#( like it's really subtle and abstract and it's in the first paragraph )

[fumeiiyo]

〘 犠牲 〙

“Do not seek D E A T H, it will find you. Rather seek the 𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐃 which makes D E A T H a 𝕗𝕦𝕝𝕗𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥”

           From the time of birth, to the last gasping moments of ones death, humans struggle and fight. Every reason is different; changes as the human grows and blossoms into age and supposed wisdom. Yet, some reasons do not come to us until the soul is weary and heavy; bending with the weight of all the heart now knows. Genji had not been born with a reason of his own, nor had he found one as he grew. Life was hollow, empty in its twists and turns, leading the young Shimada to a future he just could never see. He’d been drunk and fuzzy headed enough times in the back of some alley to wonder if slipping away in darkness was really such a bad way to go, especially when he had nothing and no one to live for. It’s a dark world, one that swallowed him further when the only family he’d had betrayed him. 

            It had never crossed his fear-ridden mind in youth that Hanzo might have just been the reason he’d kept going. Hindsight is a cruel mistress, showing you only after the deed is done just what a different path would have looked like; the path that a person might should have followed. The cyber ninja had more regrets than he cared to count, choosing frivolous pursuits over his brother for one. Though he’d been starved for love and a gentle touch, there was little excuse for the hell he’d surely put him through, but then if he’d never ‘died’ perhaps many others would not be alive. Zenyatta spoke often of fate and one ‘ending up exactly where they are meant to be’ but the words had not yet stuck in his machine-fueled pulse. 

          There were many lessons he had yet to learn--but loving had been the hardest; was still so difficult. McCree was an enigma; a puzzle that he’d never encountered nor had to crack. Despite their dark days in blackwatch and the emptiness that still haunts their eyes, the cowboy reaches out to touch his skin, calls him beautiful, and captures his heart. It isn’t easy, he’s damaged in a way he cannot properly explain. Genji expresses his anguish in poor ways and they’ve had their fair share of fights; sometimes he wonders if the tender brushes of fingers is enough. He’s incomplete like this--cannot please another in a way that someone who is whole might be able to. He doesn’t need to eat or drink, barely has to sleep--he feels anything but human. 

           Hanzo’s presence should be a comfort, but it only stirs some anguish in his soul. He is no longer the brother that his sibling still mourns, nor is he a proper lover for McCree. The thoughts keep him restless no matter the time of day; pacing and stretching til his faux muscles ache with the strain. Yet, there are good days. There are days when Hanzo comes to sit with him over a cup of tea, or meditate with him. There are days where McCree surprises him with some random flower he picked or little kisses on his scarred skin, muttering sweet nothings. Yes, he is pained and burdened by the past, but with this small family he’s slowly beginning to feel at peace. Family is all that Genji has ever wanted; has yearned for since he was young. 

             Yet it cannot last, not when they have a journey to complete. The recall is urgent, Winston desperate to restore peace. There is no doubt that he would rather continue in these moments of bliss, but the hybrid knows better than to believe remaining neutral will be sustainable in the face of such a crisis. So he, McCree, and Hanzo wander away from their lives of peace and serenity and into the arms of Overwatch once more. The world is slowly falling apart, crumbling and breaking in a way that they just can’t keep up with, but they keep trying. The operation is still small; barely functioning as it is and he’s been on more missions than he can count now. The cowboy and his sibling get upset over it, but he always just gently reminds them that he doesn’t require as much as the others. Certainly he needs maintenance and some nourishment but it’s hardly on the level the other agents require. 

              It’s not a big deal, he can take it. The words echo almost mockingly in his head as he winces at the minor pain in his leg, fluid still dripping steadily. He probably won’t die from something so minor--especially when his leg comes off, but the feeling is unpleasant and there’s still a mission to see to. If it was just Genji, then perhaps he could handle it--but Hanzo and McCree are also here and if the static is any indication their comms are down. The mission has gone wrong, there’s no time to worry about completing it. Pulling out his sword he sucks in a steadying breath, preparing for the rush he’s going to have to make on a bum leg. Once upon a time he might not have cared; would have told the two other agents that they were on their own for being careless. 

                That is not who he is, not anymore. The pain is starting to get to him a little, so he shuts down the nerves in his legs and keeps going. Angela will likely scold him about the damage he’s causing later, but he can’t care. That’s his family out there and he isn’t putting it on the line because his synthetic body doesn’t handle bullets well. Tracking them down isn’t easy, takes a while and he is worse off than the other two agents. Hanzo has a bruise on his head and McCree looks like he had to roll in some dirt to escape. A sigh of relief escaped the youngest shimada, happy that it was just misfortune that lost the comms. “We need to abort the mission.” he mutters, glancing warily around the seemingly empty hanger. It doesn’t feel right that such a large space would be devoid of anything. 

                    He lends a spare comm piece to his brother, allowing his doting boyfriend to fuss over the wound on his leg when there’s a piercing grind of metal, so loud it shakes all three men to their core. Omnic. It’s difficult, knowing that some omnics are kind and warm--while others just stick to their programming. Even if it’s not a bot he knows, it still feels wrong to cut them down. Still, this one is huge and stands up nearly to the ceiling. It fires before any of them has time to react, knocking them all back. Hanzo is lucky and has time to brace for the impacat, Genji is alright despite the twisting pain in his spine, but McCree hits a sharp edge and collapses on the ground like a sack of moldy potatoes. 

                  Panic wells in Genji at the sight, he tries to get up to help his boyfriend but his right side tilts and he almost falls. Bitterly he realized his leg is twisted and mangled, having taken the brunt of the blast. He can walk and stand, but only just. McCree needs medical attention now, but there’s no way that Genji can carry him. An alarm sounds in his helmet and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. Yanking his helmet off he lets his dark hair flop in around his wounded face, gasping as his body breaks down. The systems keeping his lungs and heart working are failing. He’s not getting the oxygen he needs and his heart is racing far too fast, even for him. He’s dying, there’s no way Hanzo can save them both--couldn’t save Genji even if there was no robot to fight. A decision has to be made; a difficult one. 

                “Anija...” It’s a soft plea to listen, one that his sibling answers as they cower behind a corner in the hanger, the omnics feet scraping closer with a loud screech. Touching his shoulder their gazes meet and he sees the pain almost instantly. “No...” It’s panicked, a rush of air as their hands tangle tightly, almost painfully. Genji understands, Hanzo would rather die himself than lose his beloved younger brother once more, especially when they’ve finally both found happiness. “Anjia there’s no time. McCree isn’t going to make it if he doesn’t get help soon and I’m too injured to take him. It has to be you.” There’s another warning blare as his suit flashes red briefly and he gasps on almost nothing, his heart leaping in his throat so fast it feels like it might fly right out. Dying was horrible the first time, but this time he’s ready. 

                McCree, his brother...they’d been his reason to stay, to live--without either of them he would be lost; if just one of them died he would never recover. It was selfish, but the truth was he was living on borrowed time already. He wipes the desperate tears from his brothers eyes and hugs him as gently as he can, feeling the shake of his shoulders. “I am at peace--now go, find your peace.” His own eyes fill with tears as he presses a final kiss to McCree’s still lips. “Goodbye Jesse.” He whispers. “Live to find that ranch you always wanted--live to see peace.” Then he’s standing, his joints almost shrieking with the effort as his synthetic systems try to keep his human parts alive. He’s a mess--but he’s never felt more human. 

                “We will come back for you--” Hanzo knows that this is goodbye, but the anguish in his eyes tells Genji that he cannot say it out loud. His brother is bidding him farewell the only way he can and he is grateful for that. There is no second guessing as he charges the omnic, forcing his body past every limit he’s ever know. It tears him apart til he is nothing but a torso, yet it falls. Genji’s not breathing, unable to take in anything as he lays on the cold metal floor, fluid and blood leaking from him with the force of his life. He had a very shaky start, a rocky middle, but the end? Yeah, even like this, he can’t find it in himself to feel anything other than peace. He welcomes death like an old friend, his face a gentle smile as he closes his eyes for the last time. Finally, he’s free of all the pain and anguish. Finally he is whole. 

                Hanzo is torn apart. However foolish, he held onto the hope his brother might live as he had before; prayed to every god he knew that they’d make it back in time. His brother is so still, his body almost a ruined as the day he’d thought they’d been torn apart. His tears are quiet, falling on the still face of a man who died happy. It aches, even if he knows it was likely the end his sibling wanted, that he failed him once more. McCree is beside himself, sobbing into the chest, begging for a heartbeat as he clutches at hands that will never hold his once more. Their lives had been a mess, a tangle of ghosts and regret, but it had been theirs and he cherished it. “Darling I’m sorry...” he gasps out. “Please come back to us.”

                Genji does not respond, not even as the saltwater soaks his skin. He lays in peace and tranquility, calm in his final sacrifice.

[mallowstep]

Genetics ask! I know that male torties/torbies are very rare and caused by a genetic mutation, but with those who do exist, are there any prerequisites with their parents? I’m assuming they’d have to carry the red gene since tortoiseshell is one red, one not-red, but I barely know anything. And based on this, is it better to just headcanon cats like Redtail as biologically female?

alright! hello, anon.

since i had to do more research than usual for this one, reminder that:

i am not an expert. i can and will be wrong. you can find my self-corrections under #corrections, but those are only things i or others have noticed, and that i've had the time to write a correction to and explain.

disclaimers out of the way, let's talk about tortie toms. (and torbie toms, and calico toms, it's all the same deal.)

if you know how ginger works, you can skip the next few paragraphs.

orange (ginger, red, etc.) is sex-linked in cats. what this means is that the gene that causes orange cats is on the x chromosome. it is also codominant, which means that having an orange x chromosome (Xo) and a non-orange x chromosome (X) is not black or orange, but both.

basically:

X or XX: black

Xo or XoXo: orange

XXo: tortoiseshell

yeah?

now, for the rest of this post, i'm going to be writing O and o instead of Xo and X because it's one less character and i don't run the risk of putting three x chromosomes together.

okay. so because torties need two x chromosomes, they're typically female. the way tortie itself works is basically, cells activate one of the genes (O or o) at random, creating patches. so you need two copies.

wikipedia says about a third of male torties have klinefelter's, which is the XXY karyotype. while this does have physical changes associated with it, the only way to confirm (humans have) klinefelter's is to test it genetically.

luckily, cats are very helpful about demonstrating it. what with them being tortie and all.

(we're also lumping in the variations of klinefelter's here. you can get XXYY, etc., and they all fit into the same broad idea.)

anyway, the extra x chromosome can come from either the mother or the father. this makes tortie toms...not quite easier, since the prereqs are the same, but y'know. if mom is Oo, dad doesn't matter. if mom is OO, dad has to be o, and if mom is oo, dad has to be O. same rules as usual.

XXY toms are going to be...not sterile, but pretty infertile. using human stats, about 50% can produce sperm, although the likelihood of them having kits is still low. humans with klinefelter's are also taller than average, so keep that in mind.

again, and this might be a correction on my part, i can't remember, but tortie toms aren't strictly going to be visibly different than other toms.

okay, so most people stop at klinefelter's, but there are two other ways to get tortie toms: mosiacism and chimerism. these are often confused/combined, but because i strive for generally being accurate, i'll go over them both.

mosaic cats carry multiple genetic lines, because of a mutation. this can either be somatic (happens in the body, is not hereditary), or germline (happens in reproductive cells of parents, is hereditary).

this is not always a gain of a line, you can lose a chromosome as well. the difference between somatic and germline and how it affects torties goes over my head, so i'm not going to speak to it, other than i'm pretty sure we're talking about somatic mosaicism. i think. again, not a biologist or geneticist, just a hobbyist with an internet connection.

right, so what happens is basically, some cells lose their extra x chromosome, giving you a cat with karyotype XXY/XY. these cats are more likely to be fertile and generally have less effects of klinefelter's. i'm not entirely sure how this affects tortie presentation, if at all, but it does happen.

i suppose you could also have some kind of mutation that gives you an extra x spontaneously, but that would be unlikely to cause torties, because it would also have to mutate into the other O allele.

again, i really want to stress that while i'm not bullshitting, i'm also not speaking definitively here.

last up is chimerism, where two embryos fuse in the womb, creating mixed genes.

i'm using a picture of a dog, here, because this is what goes through my head when i think of chimeras. you'll have to take my word for it, but while this would be a normal tortie cat, it can't really happen in dogs without some kind of mutation. and chimerism, given the extent of the patching, is pretty likely.

right! chimera torties are going to be, afaik, normal levels of fertile, although it's likely that they can pass on either black or red, not both.

(while i'm here, before we move on, there are a lot of types of chimeras. this type is called tetragametic chimerism, and it's rare in humans but more common in other animals. it's hard to know how common it is, because the differences are often very subtle, and hard to test. it's also not mutually exclusive with mosaics or klinefelter's, just to really muddy the waters.)

i don't have statistics for how common mosaics and chimeras are, and there's always, "a different type of mutation that doesn't fall into this category"

for mosaics and chimeras, the rules for inheritance seem to be the same as for klinefelter's. there's the added note that, because there can be multiple sires within one litter, a ginger queen could have kits with a ginger tom, and get a tortie son, as long as she also...ahem...with a black(/brown, etc.) tom. (or vice versa, with all brown and a ginger.)

okay! so that's basically how it happens.

as for the second part of this question, well. "is it better?" is a matter of opinion. i don't think anyone is wrong for having tortie toms. i don't care. (a) it is possible, and (b) we're all just having fun.

i, personally, do not think redtail is karyotype XX, because i like him being sandstorm's father with brindleface. idk. i like brindleface. yes, i know this raises huge genetic problems, and it's not very canon. i don't really care. i read that redtail fic where he thinks about sand&brindle as he's dying and it hasn't left me.

that said, i'm still a sucker for trans redtail. love it. idk, this is kind of hard to explain. like? it's not my headcanon, but i still appreciate it.

anyway! to the point: if you care about statistics and likelihoods and how many tortie toms you've had in the clan, yes, you're probably better off saving your chromosome anomalies for when they need to have kits, and using XX karyotype for the rest.

(under the cut: matthew rambles about trans cats and gender identity for a while)

i'm pretty sure cats don't have the western concept of gender. i don't think they have a human concept of gender, either, but at some point i need to be able to pin down something, and i think a third/fourth gender is closer to what they have.

i've been thinking about this a lot lately, because i decided i wasn't satisfied with my old approach to trans cats. i can do better than that. i decided cats don't have gendered pronouns, so why should the solution be, "trans cats don't really get to do anything about it"

no. i am dissatisfied with that.

at the same time, for specific reasons: i also don't think cats are trans in the western sense of the word.

because if for nothing else, remember that cat sexual dimorphism has a bigger effect on their life than in humans.

like, queens are going to be uncomfortable around male cats they don't hella trust and their kits. that doesn't go away if said male cat isn't a tom. y'know?

i'm in a constant state of tweaks with this, because i basically: form opinion, test opinion, refine opinion. my initial opinion was too harsh. and!

part of what's changed is i decided i wanted fernsong to be able to raise his kits in the nursery instead of ivypool. so i had to adjust how i think the nursery and queens work, slightly, to permit for that. now, i can turn back to gender and think about it some more.

i'm not going to coin any new terms, because i'm not in that kind of mood, but i think there is some idea of a female cat who is not a she-cat. i don't think the cats would call them a tom, but i'm not sure what they would say or how they would describe it.

i think they would just, on some level, get it.

actually okay you know what! i do need some lingo here. queens = cats who are raising kits in the nursery. she-cats = XX karyotype, considers self female (cis, if you will). toms = XY karyotype, considers self male (cis, again). and uh...we'll go with...

god i hate. i don't want anything i say in this ramble to be considered "words i am going to now use consistently" because i literally just need some way to describe this for my own sanity. with that in mind, let us use molly for XY karyotype, but not a tom, and...how about gib for XX karyotype, not a she-cat.

again, i don't want that to be considered permanent, i'm just fishing at words people use to describe cats so i can have something to work with.

right so, i don't think cats think gib and tom are equivalent, but i also don't think they (as a society) care about that.

like, okay, let's say redtail is XX, but not a she-cat. there's nothing to really be done (heck, if he wants to be a queen, that's still fine), cats don't have gendered pronouns or names, but at the same time, there's an intuitive understanding of what that means.

this kind of ties into the matriarchy, kind of? like, hm, queens are an important part of the matriarchy, but at the same time, she-cats inherit family lines. not that cats inherit much, but still.

i'm getting very abstract here. take, uh, like let's say a hypothetical trans mothwing. i think a lot of people have that headcanon?

and i think, like, mothwing would not be considered a tom. if cats had a concept of sexuality, leafpool would not be straight, because she likes mothwing, and mothwing is not a tom.

but! i would still think willowshine probably is the first line for nursery visits, at least when the kits are very young.

and i don't think anyone there would be unhappy with that deal.

right. i just kept rambling for a while, because i've been thinking about this and obviously it's semi-tied to the question.

tl/dr: cats don't care about gender, because they are cats meowing at each other in the woods. if a cat says they're not agab, everyone is just cool with that.

[cagestark]

-Defender//6-

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six

just a lil chapter. Next is the last.

Read here on AO3.

-

Tony’s hand isn’t as burned as he feared. Once the initial redness wears off, the skin is just tinted pink and a little raw. Still Rhodey supervises down in Tony’s lab while the younger man applies burn cream to the tender skin. On top of all the callouses and scars that his hands already bear, he’s surprised he even feels it at all.

“I’ve never heard you so quiet before,” Rhodey says from where’s he’s seated on a stool on the other side of the lab table, the surface strewn with first aid supplies. The man’s dark eyes track his every move, mouth in its characteristic frown. “I’ve never actually heard you be quiet at all. This must be serious.”

“It’s not, really,” Tony says. But as he says it, he loses his confidence. What happened upstairs seems pretty serious: seriously concerning, seriously unexpected. In a deep, vulnerable place, Tony was seriously grateful. “Peter is protective. I recruited him a few weeks ago when I found him scaling the side of the building.”

Rhodey’s eyebrows climb up his sloped forehead. “Mutant?”

“Enhanced,” says Tony, slowly refilling the first aid supply kit. “Bitten by a radioactive spider, believe it or not. He’s got super strength, agility, and scopulae that help him stick to nearly any surface like Velcro.”

“Goddamn.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“So why are you the surface he’s stuck himself to?” Rhodey asks.

Tony lets the question linger, pondering it. This is Rhodey, who has seen him in all manners of debauchery, who has seen every high and low of Tony’s up-close-and-personal for the last thirty years—but that doesn’t mean it gets any easier to see the disappointment in his face. It doesn’t mean that Tony doesn’t fear losing one of the last people who cares about him, who tolerates him at all.

At last Tony says, “I think he’s kind of in love with me.”

“Kid’s got a crush?”

“Yeah,” Tony admits. “And—he’s not the only one.”

Rhodey sighs, reaching up to rub at his forehead. “Jesus, Tones. How old is he?”

“Legal. Not that it makes it any better with more than twenty years between us. Steve doesn’t approve. He thinks I’m grooming the kid.” 

“These people don’t know you at all,” Rhodey says. “Tony. Tony, look at me. That’s not the kind of guy you are.” 

“He’s the most righteous man alive,” Tony says. His hands shake, weakness, like leftover DT’s from the day she stopped drinking an inordinate amount of alcohol and only indulged on occasion. Weakness. All he’s made from are a dozen different weaknesses stitched together into the shape of a man. “You know me. Obviously I’m not one for self-reflection. But when the man who used to kill Nazis for a living always thinks the worst of me, maybe it’s because there is worse in me.

“Peter treats me like the sun shines out of my ass, all because I treat him like a fucking human being, but he barely knows me. If there’s one thing history has taught me, it’s that there’s Captain America’s side, and then there’s the wrong side. I always end up on the other side. Always. If Peter isn’t careful, he’s going to end up there with me, and that’s not what I want for him. He’s good, I think. In his core.” 

“So are you,” Rhodey says. “None of the Avengers know you, and you don’t even know yourself. If you did, you wouldn’t let yourself be treated like this. At least this kid seems to have some sense, even if he’s subtle as a brick wielding it. I feel a lot better about spending so much time in DC knowing that someone is here and in your corner.”

-

Peter rests his forehead against one of the glass floor-length window panes in his room, mouth full of sticky-sweet cherry flavored pastry. He can barely taste it. Up this high, Manhattan looks fake beneath him, a toy city that he should take care not to step on, like the lego structures he used to leave out around May’s apartment when he was a boy. 

May. The pain of losing her never gets easier. There is no coping, there is just forgetting. Times when his mind is so full up with other things that there is no room for even her, when he’s working on a machine, when he’s training with Natasha in the gym. Then in moments like this, her memory comes rushing back in, and it’s like the grieving process starts over. She dies again to him, every day. 

Are you ashamed of me? Peter wonders, looking into the cloudless sky. There is no answer. 

May had never liked violence, but she was fierce in her own way. She believed in justice, she believed in compassion. Would she think he overreacted in the kitchen when he’d threatened to tear off another enhanced’s limb? Or would she think him justified, if she knew of the things Steve and the rest of the team had done to Tony? Just thinking about it makes his blood boil. People who had hurt Tony physically and emotionally, people who had no respect for him, people who still took advantage of every bit of his goodwill. Unremorseful people. 

Glancing down, Peter sees that he’s crushed his other poptart to crumbs. Kneeling down to sweep them into the palm of his hand, his spine goes stiff, just a brief moment of warning—someone at the door, not Steve, not Tony, someone—before there is a firm knock. Abandoning the crumbs, Peter opens the door a crack, afraid of who might be on the other side. 

A dark, serious complexion greets him. 

“Hi,” Rhodey says. “Can I come in?” 

“Of course,” Peter says, opening the door wide to let him past. He catches a brief glimpse of the other Avengers standing huddled together, eyeing Peter’s room with wariness before he shuts the door on the image. 

It must look strange, a young man whose room is so empty. No photographs on the wall, no pile of clothes on the floor, no posters or game consoles. The bed is made (unslept in most nights, though Rhodey would have no way of knowing that sometimes Peter feels more comfortable in enclosed spaces, that he curls up inside the closet empty except for clothes hangers or that he crawls underneath the bed to sleep). Combined with his display in the kitchen, he can’t imagine what the older, distinguished man must think of him. 

“Is Tony’s hand okay?” Peter asks. He can still hear the pained hiss the man made when the steaming coffee spilt onto his bare flesh. It makes that feeling come up in Peter all over again, that feeling like he has swallowed fire, fury like acid that eats at his stomach, fury that he wants to spit out at someone. At Steve Rogers. “I should have stayed to make sure.” 

“It might blister,” Rhodey says. “But he gets worse down there in his lab on the daily. That’s not why I’m here.” 

“Why are you here then?” 

“Tony is important to me. The most important person in my life except for my own mother. I’ve been watching his back since he was a teenager, and short of dying, nothing’s ever going to change that. That’s either going to make us friends or enemies, Parker. Your choice.” 

On the lengthy list of threats Peter’s received in his life, this is easily the most charming. Rhodey isn’t even enhanced. Peter could kill him without breaking a sweat, could tear his head from his body, could pull off his arms and legs the way other kids do to spiders, to smaller, weaker creatures. But there’s still something formidable about the other man. At the very least, there is something respectable. 

“Anyone in Tony’s corner is someone I want to be friends with,” Peter admits. 

Rhodey’s expression softens. He holds out a hand that Peter meets with his own. “Then you’re alright by me, kid. You could use a lesson in picking your battles, though. It doesn’t take enhanced powers of deduction to see that Rogers wants you off the team.” 

“I’ll fight any battle that protects Tony.” 

“And when you’re on the bench because Rogers has convinced the Powers that Be that you’re too unpredictable to be in the field? Who’s going to be protecting Tony then? Too many injuries have happened on missions because not a single one of them can be counted on to have Tony’s back. You could change that, if you’d get a grip on your temper,” Rhodey says. Peter’s shoulders sag—he hadn’t even thought of that. 

“Sometimes I can’t help it,” Peter admits. “It feels like there’s this monster inside of me. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or something. When they say something bad about Tony or when they hurt him, some flip inside me gets switched. How do I stop?” 

“You’ve got to choose what’s more important to you,” Rhodey says. “Protecting Tony or avenging him.” 

For a long time after Rhodey leaves, Peter stands at the wall of windows, staring out unseeing at the city below while he cycles through everything that Colonel Rhodes said, wondering again and again, Why can’t Peter do both?

-

“This is like, a foreign language to me,” Peter mutters, flipping through the textbook that Tony had retrieved for him. The cover reads FUNDAMENTALS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. The glossy margins are filled with Tony’s tiny scrawl, and Peter runs his fingers reverently over the writing trying to imagine a fifteen year old boy scribbling on each page. He’s seen pictures, newspapers archived on the New York City Public Library computers of a young, handsome boy crouched beside a robot he built, smiling into the camera. Fifteen years old, and this had been nothing to Tony. Peter is twenty and it takes him ages to get through a single paragraph, googling foreign terms on his phone and struggling to understand the abstract concepts. 

Tony glances up from his StarkPad. He balks at the expression on Peter’s face and turns the tablet off, sitting it aside. “Come over. We can go through it together.” 

“You’d explain it to me?” Peter asks, raking his eyes over the older man’s face. Fuck, Tony is so handsome. That look he’s giving Peter, too, the unbearably tender kind, the fond kind, it makes him all the more beautiful. He’s not above asking Tony for help. His pride was one of the first things he had to let go of when he began to live and sleep rough. “I feel like an idiot.” 

“You’re far from an idiot,” Tony says. He pats the seat next to him and they sit shoulder to shoulder, close enough that Peter can soak up the man’s warmth, struggling not to sway ever closer. Tony has his own gravity, and Peter often feels helpless to it. “You’re self-taught. It’s no wonder that a lot of this technical jargon isn’t connecting.” 

They make it through the first chapter together, and Tony was right—much of it Peter was familiar with, though it hadn’t been presented in terms he knew. Tony is an excellent teacher, too. Patient and insightful, witty. He soothes Peter’s fears that he isn’t smart enough, builds confidence in him that maybe he could learn to be an engineer the way he’d always dreamed. 

“We should send you to school,” Tony says afterwards, handing Peter a chilled Coke from the refrigerator. “An Avengers Scholarship, maybe. Full ride, all the amenities, only the best schools and tutors.”

“You mean you won’t be my private tutor, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, letting his eyes get wide and sweet. Most older men find the guileless thing sexy, but Tony just laughs at him. 

“I wouldn’t want to put your education in jeopardy. People will hardly be able to say I’m an unbiased educator,” Tony says. The warm, dark eyes drop to Peter’s mouth for just a moment before looking away, drinking deeply from his own Coke. “Though I’m sure we could come up with some incentive program for good grades.” 

“Incentive program, oh,” Peter laughs. “I like the—”

An alarm begins to sound, loud enough that Peter feels it in his teeth and deeper. It’s louder, harsher than the sound of Tony’s doorbell. The reaction it evokes in the older man is visceral as well, eyes going wide, jaw going tight as he taps at his glasses. The sound cuts out of the penthouse, but Peter can hear it continuing on in the floors below. 

“What’s wrong?” Peter asks. “Are we under attack?” 

“Someone is. That’s the alarm for the Avengers to assemble.” 

-

The people under attack are on the west coast. Some ‘half-rate magician’ (Dr. Stephen Strange’s words, not Peter’s) had accidentally conjured inter-dimensional creatures that they couldn’t control nor send packing. The Avengers are being sent to round them up and with the assistance of Dr. Strange, send them back to where they’ve come from. 

For the first time, Peter meets Director Nick Fury, a black man with one eye and a direct way of speaking that Peter can appreciate. Around the table are seated seven other Avengers: Natasha, Steve, Clint, Sam, Wanda, Vision, and Tony himself. After Fury ends his briefing on the situation, Steve stands and begins to formulate the briefest bones of a game plan and—

Peter isn’t in it. 

“Sorry, kid,” Steve says. “You’re not yet cleared for field work. Maybe next time.” 

“I’ve been working with Natasha for weeks,” Peter says. Colonel Rhodes words play on a loop in Peter’s brain, and they’re his lifeboat in the sea of anxiety that threatens to drown him. Peter needs to stay calm and play it cool. It’s the only way he’ll be allowed to have Tony’s back, and he must have Tony’s back. “This seems like the perfect mission for me to get my feet wet.” 

Tony sits beside Peter, silent and stiff. Director Fury watches all of them with a cool, knowing gaze when he says, “He’s got a point, Captain.” 

“We’ve got protocols for a reason,” Steve says. “Putting you in the field before you’re ready is an easy way to get hurt, Pete. Sorry, but the answer is no.” 

All eyes turn to Fury, who nods to Steve magnanimously. “Don’t look at me,” he tells them. “That’s your team leader. It’s his call.” 

Peter listens to the rest of the plans with his hands clenched in his lap, knuckles turning white. He cycles through every stage of grief, and as soon as the team breaks to head to the room where the helicarrier will take them to California, Peter catches one of Tony’s wrists to keep him from filing out of the room, just another soldier under Captain Rogers’s command. 

“Please don’t go,” Peter mutters. Director Fury watches them unabashedly, his arms crossed. Tony lifts a hand to ruffle Peter’s hair, but the expression on his face is downright grim.

“Don’t worry about me, kid,” Tony says softly. “I’ve been doing this gig for years now, and I haven’t died yet.” 

That doesn’t comfort Peter at all. When Tony leaves, he takes all the warmth with him until Peter feels chilled to the bone. 

“Parker. Nice to officially meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Director Fury says. He doesn’t offer his hand to shake, and neither does Peter. 

“From who?” Peter wonders out loud. “Captain Rogers?”

Fury hums noncommittally. “Don’t worry about Stark. He is an asset to the Avengers, and I will do all I can to ensure his safety.” 

“With all due respect Director Fury—he is not just an asset,” Peter says. Too afraid of what else might come from his mouth, come straight up from that dark place inside of him fueled by fear and anger and hurt, Peter lets his feet guide him back to the elevator. Without asking, FRIDAY takes him up to Tony’s penthouse. When Tony gets back, Peter plans to move back in (so long as the older man wants him to). He tells himself that again and again. When Tony gets back. When. 

Peter sits and he waits.

[goldingoldout8]

Is Everything About Power?

Indeed, to understand how the abstract metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: ‘What morality do they (or does he) aim at?’ Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. -Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

Jordan: So one of the claims (I suppose this would be an enlightenment claim) is that people do have a drive to knowledge, and that that drive is, in fact, what underlies the production of such things as philosophy. But Nietzsche questions that because he's trying to bring us back to consideration of the fact that you can't separate the philosopher's mind from the philosopher's being. He's first and foremost a living creature, and he's up to something. And the question is: What is it that he's up to? And so you can see the earliest manifestations in a paragraph like this of what later developed into de-constructionist thought. And that was mostly French continental philosophers who pursued that particular line of reasoning. And it is derived exactly from this kind of statement by Nietzsche. So, for example, someone like Derrida would say: 'It doesn't matter what the content of the text is. What matters is that the text can be used as a tool for power. And then whether the person who wrote the text knew it or not, that's what they were doing. And they were doing it in a way to privilege themselves above other people.’

And that's really I would say the fundamental deconstructionist claim. And it's a powerful claim. It's an utterly corrupt claim, but it's a really powerful claim, and it's related directly to the sorts of things that Nietzsche was referring to in this paragraph. What is it that the person's truly up to? Now the problem with the de-constructionist claim Is that it's an open invitation to cynicism, to thoughtless cynicism. I can just make the presupposition that whatever it is that you're telling me, you're telling me merely to dominate, regardless of what it is that you claim to be doing. Well the problem with that approach is that it's predicated on the implicit assumption that the only value that people actually have is the value to- is the desire to dominate. And of course that's a purely-

Like, that could be the case. And I also think that it's even reasonable to posit that to some degree that it is the case. But to take that from a contributing factor and to make that the highest God - because that's essentially what the de-constructionists are doing - those are entirely different things. And you have to beware of people who take a single causal element and elevate it to the stature of single comprehensive cause. You know, it's more reasonable to assume that people are complex in their motivations and that many different strands of biological and cultural motivation are in some sense primary. And then what happens is that they come together to weave a kind of tapestry, rather than to make the automatic assumption that you can reduce the entire set of human motivations to a single principle like that of power. Now, you know, I would say Nietzsche is also responsible to some degree for the de-constructionist claim that it's power, because one of his most famous utterances was that the fundamental motivating force in life is the will to power. But he wasn't so much- Because Nietzsche is a subtle thinker, he wasn't so much attempting to reduce human motivation to power, he was attempting to redefine what it was that we conceptualized as power! Whereas that isn't what the de-constructionists argue at all because fundamentally they're Marxists, and they believe that, you know, they've ensconced themselves within an economic viewpoint where- within a philosophical viewpoint where economics is paramount! And where all that matters is power construed as socio-economic domination, fundamentally.

-Jordan Peterson (2016) 45 minutes on a single paragraph of Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil

https://youtu.be/MCOw0eJ84d8?t=1633

[sebthesnipe]

The Dreamer by Whatwashernameagin an Analysis? (Part 1 cuz it was a lot longer than expected)

All portions:

Chapter 1: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Chapter 2: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Okay so first off… I get asked a lot what I can do with a forty-thousand-dollar degree in Literature when the job economy is so crap… Answer: Lay awake at 2AM analyzing your favorite fanfic authors. So, here we are. Before I begin however, I wanted to make a few things clear: First, if you have not read any of @whatwashernameagain’s work I highly recommend you do so. She is very talented. You can find her on archiveofourown here; and The Dreamer Chapter 1 here. Secondly, I realize that most authors don’t look into their work as deeply as the reader does when writing an analysis and that a red door may simply be a red door… but where is the fun in that? And Lastly, there will be spoilers… So… Beware! (Also it is a Sanders Sides fanfic so check out Sanders Sides by Thomas Sanders on youtube as well if you haven’t already)

WARNING: Spoilers under cut!!

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the literary theory of Reader Response (its pretty much exactly what it sounds like) but I’ll probably be addressing it throughout this post. In fact here and here great introductions to the literary theory; which can be defined in its most broad sense, as a criticism that “considers readers’ reaction to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text” (Purdue Writing Lab). Not very clear is it? Basically, Reader Response is the concept that readers have just as much say in what the work means as the author does. In other words, “readers do not passively consume the meaning present to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature” (Purdue Writing Lab). Without the author there is no reader and without the reader there is no author.

           That’s probably a lot of mumbo jumbo to take in but I’ve studied so many literary approaches that it is merely a glimpse into the stuff rattling around in my brain when I read any type of work. I don’t tell you any of this to flex or show how smart I am… …. Well… not really anyways lol. I am explaining this now because it will be important later in the post. Now! Onto the really fun stuff!

CHAPTER 1 (Again spoilers!)

Okay, going into the work I knew the premise: Superhero vs. Villain eventually becoming friends and even lovers. I’m totes down! However, Eva (the author (Whatwashernameagain) never ceases to pull in the reader from the first line!

“He’d chosen to call himself the Utilitarianist, the etymology of which was clearly derived from the Latin word ‘utilis’, meaning ‘useful’” (Whatwashernameagain).

First off! The italics are beautiful! They pull attention to the fact that whoever it is that is naming himself (*cough* Logan *cough*) has already shunned the outer world. He doesn’t care what others have to say. He is deciding this for himself. The sheer amount of strength in a single word because she used italics is stunning and I’m certain she doesn’t even realize what she has done.

Moving on to the actual name is another thing entirely. I know that ‘Utilitarianism’ is defined as “the ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons” (“Utilitarianism”). So first, this screams Logan, secondly there is a lot to be said for the name choice. While, the hero/villain’s goal is obvious by the name (doing acts that are for the ‘greater good’) there is a lot to be said for personality here. Obviously, it can be taken that whoever chose this name is insecure in a way; only taking value of themselves by how useful they are. The man no doubts feels as if he is only as valuable as the contributions he makes, which is certainly relatable. So, within the first sentence we learn quite a lot about a single individual and are already drawn in… then again, that’s Eva for you.

Within the next paragraph we learn that the he is in fact a ‘villain’ though I like to think of him more as a… misguided vigilante… but Logan is my bea… so… yeah. Once again, we see italics: “They called him a villain” (Whatwashernameagain). It pulls the reader’s attention to the separation the Utilitarianist is making between himself and the outside world. The feeling of loneliness just from the two italicized words is almost suffocating, at least to me (hence Reader-Response theory). Eva always has such a way with capturing emotions so subtly its breath taking. It certainly is one of her biggest strengths. I mean, here we are not even two sentences in and I’m already moved by the isolation of the villain.

Moving on down the line, we see that the Utilitarianist feels he is doing good for the world… sees himself as a hero rather than the villain the world sees him as. Eva also begins to apply descriptors to the not-villain. “Cold and infallible logic” is used to describe his work. Knowing Sanders Sides as I do its obvious that at this point, I have an assumption as to which character the Utilitarian is (and I’ve already read the work once or twice) but this practically cements it. The reason I bring these four little words to your attention however is the simplicity of them and the giant impact they have. Just as the italics spoke volumes so does this small excerpt. The loneliness I mentioned before only grows with these words, becoming an image of shivering, icy fingers reaching out for someone who isn’t there, the only thing keeping him warm is his own logical calculations…. Its… so heartbreaking… Damn it Eva!!! T.T

Within the next paragraph however we’re moving on to a more light-hearted tone as the Utilitarianist calls the world small minded and unable to understand his ‘superior logic’ (Whatwashername). That, in and of itself, gives way to more personality, breathing more life into the previously abstract character and making him more human… though far less humble lol.  

I feel as if I really need to move a bit more quickly through this work to keep this post from getting to long but… Eva’s work with emotional subtext is so stunning I can’t help myself. We’ve moved from the first sentence drawing attention to the separation of the Utilitarianist from the public’s view of him, to the lonely cool logic behind his actions and now within the next few sentences were pulled into a whirlwind of frustration and all of it is so seamless. It may seem like something small and inconsequential but there are published best-selling authors that struggle with it regularly and she manages it so flawlessly (and if I had to guess, without even really thinking about it.

The frustration I mention above is visible through the way the Utilitarianist uses descriptors pulling attention to names like ‘whistleblower’, ‘eco-terrorist’, ‘extremist’, and the way he points out more than one, obviously frustrated. He also insults the world once again pointing out their ‘small minds’ and ‘hypocrisy’; the media calling him ‘cruel’. Again, it’s the subtle things that really make a work shine and as usual Eva’s work is almost blinding.

“His enemies were clear to him, chosen not by his own selfish passions or greed, but by pure, beautiful logic” (Whatwashernameagain).

This line…. Oh, this line…. -sighs dreamily at the words-

So, Reader-Response theory can be interpreted in a number of ways but basically what you need to know is that everyone reads things in different ways due to their own life-experiences, interests, backgrounds, opinions, etc. So, this tiny line that most wouldn’t think twice of is one of my absolute favorites. Why? Well… Lets just say that I have four copies of every Sherlock Homes book (Sir Arthur Connan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) (Leather bound, hard cover, soft cover, and children’s versions). Which means I’m a bit of fan. Why is that important here? Well, Logan’s (the Utilitarian’s) thought here, pulls me straight back to Doyle’s work. It is so Holmes-esc that it makes me all warm inside and brings a smile to my face. Not to mention it is another shift in the emotional tone of the work, pulling the reader from frustration to an almost affection as Logan addresses his work. This provides the character with even more complexity making him more tangible than ever. There is already so much depth to this character in the first half of this chapter than it astounds me… I am never disappointed in the woman’s writing.

As I read about some of Logan’s target, I have to pause because of just how real some of these issues are. “Fast food chains that ate away the natural resources with their disgusting wastefulness, earning money on the back of animals starved of space and clean air. Government funded projects poisoning the water of people dependent on it. Radioactive plants secured so badly the surrounding hospitals were filled to the brim with cancer patients. Presidents who criminalized people for their skin, their sex, their religion or orientation” (Whatwashernameagain). It makes we want to bring attention to New Culturism and New Historicism but that’s a whole different can of worms. For now, I’ll just say that in today political and environmental climate these are some real issues and she knows that. She knows her audience, for sure! I feel as if this could be a real power play, not in any bad way but in the sense that she can pull at the concerns of so many readers at once with Logan addressing these issues, submerging them in support of his unconventional solutions. How else do you make a reader fall in love with a villain but with sympathy and support? Brilliant… just bloody brilliant.

“Public acts of violence threatened to cause a brutalization of the human mind and thus cause more violence due to normalizing it by prolonged exposure” (Whatwashernameagain).

I won’t spend too much time on this but… Holmes-esc… just saying… I love it so much!

“Despite any attempts to paint him as a ruthless monster, the people were his ultimate ally… Ultimately, he believed the world would come to understand his superior philosophy” (Whatwashernameagain).

Okay, lets pause for a moment. We get some conflicting information here (not in a bad way). Up until now Logan has isolated himself from the world but now, we find out that the people work with him. This is conflicting not because it goes against what has been said but simply what the reader has assumed (reader-response theory). When we really consider it, of course there would be support for his tactics. Trump has supporters… I don’t see why but he does… It’s only logical that someone who is actually making change for the better (even if his methods are extreme) would have them too…. Wait… Did I just compare Logan to Trump?! I’m going to go cry in a corner now… T.T No, but seriously Eva is making her readers think and ask questions that they have to fill in the blanks for, themselves. Its fantastic! The truth of the matter is, the best works have the readers read between the lines, fill in the blanks, help mold the story to their own liking, and she does this so Wonderfully I am jealous and awed by it all. As for bringing the world around to his philosophy we as a reader know that’s probably not going to happen but that might not be the point of the sentence. Perhaps, its to bring a small sense of eccentric tendencies in a far less subtle manner to Logan or just determination. I feel that it does both whether intended or not and does it beautifully. It makes it obvious that Logan is still lonely and determined to bring others in on his work while deluding himself that they will. I think most of us have been lonely enough that we went just a little crazy at one point or another… Which makes Logan more relatable.

Unfortunately, I have to go to work; but I will be back with a Part 2 of this. I have a lot more to say so be warned! And yes, I realize there’s going to be a lot of TLDR’s but it’s a good thing I’m writing this more for myself than anyone XP so… until next time…

 Purdue Writing Lab. “Reader-Response Criticism // Purdue Writing Lab.” Purdue Writing Lab, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/reader_response_criticism.html.

“Utilitarianism.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/utilitarianism.

Whatwashernameagain. “The Dreamer - Chapter 1.” Hello Guys Gals And Non Binary Friends, 8 Sept. 2019, https://whatwashernameagain.tumblr.com/post/187581477262/the-dreamer-chapter-1.

[faunusrights]

OFFAL HUNT REMASTERED LIVEBLOG // CHAPTER 14

IN THIS EPISODE OF THE OFFAL HUNT LIVEBLOG:

On the other end of the line, Cinder let out a tight sigh. “Yeah. Okay, well—I’m in a difficult position right now. I’m balancing a lot. So, that wasn’t, you know, directed at you or whatever… I’m just trying to deliver you to Atlas. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” Glynda said. “This apology sucks.”

CINDER FALL TRIES TO HAVE MANNERS. AND FAILS. BUT SHE TRIES.

it’s been a WHILE but i’m STILL HERE!!!!!!!!! also i’m a little late to the draw and also unlike w/ prior chaps i did actually read this one when it came out so i’ve had my first run already. BUT that means i actually get 2 Focus so lets get this party started

so we’re now entering into the New Umbraroot Arc which Frightens me on a deep and intrinsic scale because now i have no padding to ready me for whatever the Hell is going to occur, but i do know it will be gay(er) than the current content was (is/shall be) and here’s the proof

It had only been a day, but the sound of Cinder’s voice was a relief to Glynda’s senses.

glynda that’s gay. hey. hey. glynda have u been told yr a lesbian. lesbeeb. besbion--

“Not at all.” Thank god. It was one thing to be traveling with Cinder Fall. It was entirely another to have her checking in on Glynda’s well-being.

cinder: my well-being is SHIT but thankfully there’s someone nearby doing WORSE than me, which makes me feel better at least,

“Oh.” Our sounded strange in her mouth.

my favourite thing abt any gay media and content is that it’s gay in ways that hettie(tm) nonsense can only dream of being. when a story is abt a guy and a gal all the romantic tension comes from like. looking at a tiddy or getting naked or w/e the shit. here? it’s literally found entirely in the use of the word our. such power. i love it.

I went from unknown to one of Atlas’ most wanted overnight, which is charming… And also annoying, because they refuse to stop pasting wanted posters on every street corner.

i feel like cinder is the type of bitch to send pics of them back to emerald like ‘is my face ACTUALLY that janky??? my hair is a state. you think they’ll use a selfie if i ask nicely???’

Cinder hummed, affirmative. “Which would be unnecessary, if you hadn’t reported me.”

Glynda returned, “I wouldn’t have reported you if you hadn’t been committing a crime.”

glynda you snitch. you narc. you bootlicker. does be gay do crime mean NOTHING to you,

We left a funny taste in her mouth, almost as strange as when Cinder had said our. She tried not to examine it too closely.

again. look at this shit. this is real slowburn hours. this is how u DO IT.

Her heart was beginning to feel like a pin cushion with all the needles pulled out, little holes left in their wake.

would i be showing my age if i glanced at this and wondered if it were a reference to the inciting og offal hunt inspiration fic or. it does doesnt it. okay moving on.

“Okay.” And then, in an effort to change the subject to something lighter: “I’ve never broken into a country before.”

glynda’s complete and continuous inability to actually like. do what she plans on doing is SO funny to me. she’s going to be stealthy, she says, throwing a man aside in obvious fashion. i’m going to be subtle, she says, being as conspicuous as possible. she’s a disaster and i live for it.

"The Faunus." Cinder's voice was cold. "Don't speak to her."

this part of this fic is subtitled ‘cinder’s rank opinions time’, apparently. not that u can tell. but it is. dsfhgjsdfghjghfjdk

In the silence that followed, Glynda thought of the stunted horns jutting above Cinder's hairline at the restaurant.

Glynda murmured, "That’s a horrible thing to say."

"Don’t start." There was no concession in her words. “I mean it.”

“...I just didn’t expect that from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

There was something in Cinder’s tone that told Glynda that nothing she said would be correct. She said nothing.

cinder’s! rank! opinions! time! honestly this section victimises me the MOST as i very famously cried over an earlier section in which cinder thought abt all the faunus she grew up with, so i know that kc and diesel were looking to hurt me directly. that said i DO find it funny that cinder, yet again, looks like a pile of shit.  she can’t do anything right. naturally inclined to be the villain completely unintentionally. what a moron.

A harsh laugh. “What do you think we are, friends?”

“Well, no—um. Not really, but—”

YOU SEE. CINDER. PLEASE. £10 FOR U TO BEHAVE FOR FIFTEEN SECONDS.

“Then, just—just listen to me. I’m going to get us there. I p-promise.” There was a soft sound, like disgust or the prelude to a gag. “Urgh, your soul—give me more space.”

cinder: i’m inclined to being an asshole glynda: every time yr mean 2 me i’ll make u feel worse cinder: ah no. ah shit. i have to be nice??? ah fuck. what the shit is this.

Glynda thought of Ozpin. It wasn’t a comforting thought—more like the memory of a near-accident, like sliding on ice and feeling the world shift beneath you. It was a flinch-thought, and it would have made her miserable instead of just homesick had she not shut it out so quickly.

god the writing in this fic is so especially pristine. everything feels so real and visceral and you just know Exactly how that feels. it’s brilliantly punchy and i adore the way u get have the exact sensation click into place. it’s SO good.

She wondered if it was the same moon Bacia and Vivienne had looked upon. If they had felt the same beneath its pale light. The Great War had seen two shatterings of the moon, so perhaps it had appeared different, but… Glynda couldn’t help but wish that it was something they shared, even lifetimes apart.

👈😎👈

actually im a little nervous abt doing fingerguns because WHAT IF SMTHNG HAS CHANGED... but i think this bit is. safe. maybe. diesel. kc. am i safe,

Glynda closed her eyes and tried to feel out that instinctual power within her. Tried to know herself better. It resonated around her like a water in a tank, nearly palpable.

again this is just GREAT storytelling. i just LOVE how well kc and diesel turn abstract ideas into such physical manifestations it’s completely unreal. r y’all seein this shit???

upon checking his number, she’d discovered it had been blocked.

i love that glynda is abt as knowledgeable abt little jumps like this as the reader is. are we surprised as a reader? yes. is glynda also surprised? HELL YEAH SHE IS. SHE AIN’T GOT A FUCKIN CLUE MY DUDE.

Remembering the notes to herself not to trust Winter, Glynda opened the log hesitantly.

glynda no yr sending read receipts to yr future gf and thats a bad move on everybodys part

The indicator showed this wasn’t the first time Glynda had accessed the message. She couldn’t remember doing so. 

OH NO BITCH U ALREADY DID

“Special Operative Schnee, things are…” Glynda paused, searching for something suitably vague to say. “Proceeding.

do you see what i mean abt glynda’s ineptitude. it’s slapstick levels of ridiculous and i’m living for it.

Do you suspect she’s attempting to cross the border?”

“Maybe.”

‘sure,’ glynda says. ‘you could word it like that if you wanted to.’

“Bold of her, if nothing else. She should know there will—” Glynda skimmed through the rest of the paragraph to reach the end, the corners of her mouth curling. “—can make arrangements. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

HGSDFGKHJSFDGHKJDF JESUS CHRIST

its like in fallout 4 when someone tells u important info and when u click past it the main character just goes ‘uh huh’ ‘yeah’ ‘okay’ ‘sure’ ‘mm-hm’ as the text boxes whizz by GLYNDA PLEASE

Bubbles appeared, showing that Cinder was typing. Glynda waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The bubbles appeared and disappeared four times.

She flipped back to Cinder’s conversation and found that, after all that time, Cinder had finally settled on a reply.

It said:

“Good.”

i just had to pair these up for a second if only to say: dis me lol

okay let’s double back for a second just to cover this Juicy Lore:

If you’d like, I can arrange a bouquet of flowers to be left at your mothers’ memorial site. My thoughts are with you.”

For a long moment, Glynda simply stared at the screen. [...] In quick succession, she realized that it had been sixteen days since she’d met with Cinder in the restaurant and that it was soon to be the anniversary of her mothers’ deaths.

WHAT IS THIS LORE MA’AM AND MX??? **MA’X**??? firstly idk what the HELL the Black March tragedy is but im fascinated but also: did u have to do that. can ONE person in this fic not have [spoilers redacted cant say that yet no sir] problems??? no??? die. dsfhjgghjkfsddf

Glynda picked herself up from the armchair, neat and tidy, and disassembled into bed, pulling the covers up to her throat. With her Semblance, she turned off the lights. She closed her eyes.

It was quiet. Cold. The only thing she felt was the weight of her soul.

Her Scroll buzzed. Glynda answered it.

“Glynda.” It was Cinder. “I can feel that.”

okay following on from cinder’s text message, i just. love that cinder’s having such direct repercussions to her shitty shitty actions. like this is all tying together in some 👈😎👈 instances but having cinder be her usual callous self and having to literally turn around and start fucking Being Nice For Once is VERY gratifying. fuck you you lil round-faced one-braincelled baby. time to learn to have some Manners. jgdsfghsdfghfjd

She’d simply resigned to the loneliness of having no one to trust but Cinder, and then, not even having her.

... thats gay. hey lads is that gay? its gay. it feels gay.

On the other end of the line, Cinder let out a tight sigh. “Yeah. Okay, well—I’m in a difficult position right now. I’m balancing a lot. So, that wasn’t, you know, directed at you or whatever… I’m just trying to deliver you to Atlas. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” Glynda said. “This apology sucks.”

this feels like a reference to 👈👈👈😎👈👈👈 (IS IT. AM I RIGHT. IT IS ISNT IT) but also: LOOK AT CINDER GO. TRYING. BADLY. BUT TRYING. i love her she sucks so much shes such a dumbass. feel the consequences. feel them.

Glynda chided herself; Cinder Fall wasn’t capable of remorse, but she was more than capable of simple math. It seemed the worse she treated Glynda, the worse she herself would feel.

glynda: she’s doing this because it makes her feel better, not me cinder in like idk 20 chapters down the line:

(i guess thats another 👈😎👈 moment but for GOOD REASON)

There was a shift, like Cinder was rolling over, or maybe propping herself up. Was she in bed also? It triggered the remembrance of Glynda’s own physicality, and she turned over as well, searching in the dark for the nightstand and the lamp upon it. The light clicked on. The room brightened. Glynda settled in, ready.

OOOOOH THE PARALLELS. glynda turning the lights off and sinking into darkness and the void versus perking up and sitting up and turning the lights on when talking to cinder!!!!!!! POETIC CINEMA. OOF. OOF. HOW DOES FIFTEEN POINTS OF LOVE TASTE.

“Great! Lovely. Glad to hear it.” Fangs rounded out the words like scissors. A pleasant sense of satisfaction unfurled in Glynda’s chest. “So, once upon a fucking time—”

there were two gays and they were enemies to lovers but didnt know it yet. but they will be.

THATS CHAPTER 14 BABEY!!!!!!!! i LOVED this chap and i can rly feel kc and diesel gearing up for umbraroot. its great being able to like. feel the shift of focus goin on here and im SO ready to see this arc play out. once again offal hunt is the best fic ever made. this is a fact.

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Quantum Natives 5

J. Ka Ching: Another Vanishing City

Cover by J. and awe IX

Catalogue number: QNR026

Reviewed format: review copy of 320kbps/48kHz MP3 album as kindly provided by Quantum Natives

Welcome to the new review in the Fluid Label Focus series on the Quantum Natives label in which today I’m reviewing their most recent release, the album Another Vanishing City by J. Ka Ching. As always the album’s download includes all album tracks as MP3s, this time in 48kHz for better sound quality, as well as the cover artwork and also lyrics and credits text files. Indeed, you guessed it, this is one of the few song-based releases I’m reviewing on this album and Another Vanishing City does have quite a poppy sound to it, albeit with a quirky personality through energetic bursts of synths and Chinese influences in the instrumentation, but all about that in the next paragraph as I’ll first talk a bit about the album cover artwork. The album artwork is by J. Ka Ching (Jevon Voon) and awe IX and features a nifty collage like image of a Chinese style mountain landscape consisting of two different images of this landscape in monochrome layered over each other, with the background image seemingly showing an “older” image of the mountain than the more refined centre image. J. Ka Ching’s artist name and the album title feature on the cover in true Quantum Natives fashion, in heavily stylised graffiti like type that also has this wild post-internet alien feel to it but could also look a bit like a “remixed” version of Chinese characters. A very nice recognisable cover and overall it quite matches the Chinese aspects of this album’s sound as well. So indeed, let’s have a look at this 25 minute album’s 9 tracks now.

As I mentioned Another Vanishing City is pretty much a song driven album, though the tracks on the album are mostly quite short with the songs being mixed with shorter instrumental pieces making the album feel like a short soundtrack in a way. The lyrics of the songs themselves are quite abstract though noticeably emotional and a bit dramatic but in a good honest manner. As my listening manner is often leaning more on the sound and vibe of the music itself however, I’ll focus on the vocal performances and music itself which is definitely good. J. Ka Ching’s vocals are, while being noticeably auto-tuned, quite good with the emotions within the lyrics coming through clearly even with all the vocal effect processing. But what I noticed in particular, besides the vocals is that J. Ka Ching has quite a wild way of creating his music, mixing recognisable Deconstructed Club, PC Music synths and Asian influences together but in a way that jumps around in unpredictable enjoyable ways. You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next and besides the songs the melodies on Another Vanishing City are quite aleatoric and abstract at times. The chaotic edge of J. Ka Ching’s music does make the music a notch disjointed at times, with the instruments and sound effects being on the edge of falling out of the tracks’ structures but this is definitely saved by J. Ka Ching’s excellent feel for refined production in his music, always letting the layers of sound and instruments interlock with each other in a pleasant way that’s not overly noisy. Looking at the separate tracks on Another Vanishing City, starting with See No Faces, which features a calm first half and an energetic explosive second half. The first half of this track features J. Ka Ching’s vocals over a mixture of Asian mallet instruments, liquid sound effects, choir samples, modulated synth chords and punchy sub bass. The melancholic sad music of the first half follows a nice polyrhythm in its melodies which leads directly into the more active second half. The second half has quite an explosive Deconstructed Club sound to it, with plenty of thunderous stuttering compressed drums and explosion sounds, squeaky PC music synth leads as well as a mixture of Asian mallet instruments and synth sounds. This then follows into second track plurrRealityz, Tio’tia:ke. Definitely one of the stronger tracks on this album plurrRealityz, Tio’tia:ke features a melodic and rhythmic abstract made up of a variety of sources, Asian instruments, vocal sample chops, quirky synth stabs, EDM bass kick samples and manipulated percussion and sound effects, in its organic wildly evolving shape it wonderfully describes what could be a calm mountain landscape in Japan, sunlight overflowing the trees and a lake nearby. Afterwards Yearning 4 The Ideal follows which has a more straight song form with more upbeat vocals and plenty of PC Music elements in the synth, beat but again there’s also plenty of sweet Asian instruments in the mix and the wild vocal manipulations add a great layer of quirkiness to the piece. Details like the ever shifting click Trap hi hat patterns and chopped up guitar give the music that bit extra that elevates it above other PC music related music. The melodies are simple but the execution of sound play, composition and of course J. Ka Ching’s energetic vocals make this a great fun track to jam to but its layering also rewards deeper listening into the soundscape of the piece. Afterwards we have two short pieces, the first of which is 客家 Guest Families, which is practically an a capella piece (not counting the segue interlude), there are some sweet harmonies in this one which are overdubbed by J. Ka Ching himself and the melodies are very catchy and well written. A great little song. Afterwards we have the instrumental track All Ghost’s Fear the Rooster’s Crow, which has a sweet early morning ambience to it, emitted through the warm tones of a mixture of Eastern instruments, honky tonk piano and funky drum hit samples, which do give the piece a playful abstract edge. The honky tonk piano recording in the background seems to be delayed a bit, its microtonal shifts in tone sounding a bit like distant car klaxons, a great subtle touch the music which enhances that early morning vibe. The Smell of Boiling Rice starts with a really lush melodic soundscape continuing that early morning ambience featuring a great guzheng performance by Xing Ru Zhong backed by vocal drones, explosive drum hits and squelchy synth effects which morphs into a rather bizarre circus like jumpy waltz rhythm melody which much poppies and full of PC music sounds particularly in the synths. The drum patterns are really wild and quirky, very nice, but it’s good that this bit is not longer as it contrast quite a lot with the lush ambience of the first half. Nexopias of Our Forgotten Ancestors follows with once again plenty of craziness in the composition and sound work but it’s one of the tracks where the organised chaos of elements works the best. The noisy groove mixing heavily percussive drum patterns, squeaky PWM synth, vocal chops is both catchy and energetic and has a clear focus in its progression and melodies. The guitar solo by Inland Island (which is a band, but there’s no specific credit for who plays the guitar in the credits text file) also adds a surprising Rock element to the piece which works well moving to the last part of the track in which the music strips itself back to the jumpy percussion and a bit crushed marimba melody. Then on Skid Swan Song we have a Vocaloid like voice singing the song over abstract metallic Asian style staccato synth melodies which leads to final track I’m Trying to Remember the Hue of the Sunlight. This is again a song with J. Ka Ching’s vocals, very PC Music like in this case with the poppy instrumental backing and squeaky energetic fat synth leads, the quirky layering of sound effects and guzheng performance definitely do give it that extra element of originality that I like about J. Ka Ching’s stronger tracks on Another Vanishing City. Indeed when he’s connecting his wildly maximalist approach to electronic music with a smoothly flowing composition and some restraint that keeps the music from going overboard with ideas that distract and disrupt the continuity of his music J. Ka Ching delivers a great mixture of atmospheric soundscapes, PC Music influenced songs that feature some great inspired compositional and sonic ideas that give the music a great conceptual coherency, especially on this album.

To conclude this review I would say that with Another Vanishing City, J. Ka Ching is on the way of shaping a personal style through his music that combines the best influences of pop inspired experimental music styles and Asian themed soundscapes with his excellent attitude to going all out with his quirky imagination in the rich production of the music. While I do feel that J. Ka Ching can work a bit on keeping the flow of his music consistent in its structure, Another Vanishing City is definitely a great enjoyable album as it is. I am definitely looking forward to seeing J. Ka Ching’s music grow even more on future releases but for now I recommend you to check out this album for some varied good creative vibes radiated through J. Ka Ching’s colourful music.

You can get the Quantum Natives free download version of this album via this Mediafire link here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/65u338hskidedi6/J.Ka_Ching-_Another_Vanishing_City__%2528QNR026%2529.zip/file

[ceruleanvulpine]

Commentary on the statement sequence from can’t live on prayers like these?

Gladly! (The story in question is here.) 

The first thing about this statement is that it’s also about Jon and Martin. This probably is not necessary to point out, as I wasn’t very subtle, but that was my main goal in writing it: to tell a story with a similar enough dynamic that it would set both of them on edge, even if they didn’t explicitly think about it in those terms. (Elias picked the statement out. It’s not in the fic that he did this on purpose, but…) The second thing is that I absolutely do not know the rest of the story about Elise and her brother, or even what entity was involved; I didn’t want to write a whole horror story within this story, or I never would have finished it. I do feel bad for Caroline though. The third thing is that when I was almost finished with this fic, I broke my self-imposed catching-up hiatus and listened to Another Twist, and then got mad at Jonny for writing a much clearer parallel than I was. (I love Another Twist! I love it for reasons unrelated to Jon/Martin parallels, even. But at the time I was like… HEY…)

Some line by line notes under the cut:

> “Um, okay. Recorder’s on? Great. It’s been on this whole time. Wonderful.”

This is technically before the statement starts, but I want to point it out because I still think it’s funny, and also because I like Martin getting to be sarcastic.

> “I want to say something about Caroline was always weird, but that probably isn’t true — hindsight, right? No, to me she just seemed like your average severe female academic type, you know, short gray hair, very disciplined, dressed nicely enough in a don’t-notice-my-clothes way. No patience for people who didn’t take things seriously. I never saw her smiling, except when she was talking to Ben about their research. We got on fine at first, since I knew how much my brother wanted us to. But I started to hate that smile, because every time they made a breakthrough with their stupid theory something new would go wrong …”

So, writing in Magnus Archives statement style turned out to be very fun! I love how the actual statements mix casual speech with involved, weird as hell descriptions no one would ever say out loud, and it gave me liberty to fuck around. A+ do recommend.

Caroline is very much an archetype. Which I think actually sets her up as a character more effectively than Elise and Ben, who we don’t find much out about other than “suspicious” and “devoted” respectively. Scary Professional Woman With Secret Feelings is also … an archetype I am very weak to. Which might come through in the fact that she’s named after GLaDOS,

> He tries to look at nothing in particular, but his attention is drawn persistently towards Martin, and whether that is from some dread force or simple curiosity he doesn’t know.

Jon POV is also fun because when he’s not being drawn into things, he is still skeptical about what a weird life he’s having and thinks things like “some dread force” semi-sarcastically.

> “ … we used to tease him about having a crush on her, mostly because of how red he would turn whenever anyone —”

SORRY MARTIN. In hindsight I don’t know that this interruption is actually necessary — I think the idea was to break up the statement paragraphs and also emphasize how goddamn oblivious Jon is, but I don’t love it.

> “I think he really saw who she was and because of that he trusted her, more than she deserved. It doesn’t matter how clearly you see someone, if you won’t admit to yourself what you’re seeing…”

A thesis statement in the wild! It’s a little clumsy but I still like it. Martin knows Jon well and won’t let himself believe Jon is [unkind/beyond help/too fucking dumb to notice his huge crush]; Jon literally has supernatural seeing powers and yet does Not have a good grip on what Martin’s like or what he’s thinking at any given moment.

> He doesn’t know if she looked like this, or if he himself did, in the early days when he surfaced to Sasha or Martin’s interruptions. He can’t but think that if he had, someone would have made him stop.

Reading Statements Is Bad. I think probably Jon goes into a similar weird trance but doesn’t feel as drained and horrible afterwards.

> He doesn’t make Martin stop.

I love … implied self-recrimination. This is an acknowledgement of his own perceived selfishness even as he keeps doing it. It also leads into the next paragraph, wherein the prose starts to get weirder and more abstract as Jon stops being “a person sitting in a room listening to his coworker read a story” and starts being “the archivist listening to a statement” — it miIiight be too late for him to consciously make the choice to stop this?

> “Ben never would have shouted, of course, but he had this bitter, sulking tone in his voice that he always got if he couldn’t squash things down well enough to pretend he was okay with what was going on.” THIS IS A LINE ABOUT MARTIN THIS IS A LINE ABOUT MARTIN. Listen: I love Martin but he’s anxious and trapped and afraid and selfish and unpleasant to be around sometimes and I never want to write him solely as Soft Chill Dude. He gets to be (justifiably) short with Jon later, but he’s still expressing like .. futility, and giving up on communicating what he wanted to because What Was The Point Anyway, Everything Sucks And I Can’t Do Anything.

> Caroline didn’t sound sympathetic when she said, cold as anything, that he certainly couldn’t help her if he was dead.

I love this secondary character I made up, she’s terrible. She’s a little bit Gertrude, huh. I swear I did not do that on purpose.

> Jon watches Martin, but he doesn’t see him. He sees Elise and Ben and Caroline, standing in the kitchen and beholding something strange and new and fascinating. Caroline standing on the precipice of enlightenment and pressing on, needing to know no matter what sacrifice might be asked of her, not seeing that she might be made to sacrifice other than herself.

This is a little on the nose, literally using the word beholding and then describing a compulsion to keep digging for information. But needing to know is how Jon trips himself up at the end of the fic; he can’t accept a lie, and he doesn’t trust anything he doesn’t know everything about.

> The knowledge is an offering for Beholding, and he beholds it, and it is for him too.

> He is too far gone, here and not here, seeing and not seen.

I ended two paragraphs with this exact same sentence structure! What was I doing! I hate these sentences actually,

> If she doesn’t know what she did already, then me shouting at her wouldn’t help. I hope she knows. I hope she knows it’s her fault that Ben is gone, even if he volunteered. I hope she thinks about it every day, that she should have made him leave whether he wanted to or not. But she’s always been sure of herself. So I doubt it.

I know I said I didn’t know the rest of the story in this statement, but here’s a hint: Caroline sure does think about it!! She is not a happy person.

Returning to parallels, I realize that I added in this third narrator character to describe the action, and obviously she doesn’t match up directly to anyone; there is no one either telling Martin to get out or blaming Jon for letting him stay, except maybe, uh, Jon, who does a lot of telling himself he’s a monster.

But not a lot of letting that actually change his actions. At the end of the fic he concludes that his fear about doing this was right, and that Martin is horrified by him because of his increasing inhumanity; he totally fails to separate the statement reading — which is not good for Martin, and which the Elise-perspective on this would say is not something he should accept, but which was given willingly anyway — from the harm he does *in* freaking out and demanding information, which is a whole other problem, and which takes the dynamic from the statement in a different direction.

Whew, I feel sort of self-indulgent for typing all this up, so I hope you enjoy it! :)

[liskantope]

I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t seen any mention on Tumblr or on Slate Star Codex of this audio tape (which I ran across on YouTube in connection with Jordan Peterson), which was secretly recorded by a young grad student who had been summoned to be reprimanded by the professor running the course she was teaching along with some diversity ombudsmen. This was in reaction to an informal complaint they had received about the fact that she showed a brief YouTube clip of Jordan Peterson arguing about gender-neutral pronouns, which she had neither endorsed nor condemned. (It came out later that no actual complaint, either formal or informal, had been submitted to that crew from a student -- it had come from a representative from some campus LGBTQ center who had heard one student expressing concern about it in casual conversation.)

Several partially-developed thoughts about the whole scandal and particularly this audio clip. On the one hand, this is the starkest evidence -- from a primary source! -- of the kind of SJ-flavored suppression of ideas from even being voiced at universities that more and more people are expressing concern about. I consider myself generally pro-trans-rights* and am taking more issue with Dr. Peterson’s views the more of his content I’ve seen in the last few days. But I still find listening to him worthwhile in that it makes me think critically about points I may not have considered and to sharpen and refine my “generally pro-trans” views on the complex questions involved with gender identity. I can understand that certain clips of his rhetoric might be distressing to some trans people (I don’t think she picked one of the more provoking ones), but to claim that the act of merely exposing the students to a snippet of Dr. Peterson is a form “gendered violence” or denying trans students the right to “be human”, seems like quite a stretch -- in my less charitable moments, I’m even tempted to call it absurd.

On the other hand, I have some disagreements with the grad student Lindsay Shepherd’s point of view as well. My biggest issue is with her statement that “in a university, all perspectives are valid”. The first time she said it, I chalked it down to a poor explanation of her view due to the stress of being put on the spot, but she repeated it later. No, not all perspectives are valid, or at least not equally valid, and I’m not in favor of presenting them as such at a university. The “all perspectives are valid” mentality reminds me of the rhetoric coming from advocates of teaching creationism Intelligent Design in schools (”Teach both sides of the controversy!”). There is no way to present all the perspectives out there -- even all the ones with a significant amount of clout in the public discourse -- in  neutral and even-handed way. A university instructor’s choices of which points of view to teach have to be informed by the scholarly merit of each point of view out there. Yeah, certain areas of academic inquiry might be stifled by bias in academia -- I’m getting more and more worried that this is the case in some social science departments -- and this is a problem. But just tossing out “All perspectives are valid!” neither proves that this bias is happening nor solves this problem.

A much more minor and subtle criticism I would make of Shepherd’s words is that I’ve heard her at a couple of points in interviews expressing an attitude that roughly goes “I like listening to people like Jordan Peterson even if I disagree with him, because I find people like that interesting and their ideas fascinating to ponder, it’s something I really enjoy doing.” On the surface this seems all right (and I came dangerously close to expressing the same attitude a couple of paragraphs up!), but the way she said it does sort of open her up to the criticism of sounding “privileged”, and perhaps rightly so. What is a fascinating academic semi-abstract concept to one person might be existentially earth-shaking on a primal emotional level to another, and it seems like a good idea to always keep that in mind. (I will say that she comes across as a very well-meaning person, and apparently she’s only 22-ish. I probably sounded an awful lot like her when I was her age, and I may sound too much like that at times even today.)

Finally, a major aspect of the issue that I think isn’t emphasized enough is that when these types of scandals happen, unequivocal denunciation and persecution from the Left runs the risk of driving the person at the center of it in a conservative direction, quite possibly directly into the arms of the alt-right! That’s what appears to have happened with Damore after being suddenly thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the whole Google fiasco. I hope that Shepherd manages to avoid that path, but she does seem to be getting more and more friendly towards Peterson... and she has stated, “I considered myself left-leaning, and I kind of still do, but also... I’ve also been tempted by the idea of like, maybe I should just like, join the right? They’re being so welcoming to me. Yeah I should just join the right.” I hope hearing her say this gives her left-wing attackers some pause.

*inasmuch as it’s clear what that even means; trans issues are a subject I’ve been a bit shy about discussing but I may lay out my general picture of it in an effortpost soon

[eirikrjs]

Sooooooo... where to begin here. This is in response to this post where I claim that 4A’s YHVH 2 is not meant to be the Gnostic Demiurge. Frankly, I feel like a bit of an idiot for replying to this again because I know I’m going to be going over the same things as I did before, which I presume have been conveniently ignored.

But anyway, I guess I’ll go by paragraph groupings!

Paragraphs 1 & 2: Multiples of the same demon exist, including multiple Satans, and two Satans square off in the end of SMT2.

I suppose you mean that Satan and Lucifer can have a showdown in the final battles? But Jewish Satan, a part of God, and Christian Satan/Lucifer, the fallen angel, are pretty distinct and not interchangeable. You couldn’t put Lucifer in Judaism because Lucifer requires free will of a type that he wouldn’t get in Judaism because Yahweh is absolute and all angels are just a part of him.

Otherwise, yes, there are multiples of many demons, absolutely. But there are multiples for a reason: they are meant to be distinct concepts that are not necessarily interchangeable, as we see with Lucifer and Satan (unless they are “multiples” that work appropriately within a given religion, like Vishnu’s Avatars). I suppose you made this argument to try and refute what I said in the above linked post about Demiurge and YHVH not being equated in 4A because you can fight the latter with the former in your party, but you’re assuming an absolute equivalency where there isn’t one. Jewish Yahweh and Gnostic Demiurge are not the same being in religion or SMT (though see the paragraph immediately below), even if Gnosticism’s is based off of the Jewish. Gnostic Demiurge does things no Jew or even Christian would accept and is a distinct entity from “God” with a different background and personality.

So, in SMT, a demon has to be primarily the god or being their name implies them to be, else there would be no meaning to anything. By itself, SMT’s Demiurge is just the Demiurge. But sometimes context can change this, as we see with the Demiurge in Strange Journey. But there the context of the Demiurge changes in a logical way because it’s written to acknowledge the place of Yahweh in the Gnostic historical framework. It’s not there because they want to make an independent statement that God is evil or has a bad streak, but to make reference to the Gnostic belief system. So here, YHVH is only being “demonized” because of an explicit reference to a religious precedent. Again, context, something that is sorely lacking in 4A’s take on YHVH.

Paragraphs 3, 5, 6, 7, 8: There aren’t many Gnostic figures in SMT, Persona 5 has Gnostic and Kabbalistic themes, and there is room for Gnostic interpretations and themes in 4A. There are themes of “knowledge” in SMT and this absolutely means Gnosticism reference. These secret Gnostic themes have been there the whole time, but obscured by a Judeo-Christian facade because that would shift the aesthetic too much; the alternate themes that do exist are more subtle as not to interfere with the central themes. God has multiple names in Judaism but also Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the go-to when portraying YHVH as a bad guy and had to be an inspiration.

First: I don’t care what Persona does, it’s irrelevant. Persona is abstract with its various mythological elements by design.

As for the rest...there are just too many assumptions to make me even want to bother engaging with it. It honestly reminds me of the arguments a certain other someone makes. Your entire position is based on subjective interpretations and circumstantial evidence. Yes, it’s possible that the Gnostic Demiurge was part of the inspiration for 4A’s approach to YHVH (and I even admitted as such in the original post!) but there’s none of that all-important direct evidence to support the claim of a equivocal YHVH-Demiurge adaptation. General themes aren’t enough. A laughable hypothesis that the games are secretly Gnostic because Judeo-Christian appearances would be more acceptable is not enough. Gods having multiple names isn’t enough (which important gods don’t have multiple names?). All the direct evidence we have, from the game and Doi’s commentary, points to the fact that 4A’s YHVH is meant to be...YHVH, not the Demiurge.

Paragraphs 3 & 9: The “Smoking Guns”: “Archon” Michael and the lion-headed snake.

Had to save this for last. On the ribbon banner tied around Gaston’s Michael’s Spear...

...there are two visible Greek words. The easiest to see is “Μιχαήλ,” or “Michael,” of course referring to the archangel (though actually, it’s written as “ΜιχαΗλ“, with an upper-case Eta). The second, obscured word is “ο ἄρχων” or, rather, “ ο ἄρχωN” (another mistake, as Doi substituted the upper-case Greek letter Nu when it should have been lower-case), and this (ἄρχων, that is) is usually translated as “ruler,” but transliterated it is “archon.” This is really neat and I’m glad you pointed it out because I didn’t think to look too closely at the letters here.

However, the claim here is that the “archon” on the banner is a reference to Gnosticism and its gang of evil “rulers” headed by the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth. This is an incredible stretch because Michael is not considered an archon in Gnosticism. In fact, there’s an easier and better way to explain the meaning of “ruler Michael”: searching in Greek for “ο αρχων Μιχα��λ“ seems to imply that it’s just a way of expressing Michael’s name or a shortened version of “Archangel Michael” in Greek. Seems to have nothing to do with Gnosticism or its archons! This is akin to “Gungnir” being written in the runic alphabet on Doi’s Odin’s spear. It’s likely that Doi wanted to include some extra flair to the weapons and quickly looked up how to write words relevant to them (and not perfectly, in the case of Michael’s Spear).

Also, think about it from the creator’s perspective. If you were writing a game and wanted an overarching theme that’s relevant to its climax, would you include a reference to that theme, one of the only explicit references to the theme in the game, in an easily overlooked detail on a single character design? Moreover, does a minor detail on an illustration from an artist who by all accounts seems divorced from the writing process constitute evidence for such a theme? In the artbook commentary for Gaston, Doi mentions that the spear references the battle with Lucifer; no mention of archons at all.  

Finally, the lion-headed snake. I feel I have to quote you here, Bunkerbead: “Sure, the over-designed plagues nonsense looks stupid, but that’s another matter. If I was going to draw the demiurge, I probably wouldn’t leave the head as a lion either.” Okay, so, this classical appearance for the Demiurge, one you have submitted to me or Kaneko’s Crib Notes multiple times as an explanation for the YHVH 2 design and why it isn’t nonsensical, is something you admit doesn’t actually apply to the design and you yourself would immediately reject? I...rest my case.

I’m sorry Bunkerman/Beadman, your arguments here are just too inconsistent, lack real evidence, and are more easily explained in other ways. It’s very tempting to jump to immediate conclusions that support a narrative of your own creation, even if it’s far grander than what the creators intended, but that road more often than not quickly strains the limits of credulity and, as I think has been displayed here, an unwillingness to accept the direct evidence that refutes what you would rather believe.

[neuronicimpulses]

Feel Less Bad Than Before

There have been so many times in my life where, during a quiet moment alone with my thoughts, I just seem to be waiting for a drop. Not like a bass drop, but some thought that cuts through my gut and lets loose a flood of anxiety and other fun stuff that turns my insides into knots (maybe like having diarrhea at a music festival. Not a personal experience; I’ve never been to a music festival actually). Lately though, I notice that hasn’t been happening. I still operate with a base level of anxiety that I sometimes find unbearable and want to drown out with distraction or some mildly self-destructive behavior, but it’s definitely easier to live with. I feel a little lighter. I laugh louder and smile bigger. I can work on personal projects without feeling like I’m toiling in a salt mine where my own ego whips me and berates me. Perhaps everything seems brighter simply because I’ve gotten enough distance from probably the worst experience of my life. After all, it’s not like my life style has changed drastically. I’m sure time has helped some wounds heal, but I’ve never exactly been the happiest person. So what makes now the best time for me, mentally?

I think it’s cause I’ve stopped feeling bad about feeling bad.

There we go, no essay necessary. It’s simple yet profound. It hasn’t solved all my problems, but it’s solved enough!

[I will go into some detail, as others’ meditations on mindfulness have been helpful to me in taking charge of my own thoughts. Maybe someone will read this and get something from it.]

I’ve been obsessed with self-improvement for as long as I can remember. Not necessarily the kind where it’s like “yeah! I’m stoked about personal growth!” but the kind where it’s like “something is wrong and I need to fix it.” Though it’s not much to say I’ve grown a lot since uhh being born, I am proud of the progress I’ve made. I try to check in with myself on all the things I couldn’t or wouldn’t do, and everything I am capable of now. Unsurprisingly though, I am never satisfied. Growth is great, but even if positive things can come from a toxic mentality, those diseased roots should be dealt with. To that end, I made a conscious decision this year to go easy on myself! It seems like an abstract and kinda backwards resolution, but for me it would be taking a step in an entirely new direction (fits the aesthetic I think).

To get into what that entails, let me go back to what I started with: stop feeling bad about feeling bad. There have been times where I felt awash with anxiety, depression, or whatever, and I’ve either had to mental coach myself out of it: “It’s ok! You’re fine! It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” or just kind of succumb to and let it pour out of me. Those are extreme moments, and are probably the result of not properly dealing with those everyday shitty feelings (about something you did, or your general life situation, or even just some inexplicable/really complex inner dissonance). You who are reading this are probably aware of various solutions: cultivating positive thinking, reducing the weight of negative thinking, organizing your life towards solving problems rather than letting them overwhelm you, making time for things you enjoy, etc. All of these have merit of course, and regardless of your mental health situation should probably be practiced by everyone. I think those who suffer from chronic bad feel might have to take extra steps to reframe things.

At the recommendation of Like A Ton Of People On The Internet I’ve been reading My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata (as of writing this I have not read the whole thing. Also, in case I post this somewhere other than Tumblr: the comic is about the author’s struggle with depression and isolation). There is a page in the first chapter where she talks about self-harm: specifically referencing another’s description of how it makes more tangible the vague confusion of mental pain. I have never turned to something like cutting, but I would on occasion employ sort of a metaphysical scab picking where I would hone in on a strong negative feeling and dig at it until I get the release of letting it express to a satisfying magnitude. These moments aren’t exactly fun, but they are cathartic for someone who has long felt unallowed to freely express their feelings. Clearly this is a desperate solution and should not be turned to so long as alternatives exist. A simple alternative, along with some of the examples from the previous paragraph, is feel what you need to feel when you need to feel it.  

It’s not something that requires a whole lot of thought, at least it shouldn’t, right? You aren’t actively going around suppressing your reactions to your environment, but, yeah you probably are. But like, if someone went around experiencing and reacting to life with full, unfettered honesty, they’d be kind of a mess probably. I don’t think you are constantly weeping because you had to wait in line a little too long or because the power structures that define your world seem to choke the hope out of a prospective future. What I mean then, of course, is process those feelings. Identify where the feelings come from, see if you can do something about it, and, if you can, do it. And whether or not you can do something about the source of a feeling, you gotta just let it ride. Part of processing your emotions is also going through the process of allowing them their arc. If you feel shitty about something you did or something that happened to you, you might just have to sit in that for a bit. The most important thing in those scenarios though is, instead of driving yourself to an existential crisis because you can’t deal with your emotions, be a friend to yourself!

There are so many times where I would exacerbate a negative emotion by essentially kicking myself when I’m down: “You feel bad? You think you suck? It’s cause you do! That’s right you piece of shit! Haha, fuck you!” Or even the much more subtle: “You still feel bad about this? You should be over it by now.” Even though laying it out like that it looks obviously self-destructive, it seems like something that’s necessary, and it’s probably an echo of a voice that belonged to someone else in your life. Sure it’s necessary to check yourself lest you do something to sabotage yourself, but that can easily get out of hand. That’s where Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad factors in. Instead, try to be patient and understanding: “Yeah I get it. It makes sense you feel that way. Take your time working through this. I’ll be here for you!” Once you’ve gotten through it, and you are more level, then you can say “alright, so what can we do about this?” It can feel strange if you’re used to doing it the other way, but I can say that it has been more effective in every scenario, and it doesn’t leave so much nasty, self-loathing residue.

That’s sort of where I’m at with that so far, and the difference is profound really. Simply taking off the added weight of feeling guilty about or feeling the need to pile on every other negative feeling onto one negative feeling is freeing. I still have problems to figure out or otherwise feelings I need to process/wounds that need to heal, but I am giving myself the space to work that out, and being as gracious as I can with it. I also, as I said before, habitually turn to distractions or other things in order to make life more bearable, but if I can’t even do that (maybe just every now and again) then am I really livin? I suppose it’s just one step towards the grander goal of self-acceptance. You have to trust yourself to feel accomplished when you ought to, and understanding when something is wrong. For me it has been very easy to feel like, if I’m not struggling, then I must not be doing enough. Perhaps part of expounding upon negative feelings is somehow meeting some perceived expectation of how much one should work for the opportunities they’ve been given. You wreck yourself out of worry about regretting how much you could have done, but you end up just regretting the life that you didn’t let yourself live. In any case, it takes a lot of work just to dig out of this pitfall of thinking, but it starts with committing incremental things like this to habit. You notice too, that the more patience and love you invest in yourself, the easier it is to put that back out into the world. 

It turns out doing a 180 on self-loathing is not the easiest thing, but it can’t be the hardest thing if I’m here after just half a year (and like the rest of my life).

[seishun-da-ne-blog]

Anime Aesthetics: Attracted to Abstraction

One of the questions I always seem to encounter when sharing my particular hobby with non-anime fans is "why?"

They're not really asking about my preferred story-telling conventions or my interest in long form serialized narrative. They're not asking after my interest in this very specific subset of pop culture and the way people respond to it. Instead, they usually want to know why I buy into the anime "look". Why do I like these strangely proportioned figures and exaggerated lines instead of real human performers? Why do I like something that is stylized and doesn't reflect what would, in reality, be considered beautiful?

Now let me first say that I actually DON'T buy into the stereotypical modern anime look. 

Yeah this look

Or this look

Or even this look

Aren’t really my thing. And one day I’ll have to bite the bullet that with a few rare exceptions, my favorite era has come and gone and likely will not be popular for a while yet. Hell this one is on it’s way out, probably to be supplanted by this aesthetic.

But, anime is a medium like all others where art styles can come and go as befits the audience. It’s not what attracts me to anime as a viewing medium in general. Instead, I think it's best to begin with the idea of stylization. In Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" 

(great book, highly recommended)

In it, he spends the entirety of chapter two discussing the ideas of stylization and the gestalt principle especially as it pertains to mental completion of a image. Long story cut criminally short, the Gestalt Principles say that, as human beings we're primed to mentally see patterns and groups as well as conceptually fill into the blanks in what we see, to recognize an image.

One of the most recognizable to us is the human face. We can see and assign faces to just about anything that even vaguely resembles two eyes and a mouth. We seek the human in the inhuman and as such these qualities endear us to the image and make it more relatable. It would be anything from the cute little faces in electrical sockets to, yes, an anime character on screen.

(I suppose you could say we’ve now come full circle lol)

In short, my mental processes, especially since I'm particularly used to watching anime, automatically registers their faces as human and relatable.

But Seishun! Then doesn't that apply even more so to human faces? How can you relate more to a cartoon than a living breathing person.

Well you see hypothetical reader, this is where we get to the idea of abstraction. Stephen Park from the University of Chicago explains it better than I can.

(It's in his first paragraph, any further and you'll get into fine art, which, while wonderful, we can probably agree anime generally is not.)

The idea is that when you abstract something, you take the important parts of that thing and start stripping away context and meaning, stripping away the stuff that isn't strictly necessary to convey the idea - in this case, a face. I like to think of it and freeing the essentials and clearing the clutter. The way I understand it, while, yes a human face is endlessly complex and expressive, and the best of actors could eek out a thousand different faces should they need to, these things tend to obfuscate the pure idea. Abstraction, then, serves to clear up all the business, so that the face behind it can be better understood.

Anime characters, as are most cartoon characters, are abstractions of the human form. It is through this abstraction and stylizations that their ideas become much clearer, that their expressions are more potent and dramatic. That's not even to include the fact their worlds often work with them, shifting to accompany their different moods and expressions. When I say that anime characters are more relatable than human performers I am talking about these ideas. Yes, in the end the human face is far more nuanced than a cartoon face, but it is the cartoon face that can best communicate what they mean clearly and with less interference. It allows the idea of the expression to be communicated more clearly and become more sympathetic on an emotional level.

If you've ever been in a waifu or husbando discussion (I've been in both multiple times lol) a majority of the so called evidence being bandied back and forth have to do with expressions, the pictures that get posted are usually screen caps or art of certain moments of expression that are especially well drawn or have significant emotional weight. Even characters whose gimmicks are that they are expressionless have that blank face exaggerated to usually comedic effect. I can't help but think that it's this clarity of expression that is the root of this love for animation in general and animated characters specifically.

Why anime characters? Simply put, anime designs are pleasing to my eye. They copy, simplify and  exaggerate features that a designer would normally find pleasing, such as large eyes, tapered chins and so forth. 

It certainly doesn't hurt that Japanese animation culture doesn't mind delving into situations that are intensely emotional and expressive. There's no "too much" or "trying too hard". And because it IS abstract, I can be attracted to those human-like characteristics without interference, and because it is stylized I'm not prompted to actually compare it to realistic human faces. For me. there's a very large gap between what I find attractive in a human being, and what I find attractive in an anime character, they don't register in the same category at all.

Moreover, human actors' faces are, in their own way, also unrealistic and dissonant with me as a person. In their own way, actors and actresses are just as stylized as anything you could find in an anime. They're gorgeous and perfect even when they're broken and down trodden, when their hair is tangled, when they're painted with scars. Unlike cartoon characters, none of these people benefit from the simplification of abstraction. And they shouldn't; that's not the point. However, I personally have no experience with people who look like them nor do I buy into a lot of the stories that appear on the big screen. There are exceptions, shows whose actors suit me and stories that I feel deal with emotions too subtle for animation. On the whole however, because of their abstract nature, it's way easier to me to relate to anime characters.

In the end it's an aesthetic preference in which I look for certain things that I find hard pressed to see in human performers. It looks great to me, and I like it.

Besides look how cute they are!

[libretux]

Learning about design.

Design is always something I’ve been able to appreciate and drool over, Its’ been a long term goal of mine to improve it in my work.

Nothing brings me greater pleasure than designing something that actually looks good! Now heres the issue, that hardly ever happens... (Has it ever happened? Dunno!) My designs almost never get the information needed over to the user in an intuitive way, this is something I want to change and its something I have vowed to practice more this year.

I want to know which font I should use for that header or paragraph, I want to learn how to create color pallets that blend together in harmony, I want data metabolizing on my web apps to look beautiful.

You cant expect to get good at something by not practicing it, so whenever an idea for an app or website comes into my head, Ive made myself think up a design that very moment and sketch it out on paper.

I also picked up a book to help improve my approach when it comes to design. “Design for hackers” is giving me a new set of eyes, Im 250 pages in and Im appreciating typography, hierarchy of information, proportions, color schemes and more. Already, Im starting to approach my designs in a different way and I can feel them improving as a result.

For once, design doesnt feel like some sort of black magic a privileged few have  just by pure luck. It feels like a language I can aspire to learn and eventually speak.

All this is making me think harder about the purpose of my sites and what designs would best fit the end user. This is an exciting change to go through.

Last year, in November a friend of mine who volunteers for a food bank asked me if I had the time to make them a website. My instinct to these sorts of requests (people have asked this question before for paid sites) is to turn them down because Im scared that I wont make a good enough end product.

I accepted and said that It’d be a while before I start due to a bereavement in the family, I needed time to get myself into a better place mentally before taking on more work. December comes and goes and I gladly embrace 2017 as it comes around.

Over the first 2 weeks I spent most my time sketching up designs for this website. I sketched one design.... Damn, it looks a lot like my portfolio, I told myself I wouldnt use it.

I sketched another, it worked (sort of) but felt too abstract considering the end users may be people who are technically illiterate and may feel intimidated by such a modern design.

I wanted something that had identity, something that expressed charity but something that the user wouldnt feel scared to navigate him/her-self round. I hit a wall at this point and decided to go with my first design and make changes on the fly to see what would work.

It didnt.

So, I started looking at some inspiration for charity websites and found a design I liked. While looking at it, I broke down what I liked about the site. The subtle colors, the typography, the padding and proportions of the site etc.

I thought carefully about these factors and toyed with a design idea. Sketching it out on paper, I really liked the look of it as it struck just the right balance for the kind of design I was looking for.

We have a design sketched out and ready to go... Just need to program it!

I spent an entire programming design and refining the hell out of it, from start to finish. By the end of the week I had a design that was almost completely perfected and ready for a CMS. I was gob smacked that it only took me a week to get to this stage, this is something that took me 2 or 3 weeks with my portfolio!

I open up my terminal spinning up a Wordpress Docker container (yay docker!) and begin work on converting my static design to a fully functional WordPress theme.

About a week and a half passes and Im done completely. I was done by the time a week had passed but I wanted a break seeing as I progressed way faster than I thought I would! So with a few final tweaks in place, that was it. I finally had a fully functional good looking WordPress theme.

The knowledge I had gained from that book I read guided me through the whole design from start to finish and gave me a really keen eye for detail throughout.

This is something Im really pleased I could achieve, this is something that I thought would always be completely out my reach. I’ve always been awful at design and thought Id never be able to rectify that. Turns out I was completely wrong! Im definitely no Matias Duarte and Im definitely not a good designer yet, but I feel like I’ve laid firm foundations for the first steps leading up to that goal.

Im looking at designs I feel are really attractive to me and I now recognize why a particular design catches my eye, be it a particular blend of color or maybe the way the proportions are laid out and even small things like color hierarchy and typography.

These visual queues are helping me learn what to use and when to use it and Im looking forward to designing more interfaces to put this knowledge in action and learn more... Its going to be a fun ride!

[thecoroutfitters]

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[ameliawiseaub]

Continuing the ‘real stories’ section I found two short stories of victims of female genital mutilation. I separated them into two paragraph columns, as this was the most effective way to read them. As I was filling them in I left them at the bottom of the page with a large amount of negative space above it, although accidental I really like the positioning of these body texts. I repeated what I had done on the first spread with the black background and white text, I thought this would depict the darkness and horror of the stories. I used the same paragraph style as the other black/white page as when on black the leading needs to be increased to make the reading experience easier. I placed the illustration on a white background facing the other page, I like the contrast of the facing pages being black and white but I’m not sure if I like it. I worry that having two illustrations of the same style in such a small book won’t look very good and make the pages feel too ‘same-same’

Keeping the body text layout the same, I added another quote directly from one the stories to highlight the gruesome and controversial nature of this practice. I used the same font and colour I had been using on the other spreads for quotes so the book had a sense of continuity. I think this really stands out against the black background, and sits comfortably on the page with some negative space still remaining. I placed one of my combined imagery I created for this spread, using the abstract pattern that depicts and reflects the cutting and slicing involved in the genital mutilation and the illustration of the victim. I think that this now looks too busy with the bold quote, the pink is supposed to be a subtle complimentary colour and I think this page has too much pink. 

To reduce the amount of pink I removed the image on the right page and swapped it out with an inverted version of the illustration. I think that the all-black page is reflective and emphasis the dark and gruesome nature of this controversial ritual, reflective of the stories. However I worry that it has become too dark, and thus more difficult to read. I like how the text page is looking but I’m not sure on the illustration. 

I then added completely different imagery to see if it’s the illustration thats not working in this spread. I had bought children's underwear for one of the imagery (not yet completed) and had the rest of the pack left. So I cut up the underwear in the crotch area, where they would usually mutilate the girls to depict and visually represent the process of genital mutilation. The underwear are a similar colour to the pink I’ve used throughout so work quite nicely at complimenting the rest of the spread and book. I do however think that the image quality isn’t great, the contrast is too hight and it isn’t obvious that the underwear have been cut. I think I will retake these photographs to see if this imagery is the better choice. I could use the other underwear and do the same thing and create a multiple imagery spread? 

[posmatraclegenda]

Наслов: Inclusive Illustrations, By Design, Линк: http://ift.tt/2pgc4Tg , Садржај:

I like to think that designers solve problems, while artists ask questions. And when the two go hand-in-hand, real magic happens. Why? Because the right question gets answered with the right solution — art asks, and design responds.

Here at Automattic we were extremely fortunate to recently get to partner with independent artist and designer Alice Lee, who seamlessly integrates abstract ideas with concrete solutions. The following is an interview with Alice that is followed by another interview with Joan Rho, the designer who led the project.

JM: How did you become an illustrator?

AL: My path is a little nontraditional. I was always an artistically curious kid growing up, but was never of the “stand-out art star” variety. Rather, I went to business school, and after graduating, I worked at Dropbox as an early product designer.

Some of my first few projects there involved designing for externally facing projects (new user education, onboarding flows, home & landing pages), and I found that adding illustrations really elevated my work — understandably, no one wants to read paragraphs of text describing file sharing. At the time, there weren’t any dedicated full-time illustrators on the team, so I decided to just do it myself, learning as much as possible on the side and receiving guidance from teammates. Eventually I transitioned over into brand and communications design at Dropbox, working full-time as a product illustrator. I left to freelance almost three years ago and have been illustrating since!

JM: I’ve found that many people confuse an illustrator as someone who is “good at drawing.” I’ve found that description to be terribly narrow-minded. Anything to add?

AL: That’s a really interesting question because it describes two key qualities to being an illustrator. The first is the technical ability to draw — one doesn’t necessarily need to be the “second coming of art,” but it is important to possess a foundation in basic draftsmanship. The second is the conceptual ability to think like a designer — as an illustrator, you’re interpreting challenging design prompts and figuring out how to present visual ideas that often represent complex topics.

Having one piece but not the other is extremely limiting; a great illustrator balances and sharpens both. If you have more of the technical art / draftsmanship piece, this limits the type of high-level projects that you can take on and requires a heavy hand by an art director to guide you through. If you’re more of a conceptual thinker but lack drawing fundamentals, it limits the way that you can express your ideas — e.g. perhaps you can only work in a few basic styles. It’s never so black-and-white, of course, but putting the two together in illustration yields high-quality, conceptually brilliant work.

JM: Having worked in the technology world for many years, what recurring patterns have you seen in the kinds of commissions you’ve been awarded?

AL: I’m excited by the fact that illustration has become a huge part of the tech branding landscape; so many companies are incorporating illustration as keystones of their brand. Companies are now developing their own unique illustration styles that build into their brand voice, exploring different mediums, differentiating themselves, etc.

This is exciting to me because I love to work in a variety of styles and mediums; it’s a great feeling to extend yourself as an artist. Many of my recent projects have involved building illustration branding systems in addition to creating the illustrations themselves, and I love bring analog media and textures into a traditionally vector world. We experimented with this a bit on this WordPress.com illustration branding project, of adding a subtle, candid brush stroke to accent vectorized, precise shapes. With little touches here and there, under an editing eye, this interplay between mixed media does a lot to elevate what an illustrative voice is saying.

JM: Tell me about your commission from Automattic.

AL: This project had two parts: 1) the first, building out an illustration branding system: the voice and style guidelines for how to create illustrations that extended the brand; 2) the second, producing 50+ illustrations that expressed this style to be used for the product and marketing collateral.

We went through lengthy explorations of the illustration style: what brand did we want to express, and how could it be expressed visually? A key tension was in balancing the friendly, fun, accessible direction of the brand with the business need of still being professional and refined. In many ways, our final output reflects this: it’s a combination of sturdy, grounded shapes that fill out most of the composition, guided by the expressiveness and imperfection of linework that adds in quirky detail. The solidness of these geometric shapes is still tied in to the prior style of illustration used in the product, but the linework adds in personality, playfulness, and a hand-drawn quality.

JM: What was the same with respect to your past work for tech companies, and what was different?

AL: One thing I’ve noticed is that this balance of “warm, relatable, friendly, fun” and “polished, serious” is a common tension in past work for tech companies. I think this is due to a few factors: first, it’s a natural tension to exist when you’re trying to express complicated, often technical concepts via visually appealing illustrations. Second, though I work with each company’s unique brand voice, you can still see my personal voice coming through across all of my work: energetic, bright, and purposeful.

Something different that I loved was how the team uses the WordPress product to document and comment on the design process, because everyone is remote! We had a central illustration blog where I would post up each round of exploration, pose questions to the team, and receive feedback. At the end of each major deliverable, it was nice to look back on the progression and evolution of the style and work produced. It was a very structured way to document the process, which is lacking when your working files exist solely in emails or asynchronous chat tools.

JM: How did it feel to be pushed harder on the inclusion question?

AL: It was something that I deeply appreciated. We all carry our own internal assumptions and biases; and just like in design, assumptions should be challenged and improved with different perspectives, user research, and critical thinking.

For instance, John, you had just gotten back from doing user research in the field, talking to small mom and pop shops and individual entrepreneurs in the suburbs. In some early illustrations, I had drawn a lot of younger characters sipping coffee on their computers to illustrate people working on WordPress.com, and you challenged the “perfect latte / laptop world” that is a common backdrop in tech illustrations.

This made me realize that there was a whole range of characteristics I was missing from my internal definition of inclusiveness in illustration, due to my own biases: age, occupation, location, lifestyle, socioeconomic background, etc. I worked to place characters outside of the “perfect latte / laptop world,” drawing different backdrops in the larger scenes, expressing different jobs and backgrounds through props and attire, and including a section on how to depict age in the style guide.

JM: What is difficult about taking this direction? And what is easier?

AL: It is always challenging but necessary to address your own biases and assumptions in order to produce better work. In the above example, for instance, user research about who actually uses the product helped inform what the brand illustrations looked like — which in turn results in visuals that are more in line with the business objective of catering to the actual users.

It can be difficult because it’s also personal: the biases in a person’s artwork can also reflect their personal biases. Sometimes it can be hard to be challenged on that, but it’s necessary to acknowledge and no one is ever finished with this journey. I also think it is easier to start with inclusion and representation as core values than it is to tack it on after you’ve finished the branding process.

JM: What are your hopes for how people use this language you’ve produced for us?

AL: Artistically, I hope that this language can be extended and applied across the platform by many collaborators: designers, illustrators, animators, etc. I always love to see how a style evolves, and I also think it is really cool to have distinct mini-styles within a larger brand family — so that would be neat to see.

Socially, I hope that we can use these conversations around inclusivity to spark a larger dialogue in the illustration community about what it means to be inclusive in the work we produce. For instance, I personally rarely see people of color depicted in tech product illustrations (or, on a personal note, even Asian characters). When John pointed out the “perfect beautiful latte / laptop world” bias that’s common in tech illustration, I sat back and thought to myself, “you’re so right!” It made me realize some of my own assumptions about what should be depicted in illustration, and I hope that we can continually challenge each other within the illustration community.

Just like photographers, art directors, and designers, we as illustrators have the power to be thoughtful and inclusive in our work, to create artwork that shows people that anyone can use these products, not just a certain perceived stereotype of who “should” be.

I’ve found over the years that behind every innovative project launched by a company partnering with an outside artist, there’s a special somebody within the company who cared enough to make the case for doing things differently. That person, in the case of this project, is Joan Rho — one of our new Marketing Designers here at Automattic.

JM: How did you come by the work of Alice Lee?

JR: I’d seen Alice’s illustration work before and admired both the quality of her work and range of styles she was able to execute. After a brief initial chat with her about her work, her process, and learning that she was already familiar with our platform having been a longtime blogger on WordPress.com, I could tell she’d be a great collaborator who could help us elevate and unify our brand’s visual language.

JM: What is “design”?

JR: It’s communication, it’s innovation, it’s aesthetics, it’s optimization, and it’s strategic. Design shapes the way a message or experience is delivered. Good design is informed by human behavior—it makes things easier to use, more intuitive, and more enjoyable to experience.

JM: Can you describe the development of this project — from its conception to completion?

JR: Our company, Automattic, was founded on open-source principles: community, collaboration, and hard work. We’re fully distributed with our ~550 employees spanning the globe representing over 50 countries and over 76 different languages. WordPress.com, our major product in our family of offerings, is powered by WordPress, the open-source software project (which was co-founded by our CEO). WordPress.com has been around since 2005 and is primarily known as a powerful blogging platform. However, these days, you can use WordPress.com to do much more—such as starting a website for your business, creating a portfolio, or even just getting a domain name. So, as part of updating our message to communicate this better, we wanted our visual language to also reflect what we stand for and what we offer.

This illustration project was a collaborative effort that looped in many different members of our Automattic team spanning various timezones, cultures, and backgrounds. Some of our collaborators weren’t even designers, but one thing they all had in common was that they intimately knew WordPress.com and Automattic, which helped me greatly as a relative newcomer to the company. I had the benefit of working closely with Kjell Reigstad, a more veteran designer on the team, who was my “brand partner” in this project from the start. Kjell’s knowledge of our brand’s history helped us develop an illustration language that combined a geometric style in line with how we historically represented the WordPress.com brand with a newer, organic style that felt more distinctive and embodied our brand values and personality.

JM: What are a few turning points in its evolution where you saw “inclusion” coming into the picture?

JR: During one of our creative reviews, we were exploring the representation of human characters (which we hadn’t ever used before across our site pages or UI) and it was actually a comment by you, John, that initiated the discussion of introducing more diversity in skin tones, body types, hair color, age, etc. into these characters. Many Automatticians joined the conversation thanks to a prompt by Mel Choyce, sharing personal stories and pictures of themselves and their friends representing a wide variety of people, backgrounds, and personal styles. This provided inspiration for the diverse cast of characters you can now see across our brand illustrations. As a minority female who grew up seeing mostly Caucasians represented in media and design, it’s been very rewarding to help shape a more inclusive brand identity.

JM: When you consider our company, as a fellow newbie as we joined around the same time last year, what lessons do you take away from leading this project with Alice?

JR: Your best work will always be the result of collaboration. Great collaboration happens only with equal trust, respect, and engagement from everyone involved. Leadership isn’t about bossing people around; it’s about fostering an environment that encourages great collaboration.

JM: Any shoutouts for other designers who participated in this work?

JR: Shoutout to Alice Lee, Kjell Reigstad, Ballio Chan, John Maeda, Ashleigh Axios, Dave Whitley, Davide Casali, Mel Choyce, and all of the Automatticians who participated in the brand discussions and creative reviews throughout the process.

You can find these new illustrations by Alice Lee on any of our main pages, such as /create-website, /create-blog, /business, /personal, /easy, /premium, and more!

And you can read the complete story behind these illustrations at Alice Lee’s site right here from the same titled post, Inclusiveness in Illustration.

Filed under: Design, Diversity & Inclusion, WordPress.com