucks. I mean, sure, you’ll probably win eventually, but until you do, your life blows. Your parents get gunned down in an alleyway. Your home planet gets blown up. You, uh, interview this good-looking rich guy, and it doesn’t go well, so he shows up at the hardware store where you work, and, man, it starts to get, you know... ...No, no, no. The point is, the hero thing – it’s not fun. Well, I mean, there are some good things about it. Like, uh, when was the last time that Batman got a flat tire? Or Superman couldn’t pay his water bill? BESS Or the power goes out in the Red Room? GARTH Exactly. See, the hero never sweats the small stuff. It slows down the story.

Dabb framing Sam and Dean as superheroes really makes his seasons make a ton more sense, huh. I’d bet real money Dabb’s read (and was influenced by) Grant Morrison’s run of “Animal Man,” given his background, because that kind of meta writing, the author-god controlling the story and making it easier / harder for the heroes, is all over this ep and this season.

#spn rewatch #season 15

[45paperplates]

About Olivia Rodrigo

It is a sign of a deep lack of self-esteem in our American monoculture that when Olivia Rodrigo so recently became the biggest pop musician of the moment most writers tasked to interpret said phenomenon were by default so cynical about the music they live to represent to the world that they seemed totally unaware of the most obvious explanation, one so obvious that it's almost childishly democratic: that she is simply the most naturally compelling new artist working in pop today.

Instead, they have cited elements of the music that are actually quite detrimental to its quality. Most pop-punk was weak, whiny, and obnoxiously self-involved when it was popular, and the fact that one of Olivia’s songs (“good 4 u”) sounds an awful lot like the good stuff (“Misery Business”) is indeed a sign of creative bankruptcy. That the album often sounds so much like Lorde, Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish is only evidence of the pop machine’s greed-driven need for familiarity and the moments where these influences are truly overwhelming are the album’s least original and most incongruous. The truly teenage moments, despite their popularity with millennials and real teenagers alike, are out of touch and uninspired. I am a thirty-two year old man who also cannot parallel park, but I will never be able to relate to this kind of quirkiness in song if the singer is a rich teenager who claims in interviews that she pays for valet parking in order to avoid it.

Her relationship with Taylor Swift, whose influence is indeed all over every song on the album, seems destined to be tense, and Olivia performs best when her own creativity manages to escape it. “favorite crime” is essentially a Taylor Swift album track, imitative of Swift’s least incisive creative tendencies. “And I watched as you fled the scene / Doe-eyed as you buried me / One heart broke, four hands bloody,” writes Olivia, in the kind of mildly clever figurative imagery that makes the listener’s brain work to uncover a meaning that was already obvious, the kind of line Taylor writes in her weakest moments. The song’s apparent antecedent, “Victim,” performed live on Instagram in June of 2020, doesn’t sound like Taylor at all:

Let me be the victim of your perfect crime Bathe in my blood so I’m not the bad guy Yeah, I messed up so that you’ll mess up too I really want the blame to be on you So drive the knife in deep Make the victim bleed  

“Make the victim bleed.” It’s both unpretentiously direct and painfully deep. The imagery is vibrant and even specific enough to evoke centuries of high Catholic masochism without being at all complicated. Olivia’s best lyrics are indeed never detailed for their own sake, but calmly symbolic, referential of cultural archetypes, serving in the makeup of some more abstracted, weightier conceptual design.

Guilt, particularly of the religious kind, would seem to be her true creative center, a counterintuitive thought, given that so many of her songs officially released are so especially accusatory, to an empowering extent. But she always admits her doubt: “'Cause let’s be honest, we kinda do sound the same / Another actress / I hate to think that I was just your type” she says of her ex’s new girlfriend. Indeed every song on the album that is explicitly about heartbreak goes out of its way to acquit the criminal in one way or another, either implicitly or directly, describing situations that are as emotionally painful as they are understandable from both sides.

She knows, in other words, that her anger at the boy is both valid and unjustified, that her sadness is real but not at all unique. Her pain transcends by its lack of an honest target, and this is what makes her music relatable to all ages. Without quite saying it, through a contradictory combination of dedicated vulnerability and self-awareness she asks the universe--or God even--rather than the boy, why did this happen? Why does this happen and is it my fault? "Did I do something wrong?"

More than anywhere else, you can hear it in her voice. Though lots of different things can get in the way, this transcendent guilt sits in her voice as a sustained emotional power, shifting between a dull pain somewhere deep in her chest and a lump in her throat, lending sincere force and tragic significance to subject matter that most have interpreted as specifically teenaged and delightfully naive. Bruce Springsteen famously said that the first time he heard “Like a Rolling Stone,” Bob Dylan’s voice “sounded somehow simultaneously young and adult.” This is the kind of compliment disallowed to teenage girls by the use of the “you’re mature for your age” trope by predatory old men, which is a shame, because if anyone deserves to be called mature it's a teenager who takes guilt seriously before they’ve really had a chance to even do anything wrong.

Maybe she has had her marvelously unanimous success because this pained emotional high is heavily tempered on SOUR, particularly in its singles, two of which drown it out in the bridge (“drivers license”, “deja vu”), and the third of which filters it through talk-singing and distorted yelling (“good 4 u”). Maybe this is why she switched out “Victim,” a song where she sings of her “guilty Catholic heart,” and pleads “make the victim me,” for “favorite crime.” It does seem almost too heavy for American pop, and maybe a little dab of it is all the industry’s recipe requires because America doesn’t know how to process a mature teenage girl in a healthy way. But it is the passion at the source of her talent and, although her album is not at all perfect, shines through like the burning sun at every opportunity.

#olivia rodrigo #sour #pop music #catholic guilt #catholicism #bob dylan #taylor swift #lorde #billie eilish #bruce springsteen #hsmtmts #the rose song

[morrak]

Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 1

A book a week. My whims and shelves vs. the site’s image limit. It begins.

Today’s offering: a 1970 reproduction of the 1802 third edition of Thomas Sheraton’s 1791 The Cabinet-Maker And Upholsterer's Drawing-Book.

The How

On one hand, this is a gorgeous book with an interesting historical position and that’s reason enough to track it down. On the other, it’s pretty obscure and this version is scarce and wildly expensive. The short explanation is I bought this used from someone who didn’t know or care what they had.

The slightly longer version is basically the same. Growing up, I got dragged to a bluegrass festival in the middle of nowhere every year. After the requisite decade away to cultivate nostalgia, I went back with some friends in 2018, then again last year. Both times we went to the only bookstore around, which stocks only used stuff — mostly pulp paperbacks, old self-help and wellness stuff, school library fare, the odd home ec reference, and a few gems.

This thing was sitting sideways on top of a phalanx of moldering interior decoration magazines and marked $20 inside with a ballpoint. Between the full bag of stuff I’d already bought and the bad condition, I only ended up paying $10. Utter luck.

The Text

Sheraton was something of a big deal, and remains a not-quite-household name in design history. Between one and three rungs down from Wedgwood (who he namedrops a few times in the text), maybe. The first edition was issued by subscription in four parts, and was apparently a huge hit among joiners and other craftsmen. It’s not hard to see why once you see the content.

This covers everything from intermediate geometry to perspective illustration to general furniture design to a few extremely intricate full projects. Sheraton clearly has Vision and Ideas and the Right Way to do Things. This is a fact; there is no waffling about schools of thought or traditional designs. Sheraton knows his brand.

I especially like the sections about library furniture and bookshelves. Feels slightly self-referential, and locates it well at the end of my shelf next to LCC category Z, which for me is mostly library science and library history stuff. One of its neighbors is about shelves and includes a mention of Sheraton himself.

The Object

Honestly, just marvelous. Firm stitching; decadent, heavy paper; immaculate inking and spacious type; complex fold-outs, even when they could’ve been spared; exacting attention to the original’s detail. Hefty.

It’s got the ct ligatures and the ſs. The maths are arranged in a style I can only describe as ‘oh yeah’. I wish at all times to hold it.

But. She’s in bad shape. Obviously. Tragically.

The previous owner absolutely trashed the hinges to the point that it’s very difficult to handle at all. It’s obviously been stored in dusty and light-rich environments, and likely wasn’t supported well (which would explain the state of the boards’ edges and the band). I intend to have it rebound, but that’s going to take some phonecalls.

The actual pages are in respectable condition despite things — no signs of untoward handling or water damage. The text blocks and images are, despite the shabby outside, pristine. For all the craft and expense on display on the inside, the quality of the case is both surprising and disappointing, and would’ve been so even when it was new. If the outside was as well-conceived as the rest, this thing would be absolutely mythical.

The Why, Though?

Look, now you’re just asking dumb questions to add another section header and let me pretend there’s structure here.

It’s pretty. It’s an uncommon book with gorgeous content that was going to fall apart if I didn’t buy it. It was $10. Sometimes I crack it open to prove to myself I have a cool collection. Good enough? Dismissed.

#images #untitled wednesday library series

[onestowatch]

Your Grandparents Manifest a Cinematic, Soulful Debut Album With ‘Thru My Window’  [Q&A]

Photo: Jordan Perez

Inspired by everything from ‘90s boom bap artists like Digable Planets and the Pharcyde to modern funk legends like Outkast and D'Angelo, Your Grandparents have quickly proven themselves to be their generations' torchbearers for the psychedelic soul movement. 

Using a variety of recording techniques to get the desired effect for their genre-blending debut album Thru My Window, the group credits their uniquely cohesive sound to their years-long friendship, which began in their early teens. With their lush grooves, breezy, clear vocals, a sonic aesthetic built on unwavering authenticity, and of course, a deep love for their roots and deep musical traditions passed down from their grandparents, Your Grandparents embodies what it means to be an artist to watch.

Ones To Watch had a chance to talk with the trio, comprised of DaCosta (vocals), Jean Carter (vocals), and Cole, aka ghettoblasterman (producer), to discuss their inspirations and the long days and nights that went into creating their debut album.

When you last spoke to Ones To Watch, it was for the release of your single "So Damn Fly," and now, a year later, here we are talking about the release of your debut album, Thru My Window. How are you all feeling, and what have you learned about yourselves in this last year through the album-making process?

DaCosta: From a personal outlook, I've learned that making music is heavily dependent on my mood, or just how I'm feeling and what's going on in my personal life. When things are a little too stagnant, it's a little harder to write. On the other hand, when things are flowing, and life is being lived, it's easy fuel. It's good fuel. It doesn't burn too quickly.

GBM: I've learned that no idea is too wild. It's usually less wild than I think it is.

Jean: Yeah, it's better to start at the extreme and take away. I realized I feel like a lot of artists feel like they have to put themselves through turmoil or allow certain situations to write meaningful things. Like it's not necessarily good music, but it's something that means a lot to them. I think I realized that that's not the case and inspiration comes in many different forms. It could be a person or something completely random and inanimate that makes you feel something.

What were some of those inspirations?

Jean: Definitely films.

GBM: A lot of films!

Jean: Yeah, we're all pretty big film people. We do all our own videos pretty much, and it just comes from this love of film that we've had that got nurtured in high school. We were blessed enough to have a really dope film program that Sony funded and stuff, and so we got like an impromptu film education before we graduated. So by the time we graduated, we knew how to get our own projects done without reaching out to someone else and then taxing us because they want to hire their friends and all that stuff. So because of that, we had complete creative control. I've also been watching a lot of Korean movies lately. Not during the album—wait, actually, during the album, there were a lot of old kung fu movies and blaxploitation movies from, like, the ‘70s. Also, my friend got me this Curtis Mayfield record, and "So Damn Fly" is definitely heavily influenced by that whole record.

GBM: I feel like the ‘70s in general, the ‘60s and ‘70s, definitely had a big inspiration on the aesthetic and the kind of sound we were going after. Especially with "So Damn Fly" and "Tomorrow" and those kinds of songs.

Do you feel like this album has a linear story the same way a film does, or do you feel like it's more of an anthology of the band's personal experiences?

GBM: It's kind of a mix of both.

Jean: Yeah, it started off as an anthology, and then we pieced together the story, which was largely done by Cole by sitting there and being like, “Hmmm.”

DaCosta: Yeah, it was a lot of Cole dissecting the words and putting them on the tracks.

Jean: When we're writing the words and trying to be free-flowing and expressive and stuff, we're not fully conscious of a bigger picture situation. Instead, Cole is sitting there producing everything and putting in the music and being just more of a listener than anyone else could. So he has the context, and he could find a story that we didn't know we were doing together with our three minds and in our three different lives.

GBM: It's like a puzzle almost, because I'll be sitting there at like 2 a.m. in my bed, listening to the songs, and I'm like, "Ok, Kyle said, that in the hook, so this song has to go before that," and so on and so forth. It's like a storyboard kinda.

Right, to keep the record's "plot" cohesive and self-referential.

GBM: Another big consideration was playlists. I love making playlists, and I know Kyle loves making playlists, too, so it needed to flow. It just has to flow. We didn't want songs that juxtapose each other or have opposite vibes be back to back.

DaCosta: Yeah, I think we even switched around the playlist a couple of times before we had it set in stone.

GBM: There were like fourteen songs originally, and then we got talked down to ten.

Jean: Fourteen tracks woulda went crazy!

I'm sure fans would love a deluxe version of the album at some point! So what were some of the rough draft ideas before you set these ten tracks in stone?

Jean: There were more modern-sounding tracks. The more time we spent on a project, and this being our debut, we wanted to be true to the name. We wanted to be true to the artistry that had gotten us to this point.

DaCosta: There were a couple of heavier hip-hop tracks there too.

Jean: We had been doing that, and a lot of people haven't even heard those because they're like heavy hip-hop stuff from when we were in high school and like early college.

Were there any tracks on the record that challenged you?

Jean: "Intoxicated" challenged me. I had a whole different verse. The conception of that song—I was just venting about whatever I was going through at the time, and one of my homies was like, "It's not sexy enough!" So I was just like, "What? No! I've done sexy stuff on all the other songs. Just let me vent!" So I tried another verse, and we ended up going with that one instead.

DaCosta: I mean, it worked out great though...

Jean: I mean, yeah, it sits nicely on the song, and now I have a verse for something else one day when it's time for it.

GBM: Yeah, that song went from being all of ours and everyone on our team's favorite song to our least favorite song. I will say that recording the instruments for the album was fun, but there were definitely some long hours. We had a drummer and bassist come through, and they played for like twelve hours straight doing all the songs. So the songs that have live drums on them were all done in that one day, and they even did songs we recorded that didn't make it on the final record. I think we started at 1 p.m. and we ended at 1 a.m. It was crazy.

What song are you most excited for people to hear when the album drops?

Jean: I think people are gonna like "Comfortable" a lot. Honestly, I haven't listened to the record in a while because it's existed in our world for a minute. We had just posted the visuals for that song today, and I was feelin it.

DaCosta: I think people are gonna really like "Digest." For me, it gives me that "it" factor.

GBM: I think "Red Room." It's my personal favorite and one of the more fun ones to me. It's just a good time!

You mentioned earlier that you try to maintain creative control when making your music videos and coming up with concepts for visualizers. What is your creative process like?

DaCosta: We definitely sit down, and we go through everything from storyboard to shotlist and just take and grab inspiration from all over the place. For "So Damn Fly," there was that That 70's Show shot where they're all sitting around the table, and it's spinning. So there are all types of really cool influences, and we just try to use those and make everything unique to us.

GBM: I think we kind of go through a three-step verification. The idea has to go through all three of us before it becomes something else or moves on to actually being tested out or put into picture. So that kind of attributes to the very solid identity we aim for.

It sounds like that impromptu film education you mentioned earlier has really set you up for success in creating your videos.

Jean: Yeah. My high school film teacher, Miss Butler, I took that class for two years, and then when I couldn't take it anymore, I became a TA. So then I took the after-school class, and I just spent hella hours pretty much ruining the way I enjoyed cinema and teaching myself like—she would have us look and watch these classic movies and be like, this is what they did wrong.

Can you give me an example of a classic film you would watch and critique?

Jean: The first one that comes to mind is Rear Window. I watched it a few times, just because I had taken the class a couple of times. She talked about how the set that they made and the world that they created, they had full control over. Just seeing older films and how simple things were a lot more complicated then. Like you can't just delete a take and wipe your card. Everything had to be so planned out and so intentional. You gotta do shit on purpose. It's just a lot of thinking and planning, and sometimes, I feel like it's more challenging to have more people involved in a film production sometimes because of the growing degrees of communication. With the small groups that we usually keep, everyone's on the same page as us. All of us took this same class, so we all have a similar workflow.

DaCosta: Yeah, our organization when it comes to films, we're all pretty much on the same page. You know, with what was going to happen, who's doing what, who's in charge of what, etc.

Jean: And pre-production is the biggest thing and finding the right team because we can't shoot it and be in it. Although Cole can somehow!

GBM: I'm in one scene, and I'm like, "I'm just gonna kill this scene right now, and then I'm gonna jump back." That's why I'm only in the last scene.

Because he's doing everything else!

Jean: Yeah! Then as soon as the scene cuts, it's like, I go back to directing people, and Kyle goes back to making sure we got the next shot set up.

GBM: There were only seven people on set.

DaCosta: And four out of seven were crew members

GBM: Yeah, the DP was the only person that wasn't actually a casted character. Everybody else is like multitasking.

You'll be making your first-ever festival appearance at Day N Vegas in November. How are y'all feeling about it? 

GBM: It feels incredible!

DaCosta: I'm so so excited!

Jean: If I get excited, I get nervous. So I just aim to be focused, or I don't think about it at all.

After the release of Thru My Window, what are some long-term or short-term goals y'all are manifesting?

Jean: I think for the next album, I want it to get Best Rap Album. We went R&B on this one, but nobody knows the way that we—like yes, we rap on it, but nobody knows our actual rap potential. So I feel like that's something that needs to be lived out on the next project. It's been a minute since we were rapping, bro. There are cool people out here doing the rap thing right now, but not many people have impressed me.

GBM: I kind of want this album to open up the door to doing a lot of travel. When we got back from Paris in 2019, what we experienced during that summer gave us fuel to start this project. So I feel like if we just keep that kind of like tradition going, we just travel somewhere and just make stuff, I think it'll never get steered wrong.

DaCosta: I think I want the album to just open up doors in general. I know it's kind of a broad thing, but like, we're so diverse, and between the three of us, we can do literally anything I think in the world if we put our minds to it, and we kind of plan on doing everything that we want to do. So, I kind of want this album to open the door just so that we can you can start striding towards whatever, whether it's directing movies and videos and fucking scoring—

Jean: Or directing other people's videos!

DaCosta: Yeah, all types of shit.

Thru My Window is available everywhere you can stream it. 

#your grandparents #album review #interview #thru my window

[acanvasofabillionsuns]

fall out of in love with me

kudos to @emo-disaster for the original idea of a reverse love potion, and to @an-absolute-failure for betaing

Summary: Deceit decides to do something about his feelings for Virgil. Warnings: potions/dubiously edible things being eaten (it’s flowers); remus being his remus self; brief poison mention (no poisoning actually happens); multiple instances of people being called idiots/dumb, mostly self-referential Wordcount:  2070 (who even am i)

“Cool,” Virgil said, flashing Deceit a peace sign and half smirk as he walked off, and Dee’s cheeks had no right to be blushing so hard like that. He managed a nod and a strangled sound that Virgil hopefully didn’t hear, then scrunched up his face at himself. What a disaster.

“Are you trying to get your face stuck like that?” Remus asked, popping up beside him. Ze examined his expression for a moment before nodding. “It’s perfect. You look like a dead wombat.”

“I’m totally trying to get it stuck in one expression, Remus, because that can even happen.” Deceit rolled his eyes.

“Awww, okay,” ze said. Ze pouted for a moment before hoisting zir morning star over zir shoulder. “Well, it’s been too long since I’ve surprised my brother, so. Bye!”

Deceit waved as ze left, then turned back to thinking about Virgil. Or more accurately, his problem with Virgil.

If he kept malfunctioning whenever Virgil was around, simply because he liked him, that would be… inconvenient, to say the least. Counterproductive to doing what he needed to get done. He needed some way to get rid of these feelings, at least for a while.

Maybe… a creative side could help with that? Certainly with summoning something to help, if such a thing existed.

Roman liked romance too much to help with that though; he’d just push Deceit to confess his feelings to Virgil, which wouldn’t help him get rid of them and was entirely too nerve-wracking to think about. Remus, though… Remus would probably be delighted to help get rid of romantic feelings.

Mind made up, Deceit ventured down to Remus’s room an hour or two later; by then ze’d be back from messing with Roman. And by then Deceit had come up with a more solid idea for what he could do to try and erase his feelings for Virgil.

“A reverse love potion?” Remus asked, eyes glittering excitedly. “You’d rather hate ol’ Virgey than be in love with him? That’d certainly be interesting…”

“Not hate him,” Deceit corrected. “Fall out of love with him. The potion would make it so I only like him platonically.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Remus breathes. “And you need me to help conjure this up for you, right? I can totally do that!” Ze summoned a giant black cauldron, rusty and covered with dirt, and began summoning objects and dropping them in.

“Make sure everything is edible by normal human standards, Remus,” Deceit warned.

“I will! Don’t worry!” Remus called over zir shoulder, muttering to zirself, “Flowers are edible for most people, right? They’re, like, a delicacy in France or something, they’re totally edible, yeah.”

“I don’t want to eat flowers, Remus,” Deceit told zir.

“But they symbolize friendship! They’re a necessary ingredient!” Remus protested. “Plus, I’m 90% sure snakes really like flowers, so I don’t know why you’re complaining.”

“Maybe because you’re making this potion up as you go and we don’t even know if it’ll work, so if I don’t want flowers in it then you can replace them with something else?”

“Pretty please?” Remus begged.

Deceit rolled his eyes. “Fine. But that’s the only weird ingredient you get to add.”

“Oh, sure, sure.” Remus nodded. Ze subtly fished something out of the cauldron—or more accurately, what ze thought was subtle, which meant ze was completely obvious about it—and vanished it. Deceit squinted suspiciously, but Remus grinned widely and said nothing, so he didn’t comment.

By that evening, the potion was finished. Remus proudly presented a vial of it to Deceit, who took it and eyed it dubiously. It was the neon bright highlighter shade of faintly green-tinged yellow, but it smelled like some type of flower he couldn’t quite identify and Deceit didn’t think Remus would actually poison him. And he’d decided to try this, so he was going to try this.

He took a deep breath and downed the liquid before he could second-guess it. Immediately his head spun and he stumbled a few steps until Remus caught his arms and steadied him.

“Well?” Ze asked.

“Give it a minute, I just took it,” Deceit told zir, slurring his words slightly. He was still dizzy, even with Remus helping steady him. “Can we sit down?”

“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, hold on.” Remus waved zir hand. “Okay, you can just sit.” Deceit did, almost falling into a beanbag.

After a few minutes, the dizziness faded, and he slowly stood up.

“So? Did it work?” Remus asked, shoving zir face right up against Deceit’s. “I don’t see anything different.”

“How am I supposed to know? He’s not exactly here to prove it,” Deceit pointed out. Remus immediately conjured up a copy of Virgil, who smirked and leaned up in Deceit’s face.

“You wanna make out?” Copy Virgil asked lowly.

Deceit looked deadpan at Remus. “Virgil would never ask that. You have met him, right?”

Remus threw zir hands up and vanished the copy. “I don’t know romance stuff, okay! I’m just trying to help, tar and feather me and dip me into a live volcano.”

“Tar and feather you?” Deceit repeated. “What?”

“Like ‘sue me’? I improved it.”

“That’s… okay, whatever.”

“Anyway, do you think the potion worked?” Remus asked eagerly.

“I suppose.” As ridiculous as the copy of Virgil had been, it usually would’ve given Deceit that fluttery feeling in his chest, and it hadn’t. And thinking about the real Virgil also didn’t stir up the butterflies in his stomach like it would’ve 10 minutes before, before he took the potion. “Thank you for your help, Remus.”

“No problem, buddy!” Remus grinned a bit too widely.

“Never call me that again.”

“Okay, buddy!”

Deceit scoffed and left the room.

As he made his way back to his room, he considered the potion. He was pleased that it worked, of course, but he didn’t fancy repeating the vertigo any time soon, and they didn’t know how long the effects of the potion would last. Maybe in another 10 minutes or so the effects would wear off, and if that was the case it would be impractical to take it often enough to cancel out his feelings for Virgil.

And there was the fact that he... didn’t exactly mind being attracted to Virgil, most of the time. They were… a little bit fun, these feelings, when they weren’t inconveniencing him. So maybe he’d be better off not taking the potion again? He wasn’t sure.

Good thing he had time to think on it and come to a decision regarding the potion.

Deceit turned the corner, letting a smile play along his lips, and spotted Virgil. Standing outside his door, fidgeting with his jacket and looking nervous about something. He looked up and saw Deceit.

“Dee! Hi! I, uh, I had something I wanted to tell you.”

“Oh?” Deceit raised an eyebrow, shoving down the sinking suspicion that he knew exactly what Virgil wanted to tell him. “Do tell.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Virgil took a deep breath. He could do this! He just… had to… tell Deceit about his crush on him… but he could do this!

“I, um, I like you. Romantically, that is, not just as a friend, though I like you as a friend too! And it’s okay if you don’t like me back, I understand, I just had to tell you, please don’t feel pressured to fake feelings for me or agree to be my boyfriend out of pity or something Ipromiseit’salrightifyoudon’tlikemelikethat.”

He winced, partially at the babbling and partially in anticipation for a response. When one didn’t come after a few long, nerve-wracking moments, he looked over at Deceit.

He was looking at him awkwardly, giving him a smile that looked decidedly fixed. So… he didn’t like Virgil back, then. He’d expected this. It still hurt.

Virgil fakes a smile. “Alright, then. I understand; you don’t have to say it.”

He walks past Deceit, trying not to cry as he makes his way to the privacy of his room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Deceit was officially the biggest idiot ever.

“Remus!” He burst into zir room and flopped onto zir bed. “I’m an idiot.”

“What’ve you done in the five minutes you were gone?” Remus asked. “Not that I’m refuting your idiot status.”

“Virgil confessed his romantic feelings for me and I froze up, because how was I supposed to explain that I’d just taken a reverse love potion so I could stop being so in love with him for 10 minutes, and he happened to catch me while it’s still in effect so I don’t actually like him romantically right now even though I normally would? Except I paused for too long and now he thinks I was trying to figure out how to reject him nicely or something and I’ve really screwed everything up, haven’t I?”

Remus burst into laughter.

“Rude!” Deceit sat up, snatching a pillow and whacking zir with it. “I’m having a crisis here; have some sympathy! Oof.” Deceit flopped back down as his head both spun and started throbbing. “Well, this potion officially sucks.”

After a minute the dizziness faded, though his head still hurt pretty bad.

“Oh my gosh, I’m such an idiot,” Deceit repeated as the full horror of the situation hit him. “What if that was my one chance and now I’ve screwed it up?”

Remus finally calmed down from laughing and grabbed Deceit’s arm, hauling him up from the bed. “Come on.”

“Remus! I’ve still got a headache, you didn’t have to pull me up so hard! And where are we going?” Ze ignored him and dragged him over to Virgil’s room. “Oh my gosh, Remus, no, he probably hates me now—” Deceit cut off his complaints as Virgil opened his door.

Before Virgil could say anything, Remus said, “Hey! Dee over here is a dumdum and has such a big gay crush on you that he came to me and asked for me to make him a reverse love potion so he wouldn’t be head over heels for you for a bit, and you happened to catch him right after he took it, which is why he took so long to respond to your confession. Don’t worry, though! It’s all out of his system now, so when he tells you that he has a big gay crush on you and apologizes for making you think otherwise—which you will be doing, Dee, since you’re the one who had the idea and asked me to help you, which got you in this mess in the first place—then he really means it from the bottom of his big gay heart!”

“Did you have to phrase it like that?” Deceit hissed at zir, but ze just grinned, shoved him at Virgil, and skipped off.

Deceit turned back to Virgil, who looked at him tiredly and a little warily. His eyeshadow was smudged; had he been crying? Had he made Virgil cry? He didn’t think he could do this…

But Virgil was still looking at him expectantly, so instead of running away like he was vaguely considering, Deceit blurted out, “I’m really sorry!”

“It’s ok—” Virgil started.

“No, it’s really not,” Deceit protested, shaking his head. “I should’ve said something instead of just staring at you; I really do like you, a lot, and I should’ve told you that instead of letting you assume otherwise.”

“...Really?”

Deceit huffed out a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Remus can tell you about it, if you want; we actually made a reverse love potion because I like you so much. It was still wearing off when you confessed to me, which is why I hesitated—though I still should’ve said something.”

“Yeah, that was kind of a jerk move.”

“A major jerk move.”

“Yeah,” Virgil agreed. “But you… made a potion to stop liking me?”

“It was an idiotic thing to do. And it’s worn off now, anyway, so it’s not a very effective potion,” Deceit told him. “I made a stupid choice deciding to make it, and a stupider choice deciding to drink it, and I regret it.”

“Okay,” Virgil said slowly, and nodded. “So… what does this mean?”

“Mean?”

“Like… between us.”

“It means that, if you’ll still have me, I’d be honored to be in a romantic relationship with you, Virgil.” Deceit told him.

“I’d like that,” Virgil said, twining their hands together. “Boyfriends?”

Deceit held up their joined hands and smiled at him. “Boyfriends.”

#unkudos to tumblr for not letting me make my title big AND strikethrough it we do not stan >:( #ts virgil #ts deceit #ts remus #anxceit #ts roman mention #remus is aro in this; though it's not said outright in the thing #which is partially why he's so pleased with the reverse love potion thing #my fics #my writing #another thing not said outright in the fic are the flowers put in the potion #they're yellow roses; which actually do symbolize friendship and also contributed to the potion's color

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 15x08 “Our Father, Who Aren’t in Heaven”

THEY JUST. SENT DEAN AND CAS. TO PICK SYMBOLIC “BINDING” FLOWERS ???

--

06:16pm

probably gonna have to stop in 1 minute for dinner but let’s see what’s happening this week in Mr. Taco/Hotdog Pines For Angel But Isn’t Sure If God Commanded It

-

06:18

OH YEAH ADAM

forgot about him

-

06:19

hmm “lucky elephant” casino/bar

1. pink elephants  = drunk baby dumbo trippin balls

2. kinda looks like a dick

-

06:23

the hell is wrong with sam’s face?? he’s looked SO tense and uncomfortable these last episodes

-

06:24

sam eating salad and eileen eating a burger

given how much food symbolises in this show......i...... kinda wanna say that it means sam sees eileen as a sibling??????? given burgers are bro dean and cas’ thing

either that or she’s one of the family, but then what does it mean about sam’s salad being the odd one out?

....i typed samily there

ha

anyway i wonder if, given how eileen/sam parallels dean/cas, it’s gonna become a thing like “hey eileen i see you as a sibling” vs. dean and cas “cas i love you like a brother” / “BUT DEAN I LOVE YOU IN THE ROMANTIC WAY”

-

06:27

does dean not know what “achilles heel” means

-

06:28

why is there porn music playing as cas knocks on a door

is dean gonna be naked on the other side

are they playing babysitter and affronted neighbour housebreaker

.....just saying okay that comedy sting was weirdly placed

-

06:30

i love that cas is like straight-up Still Here

he was like I’M LEAVING FOREVER and then dean’s like “hey i know i said you ruin everything but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

wish we could’ve had that as an actual scene though

-

06:37

dean: but cas if u wanna stay here, why don’t you stay here

RUDE

-

FUCK I HATE THE KNIFE HAND THING

-

they almost........ touch hand.........

/14 blush emojis

cas uses last of power to make dean feel okie dokie

IS HE GONNA FALL FOR DEAN AGAIN

-

06:40

welp dinnertime back laterrr

_

07:50pm

watched the end of “the prince of egypt” and my father (an atheist) was very insistent on proving it factually incorrect while I JUST WANNA WATCH THE ANIMATED MOVIE DUDE

-

hokay where were we

oh yeah cas was trying really hard not to hold dean’s hand

-

07:54

team free will enter hell and are attacked by three lady demons

for some reason i’m thinking of cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of hell

-

07:55

OMG OMGO OmG OmG ROWENA

DID SHE BECOME QUEEN OF HELL

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES

THIS IS THE CHARACTER ARC SHE NEEDED

-

THOSE BRAIDS

-

07:57

someday i wanna do makeup as well as rowena’s makeup magically manifests. that glitter eyeliner over the black wing is mmmmmmmmmmmm

-

08:00

ahh bless

a bechdel test pass

it’s been too long

*edit* BUT DID THIS EVEN COUNT??? IF SUE IS NOT SUE

-

queen of hell suits rowena better than any dress she’s ever worn

so we’ve got rowena as queen of hell, billie as death.... need one more lady in charge of heaven to complete a power trio OH YEAH AMARA. god yes give me that......... pun intended i guess

-

08:03

rowena after looking at dean and cas for 1 second: “what am i picking up from you two? tell auntie rowena”

ROWENA IS THE BEST I LOVE HER SO MUCH

-

two grumpy grumble butts: “it’s fine”

WOW

-

YOU HEARD THE QUEEN OF FUCKING HELL YOU TWO

FIX YOUR DAMN PROBLEMS THIS INSTANT

-

SAM WHAT TERRIBLE TIMING

jeez they really don’t wanna have that conversation in front of an audience

someday they better get NOT FUCKING INTERRUPTED

knock knock

who’s there

interrupting moose

-

08:09

adam’s facial expressions look so much like dean’s

-

08:11

for some reason i was just watching dean say “i didn’t wanna jinx it” and looking at his eyelashes and then involuntarily imagined him wearing rowena’s fake lashes

it was a good look

-

dean looks so, sooo pretty in this blue shirt

maybe blue for cas’ eyes

-

08:17

cas says to micheal “your father is certainly not who you knew” but not “our father” as in chuck is no longer his father

-

“you called me assbutt and set me on fire”

yeah pretty much iconic, no?

-

oohh jeez poor michael, poor adam

sent to hell, comes back and is aggressively greeted by the same assholes who sent him there

-

dean put a black armour jacket over his vulnerable blue one to talk to adam

-

08:32

dean sees cas sitting alone and gets himself a beer without offering one for cas

ohhhh that hurts

-

/takes screenshots of cas’ side profile

what a good profile

-

dean’s back in his blue vulnerability shirt

-

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH SEND DEAN AND CAS BACK TO PURGATORY TO FETCH A FLOWER OF SYMBOLIC “BINDING” YES

FIX THE STORY WITH THEIR LOVE

*edit* ............hey. heyheyheyhey does anyone remember those promo posters from season 8 of dean poking his head out around a tree in purgatory and there was a flower there?? and as far as i know we never actually saw the flower in canon and it was Weird? foRESHADOWING or ?????? hindshadowing?

-

no michael’s not coming on your gay flower road trip, dean

no third wheel this time thank u

TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED PLEASE

-

michael is literally just....sending dean and cas to pick flowers together

-

08:41

it’s over

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS 10/10 THAT WAS GREAT 

I LOVE THE SETUP FOR WHERE THIS IS GOING

rowena as queen of hell 15/10 best thing that ever happened on this show

adam getting his apology and peaceing out yes good

SENDING DEAN AND CAS TO PICK FLOWERS IN FUCKING PURGATORY THE LAND OF THEIR YEAR OF PINING HELL YES

i love how self-referential this whole story has become and it’s so GOOD to have all these loose ends come back to hopefully be tied up one by one

i just....... i just checked the writer for this episode and i AM AMAZED it’s a deadly duo episode??????????????????????  H O W

bechdel test pass?? holy shit (well...... i doubt this now but still)

only woman who died was lilith and she was awful

unless you count sue but i don’t think sue was real to begin with

and there was a black guy.... with lines.... who didn’t die??? astonishing

also the pacing was like... good or whatever. at least i didn’t think it was patchy like their episodes usually are. and the script wasn’t bland and boring ?? what is happening here

PLUS ROWENA POINTING OUT THAT THERE’S soMethING GoiNg On between dean and cas which draws attention to it for later resolution, despite the audience already knowing they had a tiff

colour me impressed, anyway

#our father who aren't in heaven #spn #spn spoilers #Elmie watches things #post of postiness #season 15 #15x08 #Destiel #Destiel breakup

[artificialqueens]

I Love You Anyway (Shalaskie) - Pilandok

Alaska and Sharon have always been drawn to the same things, even until now.

AN: Hi guys, this is just a drabble that I wrote while I take a break from writing the end of Star Power Over Me (it’s written, I promise, just not typed). This might turn into a series of interconnected drabbles, but everything happens after Star Power.

Also posted on ao3.

“I know you have a crush on her.”

           Sharon Needles didn’t have to turn around to find that Alaska has, quite aptly, snaked her way towards him. She settled herself in the familiar space behind him and rested her head on his shoulder. Sharon isn’t bothered, used to the sensation. His eyes was on the performance on stage.

           Sharon and Alaska were situated to the side of the stage, behind a curtain, and a couple of young audience members seemed to have their eyes set on the pair. With their phones clutched, ready to take a picture, their eyes widened when they saw Alaska wrap her arms around Sharon’s waist.

           “You’re giving them a field day with this,” Sharon commented, ignoring what Alaska had said.

           “We need to tease them a little dose of Shalaska every once in a while,” she shrugged, stretching her vowels, “it’s part of our brand.”

           Sharon hummed noncommitantly and he made no motion to move away from her.

           “Easy for you to say, I get all the hate,” Sharon remarked, not unkindly, just as a statement of fact.

           Alaska’s wrinkled her nose at this but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she pulled on Sharon a little tighter. It has been a while, but he knows enough to understand this as a protective gesture.

           “Shh,” Sharon shushed Alaska even though she wasn’t saying anything. “I like this song.”

           “Of course,” Alaska said sarcastically, still in-character, “we all know how Sharon Needles just can’t get enough of country.”

           He chuckled, shaking his head.

           “I’ll have you know that this song is terribly clever and—“

           “And comedic, and self-referential, and authentic,” Alaska interrupted, voice winding down to a whisper. Sharon began to wonder what game she was playing at. “Like you,” she finished.

           “And you…” he said slowly, it suddenly dawned on him. He turned around to look at Alaska but she was looking over at the stage wistfully, although she still hasn’t unwrap her arms around Sharon. “You have a crush on her,” he accused.

           “As do you, Noodles,” she answered, the last syllable drawn out even longer for full effect, “you’re all butched up.”

“Lasky,” he cooed sweetly. The reemergence of their pet names was an alarm bell, a warning that they might be threading on some dangerous territory, “what are you doing?”

Alaska looked down at Sharon who has to strain his head upward to eye her, towering over him in high heels. Her focusing on him, unblinking In full black contact lenses, with the absolute certainty that she has no intention to answer his question, created an overall effect that was more than unnerving. These were the kinds of things that excited Sharon.

Clicking sounds from the stage caught both of their attention. They watched the tap dance routine in silence although he could feel Alaska chuckle slightly at the more difficult parts of the number.

Adorable, was what Sharon assumed she was thinking. He knew because that was what he was thinking too. Goddammit.

“We might be screwed,” Sharon noted. For the first time that night, Alaska broke character and nodded solemnly.

When the number ends, Trixie Mattel took a bow while fake-panting, playing at being exhausted. She reached for the mic and tapped on it a few times before speaking.

“Okay guys, I’m going to end my set with an absolutely heart-wrenching song about my real-life break up,” she announced and wiped away a few fake tears. The audience responded with some awwws. She then pointed to the side of the stage and rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, “so yeah, I’m going to need the Ross and Rachel of drag over there to get a fucking room.”

#shalaska #oneshot #fluff #light #sharon needles #alaska thunderfuck #trixie mattel #exes the bestest #rpdr fanfiction #canon compliant #poly #alaska x sharon x trixie #rare pair

[caramel-and-pine]

12 - Friends and Emotions

Max is leaving David’s house in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, and a big mug of black coffee.

“Can I ask something before you leave?” David asks at the door, and Max only nods in response. “Will you save my number and call me sometimes? Add me on Whatsapp or something like this so we can actually keep in touch?”

“I’m not really a fan of phone calls,” Max says but he reaches for his phone and unlocks it before giving it to David. “But if you swear not to send me lame good morning images we can talk on Whatsapp.”

David smiles as he enters his contact on Max’s phone, when he gives it back he makes the Camp Campbell salute. “I swear not to send lame good morning images!”

“You’re unbelievable,” Max says fondly and he leans up to give him a quick kiss. David melts a little. “I must go now, Christine said she wanted to discuss the new outfits and performances for the club today.”

“What is wrong with the performance and outfits you have now?”

“Nothing really, but she likes to create and Sid always gives her free reign of the ‘artistic direction’ of the club.” Max shrugs and smiles anyway. “Well, she enjoys it so it is okay to me.”

“Tell her I said hi, and that I’m curious about the new performance.”

Max grins and raises his eyebrows suggestively. “Do you want to see me dancing again, David?” To emphasize his point Max crudely grabs at his own crotch making an overly dramatic face.

A deep blush overtakes David’s face and he splutters a little before speaking.

“You are both very good performers, I am curious. That’s all!”

“Well, If I know Christine, and I do, she must have everything set up for next week. You should show up next weekend to check it.” Max’s demeanor is suddenly coy as if he isn’t sure David will accept his invitation.

“Oh, I will!” David says all too enthusiastic. “But just to make sure I don’t forget or anything, you should message me some time to remind me.”

“Loser,” Max says softly but he smiles as David leans down to kiss his cheek. “I really must go now…”

“Okay, I have some work to do too and I don’t want to keep you here too long. Don’t want to make Christine wait for you,” David says with a pleasant smile. “Take care, okay? And send me a message when you get home so I know you’re safe.”

Max is half annoyed, half endeared by David’s motherly behavior. “Yeah, mommy, don’t fret,” he says without much heat. “I’ll be careful,” he adds when he sees David’s smile turning into a little frown.

David is still pouting a little bit but Max quickly fixes it by kissing him, sweet and brief, before stepping out of the house. When Max reaches the gate he looks back and David is still at the threshold watching him with a silly smile on his face. Max waves him goodbye and David’s smile goes bigger as he waves back.

Max’s heart is full of fluttery feelings and he bursts into tiny fits of giggles as he remembers the previous day. He attracts a lot of attention on the bus home, but most people just look at him fondly - one old woman sighs dreamily once she sees his blushing and giggling. When he gets off the bus his ears are red with a strange sort of embarrassment.

When he arrives home he sees that Christine has taken the entire table in the kitchen as her workplace. There are at least three sketchpads, her laptop opened on a youtube video, and a box full of art supplies Max has absolutely no hope of ever learning the name and use for. She is deeply focused on the video but when she notices his presence she pauses it and practically tackles him as she makes a million questions in under thirty seconds.

“My god, Christine, don’t you breathe?” Max extricates himself from her clutches and makes it to the sink where he drinks some water.

“You’ve been keeping me in the dark on purpose, Max!” Christine whines and pouts as she sits back on the chair. “Seriously, I am so curious!”

“I know you are, let me enjoy torturing you a little longer,” Max says smugly which just makes Christine make pitiful little noises.

“Max, please, I am serious,” suddenly, her behavior turns serious and she looks at him with a worried expression. “Was he nice?”

“The nicest,” Max says as he takes a seat in front of her. “I mean it, Chris, he was absolutely… perfect?”

Christine raises her eyebrow slightly but the look on Max’s face is so soft when he speaks it placates her worries efficiently. She rests her chin on her palm as she studies him.

“He cut your hair,” she observes and Max makes a show of pointing to his shaved head.

“He cut my hair! And we watched movies together on the couch and he was so into the cuddling and watching TV he never realized I sat in front of him and not by his side because I was hard for him the whole evening…”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Max rubs his neck, a little self-conscious. “Can you believe it? And when he finally got hard he was so fucking cute! We were back at his room and he was still asking if I wanted it and he kept saying how good it was. But it wasn’t gross or condescending, it was just spontaneous, you know?”

“Max, you are so very much in fucking love,” Christine says, at last, a smile on her disbelieving face. “I’ve never seen you talking like this about anyone else before.”

Max doesn’t reply immediately. Is he in love with David? Surely he does feel something but he can’t call it love. Not yet. David has shown him much more respect, care and attention than he’d ever received in his life and maybe that’s why he doesn’t know what to do. He has never truly known affection, how can he properly gauge the situation when his referential is null?

“Do you really think I’m in love with him?” He asks in a small voice. Christine holds his hand across the table and squeezes it lightly.

“I’m sorry, Max, I shouldn’t have said it,” she says in a very serious voice. “You were very cute talking about him, and you looked very happy on the selfie you sent me yesterday but I have no right to label your feelings. David seems like a very nice guy but your feelings are your own and you have as much time as you need to figure them out. I’ll be here for you if you need but the conclusion is only yours to make.”

“He is very nice,” Max says defeatedly.

“He is.”

“I have to text him.”

“You do?”

“He asked me to text him when I get home,” Max picks his phone with his right hand, the left still holding Christine’s hand as if taking strength from her. “He told me to take care.”

“Isn’t it a little possessive?” Christine furrows her brows as Max searches for David’s contact on his phone. He smiles a little and turns the screen to her - the contact is saved as David *pine tree emoji*.

“I don’t think so, when he asked he had a genuinely worried look on his face,” Max types a short message and places the phone, screen down, on the table. “I think he still blames himself for losing me when I was a child, all that camp thing I talked about the other day, remember?”

“Oh, yes, when you were kidnapped by your own mother.”

“It sounds unnecessarily ridiculous when you say it like this, Christine,” Max frowns and Chris laughs.

“Talking about your mother, does Hannah know about him?”

“Not yet,” Max says pensively. “I’ve been meaning to tell her but I don’t know what to say.” Max makes an imaginary phone with his hand and talks on it with a nasal voice, “Hi Honeybear, there is this guy who took care of me for a while when I was a kid and now we’re maybe dating and I’d like you to meet him because he is amazing but the nuns would probably say we’ll both burn in hell.”

“Now who is making things unnecessarily ridiculous?”

Max groans and deflates. “I am sorry. I want Hannah to know about him but until I figure out what I feel for him I think it would be best to keep it to myself.”

Christine pats his shoulder sympathetically. “Take your time, darling. I am sure David can wait; and so can Hannah.”

Silence falls over them for a moment, both immersed in thoughts until Max suddenly stands up and starts to rummage around the kitchen cabinets.

“I’ll make lunch today,” he says, suddenly full of energy. “How was work yesterday, anyway?”

“The usual,” Chris says, turning her attention back to her sketchpads. “Guess who was there asking for you?”

Max groans. “Sam?”

“Ding ding ding! Right answer.”

“And what did you tell him when he figured out I wasn’t there?”

“Well, I’d have said you were home with a terrible virulent sickness that would make you untouchable for the rest of your life,” Christine says dutifully and Max thanks her. “Unfortunately, Ivan was there and he told him the truth.”

“Damn you, Ivan,” Max mutters with a frown. “And how did he react?”

“As well as you can imagine,” she says darkly. “He literally asked for the other client’s number so he could call and ask what time you’d be free and where he could pick you up.”

“Man, that guy is a lost cause,” Max shakes his head. “He acts all ‘oh look how manly I am’ and then he cries when he takes it up the ass!”

Chris snorts a little but she quickly goes back to a more sober demeanor.

“Ivan managed to calm him down yesterday and he left without incident but I swear I was a bit scared,” a cold shiver runs down Christine’s spine at the memory. “I hope he and David never meet.”

The same cold drips down Max’s back. “Oh, please, no!”

***

From: Gwen Hi David! Are you free tonight?

To: Gwen Yes *smiley emoji* Do you want to go out? We could go somewhere new.

From: Gwen Nah, I don’t want to go out *weary face emoji*

From: Gwen How about dinner in your place? I can drop by the supermarket after work pick wine and cake and then go to yours

To: Gwen Merlot and dark forest?

From: Gwen Of course

To: Gwen 8pm?

From: Gwen Deal

David smiles at his phone, it’s been a while since he and Gwen got to hang out together. Actually, the last time he’d seen her in person was when she took him to The Fruit Bowl. After that, they’ve only texted and talked a bit on the phone. Once again the urge to tell her about Max starts to itch but he steels himself and starts to make a mental list of topics of conversation that would lead away from dangerous subjects, like the bar.

It isn’t difficult to get a long list, he and Gwen still have a lot in common despite the different paths they’ve taken in life. They rarely ever talk about Camp Campbell, but they have plenty to talk about their jobs, their friends, Gwen’s pet snake, David’s travels… The list goes on and on.

It’s barely past noon when Gwen sends the first message, so David has a lot of time to tidy up the house and cook. David enjoys cooking despite knowing only three recipes, luckily Gwen likes all three of them. Since she offered to bring wine he decided to make salmon with vegetables, a good combination according to the fancy site he and Gwen liked to scroll through when they were still dating.

David has a meeting with an editor of a magazine in a few days so he works on his portfolio until about three in the afternoon. After some deliberation, he adds two of Max’s photos to the file alongside with many landscapes and some product images he produced in the studio earlier in the week. With a satisfied groan, David finally turns off his computer and goes downstairs to prepare for the dinner.

Being a naturally organized person has its perks. Tidying the house takes him very little time, some sweeping in the living room and a little cleaning product on the floor of the kitchen and he is done. He turns his attention to the food after this.

He prepares the fish and vegetables efficiently and cleans most of the utensils he uses in the process. Gwen will surely ask to do the dishes since he’s cooking and he doesn’t want to leave too much work for her. She will probably be tired from her shift at the clinic and the traffic across the city to David’s house, so it won’t hurt to take it easy on her.

David is satisfied with his preparations. He sets the table with his good plates and a pretty towel and puts the timer on the oven as he goes upstairs to take a shower.

***

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, trust me,” Christine smiles. “Sid said we’ll have a lot of bachelorette parties in the next month, so we think an all-male performance to open the nights will be a good idea.”

“Okay, it makes sense,” Max concedes. “But you know I don’t like dancing without you.”

“I know, Maxy,” Christine pinches his cheek. “It is adorable but I need you to work with the guys on this one. It will be a short number, just to open the nights, okay?”

Max groans. “Okay.”

“Good, now, pay attention here.”

Christine shows him a video clip with a group of four men dancing in some sort of prison corridor. The narrative of the video is confusing at best and nonexistent at worst but the visuals are very strong, the beat well defined and the choreography amazing. And insanely complex. Christine’s eyes shine with a touch of maniac glee as they watch the video.

“And this is what you want us to do?” Max asks, incredulous.

“Yes,” she answers decisively. “I mean, we’ll have to make our own version, but this is the idea, yes.”

“They are wearing high heels, you crazy bitch,” Max deadpans. “You want me to sprain my ankles? Ivan won’t fill in for me if it happens.”

“Oh, please Max,” she rolls her eyes. “Just give it a try, okay? I’ve learned to walk on them, surely you and the guys can too.”

“I’d rather not,” Max pouts.

“Don’t be a baby, Maxy,” she says rolling her eyes.

“I invited David to go to the club next weekend,” Max says pensively. “Do you think we’ll have it ready until then?”

“Oh, you want to impress your boyfriend!”

“Shut up, Christine!” Max pushes her away and she almost falls from her chair, but she is laughing all the while.

“I don’t know, do you think you can stop bitching and work with me?”

“Yes…”

“Good! So, pay attention again because after this we’ll go to the club talk to the guys and hopefully have it all set until next Saturday so you can make David’s heart throb. And hopefully, other parts of his anatomy too.”

***

“Sorry, David, the traffic was awful,” Gwen says as she hugs David at the door. She is barely fifteen minutes late but she knows how much David values punctuality.

“Don’t worry, you sent me a message so I knew you’d be late,” they separate and David takes a good look at her. “I hope you’re not too tired to enjoy the evening. You surely look exhausted.”

Gwen rubs her eyes lightly but shakes her head in a negative.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. It was the traffic, you know how much I hate those slow drivers who think they are on a field trip in fucking rush hour.”

“Yeah, I know,” he smiles a little and rubs his hands together excitedly. “But you are here now, and dinner is about to get ready.”

Gwen smiles at him and there is something off about it. It is small, so subtle he isn’t quite sure if it even exists. This is a rare occasion nowadays, after so many years David and Gwen are pretty proficient at reading one another. David can’t tell what is more alarming if it is the fact that he can’t immediately tell that there is something wrong, or that something happened and Gwen is trying to hide it from him.

They move onto the kitchen and David decides to put it aside for the moment. Maybe Gwen only needs some time to relax and gather her bearings before telling him what is the problem. Or maybe after some conversation, he’ll realize there was nothing wrong to start with.

In the kitchen, he busies himself with the fish and Gwen goes to the drawer get a corkscrew to open the wine. She pours two glasses and sets the bottle aside before putting the cake on the fridge to cool down a little, the hot weather had melted some of the frosting. David places the tray on a heat mat in the center of the table and Gwen brings the wine with her as she sits down.

“How you’ve been?” She asks, taking a sip of the wine.

“I’m very good,” David says with enthusiasm. “I’ve just set up a studio upstairs. It is small, just a background on the wall and some floodlights but it is mine and I am very excited about it.”

Gwen smiles benevolently at him. “This is very good! Are you planning on quitting the tour guides?”

David frowns a little as he serves Gwen a generous piece of salmon.

“No, I wouldn’t be able to quit the tour guides,” he says fondly. “You know how much I enjoy them, but I want more options and it is important to widen my repertoire.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“I’ll have a meeting next week,” he tells her. “It is a new magazine, focused on alternative fashion and culture. I am very optimistic.”

“What a surprise,” Gwen says with a little eye roll. She takes a bite and makes a pleased sound as she chews on it. “Oh, this is better than I remembered.”

“Thank you,” David starts to eat his own food. Gwen is right, it does taste better than the last few times he’d made it. His good humor might have infected the food.

They eat in silence for a while. A few times, David is certain that Gwen will finally tell what is wrong, but she just shakes her head slightly and continues eating. He doesn’t remember the last time they had such a silent meal. David’s plate is still half full when he gently sets his knife and fork down to look directly at Gwen.

Her eyes are sunken, and she is looking very tired. Not ‘tired from work’ or ‘stressed because of traffic’, but a deep kind of tiredness that David is all too familiar with. It is the exhaustion of a person being consumed by a problem that seems too big to face. David had had this look for ten years, but Gwen had overcome it when she started to work at the clinic and made her peace with Max’s disappearing. If she is back at this kind of mental space, something really serious might have happened.

David clears his throat to call her attention. Her reaction is slow, it takes a long second for her eyes to meet his.

“Gwen, is there anything you want to tell me?”

Gwen looks down and she tightens her grip on her cutlery. Silence stretches between them, dense and dark for a long while. Gwen gently places her knife and fork down before cleaning her mouth with the napkin.

“Did I tell you about Simone?”

David frowns. This isn’t what he was expecting.

“I am afraid not,” he says carefully. “Who is Simone?”

“Simone is an eight years old girl who was abused by an uncle,” Gwen tells him with a heavy expression on her face. “She was taken to the clinic by a social worker because they needed her testimony on the trial but she refused to speak. I’ve been working with her for a few weeks. In fact, the last time we met I had to leave earlier because they needed me to go to the court see her for the first time.”

“I am sorry, this is a very sad story,” David says, genuinely heartbroken.

“It took me a long time, but she is finally talking more freely with me,” Gwen continues. “Two days ago she said she wanted to talk on the court because she was worried about Bianca.”

“Who is Bianca?”

“Bianca is her ten years old sister,” Gwen explains and something happens to her face when she says it. Her expression hardens all of a sudden, but the vulnerability in her eyes becomes more evident by the change. “Bianca went on a trip with this uncle one year ago, but she didn’t return. Simone thinks the uncle might have hurt her sister,” the emphasis on the word make her meaning clear.

David swallows dryly, any trace of good humor gone. He knows this is the kind of reality Gwen faces on her work, and he wants to be there to help and support her, but it is so difficult. It is such an awful, terrible thing, and despite being a different situation he can’t help but think of Max and how close to this he was during his childhood. David’s throat close.

“So, two days ago I started to look for signs of Bianca,” Gwen says. voice breaking. “And you know that I have quite the experience with missing children. I still remember all the sites, all the forums. I still have all the usernames and passwords.”

Tears start to form in her eyes and David wants to hold her and comfort her but he is too paralyzed to act.

“And since I was there I decided to look our old topics looking for clues about Max… David, why did you close them?” Gwen’s tone is not accusatory, it is confused and somehow betrayed. She is shaking slightly, her lip trembling and her eyes glittering with unshed tears.

“Gwen… I….”

“I am sorry I gave up,” she says pitifully. “I wish I was stronger but I couldn’t keep up with that life. But I did it because I knew you’d be strong for the two of us. I knew you’d never give up,” her voice breaks in a big sob and David’s chair falls when he stands up to go around the table and hold her.

“I’m sorry I abandoned you,” she says between wavering breaths. “I’m sorry I left you alone on this, I’m sorry you had to give up too.”

“Gwen, Gwen, please stop crying,” David holds her in a tight embrace and she weakly holds the front of his shirt in reply. “Gwen, you were right, I’ve never given up.”

“But you close the topics,” she whines. “Now you’ll never receive new information, we’ll never find him!”

“I found him.”

Time seems to stop when David says those three words. It stretches like molasses, slow and heavy around them. David’s brain catches up with what he’s said a fraction of a second too late; at exactly the same moment Gwen processes the information.

She slowly pushes him off, her face a painful puzzle of feelings.

“You what?”

“I…” David takes a deep gulp. “I found him.”

Check this chapter on AO3.

#chapters #chapter 12 #Friends and Emotions

[poetry-is-in-the-street]

once more

i’m gonna try writing here just streaming my thoughts out because i haven’t touched this in a long time and it was recently brought to my attention again. the context was that what i wrote here was pretty sad, and i have to agree. in fairness, last year was pretty depressing. but i’m doing a lot better now! so i guess maybe i’ll talk about that. or maybe it’ll veer off into something else. this isn’t really up to me it’s just whatever my fingers feel like typing. 

so i think the last time i updated this was the chicago post. the one where i was like yeah i’m in chicago and it’s cold what the fuck. like i didn’t know what i was getting into, and maybe i didn’t, because now i’m back in oregon and it’s where i’m staying because it’s the place that i love and the place that i suppose i belong. and i’m sitting in my own apartment! not a dorm! a real apartment like what adults have! things have improved greatly in the past few months. i transferred schools, i’m in love, i live in a city that actually makes me happy and that i love being in. things are good. i feel like maybe that’s a boring thing to read or maybe just not something that people care about in any way, but i want to shout about it! i don’t care if my happiness is the dullest thing in the world, because it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and i feel like i’m finally on the track that i’m meant to be on.

i was thinking earlier today about how this summer has been the best of my life. specifically, i was thinking about this moment that i had at a park that i used to go to when i was very, very small. i hadn’t been there in years, but i went with keeghan because that’s what the dice said we should do. its so weird to think that three months ago we were laying under that tree with the light pouring in through the crack in the leaves, because it feels like no time has passed at all. when you’re actually happy, it feels like time goes by very quickly. it all blurs into one long, blissful moment. that’s what this summer is to me. we were laying under that tree in sherwood and a shooting star passed through the sky above the heineck house and we got hit by a car and we kissed at a green day concert all in one moment. and the moment continues and it doesn’t have to stop!

about an hour ago i was watching the 1975 videos on youtube. if i’m listening to the 1975 i’m definitely writing something whether it be in my head or on paper and if i’m writing i’m listening to the 1975. it’s that mix of sonic manic energy and dreariness and lyrical nostalgia that makes me feel the need to put something out there. one thing that matty healy does that really speaks to me is constantly refer to the people in his life. everything he writes is about someone he loves, someone he hates. this person could be himself, referring to the self almost as a separate entity, because really you are the person in your life that is always there and always talking back to you, you are very present in your life so why would you not write about you? or that person could be a lover or a friend, those people in your life that mean the world to you. they are just as important as the self because they shape you and you shape them, you would not be the same without them and they would not be the same without you.

i love to write about those three things. at times, in fact, it’s difficult for me to write about anything else. i guess that’s why this blog goes in waves of being so appealing: it’s the one place where i can write about myself, the love of my life, and my friends without being too disguised or guarded about it because in all honesty the only people reading this are those three groups! that’s so freeing and fun. and really i could be writing these sentences in a journal or something but, once again in all honesty, i love it when people read the things i write. why write something in private when i can write it in public and see if someone gains something from it? be that inspiration or more insight into me as a person or even just a laugh or a cry. might as well. i also have the worry that if i write about things here that i can’t write them into something later, like a story or a script. but fuck it. if i write something here that makes it into a script then it just becomes self-referential or at least i can say that it’s self-referential and then it’s a cool easter egg that someone who likes my work can find later down the road. assuming that at some point people begin to like my work. like not this work, not the shit i put online, but the stuff that i make with the intention of being un serious artiste. i like to assume that this will eventually happen.

my aunt asked my mom the other day if i know that i have a big effect on people. unfortunately, i do know this. and i love it. that’s probably another reason i write shit and throw it online. i like noticing when people dress like i do, or talk like i do, or listen to my music, or take interest in my hobbies. we all like noticing those things. that’s another thing i’ve been thinking about today. it’s weird that it seems like i have influence because i’ve always considered myself shy or generally uninteresting but this has turned out to not be the case. 

this post is very stream-of-consciousness but that’s ok. i like that format for this. it works, i think. i guess i’ll end this here. but i might start using this more. or i might forget about it again! who knows! but now i have time to use it again and i feel like using it won’t just depress everyone! things are.... interesting. in a good way.

alright, see ya soon

[khalix-hyetology]

(In)visible Disabilities and Machine Bodies in NieR: Automata:- Plato 1728′s plight in a posthumanist light

In [Jacques] Derrida’s terms, it is the blind, the disabled, who “see” the truth of vision. It is the blind who most readily understand that the core fantasy of humanism’s trope of vision is to think that perpetual space is organized around and for the looking subject; that the pure point of the eye (as agent of ratio and logos) exhausts the field of the visible; that the “invisible” is only — indeed, merely — that which has not yet been seen by a subject who is, in principle, capable of seeing all. 

— Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (132)

Embedded and embedding narrative frames assume precisely this self-referential form of form by marking the virtual edges of narrative structure.

— Bruce Clarke, Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems, (94)

Upon Playing NieR:Automata’s DLC, which focused on the machine individual, Plato 1728, I felt that the narrative was engaged with the powerful aspect of disability. It allows the player to take control of a robot who is considered “defective” and does things poorly. Plato 1728 believes that he does poorly in everything, he cannot fight well as when he does his body betrays him, nuts and bolts come off and oil spills. He cannot hold a weapon. Yet, he tries his hardest hoping that he will be accepted and appreciated. 

This does not happen.

What you experience in the gameplay is a first person perspective of what it feels like to be disabled and ostracised for said-disabilities. The game poignantly attempts to show the player the censor and the frustration, alongside the mental trauma, a person with aa disability can face in a ableist society. It does this brilliantly by showing this efficiency prone behaviour and ableism in the lifeforms that invaded Earth. Though they are aliens they have adopted many human like aspects. The other machines tease and ridicule Plato 1728 to the point that he feels alone all the time. No one desires to be his friend and no one seems to care about him. 

Plato 1728 is a horrible dilemma. He was built to be a weapon but he has not of the proclivities and qualities of a weapon. Rather he mentions he abhors violence. Yet, as he is built to fight, he must continue to do so. The machines are all living workaholic existences in which their daily routine is comprised of sparring and maintaining, and building other machines for war alongside taking care of the factory. Some of the machines obviously have consciousness and existential thoughts but this gets stampeded over the nuts and bolts of what they assembly is comprised of. 

We, as the players, are put in the position to play as Plato 1728. It is something that overwhelms us. It is designed to show how inhumane and cruel the machine life routine is. Operating Plato 1728 you notice he glitches and seizes up at times and he cannot move at all. There are system errors shown about as you and Plato 1728 desperately attempt to keep himself composed. Then we are presented with the motor function test. We are in the position of Plato 1728 giving this test. Plato 1728 actually does well. You can, even with his body glitching, get 17-10 rings, which are the objectives of the motor examination. However, then multiple rings come on and off and go away easily and we are given a body that wasn’t either designed to move fast or we do not know how. 

This a crucial part of the narrative. After basically failing the test three times, with an “exceedingly poor” grade, we as players are made to ruminate why the motor function examination suddenly became what it was. Why did the runs suddenly come and go off in such a manner. Why were these tests designed like this. The players are also made to wonder if we were in control of 2B, 9S or A2 would be able to pass a motor examination like this? We probably could. However, in the base game when you start out with a mission directly with tutorials just being on-screen commands you may falter. The prologue is also designed to be 35-40 minutes gameplay that any newcomer can exceedingly fail in as well. 

It is not also a question of machine lifeforms themselves. Before coming to Plato 1728′s narrative, we must finish three coliseums. One coliseum is devoted entirely of machines and you must make 9S choose a machine to battle with. Depending on your level, you get a selection of machines. The thing is you upgrade or you choose a machine based on which level in the coliseum you are, what your skill level is and what the skill level of the machine is — they are all interconnected factors that help you win the tournament in the coliseum. 

Plato 1728, though saying he is a “defective” model, was able to get many rings. It is not his fault the test is designed such a frustrating way that failure seems to be the only option. Even with his disability Plato 1728 tried and succeeded a lot. However, due to the assessment requirements not being met, Plato 1728 is branded as a failure. 

Subsequently, this branding of failure persist. When we are doing combat training we, the players in control of Plato 1728, are shocked when a punch makes Plato 1728 lose both his arms! We can try to evade and move about and do what we can to keep the clock running but Plato 1728 fails. It is not that he is intending to do nothing. He is intending to fight but his body is having issues and no one seems to care and no one seems to assist him with his bodily issues. He is branded a failure. This is not only a desecration of justice but a desecration of life and the game wants you, the player, to feel it, as a machine with disability. 

Plato 1728 then decides, in his loneliness and ostracism, to take care of a doll. The factory is attacked, either by the player as playing one of the protagonists’ androids, and Plato 1728 helplessly watch as the doll he cherished goes up in flames. Feeling traumatised and grief beyond anything, all his pent up sadness came up and he started anyone and anything. When his rage is exhausted, his companions trap him and dispose of him. When we re-enter the factory as another machine, the player sees that some people are shocked that Plato 1728 have had so much power in him that they didn’t realise. Some don’t wish to go into battle, afraid at seeing the destruction that Plato 1728 wrought, some are still thinking he is “useless” and that his model should be stopped while others mourn his downfall and are ashamed at their own behaviours surrounding him. 

In fact, the machine the player is operating comments at his terminal as he has to input data on Plato 1728 goes on to say something like oh yeah, the guy who lost it.

Plato 1728′s consciousness and soul are still alive even if his body is gone. Though he wishes he could have a body again. He comments that the coliseum people are all selfish. The ones were machine are fighting to become stronger, the one where machines are trying to live by rules and the ones where machines are enslaved to be gladiators for android amusement. He says that is he really the crazy one? 

Due to the doll seemingly being the cause of Plato 1728′s madness, dolls when found, are destroyed in the factory now. The players are then shown a psychedelic, gothic music video of a random machine destroying dolls and in the end Plato 1728′s soul reaches out attempting to stop the machine to destroy the doll that looks like 2B but he fails and the 2B doll is symbolically destroyed. 

In my own reading of this DLC and the NieR:Automata game, I found aspects of posthumanism and transhumanism at a clash. My intentions to summarise the events of the DLC is to provide some of my own critical understanding of the game. In the base game, Pascal, 2B and A2 herald empathy and mostly posthumanist aspects in their characteristics. Though Route A follows more of a transhumanist path the characters present show some posthumanist nuances. In the game, the transhumanist agents are 9S and initially, Adam and Eve. 

Transhumanism believes in the augmentation of the human body. It believes that human limits can be “corrected” and transcended. The body is to be a workshop and that workshop perfects upon the body into an ideal type of unit or anatomy in execution. Posthumanism is different; in fact, posthumanism believes more in the imperfections of humans and it rejects the humanist model of ideal human saying there can be no ideal. It considers the value of all living life forms and the systems that interconnect them. It also shows that human bodies can inherently and environmentally differ from each other and that is a good thing. Posthumanism also does not advocate anthropomorphism. 

Bruce Clarke in his book Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems talks about humans as quasi-subjects and quasi-objects. This means they are neither completely subjective markers nor markers of objectification. Humans interact and they are heavily affected and influence by how, what and why they interact with (Clarke 44-45). Clarke also states that humans are biotic creatures and there can be abiotic organisms (Clarke 17). Biotic organism are organisms who can perform autopoiesis. Autopoiesis is the ability of the body;s various parts to organise itself, to keep its integrity but also to allow certain things to change, an example of human genome which does not change but phenotypical components such as hair and eye colour changing. The organisation of autopoietic structures is recursive; unique in its context. Non Autopoietic structures can exist within autopoietic creatures. Clarke states that non-living, non autopoietic organisms are called abiotic. He also states that there are metabiotic structures as well for example consciousness and social and psychical systems that make up society, an example would be media is an abiotic system that influences metabiotic structures like society and biotic humans. 

I talk about autopoiesis and abiotic, biotic and metabiotic structures because these are crucial elements to understand posthumanism. Posthumanism plays a large role in NieR:Automata not only in its embedded narrative style as Clarke would state it, but also as Wolfe would state, it attempts to broaden the self-reflexive criticism of disciplines themselves. Wolfe states that disciplines can keep their integrity, as in autopoiesis, but must understand that there is a multidisciplinary promise to every discipline and that disciplines can evolve. Wolfe follows the second system theory to a bit in that the observer(s) are also scrutinised and called into question or positionality as much as the observation (Wolfe 121). There is a difference to Wolfe between the accurate and the specific (Wolfe 115). Wolfe critiques that disciplines are important that they are specific and not necessarily always accurate as in the universalising way (Wolfe 115-117). Things have context and that context must be taken into consideration. This is important as NieR:Automata also looks a lot on the context of the situation via both its posthumanist narrative style into bioethics and but also through disability studies and trans-species disciplinary actions (Wolfe 141).

Wolfe uses the life of Temple Grandin to talk about the trans-species understanding in that Grandin’s understanding of things in pictures, this hypervisuality within her autistic self which she has to then add language to is both thinking in pictures and allows prosthetics become one with her which are both ahuman or considered nonhuman traits. However her approach has “canonical expression” which includes Renaissance theory of perspective, to Freud’s parsing of the evolutionary sensorium in Civilisation and Its Discontents, through Sartre’s discussion of the Gaze, to Foucault’s panopticon,  and finally to the various modes of electronic surveillance culture.” (Wolfe 130) Wolfe further postulates that there is obviously different ways to thinking that humans have but can be excised (140). He also quotes Derrida’s concept of knowing invisibility as another kind of spatialisation (Wolfe 133). 

The reason I have talked about this is that in the gameplay of NieR’s DLC our narrative focus on Plato 1728 shows many ways of understanding content. The language is not always constructed verbally. The players must level up, become fit and then fight battles in coliseums with different storylines and tangents, and rules and regulations. Plato 1728′s story origins begin with the machine spear which decodes some fragments of his story and this is later extrapolated in the DLC. Plato 1728 is sensitive and kind, communal and intelligent. He has almost all of the understanding of family and familial connections as once stated by 21O independently in the Data Freak quests that androids seemingly lack. Plato 1728 intelligence is differently abled but not all inferior to others and it is not to be taken lightly. When Plato 1728 in grief attacks in a berserk way he is only doing something normal in his condition though normative regulations deemed this to be the progression of him as a failure. 

Plato 1728 is not a failure as he understands that there is lack of justice, a seduction by rules and power in the coliseums and in life in Earth in general. A feeling and understanding he also shares with Emil. Emil is attacked by 9S is losing his mind. Emil calls 9S his “cherished companion” who still must be “punished” because he has done something wrong, obviously, from stealing from him. The player as 9S can defeat Emil in which, in this first form, states that in the end power dominates so much and he says, with reluctance, that 9S can use his room whichever way he prefers. Though, Emil just accedes only because he doesn’t understand what purpose 9S has to do this to him. In a similar way, Plato 1728 does not understand why his companion easily disposed of him instead of coming to his aid.

NieR: Automata uses a very embedded narrative. It uses a verbal embedding, which is a narrative that is horizontal and epistemic (Clarke 100) meaning it uses people in the same timeline such as Emil and 9S battling out within the same time period and context to say some of its story. Then it also has a modal embedding, which is ontological and vertical. That as Clarke expertly puts:

“here the same or different narrators are transported to and thus reframed within different storyworlds — for instance modal borders are crossed in the transit “through the looking glass” from waking to dream worlds, from the present to the past or future, or from physical space to cyberspace.”  (Clarke 100)

When we play as 9S or 2B or A2 we experience the story differently. Swords and hacking tell the story differently. Then there is Route C and D than changes a lot of the narrative setting and climate. The narratives are something, as Clarke puts it, stretching and meets at different viewpoints and that it what makes narratives embedded and autopoietic. They are framed to form something that has integrity but is also perpetuated amongst different disciplines. The modal embedding also goes to mathematics modular group, with the j variant, the function of complex numbers which satisfies a growth condition in the upper plane of a graph and shows the connection between monster group and modular group. 1728 is a number that is the cube of 12 and also part of the j variant. The monster group, or Friendly Giant, being the largest sporadic group in mathematics. The name is embedded into the narrative of NieR Automata thus disciplines evolving, looking at the observer and the observation, keeping the integrity but also going beyond. 

Additionally, many side quests and even the birth of Adam and Eve is a fusion between modal and verbal embedded storytelling. We can see this in both 2B and 9S routes where picture books also tell the story of machines getting consciousness and an identity. Also, we see machines having sex or attempting to in the chasm. It is as if they don’t wish anything to be ex nihilo but to have origin, purpose and an evolution in connectivity. 9S’s trauma is also reflected in quests done for Resistance members when they lose their loved ones. Though 9S’s actions are more severe and a disruption to not only his life but others. 

Going back to Temple Grandin, 9S is someone who espouses humanism and transhumanism a lot. Even when he hears machine talk he keeps on repeating to 2B they meant nothing. He even says that after he is traumatised and going insane. In the Forest, Resource Unit he hears the machine begging him for an explanation to the violence and asking him to just kill them but he almost takes sadomasochistic satisfaction in torturing them and being in denial. To him, only androids can have life. As Wolfe also states that the sciences Cartesian duality of consciousness and cognition is pretty ingrained (Wolfe 116) and 9S is a proof of that. He has selective empathy and he cannot see anyone not abdroid-like to be human. Pascal is an exception because 2B and he had visited him and 9S is just in denial as well to consider Pascal completely living even as there is something disturbing is seeing his memory being wiped. 

9S in Route A ending is accepting of his data being embedded in machines, in a way Plato 1728 was alright in loving a doll. Yet in Route C/D 9S is disgusted to know that their black box does contain the machines’ cores as well. He is angered to know that within him is embedded, in the flesh so to speak, the narrative of machines. This is why it was ironic when sometime ago he told to Pascal that he didn’t have a heart seeing their autopoietic structures are similar in detail. 

Similarly, Adam and Eve killed the aliens feeling they were too “plant-like.” This alone becomes at first their justification. They so are obsessed in bettering themselves in some mythical ideal way that they wish to even dissect humans to achieve this goal. It is noteworthy, that 9S is selectively horrified by this yet he too decides to dissect machines or remnants of YoRHa later on. N2, the machine in the tower, programmed to fight the enemy, felt they must keep the androids alive and manipulated the coding of machine s which help make machines like Adam and Eve and Pascal. Though, they didn’t really know if such machinations would bring forth what it did thus they are killed by their own transhumanist consciousness in a way. 

Empathy is not relinquished by A2 or 2B. Like Plato 1728 who signifies that invisibility, as in his own thoughts and emotions and different abledness, is a form of spatialisation, we can see that in these individuals as well. A2 opens up to Pascal and shows him kindness and empathy. She starts treating him as an equal and is heartbroken to erase his memories. When she fights Emils and tries to help Emil she actually calls him “kid” and wishes to protect him. 2B hearing machines feels terrible about injuring and killing them. That is why Route A ending was also a trans-species ending where 2B understands and accepts the machines’ souls and consciousness. It takes almost death for 9S to do this in Route C/D and he also falls like an angel from heaven. A hero who becomes a brutal villain due to trauma, idealism and grief. A2 already accepts this as in a way her ending shows her need to reunite with her old comrades, Pascal and the village’s lost children. 

The True Ending, reaches out and embeds both the old beginnings and a prospect of evolution. This is semiotically and semantically shown with the Pods but also the different endings that were possible showing that the future, open but still with some integrity and organisation, is not set in stone but growing and evolving. Plato 1728 also sends the player a mail thanking them for reading about his life and looking at it. This brings back the posthumanist term of the observer being observed and visa versa. 

In conclusion, The transhumanist and posthumanist conjugate with trans-species elements and disability studies in NieR:Automata. This is done expertly through various intermeshed narratives. The game attempts to make players embed both storytelling and the codex for change within them. Thus it generates new knowledges and a sense of hope even when the story and game ends. It is interesting to play a game as such that takes into context and spatialization/specialisation that individuals do not need to look human and androids can very well be more than standard AI and machines can evolve into their own beings. 

Sources:

         Clarke, Bruce, Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).

        Wolfe, Cary What is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)

#posthumanism #transhumanism #cybernetics #narratology #2B #9S #A2 #Pascal #Plato 1728 #disability #human rights #animals rights #androids #machines #diversity #humanism #nier automata #Nier automata dlc #depression trigger #suicide trigger #Adam #Eve #Emil #spoilers #long reads #essay

[elizabethrobertajones]

Has no one noticed the description of season 1 episode 13???? "Dean is contacted by his first love, Cassie!" CASSIE, CAS, OMFG! This is canon and I choose to believe! Coincidence? I believe it's foreshadowing!

I stumbled over to my askbox first thing after waking up and squinted at this like, oh, hon, don’t believe everything you read on the internet, until my eyes adjusted and put “season” and “episode” in the right order

But yeah, there’s a beautiful wealth of literature about Cassie and Dean, who are the only reason to watch that episode. 

(It helps, if you’re going to watch, to pretend that bit where Cassie, brilliant local reporter and apparently extremely smart cookie, who has gathered mountains of information on this case and has extensive personal ties to it, before she called in the Winchesters like an extermination service, has to sit there and watch Dean suddenly figure out her whole case for her, instead actually gets that win herself, at which point at least all the agency in dealing with the case goes back into the black woman’s hands, and Sam and Dean are just hired muscle and a fun hook up for our real hero. :P I figure that weird choice was an attempt to not make Sam and Dean pretty much passive observers through the first ¾ of the episode out of some misguided feeling the show had to be about them ALL the time, but in some cases you should prooobably stand back a little and wonder if that was not maybe the one choice you could make if you had to do EVERYTHING else the same to salvage the episode out of total infamy, and all it costs you is making your smart and interesting original character continue to live up to the most important character trait we know about her, aka that she is a good journalist, and not have that all unfairly robbed from her so the white guys can look smart and she’s reduced to a love interest with an infuriating deliberate passivity in the story)

Anyway my entire tag for the episode is either complaining about the rest of it or talking about Cassie and Dean and this parallel 

I think even if Cassie was called ANYTHING else it would still be an absolutely fascinating case study in Dean’s early emotional history, the way Sam teases him about it, the suspiciously similar lines in their argument to the way Dean and Cas talk (sadly without hooking up immediately after :P) and it just happens to be that way. I doubt it was more than a coincidence - this is in season 1, Buckleming, only episode more maligned by the show in its own text when being self-referential is Bugs etc etc - and this IS the show that in 3x06, a mere 10 episodes before Cas showed up, had Sam using a summoning spell that invoked the names of several angels, Castiel among them. Also the same show Jeremy Carver accidentally-deliberately (?) named three separate wives and girlfriends “Amelia” and even used the same career for the husband in 2 of those instances. I’m sure if Sam stuck around and married HIS Amelia he would have started selling ad time for radio whatever the heck that is.

Brains work in weird patterns and no one checks this stuff as far as I can tell :P

Anywho if it was Buckleming writing 4x01 (*shudder*) I’d maybe think picking “Castiel” was at least a sort of influenced decision, but as far as I can tell the show’s been so desperate to bury The Racist Truck Episode, Cassie has never been mentioned again and in general the writers clearly know not to go mining the episode for material to reuse :P The decision to use “Castiel” was because he was the angel of Thursday and that’s the day the show aired on at the time, and of course he was never originally intended too be a love interest and convincing arguments to explain narrative roles and at least why we CAN read him that way earlier aside, not strictly written as one until season 7 or 8. 

But now sitting over here with all that hindsight, it is a pretty excellent thing :3 I like to think of it as the way the show just runs to many loops around itself it’s not even always intentional, and tbh the fact it is basically a storytelling uroboros, the snake eating its own tail, is hardwired into the show’s DNA as the kind of narrative style used since the early days, but the way details come around again and again often feels almost like it’s unconscious and after a point certain things get absorbed into the back of the writers’ minds - lines of dialogue, characters, quirks they like to include and there’s only a chance they know they’ve done it before… I think season 12 serves as a good example of how the show looks once the writers are told to be AWARE of doing it and ENCOURAGED to go pilfer from anywhere in canon they like, taking advantage that the “we’ve been down this road so many times” mantra has left them free to use mirrored moments that can reflect 8 different episodes in 8 different seasons in like one line of dialogue, only now it feels like every episode and every moment was intentionally tuned to be doing that in a self-aware, meta way instead of how you suspect earlier iterations were just the same train rolling through the same town on its route like we were commuters along certain threads of the story. :P 

(Sorry this has turned into a treatise on why I love Dabb era so much) Anyway long story short if Cassie HAD been introduced in 13x01 the “omg I see what you did there” would be way more intentional, but as it is Cas just sort of FITS into one of these already established grooves in Dean’s character, right along with his issues with angels and faith that with hindsight make 1x12 and 2x13 look as if the writers somehow just KNEW it was about Destiel, and I’m not talking the “well yeah they were/probably were setting up for him to have an angel love interest all along, only it would have been Anna” type speculation, I’m talking about 1x12 and Roy LeGrange using dialogue 4x01 would nick and put in Cas’s mouth… 

Maybe my next ridiculous diagram should be “why everything before season 4 proves Destiel is real even though none of it was written intentionally to do this” :P

#Asks #1x13 #destiel #parallels #I also acknowledge I just made this entire post about the interesting black female character as a love interest #and at that just a parallel to serve my white dudes ship #still thinking about that post from last night that meta writers look so callous about the characters they use as mirrors #so I would like to state that when I actually watch 1x13 of course I'm rooting for Cassie and think the episode is all about her #and she's awesome and deserved better and so on #but for the sake of having a normal conversation about other stuff of which she's an incidental part #I can't include a second paragraph of disclaimer about how I'm not just reducing her to a Destiel mirror #and in other circumstances when I would write about her and not Destiel I have a deeper appreciation for her as a character #which doesn't disappear to use her like this >.>

[juushika]

Homestuck liveblog part 2: early Terezi, Dave/Dave OTP, narrative techniques; interspersed by quoting everything Karkat says

me: did i say i was vriska i mean i am she is really obsessed with blackrom and same uh vriska a troll in homestuck blackrom = antagonistic intimate relationships

Missy: yes you are

me: but really i am terezi

Missy: i has no idea who this is i am a potato

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003479

EB: oh man, whatever, what do you even want. GC: 1M MOT1V4T3D BY S3LF 1NT3R3ST […] GC: MY FR13NDS 4LL TH1NK TH4T YOU C4NT R34LLY CH4NG3 4NYTH1NG GC: TH4T YOUR T1M3L1NE W3'R3 CH4T-HOPP1NG 4ROUND 1S S3T 1N STON3 GC: NO M4TT3R WH4T W3 S4Y OR WH3N W3 S4Y 1T GC: 4ND TH3YR3 PROB4BLY R1GHT GC: BUT 1 DONT C4R3 GC: 1 W4NT TO M3SS W1TH 1T 4ND T4ST3 WH4T H4PPENS GC: >:D

terezi is like hannibal-esque curiosity i wanna see what happens if I: help! make a murder! i’m flexible really!! she’s just the right balance of creative & engaged vs distanced & curious

Missy: …. you scare me

me: THIS is what scares you about me

me: oh fffff i forgot about tavros’s …quadrant…ing (I can’t find the first reference of this in the 2mins I am willing to spend looking, srry) this reread is like 50% super familiar and 50% i FORGOTTED ABOUT THE FEELS the cast is so big and confusing and the troll’s interpersonal quadrants is complex but also ESSENTIAL like the true “let me tell you about homestuck” is “let me explain quadrants and tell you why SAME BRO SAME” tavros is such a small pure child

me: i am so glad that rose/kanaya is literal canon b/c they are my faves john & karkat’s relationship is so good i just love the narrative longcuts/shortcuts/loop de loops that homestuck achieves?

(http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003535

EB: well you see, the explanation is perfectly simple and scientific. EB: it was because shut up. EB: shut up is why. 

we are all john)

it’s just such a BRAVE narrative in some ways–not really the use of second person, which is 50% gimmick and 50% narrative technique, when it’s done well that’s neato but mostly it’s stylistic but the use of time-travel to just leap the narrative ahead of itself, to insert foreshadowing/stakes from fucking NOWHERE and the fact that Hussie kept it all in his head and it makes a cogent whole: really smart, really effective progression/pacing

me: DAVESPRITE I COMPLETELY FUCKING FORGOT jesus like hussie has absolutely said dave has his typing quirks/voice/is basically him and so the hard-on that hussie has for dave and the FACT THAT DAVE’s entire narrative is time-travel/interactions with self is a thing worth commenting on (dave/dave otp)

me: am reading the homestuck year one review if you ever wanted to know what i meant about self-referential/time travel as plot progression STUFF then it’s a really good…. indication http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003574 …..which i think is comprehensible without context. maybe not that you should actually read it, i just seeing it in paragraphs is An Experience

Missy: why... does he have an icky big enter keyboard with such sad keycaps?

me: this was posted in 2010 so maybe he hadn’t learned to be cool yet

[and what followed was a 15min derail about vintage PC keyboards I swear2god]

me: HI SOLLUX LONG TIME NO SEE we’re meeting the rest of the trolls now!!! sollux is also when the typing quirks start getting ridiculous so there will be less copy/paste because you will be like "why am i trying to read this, why are you pestering me” (ahahaha this was a lie) http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003615

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. 

me: this is it this is when dave comes together for me there’s a major time back-skip he does half an act ago which is the sort of establishing moment of “dave, knight of time, breaking narrative convention/building narrative shortcut/also functioning as foreshadowing and user guide” and then his sprite prototypes off him, which is a sort of “a dave, in conversations with himself” http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003763 but its the first sighting of a dave corpse that sort of clarifies what the looping is for him, and how he … does … time/identity/mortality

(an aside: …..i didn’t catch before that the second (….second by series chronology not internal…. chronology b/c internal chronology is complicated) generation was actually created first????? a discovery oh wait nvm its the guardians (ty for clarifying that thing about which i have no context; yw!) ooooh my confusion is jake (second gen) is cloned from grandpa (zero gen) which is why they look the fuck identical)

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003835

GC: D4V3 WH4TS 1T SM3LL L1K3 TG: what GC: YOUR BLOOD TG: fuck off GC: D4V3 GC: G1V3 1T 4 L1TTL3 T4ST3 FOR M3 GC: T3LL M3 WH4T HUM4N BLOOD T4ST3S L1K3 GC: 1V3 B33N SO CUR1OUS >:]

it’s me i’m terezi

TG: how do you use a computer and know whats going on it doesnt make sense TG: my face doesnt make sense GC: D4V3 YOUR *F4C3* DO3SNT M4K3 …… GC: D4MM1T GC: 1 KNOW 3V3RYTH1NG TH4TS GO1NG TO H4PP3N TO YOU GC: 1 C4N T3LL YOU B3FOR3 1T H4PP3NS GC: SO YOU C4N B3 R34DY GC: 4ND NOT H4V3 TO GO B4CK 1N T1M3 4ND G3T K1LL3D 4LL TH3 T1M3 GC: 4ND ST4ND ON 4 TO1L3T LOOK1NG 4T YOUR OWN BLOOD FOR T3N M1NUT3S 

what i love about terezi is like the mix of practicality, curiosity, get shit done but with the true motivation of “what if” and the surprising interpersonal insight which arises from that same curiosity like from the narrative pov, we saw dave find his body and dump his body, then cut away, and then he just had bloody hands but it’s terezi who noticed, and tells us via this conversation, that dave was having A Think about those bloody hands b/c they’re an accidental contemplation of time and morality dave would never bring that up b/c of the facade of cool, narrative can’t easily show us and it’s not action-based really, but terezi introduces it b/c terezi cares b/c terezi cares about people in the “what do they do??? when exposed to this stimuli??” sense not in the, caring about, their welfare, thing not that part

Missy: i read your whole homestuck thing i understood maybe 20% of it without context i think this is decent

me: considering i understood about 80% of it yeah i’d say so that’s why the year 1 wrap up was so nice i am not a good visual learner so some of the flash anims go over my head and the plot is a clusterfuck so it’s easy to feel wtf even when you’re the active reader

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003927

CG: WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT, THIS ACT THAT YOU ACTUALLY THINK YOU’RE A HOTSHOT, YOU KNOW YOU HATE YOURSELF. TA: nobody hate2 hiim2elf more than you iidiiot.

Babiesssss

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003961

GC: : K4RK4T, PL34S3 GC: DONT PR3T3ND YOU D1DNT 3NJOY GO1NG 4ROUND K1LL1NG TH1NGS GC: 4ND TH4T YOU WOULDNT 3NJOY K1LL1NG 4 WHOL3 LOT MOR3 GC: PR4NC1NG 4ROUND W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 S1CKL3 B31NG 4LL 4DOR4BL3 CG: YEAH RIGHT. CG: MORE LIKE… CG: ADORABLOODTHIRSTY. CG: I’M PRANCING AROUND BEING THAT, OK?

200% sure I c/ped that last time I read this But I regret nothing

#/ #// #/// #//// #///// #Juu reads #Homestuck #conversations with Missy #spoilers be ye warned #character death tw // #also Homestuck has a lot of negative self-talk/self-feelings which I'll discuss incessantly so this is a blanket #character bad feels warning

[horrible-monstrosity]

post from like five weeks ago that i just got around to finishing now woot

oh man, I thought I had run out of salt to mine aside from heromaca, but just look at this fucking shit it's fuckig beautiful--

wait no actual first off, I want to complain about the fucking otter motif- we get it Ukuhara you made two pseudo-successful series with animal motifs, now you're being self-referential. fucking stop. There's nothing to the otter motif that can possibly actually add anything to the show- "uhh sometimes they hold hands ???" doesn't work because it's nowhere near the desperate clinginess implied in the trailers, and if that's how it's supposed to be it's an incredibly shallow motif, and it can't be the gay man thing because that's about hairy guys, not anime twinks. But becusae Penguindrum had a penguins and Yuribears had a bears and becueas meaningless callbacks are meaningful to retarded people, we have to have something so working backwards it's otters. My conficence in this production is though the roof

first off, there's the weird wait for it DOUBLE STANDARD with how people describe what they expect from this show versus how they describe Utena et al- with Utena it's about the porblems stemming from the magic evil society monster from forever ago, the good old patterwacky, how we're not saying the mens are responsible for all evil but we're saying hurr mens, how we're not saying women are the only victims that matter but every mention of male victims goes into some bizarre circular language avoiding ever actually assigning agency to any sort of a human cause while every mention of le female victims goe striaght to belbllbelbleblelbblbllbr but with these male characters it's suddenly, oh, it's about the expectations placed on men (reasonable enough), expectations to live up to muh toxic masculinity (no)... sentence ends. The expectations don't come from somewhere, they just... sentence ends. Not even society half the time. Because men can't be the victims of anything let alone a social anything, I guess. Definitely not from women. and of course there's some fucknaut beating off about "HRUUUUU BE AGNAISNTNT DUBE BRO CUTLURE ???" because why the fuck would a japanese director who writes deap n meeningful tresh care about your fucking misandric american derangement complex you fat unwed dangerhair rre-- Especially amazing how this *subtle/subconcious sort of leftist cancer is coming out of 4chan, but I guess you really can't expect people to be very reverse woke outside of, like, /pol/ (where they may be just a little bit too woke). fuck idk Reminds me of like 7-8 mins into this video where some shlubnut declares proposal expectations or some shit sexist... but does not say against whom. Because then they'd have to admit it's possible for things to be sexist against men, or a bad time for men because of their gender, and possibly because of the actions and expectations of a woman. Can't have that. So it's either sexist against women or it's just sexist against the air and nothing, I guess.

There's something about Iku being a communist edgelord and in some kind of commie cult, and about Penguindrum being a refutation of that... uh, somehow. I guess because it had something to do with a cult? Somehow?

There's something about Ikuhara and Hideaki Anno going on a gay spa trip, I don't fucking know- but interestingly, one anon's interpretation of the preview materials sounds entirely like the "hedgehog's dilemma" shit from Eva. And they did both work on that new Godzilla thing. Hmmmmm

And of course there's the convergence shit like "if it deals with The Stereotypes then it is a feminism even if it has ideological components that have nothing to do with anything feminism ever does or addresses". Can't have anything outside of the thing, obviously using the show's existence as validation for their own twisted and retarded viewpoints and so having to insist that is conforms entirely to said viewpoints while simultaneously not having the more odious elements of said viewpoints because we totally don't hate teh mens guys, we just like an anime that's about ~~sticking it to the virgin-whore complex~~ that totally exists while sucking off the male knight-beast complex most of the damn time except the knights are evil too and the one guy who's actually nice is a spineless wimp who's sexually assaulted by his sister all the damn time and should totally be happy about it FUC (srsly, there's an Utena fan site or forum thread or something I found once that talks about the virgin-whore thing in Utena with googly eyes and gooey lips but then suddenly mentions the show flipping it onto males and just... says it's "interesting" and leaves it at that... some fucking shit like that meh)

oh yeah, there's this guy

For a long damn while I've thought to myself that Ikuhara's works, while touted as feminist and certainly dealing with those feminist sorts of issues, aren't quite... so. They're certainly some kind of gynocentric, but with just a little bit more... sympathy for the male characters, responsibility placed on the females, and generally some sort of actual nuance. Maybe. Just a bit. Certainly more than basically every breakdown I've ever seen of his works has put forth up until this mofo. I guess the best thing I can say is his works seem to exist in some kind of limbo between the two... Utena seems like it's deconstructing the idea that the "roles" are some unique oppression to women or even fucking matter, including a backstory for Akio where his role as prince breaks him so badly (thanks to greedy peasants who, if I remember, are a mixed-gender crowd... where do they lie in the prince-princess-witch equation?) he basically fucking invents an evil role for himself where none apparently existed before. But then it ends like it was... not doing that, or something. In Yurikuma, I mostly saw people say shit like "this is what society makes lesbians do by being so mean to them!!" (lol remember when lesbeans got stoned and thrown off of roofs lollololol so oppress clearly the victims of anything etc etc), but there is just... no fucking society in that show outside of the cannibalistic sex offender bear lesbians and the Higurashi-tier paranoia-cult schoolgirl lesbians. The latter victimize themselves by coming up with ridiculous social mores to defend against the threat of the bears in their midst (entirely reasonable, but they sure found the most retarded possible way of doing it), while the former are cannibalistic sex offenders. NO ONE WAS THERE TO MAKE THEM THIS WAY. Hell, with the humans being called "yuri" and the bears being... well, bears, which is a gay guy thing, and the plot being about segregating two compatible but different halves of society where the more violent half can go "undercover" and "pass" within the less violent half in order to hunt them... it comes off more like the females are trying to political feminist themselves and build a wall to keep the males out. Which comes with the implication that men are cannibalistic sex offenders, but since the grils are being characterized to an absurd height of feminine toxicity as well and the show is about both sides learning to cool their tits it kind of works. Kind of. fuck idk The entire plotline with the teacher who let herself be waited on hand and foot by some guy (nice fucking meaningless reuse of the coffin motif from Utena, by the way- shit like this is why even if this was the most reverse woke anime ever it would still just be shit) and then when he simply got bored of her and politely moved on she lost her shit and immediately killed him, then remained bitter about it for the rest of her life and went on to assault teenage girls... that has got to be taking the piss. It's just gotta. If not Iku has his head up his ass to heights previously unimagined.

and then there's those converging lefttards in that thread going "he is wrong with his subjective interpretations of a vague show though!! he is wrong!!! reeeee" Uhhhh, there's like a bazillion types of feministsms so the show can't possibly be about critiquing it!! It can't just, like, pick a type, or pick out some commonalities (there sure are plenty for something so supposedly nebulous), and mull over that, it's unposstible!!

Finally I find this interesting... while his previous works had some kind of strange innocence about them despite the sexual shit, the first male-centric work he does outright has "lust is life!" as a tagline and the word "desire" worked into the title. I'm... not even implying anything with this, I just find it really kind of interesting. The title itself actually inspires more confidence than his last two works- the "zanmai" could mean "lust" or "desire" and is likely referring to the same thing as said tagline, and the "sara" could mean "dish" (as in "this place's signature dish", not a literal plate or something); lusting after food is often metaphorically used to mean lusting after someone sexually (gobble someone's cock, etc), so already it looks like there's something vaguely resembling a coherent symbolic framework rather than the random-words-based titles and plots of Yuribears and Penguindrum.

Honestly however this show turns out it's going to be a fucking disgusting beautiful delicious shitshow and I cannot fucking wait.

#anime bitching #deep thunks

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Stereophonics Talk Bob Dylan, 'Scream Above the Sounds' LP

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/stereophonics-talk-bob-dylan-scream-above-the-sounds-lp/

Stereophonics Talk Bob Dylan, 'Scream Above the Sounds' LP

On the afternoon that Rolling Stone catches up with Stereophonics leader Kelly Jones, he’s already had a full, and rather upsetting, day. The 43-year-old singer and guitarist is calling from his home in the Parsons Green district of London, where, just a few hours earlier, an explosion on a train at his local tube station injured several people. “I’ve got three daughters, and I dropped the oldest one, who’s 12, at the tube,” he says. “And she went off on the train and then 10 minutes later I come back and there’s men with machine guns and helicopters flying over. So it’s been kind of a weird, insane, surreal day, to be honest.”

Jones is on the phone with Rolling Stone to speak about the Stereophonics’ new album, Scream Above the Sounds, the Welsh band’s 10th full-length overall. But several times throughout the conversation, he’ll make reference to the day’s alarming event – which, in its own way, also ties into some of the emotions captured on the record. “You know,” he recalls, “we opened up for U2 on their Elevation Tour, when 9/11 happened, and the names of all these firemen would come on [the screen] and stuff like that. There’s been a lot of stuff that has gone on in my professional life, and things happen and you don’t talk about it and you bury it. And I guess you get to a certain point and maybe you start making life choices, you don’t want to go here, you don’t want to go there. And then you realize it doesn’t really matter where you go, there’s shit happening all the time. Today is a fucking perfect example of that. And I always try to write about the things I’m experiencing. “

Those experiences are all over Scream Above the Sounds, such as in “Before Anyone Knew Our Name,” which finds Jones looking back on his musical life with both fondness and regret. Overall, however, he posits that Scream is a “hopeful” record, its title telegraphing a desire to have one’s voice heard through what he deems to be the constant noise and intrusions of modern life.

As for the Stereophonics’ own noise, Jones and his bandmates have been playing their particular brand of wide-lens pop-rock (gritty and punk-infused sometimes, slick and electronic-tinged at others, massively anthemic more often than not) for 20 years now, and continue to find great success – in particular in the U.K., where they regularly chart Number One albums and sell out arenas and stadiums. And while they haven’t experienced the same popularity on these shores, the band has garnered respect and recognition from some of America’s greatest artists, from Bruce Springsteen, who has had Jones & Co. open shows for him, to Bob Dylan, who in a recent interview named the Stereophonics as a “good record” he’s heard lately.

“It’s very surreal,” Jones says of the Dylan shout-out. “You know, I was brought up with two older brothers and they used to play stuff like Creedence and Neil Young and Dylan all the time when I was a kid. So when I heard him namecheck us I was very kind of nervous if it was true, and then very, very flattered. Because I’ve spent a long time trying to writing lyrics that mean something to myself, and that hopefully other people can then relate to. So to have something like that come from a guy who’s kind of the Shakespeare of music? It’s very … it’s a jab in the arm for sure. It’s encouraging, you know?”

Stereophonics on U2’s 2001 Elevation Tour Jeremy Bembaron/Getty Images

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Stereophonics’ 1997 debut, Word Gets Around. Did you have that in mind at all while working on Scream Above the Sounds? Not really. I’m not the type of writer or the type of musician that looks back very often. I mean, the last two albums [2013’s Graffiti on the Train and 2015’s Keep the Village Alive] have been very successful. We had a Number One record [with Keep the Village Alive]. And we did them both independently, on our own label, so I think of these as almost like a trio of albums, really. So I wasn’t really thinking about Word Gets Around a lot. And you know, records to me are kind of an ongoing process. I’ve got my own studio space and I’ve just been going to work every day and making songs and making music and not really thinking of them as albums. And then I compile the songs and fit them together at a later date. Whereas in the past, you’d book a studio for six weeks, go in and make a record and hopefully get it done in that period of time. But I’ve just been making music in a very free kind of experience.

Do you feel there’s a difference in the type of music you’re making today? I think the main thing with each record is finding something that steps out of our comfort zone, musically and lyrically. And I try to always write about something I’m experiencing. Tracks like “Caught by the Wind” and “Boy on a Bike” reflect back on stuff that happened – oddly speaking considering what happened today – after things like the Bataclan, where I felt anxiety start to get in the way of choices we were making. And I thought the record as a whole might have turned that way, but the songs actually came out much more celebratory. I think they lend themselves to some sort of hopeful kind of record, and really in a time where there’s a lot of noise and a lot of destruction every day.

Is that what the album title is referencing? Trying to get beyond that noise? Yeah. It’s a lyric in a song called “All in One Night,” which takes you through a journey where two people’s lives change quite dramatically. And then it just kind of fit. There is a lot of intrusion, and young people have to deal with this stuff every day. We all do. And I think people sometimes we forget to celebrate the small things – lying on a roof and looking up at the sky, or whatever it might be. I try to paint pictures that make people realize there’s more to life than the constant intrusion we’re living through, really.

“All in One Night” has a pretty detailed lyric about two people who meet at a party. Is it based on a true incident? It’s pretty much a fictional story. I like narrative songs, story songs. I had an idea for each verse taking place at a different time of night. It was kind of inspired by … there’s an independent German movie called Victoria, where these guys leave a nightclub and over the course of an evening everything turns pretty dramatically on its head. And I like that idea. I had the music for the song in a hotel room in Shanghai when we had to do a stopover once. I had a few versions and that was the one that stuck really. So it’s a fictional story but one that takes you on kind of a trip.

“Boy on a Bike,” on the other hand, is clearly self-referential. It shows you looking back on your childhood, to a simpler time in your life. Yeah, probably everyone’s lives. But there’s an image I used to use in my head of me riding down a small village street when there was snow on the ground, going to see my grandmother on Christmas day and it was very quiet and you could just hear the snow crunching under the wheels of the bike. That’s a common image for me that I use quite a lot. And it just came out in a little song, really. Kind of a little Louis Armstrong tune in a way. I had a nylon-string guitar, it was very lo-fi. It’s a very personal song and I’m quite fond of it.

Another song that shows you looking back, and in a very specific way, is “Before Anyone Knew Our Name,” which pays tribute to a former member of the band. That’s about friendship and loss. Boyhood. That’s a reflection of losing Stuart Cable, who was the drummer in the band, which happened almost seven, eight years ago now. I don’t know where that song came from – one day it just came out that way and it was literally pages and pages of words and I just sat down at the piano and they unraveled. Again, it’s a very honest and vulnerable type of song, you know? Very true. Almost one of those ones where you’re not sure you want to put it on the album.

It’s a reflection on the beginnings of the band, and your musical journey with Stuart. Yeah. I think, you know, Stuart left the band and we were still friends for seven years. And then he passed away tragically, and of course people have opinions about what happened and all this sort of stuff. We kept it very private because we were like brothers and we didn’t want to dish any dirt. And I guess a lot of the point of the song also is, you know, Stuart and I lived seven doors apart all our lives, and from the age of 12 I was in a band with him. So we were trying to be the people we became for a long time, before anybody knew who we were. So there’s a lot of history there before we even had a record deal. People forget that sometimes. There’s a lot of history there and sometimes people make judgements or calls on what happened when they don’t really know the backstory.

You talked earlier about stepping out of your comfort zone not only lyrically but also musically. And there are a few tracks on the new album that have a bit of a different sound for you: in particular, “What’s All the Fuss About?” and “Geronimo.” “What’s All the Fuss About?” is a very musical song for us – it has almost like a jungle drumbeat. And it’s also a very lyrical song. I guess it’s influenced by people like Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. Again, I’m using a nylon-string guitar with all these other kind of electronic sounds, and there are trumpets and other things. So that was a cool song which really led the way to some other ideas. “Geronimo” is more kind of gnarly. Again, I’m a big fan of Tom Waits, and I love songs like “Big in Japan” and that kind of stuff, where the trumpet just goes fucking crazy at the end, and all the saxophones and baritones. That kind of very free, falling-apart kind of feel. Compared to something like “All in One Night,” which is very linear and very electronic, it’s a complete contrast. And then you have something like “Caught by the Wind,” which is a very uplifting kind of sound, and that goes into “Taking a Tumble,” which has almost like a New Wave, Tom Petty / Cars kind of vibe. And “Elevators” at the end could be kind of Lou Reed crossed with Exile on Main St. It’s very loose and falling apart. So there’s a lot of different things on there. I don’t really like to box myself in on sounds. I let the song dictate where it feels it should go. And I try to make the sonics sound as close as possible to what the lyric is about, to take you on that trip.

You guys are huge in the U.K. Obviously, you haven’t had the same sort of success in the U.S. Have you ever wondered why that is? Yeah, I’ve wondered why. I think people are the same worldwide. I think if there’s a certain tribe of people that like the music I make, then I’m sure there’s certain tribes of people in every country. But you know, we signed to an independent label, V2, and it was great for the first couple of years. And then it kind of fell to shit. And once you lose that momentum it’s very difficult to get it back. So without blaming others involved, we tried our best to be there as much as we could in the early days, but sometimes things don’t pan out your way. But I kind of feel that’s what’s made me work so hard for 20 years. And I feel more comfortable in my skin now than I ever have. And I think the music I’m making now, I’m way more comfortable, and if anything, we’ve become more successful now than I would’ve been then anyway. You know, we’ve had the opportunity to do Bowie’s last tour in America. We’ve done shows with Springsteen, who doesn’t have opening acts. We’ve learned so much from watching the greats. And I would say we’re ready for any opportunity that comes along. We’re in a good place now.

Stereophonics in 1997 Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images

Twenty years in, are you amazed at the experiences and success that you’ve had? The last, I would say three to five years, I’ve really embraced it and understood it. When it first started to happen I was very young. It happened on, like, our second or third record and I kept thinking that these people were there for someone else! I couldn’t fucking believe it. And of course it took me 15 years to realize they bought the ticket to come see us play. It’s weird because when success comes that fast and that hard and that big, and literally four years before you’re playing in a bar, it’s an odd feeling. You know, we headlined Glastonbury on the Pyramid stage [in 2002] and I basically can’t even remember it, really. It was an out-of-body experience, you know? It was so bizarre. I’d love to have a crack at it again and actually be present [laughs].

Is there one show you’ve done over the years that really stands out? I guess the first big one. It was at a place in Wales called Morfa Stadium. It was just when our second album [1999’s Performance and Cocktails] came out, and a promoter took me to a field and he said he could put 50,000 people in this field. And I told him he was fucking crazy. And the next thing you know, there were 50,000 people in the field watching us. That was very special, because at the very beginning I didn’t really believe it could possibly happen. And then I realized that, you know, people really do relate to things that we’re saying. That was a very special moment. And then from that point on it was very, very fast. We were opening for everybody from the Chili Peppers to Aerosmith, and all these bands wanted to take us on the road. We were playing with the Stones and these sorts of things. So it’s been a fucking ride, and it’s been incredible. And like I said, since about 2012 I’m starting to really get into that whole, you know, “what it all is” point of view. And I’m loving it.

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