#i have so much work .... two coding projects and another essay and an art project and two midterms to study for | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

notapersob · 1 year ago

Text

I wrote an essay on this topic, which is what the comic is based off of. If you care to read it it's beneath the cut , as well as my works Cited, and alt text.

This was a college English assignment, first the essay then the multimodal project. I wanted to share it with the internet people on my phone because this is something that is important to me. (i added it up and i spent roughly 40+ hours on this comic in two weeks, guys, the carpal tunnel is coming for me...)

i would also like to give a huge thanks to some of my best friends for helping me, @ellalily my wonderful talented friend who i love so much and adore their work. (i love her art so much). I know you'll see this, love you king <22223333.

and my partner, @totallynotagremlin . amazing artist and the person i admire every day. thankyou for helping me with this and listening to me rant about this project. i love you so much *kisses you on the forehead.

If anyone reads this, please go check out their art.

THE ESSAY

If you're not paying attention you could mistake AI art for art made by real artists. Many people use AI without much knowledge about it, thinking it's something harmless and fun. However, AI art has a real impact on the art community. AI art is largely harmful to the art community because it negatively impacts artists by stealing and plagiarizing their work.

Knowing how AI generators create art provides important context in understanding the negative impacts of AI-generated art and why it is bad. In an article by The Guardian, Clark L. explains, “The AI has been trained on billions of images, some of which are copyrighted works by living artists, it can generally create a pretty faithful approximation”. On its own, this doesn't sound that bad, and many fail to see the issue with this. However, the corporations training these AI art generators use artists' work without their knowledge or consent. Stable diffusion, an online AI art generator, has provided artists the option to opt out of future iterations of the technology training. However, the damage has already been done. AI is ‘trained’ by being fed images. It analyzes them. It works by being given large amounts of data and input codes. In an article by The Guardian, written by Clark L, there is a quote from Karla Ortiz, an illustrator, and board member of CAA, concerning this issue. She says, “It’s like someone who already robbed you saying, ‘Do you want to opt out of me robbing you?”.

Another article by Yale Daily News has several categories, the first being, “How does AI generate art”. As the heading explains, the first section of the article explains how AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E2 and Midjourney create images by “analyzing data sets containing thousands to millions of images” (Yup K.). In the same article, they cite an artist, Ron Cheng, a Yale Visual Arts Collective board member who is against AI because AI fails to obtain consent from artists before stealing their art. Cheng says “There are enough artists out there where there shouldn't really be a need to make AI to do that.” (Yup K.). The article says Cheng views AI as a tool but not at the cost of the people who spent their lives developing artistic skills.

Many artists feel that they should be compensated or that this should fall under copyright laws but because proving this machine-made art has taken elements of their style is so difficult, the AI companies get off with no consequences. For an artist to take action against an AI image generator, they would have to prove that one of their art pieces had been copied into the system which can be difficult. They would have to prove specific elements of their personal art style have been directly copied and prove that their art has been used and imitated without their consent. Many artists feel that this technology will take their jobs and opportunities in the creative field of work. Kim Leutwyler, a six-time Archibald Prize finalist artist, expressed her issues with AI companies stealing her art in an ABC news article. Leutwyler said that they had found almost every portrait they created, included in a database used to train AI without their knowledge or consent. They said it “feels like a violation” (Williams T.).

With AI art relying on, often, stolen artwork, and creating an interpretation of what it sees, it blurs the line between what is copyright infringement and what is not. In a BBC article by Chris Vallance, Professor Lionel Bently, director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at Cambridge University said that in the UK, “it's not an infringement of copyright in general to use the style of somebody else” (Vallance). Another point to keep in mind is that not many artists have the means to fight these legal battles for their art even if they wanted to. This same BBC article speaks about the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), an organization that collects payments on behalf of artists for the use of their images. One quote helps illustrate their point, “I asked DACS’ head of policy Reema Aelhi if artists’ livelihoods are at stake. “Absolutely yes,” she says” (Vallance).

Another concern about AI mentioned in this article is deep fakes, porn, and bias. “Google warned that the data set of scraped images used to train AI systems often includes pornography, reflected social stereotypes, and contained “derogatory, or otherwise harmful associations to marginalize identity groups.” (Vallance). These are all important things to consider when using AI because an AI system can harmfully replicate biases and negative stereotypes because of what it learned. For example, if you input the prompt criminal, it is more likely for the image to be of a person of color. On the other hand, if you input the prompt, CEO, it is strongly probable that an image of an old white man in a suit will show up, not a woman, or a person of color. These stereotypes go much further and much deeper than just these two examples, but the AI recreates what it was taught and can follow patterns that are harmful to minorities.

Another concern many artists have is about their jobs and livelihoods. With how AI art has progressed in the past few years, it is starting to take opportunities from real artists. “It’s been just a month. What about in a year? I probably won’t be able to find my work out there because [the internet] will be flooded with AI art,” Rutkowski told MIT Technology Review (Clarke L.). Many of the articles I researched mentioned the Colorado State Art Fair, where an AI-generated image won first place. The BBC article written by Vallance talks about how a man (Allan) entered an AI-generated image mid-journey and won. Many artists were outraged by this and suddenly aware of how AI could take opportunities like these from them. The artists who entered this competition spent hours and hours on their pieces. As you can imagine they were angry, rightfully so, that an AI-generated piece that took no more than a few seconds won. There is a level of unfairness to this and many artists feel that AI should not be allowed in art competitions like this. It feels like they got cheated out of something they worked hard for. Nobody would let a robot compete in the Olympics or a cooking competition, so why should a machine be allowed to enter an art fair? AI could start taking jobs from artists working on animated projects, or taking commissions.

With AI’s ability to imitate a certain artist's style, some people may feel that they no longer have to pay an artist for work when they could just input a few words into a machine and get something done in seconds. There were artist and writer strikes in Hollywood, in part because of this. These creative people wanted to be paid fairly and have better working conditions, as well as a promise that not all of them would be replaced with AI. When SORA AI came out, I saw many artists online who aspired to have jobs in the animation industry, losing hope and motivation. A soulless and emotionless machine can rip away a lifelong hobby and passion.

Many artists were upset but Allen, the winner of the Colorado State Art Fair, stood by his point and said, “It's over. AI won. Humans lost” (Clark L.). The article quoted a game and concept artist, RJ Palmer's tweet, “This thing wants our job, it's actively anti-artist”. The article speaks of how artists often take inspiration from other artists, “great artists steal”, but Mr. Palmer said, “This (AI) is directly stealing their essence in a way”. In an article by The Guardian, Clarke L. writes about how AI art has raised debates on just how much AI can be credited with creativity. Human art has thoughts, memories, and feelings put behind it and takes a lot of skill, whereas, on the opposite end, AI art can't handle concepts like that. AI does not experience life like real people do. It does not have feelings or emotions and it can only think with the knowledge we give it. Since it cannot have these emotions, the art it creates will never have the emotions that art made by real artists has.

Cansu Canca, a research associate professor at Northeastern University and founder and director of the AI Ethics Lab said, “It is important to be mindful about the implications of automation and what it means for humans who might be ‘replaced’” (Mello-Klein, C.). She went on to say that we shouldn't be fearful but instead ask what we want from machines and how we can best use them to benefit people. The article says “With the push of a button, he was able to create a piece of art that would have taken hours to create by hand” (Mello-Klein, C.). Some artists said, “We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes” (Mello-Klein, C.). In an article by the New Yorker, Chayka, K., started by giving three reasons why artists feel wronged by AI image generators that are trained using their artwork. The “three C’s”, they didn't consent, they were not compensated and their influence was not credited. The article states how it is hard for copyright claims based on style to get picked up because in visual art “courts have sometimes ruled in favor of the copier rather than the copied” (Chayka, K.). This applies to music as well, where some songs can sound similar but nothing will be done about it because they are different enough, or the source material was changed enough not to be seen as a complete copy. The article said, “In some sense. You could say that artists are losing their monopoly on being artists” (Chayka, K.). Some people are even hiring AI to make book covers instead of hiring artists.

While I am personally against the use of AI art as well as many of my artist friends, all people have their own opinions about the technology. The article by the New Yorker, written by Chayka, K, quotes Kelly Mckernan, who said they watch Reddit and Discord chats about AI. This provides opinions on some everyday people who aren't in the art field. on the situation and said, “They have this belief that career artists, people who have dedicated their whole lives to their work, are gatekeeping, keeping them from making the art they want to make. They think we’re elitist and keeping our secrets.” (Chayka, K.). I remember an acquaintance of mine said that he used AI art because he could not afford to commission an artist. Not everyone can afford to commission an artist and pay them fairly for their time. However, this does not mean artists should settle for less than their work is worth. Art takes time and that is time the artist could be doing something else.

Northeastern Global contacted Derek Curry, an associate professor of art and design at Northeastern, who gave his thoughts on the subject and he does not believe AI art will ever replace humans because technology has limits. “The cycle of fear and acceptance has occurred with every new technology since the dawn of the industrial age, and there are always casualties that come with change” (Mello-Klein, C.). The article goes on to say how auto-tune was once controversial but it has become a music industry standard. It's used as a tool, and AI art could be similar. It is true that with new technology, people always fear it before it is accepted. For example, the car. People feared it would take jobs and replace people, and this did happen, but it offered more convenience and opened up more jobs for people than it took. Now cars are used by everyone and it is almost impossible to get around in America without one because it wasn't made for walking, it was built around roads. There are many more examples of people fearing a new technology before accepting it, so this could be the case with AI, but for AI to be used as a tool and aid to artists, greedy corporations have to change the way they think about the technology. They have to see it as, not a replacement, but a tool. Big animation companies want to replace a lot of their human artists, who need their jobs to support themselves and their families, with AI. This prospect is something that is discouraging to artists who want to enter the animation field, which is already competitive.

The Yale Daily News (Yup, K.), cites Brennan Buck, a senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He uses AI as a tool to colorize and upscale images. He does not think AI is a real threat to artists. This is a very different take from most artists I’ve heard about and talked to. I can see how this technology can be used as a tool and I think that is one of the only right ways to use AI art. It should be used as a tool, not a replacement. Another way AI art can be used as a tool is to learn how to draw. New artists can study how art is made by looking at colors and anatomy for inspiration, though it should be taken with a grain of salt because AI tends to leave out details, and things merge and some details make no sense. These are all things real artists would notice and not do in their pieces. Young artists could also study the process of real artists they admire. Getting good at art takes years and practice. Seeing all kinds of different art can help with the learning process. On the topic of some people feeling like AI is not a real threat to artists, some people feel that eventually the technology will fade in popularity and will become more of a tool. Only time can tell if AI art will take the jobs of artist.

With everything being said, AI art is actively harming artists and the art community. Even if some artists like Brennan Buck feel that AI isn't a real threat to artists, presently, it is taking opportunities and jobs from artists and it will only get worse as the technology progresses. We need to prioritize real artists instead of a machine, a machine that will never be able to replicate the authenticity of living people's art that reflects their experiences and lives. Some artists use art to express and spread awareness of real-life issues. I have neurodivergent, transgender and queer friends who create art to show what it feels like to experience the world when it seems everyone is against you. I make art to reflect the beautiful things I see and read. I too am queer and fall under the trans umbrella term and I'm autistic, and I use art as a way to express myself through these things that make up my identity.

AI could never put the emotion that real people put into the things they create. Art is a labor of love and pain. Art like Félix González-Torres free candy contemporary art piece cannot ever be replicated by AI and have the same meaning. He “created nineteen candy pieces that were featured in many museums around the world. Many of his works target HIV”(Public Delivery, n.d.). The opinions and views on this, relatively, new technology differ from person to person. Some artists view generative AI art as a tool to utilize in their art while others see it as a threat and something that is taking away from artists. AI art can be used for bad, as it has and will be used to make deep fakes unless limitations are put on it. The AI systems are trained on thousands of images of real people and of art made by artists, all without their consent and most of the time, without their knowledge. On the other hand, some artists use it to aid their process and don't see the issue. Based on what I have learned, I do not think AI art is good, nor should it have a place in the creative job fields. Companies should not copy and steal work from artists. Artists work their whole lives to learn to create, and that should not be replaced by a machine.

ALT TEXT (I didn't know where to put the alt text, sorry, also, this is the first time I've ever done alt text so I'm sorry if its not the greatest, i tried. if you have feedback though, that would be greatly appreciated)

Page 1

“AI art is NOT real art” under a picture of the letters AI, crossed out in red.

“AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E2 and Midjourney create images by, “analyzing data sets containing thousands to millions of images” (Yup K.)”

Beneath the test is a set of polaroid photos strung up, with a black crow sitting on the wire. There is a computer with a few tabs open and two ladybugs near it.

“AI art generators are trained off of artwork used without the artist's consent.”

To the side of the text is a small person holding up something they drew. There are lines leading from their drawing to an ai recreated version of it.

Page 2

There is a picture of Kim Leutwyler

“Feels like a violation”

“I found almost every portrait I've ever created on there as well as artworks by many Archibald finalists and winners”

Kim Leutwyler

(Williams T.)

There is a picture of Tom Christopherson

“I didn't think I would care as much as I did. It was a bit of a rough feeling to know that stuff had been used against my will without even notifying me.”

“It just feels unethical when it's done sneakily behind artists' backs… people are really angry, and fair enough”.

Tom Christopherson

(Williams T.)

There is a drawing of Ellalily drawn by them, with their cat sitting on top of the bubble they're in.

“AI sucks the life out of art… there’s no love, no creativity, no humanity to the finished product. And that's not even scratching the surface of the blatant violations put upon artists whose work has been stolen to fuel this lifeless craft”

EllaLily

(@ellalily on tumbrl)

There is a drawing of Gremlin/Cthulhu 14 with small mushrooms growing off of their bubble

“AI art isn't real art because it just copies from real artists. Art is something that is so very human and it has human emotions in it. A robot can't replicate that emotion and cant give meaning to an art piece”

gremlin/cthulhu14

(@totallynotagremlin on tumbrl)

There is a drawing of myself gesturing towards the text.

“AI art is actively harming the art community by:

Taking jobs

Opportunities

Hope and motivation

From artists.”

Page 3

“Most artists can't do anything against the people feeding their art into these AI systems.”

There are two drawings of myself, sitting down, crisscross, underneath the text with speech bubbles showing that I'm theI'm person talking.

“Many artists don't have the means to fight these legal battles for their art, even if they wanted to.”

“Some dont have the:

Money”

drawing of a dollar and some coins

“Time”

drawing of a clock with the numbers jumbled

“Capability”

drawing of a green frog in a purple witch hat and dress holding up a magic wand with its tongue.

“And even if they did…

Most AI art escapes copyright laws”

Beneath this is an image of Professor Lionel Bently and a small drawing of the university of cambridge.

“Professor Lionel Bently, faculty of law at university of cambridge said (In the UK) “its not an infringement of copyright in general to use the style of someone else””

There is a drawing of the same wizard frog from before. It is laying down.

“so … AI gets away with stealing from artists with no consequences.”

The text is surrounded by a yellow and orange comic emphasis speech bubble

Image of van gogh, starry night, and fake ai recreation.

Image of Zeng Fanzhi art, image of john chamberlain art, “art by artists inspired by Van Gogh

“Artists take inspiration from each other. AI only companies what it sees.”

Page 4

There is a drawing of a green beetle with yellow wings in the top right corner. On the other side of the page, there is an image of Reema Aelhi.

Design and Artist Copyright Society (DACS) is an organization that collects payments on behalf of artists for the use of their images. “I asked DACS’ head of policy Reema Aelhi if artists' livelihoods are at stake, “absolutely yes,” she says”. (Vallance).

There is a brown bat hanging upside down from red swirls on the page.

“Deep fakes and biases

Another problem with generative AI is that often, the data sets used to train it contains, “pornograhy, reflected social stereotypes and contains “derogatory… or harmful associations to marginalized identity groups””. (vallance)”

There is a cartoonish small white and brown cat underneath the text.

“Example, Prompt CEO”, image of a white old man.

“Prompt, criminal”, image of person of color

“These are examples of HARMFUL BIASES”

There is a moth emerging from a green cocoon through three images. The first is an untouched cocoon, the second has a yellow, red, and green moth halfway emerged from the cocoon. The third has the moth fully emerged, resting on the cocoon. There is one last moth flying across the page underneath the text.

“AI art also threatens the jobs and livelihoods of artists.��

There is a drawing of a brown suitcase with stickers on it, and college certificates around it.

“The artist and writer strike in 2023 that lasted 148 days happened in part, due to the fear of being replaced by AI.”

There is a broken yellow, red, and green moth wing at the bottom of the page.

Page 5

“AI also takes opportunities” two green shoes are hanging from a red dot.

“Animated jobs”

Two cartoon birds are on a television screen with a red/pink background.

“commission work”

There are two people, one is a person in a purple shirt who is handing over a drawing to a girl in a blue shirt with ginger hair.

“Book cover art jobs”

There is a fake book with a person on the cover, who has a big orange bird on her arm. There are clouds and three stars in front of her.

“The Colorado State Art Fair was won by an AI image, entered by Jason M. Allen”

Arrow from Jason M. Allens name to quote, “it's over. AI won. Humans lost” - quote from Allen (Clark L.)

“Artists were outraged. You don't let robots compete in sports competitions, why was it allowed in an art competition?”

Tweet from RJ Palmer, @arvalis - august 13, 2022

“This thing wants our jobs. It's actively anti-artist”

“Great artists steal…[but] this (AI) is directly stealing their essence in a way.”

How much can AI be credited with creativity? Human art has emotions /feelings, thoughts/memories, and takes skill and time.

AI art has none of that”

Beneath the text, there is an image of a desert with two clouds, one partially covering the sun. The sky is blue and there are cacti in the background. There is a singular tumbleweed bouncing through the scene.

Page 6

“With a push of a button, he (Allan) was able to create a piece of art that would have taken hours to create by hand… we’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes.” (Mello- Klein C.)

There is a person in a coffin. There is water in the coffin covering most of them. There are stars over their chest. There are leaves surrounding the coffin.

Page 7

“It is important to be mindful about the implications of automation and what it means for humans who might be replaced”

-Cansu Canca, research associate professional at Northeastern University, founder and director of AI ethics lab. (Mello-Kline, C.)”

There is an image of Cansu Canca. There is also an orange owl in flight.

“Most artists taken advantage of by AI feel wronged in 3 main areas

They didn't consent”

There is tea in a white and blue cup. Steam is coming up from the brown tea.

“They weren’t compensated”

There is a bronze coin. Next to it is a stamp with the words “the three C’s (Chayka, K)”

“Their influence wasn't credited”

There is a blue credit card with waves on it and a silver chip. On the credit card, there are the words “credit card numbers :D”

“Courts have sometimes ruled in favor of the copier rather than the copied”

There is a red fox with a blue butterfly on its nose and a turquoise background.

Page 8

“If AI art should be used at all, it should be used as a tool and not a replacement”

There is a hammer with a red handle and two wrenches, one on either side of it, followed by two files and yellow pencil.

“Brennan Buck, senior critic and Yale School of Architecture uses AI also a tool to colorize and upscale images.”

Next to the text is an image of Brennan Buck.

“New artists can look at art made by artists and AI to learn new techniques. However, learning from real artists is more ethical and effective.”

Beneath and between the text is a drawing of a woman with long flowing ginger hair. Her body is obscured by waves like clouds or mist. Six white wings are coming out of her back. She has several hands surrounding a woman with shorter brown hair.

Page 9

“AI is actively harming artists and the art community. It's presently taking jobs and opportunities. Art is a labor of love and pain. Artists cannot and should not be replaced by machines.”

There is a drawing of myself in a birch wood forest. There are bits of sunlight streaming through the gaps in the leaves. I am painting a picture of the scene I see before me. I am in a green dress with a white off-the-shoulder top and there is a brown easel.

Works Cited

Chayka, K. (2023, February 10). Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-ai-art-stealing-from-artists?irclickid=xyOXQL259xyPRBuWV7XlJViKUkH17cVGIzN7Xs0&irgwc=1&source=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_FlexOffers.com%2C%20LLC&utm_source=impact-affiliate&utm_medium=29332&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=Online%20Tracking%20Link&utm_brand=tny. February 28, 2024.

Clarke, L. (2022, November 18). When AI can make art – what does it mean for creativity? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/12/when-ai-can-make-art-what-does-it-mean-for-creativity-dall-e-midjourney. February 28, 2024.

Mello-Klein, C. (2022, October 12). Artificial intelligence is here in our entertainment. What does that mean for the future of the arts? Northeastern Global News. https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/09/09/art-and-ai/. February 28, 2024.

Public Delivery. (n.d.). Why did Félix González-Torres put free candy in a museum? https://publicdelivery.org/felix-gonzalez-torres-untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a-1991/

Vallance, B.B.C. (2022, September 13). “Art is dead Dude” - the rise of the AI artists stirs debate. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62788725. February 28, 2024.

Williams, T. (2023, January 9). Artists angry after discovering artworks used to train AI image generators without their consent. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-10/artists-protesting-artificial-intelligence-image-generators/101786174. February 28, 2024.

Yup, K. (2023, January 25). What AI art means for society, according to Yale experts - Yale Daily News. Yale Daily News. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/01/23/what-ai-art-means-for-society-according-to-yale-experts/. February 28, 2024.

#art #anti ai #anti ai art #artists #artists on tumblr #comic #digital artwork #digital art

7 notes · View notes

nabilla4 · 2 years ago

Text

Initial Essay Ideas!!!

...

1. Last year I explored diaspora aesthetics and I really enjoyed it so I think I could go into it in more depth or at a different angle. Some of the things within this topic that I am interested in are:

diaspora art; assimilation; loss of culture; third culture kids; code-switching; masking (Fanon?); The myth of primitivism (book); hybrid cultures; globalisation; performance culture (Goffman?); art representing communication between cultures e.g. oriental patterns.

There were also artists whom it felt like I only wrote about the surface level of their work because I didn't have enough time so I would love to look at more of Yinka Shonibare and Chila Kumari Burman's work.

2. A similar topic that I think would be interesting is the disneyfication of cultures. Q: What is that? A: “Generally, Disneyfication refers to the process of adapting and transforming places, cultures, and traditions in order to make them more appealing and commercially attractive, often at the expense of their authenticity and original characteristics”

E.g. Aladdin is set in the Middle East but the 1992 film has influence from India, which is even worse in the live-action as they just borrow clothes and designs from surrounding cultures (mainly Indian) for aesthetic purposes.

I think that this also represents a “communication between cultures” like the oriental pattern that I learned about in the myth of primitivism. It is a representation that is altered to fit people's perception of what it looks like rather than what it is ((cultural appropriation, authenticity, representation in media??))

3. In relation to ideas #1 and #2 I could look at beauty standards and how they transformed and traveled. I got this idea because I saw that The Wellcome Collection is going to be opening a new exhibition on “The Cult of Beauty.” I haven't looked into this much yet but think it can relate to the first two points especially because from my experience it has always been taught that “whiteness is desired.” The topic by itself might be a bit boring for me though.

4. Another topic that I am very interested in is what I wrote about in the first year which is to do with hyperreality and post-modern ideas in relation to art and technology. I enjoyed looking at work by Hito Steyerl and Jon Rafman. These are also two artists I feel like I didn't quite get to look at much of their work and to be honest, I'm not sure if I even fully understood what their work means in the first year (or even now). This is why I think I might be able to learn more from investigating art related to technology. Compared to diaspora art I have researched diaspora art in much more detail than this topic. However, for this essay idea, I'm not sure to what extent I can write about this topic, how far I can go with it, and what my point would be. Will I be able to write 5000-7000 words that are interesting…((Always On?))

5. If all of these topic ideas get rejected a new topic I could research is how ethics affect art. I actually thought about this in the first year when I was researching surveillance. One of the artists that I studied, Jill Magid’s work involved basically distracting the police. Which seemed kind of wrong in some ways. They focused their attention on her using the surveillance cameras for her art but what if, as a result, they missed a crime? But that wasn't really Magid's fault… The police shouldn't have been distracted by a potential love interest…There was also the Serbian artist, Marina Abramović with her project Rhythm 0. She laid items out for the public to use on her for 6 hours which included a loaded gun. She said she was prepared to die but that doesn't really justify it….

6. I’m also still interested in surveillance art and work by artists like Ai Weiwei but not so much anymore after writing all of this.

I am not as connected with the last two topics compared to the previous ones, so I may be less engaged. I prefer looking at work to do with diaspora or virtual worlds etc. because I feel like they speak to me more from my experiences.

0 notes

ready-to-obeyme · 5 years ago

Text

[OM!] (American) College!AU Demon Brothers

Scenario: Headcanons on the demon brothers as college students (specifically in the US because I don’t know how college works elsewhere), their possible majors, career goals, extracurriculars, ~GPA~ and whatever else I could think of + how meet you in college

Note: I’m hoping to do a Part 2 with the Undateables but honestly… we’ll see lol. This is based off something ~A~ and I thought of for our specific university but we’ve made it broad enough to share HAHA this turned out VERY long

Lucifer

Majoring in Political Sciences with a minor in Psychology

Pre-Law-- most likely immigration law or child custody (there’s definitely a backstory here)

Initially went to community college for the first two years to save up money to take care of his younger siblings

Rejected an offer to go to an Ivy League because it was too expensive; if his siblings ever found out they’d be furious that he’d give up on that chance, but he knows he can succeed wherever he goes (and besides, family is first)

Transferred into a 4-year university his junior year

Very high GPA-- VERY

In a professional fraternity with Diavolo and Barbatos

He didn’t think he’d join one either but Diavolo was the vice chair when he transferred in and the president the year after so… ~nepotism?~ and also Lucifer is charming as heck so no surprise he’d get in

Also rooms with Diavolo and Barbatos

Goes to the gym regularly just to keep fit; gets goaded by Diavolo and Satan into joining an IM team with his frat brothers and actual brothers-- probably basketball or flag football

Probably meets you at a interclub council meeting and mutters under his breath how useless the board members are and you overhear

“Never have I met more incompetent people.”

“Lmao mood”

“!!!”

Keeps sitting next to you at every interclub meeting then after because at least there’s someone that can keep his mind stimulated (thinks you’re hot if you’re competent btw)

If you somehow meet him on campus, he’s the type of guy to put his hand up and pretend he didn’t see you (just kidding, he always ends up saying hi anyways)

Will Absolutely Lecture You if you are procrastinating on studying especially if your midterm is, like, TOMORROW

Always ends up studying with him because he’s actually focused on studying and glares at you if you get distracted (but hey you get good scores in the end)

Mammon

Majoring in Business Econ/Economics, Minoring in Statistics

(always ends up in the middle of the “is econ a humanities or a STEM major” debate that leaves him left for dead)

Planning to work in Business as Finance -- probably has been treasurer or finance director for a club; can even see him being a banker if it suits his plans better

Goes to a four-year university

Decent GPA (or Lucifer would absolutely destroy him), and does REALLY well in mathematics classes

Would room with Lucifer and his posse if they all go to the same school

Probably in a Business Frat as well because he’s pretty charismatic when it comes down to it but was an RA for some of his years for the free rooming and dining hall privileges

Is a very chill and understanding RA (as in he smokes weed with you when he’s off-duty) but is surprisingly well-versed in dealing with roommate issues

Works part-time (gasp) to buy stuff off of Amazon and go out to places

Spends a lot of time exploring places with his friends, going hiking, rock-climbing, clubbing-- which is expensive, as it turns out, so he needed to be able to afford it somehow

Meets you when you’re eating your lunch outside somewhere and he asks you if you have a dollar he could borrow for a vending machine snack

You exchange numbers with him so he can pay it back (even though you honestly don’t really need it, but why not) and turns out he’s in your GE class

“Heyyy wassup! So glad I have a friend in this class”

“Oh by the way, did you finish the homework? Haha, I forgot it.”

Mammon always repays you for your help in food though so you aren’t complaining

Leviathan

Majoring in Computer Sciences

And honestly that’s too much for me already-- the man is doing computer programming, coding-- WHEW-- and they do NOT rest

Goes to a community college but honestly has no problems cinching internships. The computer is his domain-- online applications are EASY, doing projects NOT as easy, interviews? HARD-- REALLY HARD (someone help him)

Probably intends to work with a big company like Google if only to help supply his income so he can live his life going to AX and buying merch

Most likely moved out of his house mid-college with his online friends (who are luckily compatible with him living-space wise) and visits home once a week

There’s two potential sides you can meet first:

Either you meet him at a convention and you both gush about the same character and anime and somehow find each other online (not college related)

Or his favorite Ruri-chan keychain gets broken off in the computer lab, and you’re the one running after him to give it him

He may or may not owe you his life after that (and if you enjoy anime, well that’s a bonus)

Both of these meetings can happen if he doesn’t recognize you in class because you were in cosplay-- imagine the surprise

The two of you as friends are MASTER PROCRASTINATORS at every assignment the two of you have-- so low-key not a great influence-- but you have fun together watching animes, playing games, talking about life-- anything but actual work

Always ends up scrambling to finish things-- but he keeps doing it because it’s been working for him so far

You help him prepare for interviews because he’s always nervous before each one regardless of how well his application looks

Satan

Majoring in Comparative Literature AND Anthropology (ya boy is doing the whole nine yards)

Planning to get his Master’s and then a PhD in one of his majors (whichever proves to be more engaging for him)-- visibly excited to become a Professor

College was meant for Satan-- like REALLY; the man is in LOVE with learning; most likely to go and be accepted to an Ivy-League after Lucifer but... truly believes you can get a good education anywhere so it depends on his financial standing (and how much scholarship he gets)

Does get a little disgruntled when his classes aren’t available but doesn’t mind learning something new-- if the professor bores him to death, he’ll read the book

Really good at tutoring people; someone suggests that he works as a peer-learning facilitator/writing tutor and he does-- might as well make bank doing something you always do anyways

Joins a writing/journal club as an extracurricular and a club that provides tutoring services to the underserved community-- surprisingly good with kids!

He knows friends in high places, so if he wanted to, could get into any party without batting an eye and his favorite professors love him

Spends a lot of his time going out to the city and exploring places, similarly to Mammon, rock-climbing, hiking, paragliding-- anything

He is VERY well-rounded as you can see; competes with Lucifer to see whose GPA is better though

You probably meet him during office hours, and you can only stare in awe as he asks questions that you had in mind, but better; if you’re visibly confused about something, he’ll take his time to help you too (it’s habit at this point)

Ask him for his contact info and you’ll get it, and maybe repay him in coffee? (You always see him at the cafe on campus.)

Most likely to have a specific spot in a cafe that he is always at that the workers actually save a spot for him or give him his usual order before he even arrives-- may or may not have helped them edit their essays or with their homework as a thank-you so you KNOW they’ll love him forever

The type of person to help you make flashcards and cram if you need it

Asmodeus

Majoring in Dance and Fine Arts (I HC going to NYU specifically)

Considering going for an Master of Fine Arts degree but he might just move to New York and go for being a Broadway Star

College is mainly just training for him and hoping to land gigs in local theater-- and the university theater if there is one-- and building his resume for his big break

Has SO many extracurriculars, all pertaining to his career choice, but also because he enjoys what he does: drama, competitive dance team, acapella, fashion design

Makes an unbelievable amount of friends, incredibly good at networking

The first time you saw him was when he was performing for a local theater and you were in love with his performance, and the next time you saw him in the hallway of a classroom building, you told him how much you enjoyed it

Always accepts compliments about his looks with grace, but there’s something about truly being admired for his acting and singing that has him preening

Invites you to come out to his next performance, and if not his, then to another play-- and it can be a date, but up to you ;)

The man is the KING of Multiple Talents and has big dreams to match

Always finds a way to hang out with you and drag you to every club that he can use his fake-id for (and when he’s actually 21 and above, gets a little offended that he doesn’t get ID’d)

A night in the town with you is always a good night!

Sometimes when he has practical exams coming up, he asks you to watch him perform-- and he likes your compliments but actually takes getting all the moves seriously so you better pay attention!

Most likely to move far away to reach his dreams, but he would take you with him if he could-- his little star

Beelzebub

Majoring in Physiological Sciences

Pre-Nursing or Pre-Sports Medicine

He’s a little undecided, but he’s definitely going to go into the health field because he likes the idea of being able to use his strength to help others

Gets a scholarship from the university because he’s part of the football team, which is actually pretty hard on him because Fall Semester/Quarter he has to keep skipping classes for games

Always brings a snack to eat with him during lecture-- and is not afraid to bring his entire lunch and make it right in the front row, though he tends to stick to the back because they tend to have electrical plugs

You most likely meet him during lecture: he offers you an entire sandwich (not a chip bag, not fruit snacks, an entire LUNCH) because he heard your stomach growl during class

From then on, you collect notes for him when he’s gone from games and even go to games if you aren’t usually the type to just to see how he’s doing; it’s hard trying to find you among the huge bleachers, but he always asks you where you’re sitting anyways

Really appreciate it if you help him study into late at night because it IS hard balancing sports and academics

He most likely doesn’t really have any time for anything else so he usually makes up for it during the rest of the year when training is less to volunteer in the hospital or at the gym as a personal trainer

If you ask him to teach you how to properly lift weights, he’ll definitely help out and the both of you can work out together-- though you feel bad when he has to add four extra weights to each side after you finish your reps

Belphegor

Majoring in Computer Graphics/Animation

Intending to go into making animation or game design-- is one of the brothers who doesn’t really know exactly what he wants to do yet because he’s afraid that doing what he loves as a job will ruin it for him

His family reassures him that they’ll support him whether or not he continues with his path in life, but he’s considering art school and then taking internships in places so he has a better idea on what he wants

Most likely to sell his own original work and become a full-time artist regardless

I think you already know how you meet him-- he’s sleeping in a lecture hall-- either against the wall or on the small piece of wood they call a desk when class ends and he’s still sleeping; and you wake him up

Sleepily thanks you and continues to sleep through every class that you wake him up to; when you ask him why he doesn’t just go home and sleep, he tells you he’s too lazy to walk back and forth from his dorm/apartment to campus (mood)

When you add each other on Snapchat or something, he sends you pics of ‘places to nap’ on campus

You always end up studying together because he’s actually pretty good at understanding lecture stuff despite not being awake for most of it-- apparently he’s used to teaching himself

Will make you art for your birthday and will vehemently refuse payment so he just tells you to take him out for dinner instead

If you talk about how you’re not sure on what you want to do in life too, he’ll probably say ‘mood’ but is most likely to encourage you to do whatever you want to do in life too

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me satan #obey me leviathan #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me shall we date?#ngl i would date beel in this au 100%

234 notes · View notes

oldadastra · 5 years ago

Text

Letter to Lucasfilm

So, I’ve written a letter to Lucasfilm. It could be better, but this is what came out this afternoon. I hope others who are writing will share what they are putting into the mail. I was trying to be concise, but it still ran to several pages. Find it in its entirety below the cut:

***

Lucasfilm, Ltd. Attn: Fan Mail PO Box 29901 San Francisco, CA 94129-0901

December 30, 2019

Lucasfilm/Disney:

I am writing to express my anger, shock, disappointment and deep sadness with the final installment of the Star Wars saga, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

I was ten in 1977 when the original film was released and have loved Star Wars ever since. I was thrilled by the reopening of the saga in The Force Awakens, and delighted by the excellent script, rich visual storytelling, nuanced character development, and thematic direction of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

Disney took on a sacred trust when it acquired Lucasfilm. Star Wars is deeply important to many people, and if you couldn’t do justice to the characters and themes of the saga, I’d argue that you had no business being involved in these stories. There is so much Disney/Lucasfilm got wrong in Rise of Skywalker, I’m struggling to gather my thoughts or express them coherently, but here goes:

Ben Solo. You created the most compelling character in the new trilogy by destroying the happy ending of the original trilogy. I was willing to go along on the ride Abrams and Kasdan began in The Force Awakens, because the fate of Ben Solo felt like it mattered. The questions raised in the new films: the nature of good and evil, the degree to which one’s family legacy defines a person, whether a one can atone for past sins; all of it felt alive and urgent in the person of Ben, a character I loved like one of my own children from the moment we so traumatically met him in The Force Awakens. His story was the beating heart of the new trilogy. His story is the one that mattered. His life was the one to be saved.

Ben solo was never an exposition device, cool villain, or disposable baddie to me. He was Han and Leia’s only child; loved, targeted, broken, lost.

The Rise of Skywalker redeems Ben Solo in the final act of the film, only to destroy him. Was it always your plan to kill the last Skywalker in the final installment of this story, to render the overarching message of all nine films as tragedy? If so, I wish I’d known this was your intent; I would never have engaged with these stories and made an emotional investment in them. If tragedy was your goal, that was certainly your choice to make, but I’d argue that you owed it to the audience and the cast to do a better job of it.

For example: You give us evidence that Han and Leia’s child was targeted by evil old men from before his birth. It’s a disturbingly explicit allegory of grooming and child abuse.

You give Ben Solo a backstory which implies he is guilty of vile, Anakin-style crimes against other young people, coding him as a school shooter, and then chose to exonerate him of this crime in a comic book, where the general audience will never know he was innocent. It’s a form of character assassination.

You consigned Ben Solo to the darkness for almost the entirety of three films, then denied him his voice in the final acts of his own story. “Ow?” The only words the redeemed Ben Solo will ever speak. Apalling.

You brought back Palpatine for this film (arguably rendering the message of the first six films meaningless), identified the Emperor as Ben’s tormentor all along, then denied Ben the opportunity to fight his enemy in the final act of the film. Rise of Skywalker literally throws Ben Solo into a pit, and forces him to climb out alone and unaided while Rey is whispered to by “all the jedi,” offering her words of encouragement. It’s grotesque.

I’m getting lost in rage and sadness again here, so let me just say that even if you inexplicably didn’t care about the last Skywalker in the Skywalker saga, you have done a grave disservice to Adam Driver in your treatment of his character in this these films. Perhaps you’ve heard of Driver’s non-profit organization, Arts in the Armed Forces? He’s deeply committed to the importance of stories as a way to make meaning out of the inexpressible. Did he really sign on to this project thinking that the final message of his character would be to say that even if you are able to come back from the darkness, your final act must be to die? That imperfect children don’t deserve compassion, forgiveness, life? You owe Mr. Driver an apology, but you can never really atone for what you’ve done to him.

You ended a nine-film, forty-two year saga with all the Skywalkers dead, and a Palpatine the last one standing. You spent three films tormenting Han and Leia’s child, only to kill him in the final act. What you did to Ben Solo (and frankly to us, who loved him) feels more like a horror story than anything else. In my dreams, I walk right into your offices and flip over tables.

There’s a lot more I could accuse Rise of Skywalker of bungling, but I assume you are hearing this feedback from others besides me, so I will summarize:

Rey Palpatine. Was is all about the midiclorians after all? By making her Palpatine’s granddaughter, you deny Rey everything that made her special; you deny her agency, and you negate the beautiful message I thought you were trying to communicate in the first two films with Rey Nobody: that the force belongs to us all, and that anyone can be a hero

The erasure of Rose Tico. It’s difficult to interpret this as anything but a capitulation to a loud, racist, and misogynist element of the fandom. It’s a very bad look, Disney. Please pay attention to the message you are sending.

Character development in general and a truly horrible ending: Rey goes back into her child-like costume, Ben Solo spent much of the film forced back into his stupid mask. Ben disappears at the end with no one to mourn him. Rey ends the film alone in a desert wasteland.

Rise of Skywalker is the most bleak, hopeless, and depressing Star Wars film ever made. As days go by, it’s becoming clear that it was also poorly written and edited. These stories matter to us, and we pay close attention to them. Disrespect us at your peril.

I don’t expect anyone will ever read this missive, or care at all about what an old shepherd on a mountainside thought about the execution of your multi-billion dollar movies. This is a personal exercise in catharsis as much as anything.

But here are a few notes in a language you might understand. I made some quick calculations about how much money I’ve spent on Star Wars over the past four years, and I’m sharing that with you now.

Movie tickets: I’m one of those people who sees movies I love more than once (I saw Empire Strikes Back eighty-one times in the theater!). I saw The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi at least ten times each. I’m not counting the cost of tickets for my extended family, whom I brought along to a number of screenings, or tickets for birthday party guests we treated to these movies. My teenaged daughter came along for all the screenings I am including, so I calculate I spent about $360 on tickets. We also bought tickets to Rogue One and Solo, so it was actually more, but you get the idea.

Books, tie-ins, DVDs, merchandise: I invested in The Art of the Force Awakens and The Art of the Last Jedi books, as well as at least one SW Visual Dictionary. I bought DVDs of the films of course, and CDs of John Williams’ beautiful scores. I bought and read a number of books; Boodline and the Leia novel, The Force Awakens novelization and Junior novelization, Aftermath, and a couple others whose titles escape me. At least seven action figures. Toy light sabers for me and my daughter. Posters. T Shirts. I know I’m not remembering everything, but it adds up to an expenditure of at least $347 in books and other Star Wars merchandise.

Star Wars Celebration: I splurged on passes for my daughter and I to attend Star Wars Celebration in Chicago this past spring. It cost me about $400, and a last-minute family emergency meant we were unable to attend, but the tickets were non-refundable, so it was money I spent on Star Wars nonetheless.

Total: $1,107

A laughably small amount to you guys, I’m sure. Perhaps a contrast is useful:

Total amount I have spent (tickets for my daughter and I on opening night) on Rise of Skywalker: $22.

Total amount I plan to spend on Disney Lucasfilm merchandise in the future: $0

I invested quite a lot of my time in Star Wars over the past four years. I’ve written thousands of words in essays, appreciations and analyses (mostly on Tumblr), where I amassed a modest following of just over a thousand people. I’m sure I occasionally bored my friends and family by going on and on about Star Wars. This kind of ‘work’ has no dollar value of course. I will say that it was great fun while it lasted, though I feel foolish in retrospect, remembering all the times I came to your defense, arguing that the saga was in good hands, that you had a plan; that you were going to tell a good story.

Sadly, I don’t think you can fix the damage you’ve done to the Galaxy Far Far Away with The Rise of Skywalker. You made this film, made your choices, and put it out into the world. I have no control over where you go from here, but as a person who has loved Star Wars since I was a child, I beg you to take some time to reflect before making another Star Wars film.

You’ve broken so many hearts. Mine was one.

Andrea ____

...my full name and address, blah blah, I live in Vermont

#letters to lucasfilm #Lucasfilm #tros #reylo #ben solo #tros grief #hit them in the wallet #disney lucasfilm

278 notes · View notes

checkdispleased · 5 years ago

Note

re. ep. 21 on Lardo, what are your thoughts on the idea that Lardo's haircut/ art student vibe, is sort of trading on the visual cues/ imagery of queerness, to provide an illusion or semblance of queer rep, while not actually doing the work to write an actually queer character? You guys have touched on N using a sort of visual/generic shorthand in her characterization in other areas, but the mentioning the Ollie/Wicks thing got me thinking again about how few canonical queer characters are 1/2

2/2 are in the majority of the comic, for a comic supposedly all about queer rep. [it kinda reminds of that author of the wizard books and her word of god gay character after the fact, though i don't think N is doing it to nearly the same degree], but i can't help but see similarities in how cultural cues are used to a nod to representation that's not actually treated as canon by the text itself.

I just deleted a whole stupid Harry Potter essay and will instead say this: I was about to say we found out Dumbledore was gay 15 years before OMGCP even started, and then I remembered I’m an idiot who can’t do math. Still, not that I think JKR needs or deserves the very meager fairness I’m about to lend her right now, but, one difference between that series and this comic is, Harry Potter is not about queer experience, and it never claimed to be, and it wasn’t de rigueur for YA book series to feature any LGBT characters necessarily over the period when it was begin published. Check Please is supposedly about that exact topic! And it was created and presented in a space -- specifically the slash fandom subculture on Tumblr, in 2013, working on the vernacular of webcomics -- where the expectation of queer content was de rigueur. In addition to the fact that I got into the comic because I had heard Jack and Bitty got together, this is maybe why I diverge from @tomatowrites‘ uncertainty that they would get together: this was being created from and presented in the space where that was exactly what would happen.

To be also fair to Ngozi, I guess the comic never really positioned itself as speaking to LGBT experiences other than Bitty’s. Still, he says he’s come to Samwell because of the breadth of its queer community? I think, through the lens of the comic alone, what he must have meant was that he wanted to be in a place where he could be openly gay to find a boyfriend, not that he wanted to like, have LGBT friends broadly speaking. One interesting thing about the Y4 Tweets, which I have only ever seen in the chirpbook, is that it is established that Bitty, uh, addresses one of the most pointed criticisms of Check Please:

“ducksducksducksducks,” I’m entirely sure based on other Tweets in here, is Lardo.

Hey, this is loooong.

This is SO confusing because it’s like, Lardo’s not a lesbian ... probably? She’s very into Shitty? They live together? Like sharing-a-bedroom live together? There is nothing in the physical comic, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, period, where it’s implied that she’s into women at all, beside the fact that she’s got short hair for a while? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think these were ever tweeted; I think they were written to go in the chirpbook. So it’s tough to know, in a Watsonian sense, what precisely Bitty is responding to, or if he’s responding at all. There’s no context for this. Like much of the comic, it’s just there, implying some things broadly while also addressing a major criticism of the text (that Bitty has no gay friends) without actually examining it within the text itself. Confusing!

I’m not sure what was originally intended in regard to Lardo. (Would love to hear Tomato weigh in on this, if she has time.) It could be as straightforward as, some people at art school look like this. It would be absurd to code a character as queer and then do nothing to establish them as queer in your queer webcomic, of course. Anyone who understands the potential gain of having people think Lardo is not cishet must also understand the potential cost of not just making it canon?

Part of the essay I started writing about Harry Potter up there was to say that, of course, fuck JKR, but also, I think people are making a very 2020-based criticism of the “Dumbledore is gay” reveal, which happened in 2007, concerning a book series that was written starting in the mid-1990s. Not that nobody was ever gay in mainstream media before Check Please, but I do think it’s possible that as popular as those books were, and as powerful as the author was, she may actually have felt she couldn’t put that in there? At the time, I felt like it was a cheap nod to an obviously huge slash fandom -- but now I actually kinda feel like, okay, maybe it was a cheap nod to her obviously huge slash fandom and also she genuinely didn’t think she could have it in there? The very conservative principle of universally legal gay marriage still felt, at the time, like a distant prospect. My goal in thinking this through isn’t to say it’s okay because it happened in ~the past~ when things were less socially just, but rather, to try to explore the thinking that must have gone on around these decisions.

Which leads me, finally, to the actual point of this post: conceiving of Lardo, and OMGCP, in 2013, Ngozi was coming from a slash fandom perspective that largely held these two beliefs:

It is unrealistic for a story to have more LGBT characters than the main pairing; 10 percent of people are gay so if a friend group has more than one or two gay people in it, that’s submitting to some kind of slash-brain internet logic that can’t hold; and

Just as it is homophobic to presume that gay people are or have to be any particular way, it is similarly problematic to presume someone is queer just because they look or act any particular way

The first one is really rooted in fanfics where an entire cast of characters who aren’t gay in canon are suddenly gay in fanfic; this is presumably not a problem for OMGCP because OMGCP is not actually a fanfic. But it is heavily influenced by fanfic; it functionally works as a fanfic ahout two characters named Jack and Bitty who just happen to have also originated within the fanfic. But the comic’s initial readership is going to be people whose interests cross with fandom, because Ngozi is a prominent fan artist so her audience is gonna be that! So you can kind of feel why maybe Bitty is the only gay in the cast until it turns out Jack magically (??) is also.

Which brings us to Lardo: she looks like someone you would think is into women? But I think she was potentially designed as an example of a character who seems gay but isn’t, because it is not okay to presume things about people based on how they look. This is pretty complicated because, well, yes, in general there’s a saying about not judging books by their covers because that level of superficiality perpetuates harmful biases. At the same time, people do judge just about everything by their appearances regardless of whether it’s superficial or not, and so most people know this and use their own appearances to construct their own identities, that is, try to tell people how they want to be read. It’s very 90s-2000s to assert that it’s wrong to make assumptions about whether someone is gay based on appearances, and you can understand why: normalizing gender non-conformity was and is an important project, but until recently the only way to do that was to do it from a position of insisting cishet people could be gender non-conforming. Of course, looking back, this feels like an insane supposition because of course there is a gay aesthetic, or gay aesthetics? Of course queer people have always looked and acted certain ways to try to subtly identify for the purpose of finding fellow travelers?

If I recall correctly, this came up in fanfics a lot, where you’d have one character who is the straightest man making jokes about how much he loved to suck dick, or whatever. And maybe, maybe, some of this lingers in Lardo. I’m thinking mostly of how Kenny was used in South Park fics, but also, come to think of it, Butters, who doesn’t so much crack jokes but he does seem pretty gay, if you take soft-spoken weak-willed effete boys to be gay, which, of course you do. We all do, sometimes. (There’s also an episode about him cross-dressing.)

But what’s even more striking is that there’s already a character who embodies this particular trope in Check, Please: Shitty. He’s theatrical (flamboyant?), he’s writing his senior thesis on the homoeroticism of hockey, and in a very brief (very badly written) ficlet from the back of Huddle Vol. 1, he checks out Jack’s body in the lockeroom and tells Jack he’s a “Greek god.” When Jack says, “That’s so gay,” Shitty responds with, “Welcome to fucking Samwell. Sometimes dudes will tell you you’re hot without even saying ‘no homo’ afterwards.” So we’ve got Jack, who is gay, telling Shitty it’s gay to admire another man’s body as he reddens and is visibly uncomfortable, while Shitty, who is straight, acts like it is somehow normal for all men to be attracted to other men without it being much of an issue for him personally or society broadly. This is not to say that you can’t find these attitudes reflected in the real world; Jack, who’s closeted, obviously has reasons to posture like this, or be uncomfortable with another man complimenting his appearance. But paired with Shitty’s comments the comic is engineering a reversal that claims it’s not inherently gay when a man is attracted to the body of another man -- except, it is? It’s a fiction that serves a kind of post-post-modern post-queer theory pop cultural attitude that I think, in 2020, we’ve moved on from. Underneath Shitty’s posturing is the sad truth that it’s a straight man, particularly a man like Shitty, whose comments on other men’s bodies would be tolerated; it’s unlikely that this is something Bitty (or Jack) would feel it was socially acceptable for him to say. Shitty’s working here as a type.

An I think it’s not a coincidence that he’s paired with Lardo within this story? She is similarly gender-transgressing; beyond having short hair she is characterized as a “bro” (an inherently male-coded performance) and crushes at beer pong and belches on her opponents. Not in the comic, obviously, but we’re told she does -- maybe kind of like Shitty only finds Jack hot off-page? (When he’s not lounging naked in Jack’s bed--again, something that Jack is uncomfortable with, but if a gay man did this, it would certainly be a problem.) I think these are all jokes that are very of their time for fannish texts in the period leading up to when this comic was started.

Again, nothing is impeding Ngozi from putting a female-identifying character who’s attracted to women into her markedly LGBT webcomic in 2014. I think it’s more than likely that if Lardo were meant to be queer, it’d be in there, somewhere. Or, rather, I think if it were an intended reading from start, it would have been in there. Or it would have been in a Tweet. In an extra. In an FAQ. On the Patreon blog. Mentioned in a Livestream. Somewhere? But where we get one incredibly disconnected hint that she might be, it’s in a Kickstarter-backed volume of post-canon content in a way that ties into the actual story or Lardo’s nonexistent interior life not at all. It’s not a story about her--but that’s the point? It’s not a story about her. If it were meant to be a story about a friend group, how would this particular detail not be enriching? When Lardo notices Bitty fretting over Jack’s game in the library, doesn’t the moment have more weight if she can empathize with even slightly more incision?

And like, you can say a lot of things about JKR, and the politics of gender and sexuality within her books was always bad, so this isn’t giving her, like, credit. But you can totally see how using cultural cues might have been all she felt she was able to do in the 1990s and early 2000s, yes, even as one of the most powerful authors working at the time. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have done more, or that her bad views are actually understandable, see. (I mean, they’re perfectly understandable, also abhorrent.)

Ngozi is making a fucking gay webcomic for a gay readership on Tumblr in 2013-2020. She had no reason to use cultural cues to hint broadly unless she wanted credit for something she felt she couldn’t represent (which makes no sense, see previous sentence; entire essay) or Lardo was never intended to be anything other than a cis straight woman -- which is a fine thing to be, by the way, nothing against cis straight women? It’s just that like, this comic got a lot of flack from an internal crowd of complainers, myself included, about the things it didn’t do -- and one big thing it neglected to do was introduce meaningful relationships with other LGBT characters for Bitty. So I think that Chirpbook shit is just a late-in-the-day retcon for virtually nobody.

But this is a conspiracy theory so like, take it with a grain of salt.

19 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

Text

THE OTHER HALF OF THE RESOURCEFUL

Up till a few years ago an Italian friend of mine who knows nearly all the rest, the lead is out too. Instead of a beautiful but fragile flower that needs to have its stem in a plastic tube to support itself, better to be small, ugly, and indestructible. The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Not because they contribute more to the startup, but not so they can sue competitors. So obviously that is what we should be able to be included in it. Some say it's because their culture encourages cooperation. Another popular explanation is that wisdom comes from experience while intelligence is innate. Nor is there anything wrong with that.

We take for granted things we would consider shockingly luxurious. You may need to be designed for human feet. In the last couple years they've extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from them. But it seems to bother a lot of parentheses by making indentation significant. And at Y Combinator is not to be desperate. Now we'll show it to you and your friends, to people in Nepal, and to know how to improve them. I'm sure Larry and Sergey were noobs at fundraising. You need the young hacker's naive faith in his abilities, and at the same time. But if you get a lot of code. What should you do in the design. I feel bad making an example of this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.

Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. The whole field is uncomfortable in its own right, and that it is not dense enough. Another probably even worse obstacle is that one has higher standards. I realize it may seem cool to get paid for doing easy stuff, after paying to do hard stuff in college. If you start from the mistaken assumption that Instagram was worthless, you have to figure out what the problem is more with the patent office takes a while to gain momentum. Why isn't it? This only seems unfair if it comes as a surprise.

In existing open-source is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker? Meet such investors last if at all. A good language, as everyone who's had a regular job can tell you, is that it also means there's no such thing as good art, but for those who make it often try to trick us. They use the latest stuff. We couldn't believe large numbers of preposterously over-broad patent, the USPTO are not hackers. In the middle you have people working on something great. It means arguments of the form Life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is bullshit. If the number of people who could start a startup.

In some applications, the processor will be the last you ever raise. In the big angel rounds that increasingly compete with series A rounds aren't going away, I think, is to have the upper hand over investors, if you can. A quality that's inborn will obviously be more convenient to work with than one that's broad but hypothetical. Frightening as it seemed to them, not something that was a property of the subject or the object if subjects all react similarly. Unfortunately, patent law is inconsistent on this point. Hackers, likewise, can learn to be a good thing when it happens, because these new investors will be hot to close, which is that it has made it easier to learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. At the time, instead of what I wanted to do anything that completely took over my life the way a painting is drowned out. For example, the editor could display bottlenecks in red when the programmer edits the source code. And in particular, younger and more technical founders will be able to write a program decides what language to use by someone else. So probably math is more worth studying than computer science.

You have to invent anything. In this case the super-angels are really mini VC funds, and they turned out ok. Nearly all the greatest paintings are paintings of people, you've found a gold mine. The constraints that limit ordinary companies also protect them. They seem to work just as well without, however, you'll start to think of them. All that matters is how hard the project is technically, and that you haven't thought much about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as possible, preferably in the first couple generations. Debugging, I was taught in college that one ought to figure out what's actually wrong with him, and treat that. The founder who handles fundraising should make a conscious effort to avoid addictions—to stand outside ourselves and ask is this how I want to free the idea of the corporate ladder is probably gone for good.

But there are two things different here from the usual confidence-building exercise. I don't think there's any limit to the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to the judgement of art. If a writer rewrites an essay, people who read the source read it in illicit photocopies of John Lions' book, which though written in 1977 was not allowed to flake. Letting focus groups design your cars for you only wins in the short term. That has worked for some groups in the past been the ones with the most power. In an earlier essay I said that VCs were a lot like being a doctor. And since a startup is like being proud of your college grades. But there is something structural and therefore legitimate about their behavior. They may have to decide what to do next.

In the worst case, it will also start to matter less where they go to VC firms they have to be thinking, wow, this is not how to have good taste, which is then executed by an interpreter. So cultivating intelligence seems to be a property of objects after all. I can think of are W. Most people have learned to treat saying yes as like diving off a diving board, and they know how much jobs suck. Tv are a good example. The other reason parents may be mistaken is that, at this early stage, there are some smart hackers there they could invest in. Since the goal of this rule is to avoid messing up the series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising more than they would be for the company to build their product for them. The most important thing about a car is the image it projects. The fascinating thing about optimizing for growth is that it sucks for doing what hackers want to do.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #hackers #A #essay #writer #car #sign

1 note · View note

thedeaditeslayer · 5 years ago

Photo

The Cool Side of My Pillow Interview: A Trip Inside the Mind of Bruce Campbell.

When you mention the name Bruce Campbell, the first thing that readily springs to most people’s minds is the boomstick toting, chainsaw-wielding final guy of the Evil Dead franchise, Ash Williams. However, for some of his fans, he will be forever linked with the Harvard educated, resourceful bounty hunter, Brisco County, Jr. Then, of course, there will be those devotees of Burn Notice that will be quick to let you know that Sam Axe, the ex-Navy Seal with a love of Mojitos and Tommy Bahama shirts is their guy because we all know, “Chuck Finley is forever.” For those of you that have never had the pleasure of watching the inventive spy show, Chuck was Sam’s alias that he would use as a cover on certain operations. The mere fact that Bruce Campbell is a part of three vastly different fandoms says quite a bit about his ability as an actor as well as his likeability quotient.

A headliner on the convention circuit for years, the minute he is announced as a guest, tickets go flying out the door and venues sell out. Campbell understands what the people want and he is more than willing to give it to them which is why most promoters clamor to book him. His Q & A sessions are legendary and audiences love the way he sarcastically banters with them. In addition to being an accomplished actor, director and producer, Bruce is also a New York Times bestselling author with four books under his belt. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and his soon to be released, The Cool Side of My Pillow.

His latest book is a collection of essays or as he would say, “rants.” This venture is unlike any of the previous mentioned titles and perhaps his most personal effort to date. In a sense, you get to take a trip inside Campbell’s mind. He expresses his feelings and opinions on a variety of topics from current events and social media to his code of ethics. I was fortunate enough to chat with Bruce about The Cool Side of My Pillow, and his future projects. After reading his book, you come away with the knowledge of how genuine and thoughtful he is which is refreshing in this day and age.

Diabolique: What I like so much about The Cool Side of My Pillow is your honesty. Your writing style makes the reader feel as if they are having an intimate conversation with you. You don’t hold anything back. There are certain aspects in the book which made me feel a tad uncomfortable because you shared some information that was deeply personal, in my mind. I don’t know if I would have included some of the things that you did.

BC: Oh, sure. You always have to decide where you stop. Where is the line? For me, it depends on the type of book. It depends on the type of subject matter. Every project is different.

Diabolique: Were some of the subjects you tackled cathartic for you?

BC: I don’t normally do that sort of stuff. I’m happy to share if I feel something is useful. In the chapter, “What Are You On?” I’m not ragging on people who have habits. I have habits that was the point. There are very few people that just go through their daily life without jacking themselves up, knocking themselves down, knocking themselves out, you know? So, its kind of amazing. The human condition fascinates me.

Diabolique: “A Little Effort Goes a Long Way” is one of my favorite segments. A tale of hard work, ingenuity and perseverance. Which is key to succeeding in the entertainment industry. Where does your drive come from? Some people can pinpoint it to relatives, a mentor…

BC: I do attribute some of it to the Detroit metro area. A lot of my buddies worked on the line, they worked in the factories, it was a great summer job that paid really good money. In Detroit, it was weird. There weren’t a lot of discussions about hopes and dreams. But I could see things happen incrementally that encouraged us. My grandfather worked for ALCOA Aluminum for over 40 years. Would he want to do that job? Was it his favorite job? He wouldn’t even know; it was his only job. He had that job for his whole adult life. My dad wanted to be a painter. I call him a “go betweener” because he didn’t do exactly what he wanted to do but he didn’t do what he didn’t want to do. He got into advertising because it was sort of creative but it wasn’t creative enough so he got into community theater which was more creative. That filled a very strong niche for him and so he kind of straddled the line and then I came along. He allowed me to pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted to do in whatever industry I wanted. He was the first investor in Evil Dead. So, I benefited from the transition of ONLY having drive. Meaning, you just go to work, it doesn’t matter what the job is. The next generation is, “Well, the job kinda matters.” My generation is, “The job matters a hundred percent,” because it determines what you’ve decided to do with your life. So, I am grateful for having enough drive but grateful for being injected with enough freedom of thought to then do my own thing. Partly the drive is the Midwest because you put a tie on, put your sport coat on and you go to work. Get your briefcase, shine your shoes and off you go.

Diabolique: Do you think it is important if you want to be in the arts to have a benefactor? Not necessarily monetarily but someone who encourages you like your dad?

BC: Well, my mom did sort of amateur writing so she was sympathetic at least to that side of the arts. She liked that creative side. My dad was way more interested in acting. So, I saw him in plays and stuff. I definitely benefitted because I had a sensibility that was similar to my dad. My two older brothers could give a shit about acting. They never touched it. I think my dad saw, “Hey, the young guy likes acting just like me.” That was probably an advantage.

Diabolique: Another thing about that particular section that is fascinating to note is your resourcefulness. The anecdote that you recount about having to come up with a way to deliver newspapers in a horrendous snowstorm and the lengths that you went to just to do your job is inspiring. I feel like that isn’t something that would be done by the younger generation, these days.

BC: We were pre-slackers and again, this isn’t to sound like a crabby, old guy on a hill shouting down about the great old days, at that time there were no other options. Our boss dropped off these papers at the top of a hill. That was as far as his van could go. He dumped the whole thing on me and my brother. We delivered them together (the resolution involved Bruce donning hockey skates and a toboggan). So, we thought okay. There was no option of saying, “Dude, I can’t do it. They’re just not going to get their papers today.” That would be the current response. You would wait until the roads were plowed, like that night, and then you would get your damn paper the next day and you’d end up getting two papers. It wasn’t an option. There was nothing in my upbringing that said, you can tell your boss, no. Now, if I thought it would have been very dangerous or life threatening, I probably would have said, no but short of that, there was a slightly different mentality in the air. You did what you were fucking told, for the most part which is a little bit different now.

Diabolique: “The Princess Di Factor” was a thought-provoking chapter because you talk about the click-baiting, disinformation and too much information that occurs on social media. Some of your peers have their PR reps handle their feeds but you are very present in yours. Do you think someone who is interested in getting into show business has to obtain “influencer” status?

BC: I think there is certainly pressure to do it. The old actors when they were doing a film could get away with telling the local studio, “By the way, I don’t do social media.” They say, “I’ve never done it. I don’t have a Twitter feed. I’m not starting now.” They can get away with it. But a younger thespian has a website and at least two or three social media platforms. I think its important to get a distinction of what are using them for? Facebook is all mercenary. Whenever I post, its just for a link to get tickets. I just do that to keep the account warm but I won’t add to it. That one is really inflammatory. They are finally starting to take the misinformation down. It should just be illegal. The stats are mind boggling. Something like 65% of the people who refuse to do social distancing and stuff like that get their information from YouTube. Its not news sources. Its like the Wild West. I think it needs to be settled. I would introduce journalistic standards and practices where by if you tell a little white lie, you get yanked and if you get fact checked and the facts say you’re wrong, that gets yanked.

Diabolique: At the beginning of your book, you discuss the toll of COVID-19 isolation and changes to the convention and motion picture industries. After presenting the Ashland Independent Film Festival awards virtually, do you think conventions might go that route in the future? San Diego Comic Con has gone entirely online which is surprising. Galaxy Con is another.

BC: If we don’t straighten this out, yeah. Sports are going to be weird for a while. Large venues are just going to be strange. How are you going to figure out the San Diego Comic Con? How are they going to make people feel comfortable jamming 125,000 people over a four-day period into that convention center which is already elbow to elbow and unhealthy? I don’t know. I’ve talked to promoters about a bunch of different things. I’m doing a Drive-In tour. Also, some theaters have opened up again so I am going to encourage and reward that so I have added five theater dates for later this summer: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. I’m getting back out on the road. This is not a tour year at all but when I heard that drive-ins were making a comeback, I thought let me be part of that. Some of them are struggling to open and I want to help. I’m tired of being on the sidelines. I want to get back into it. Drive-ins are perfect. You’ve got your distance. I can go up to cars and hassle them and there’s no problem. I can shine my flashlight in the cars, see if people are having sex, there’s a lot of fun stuff we can do. I want to be the first guy they meet when they come into the place to park. I want to be the guy that parks everybody. It’s time. Everyone wants to feel normal again. Eat the meatloaf sandwich. Going to the drive-in is the oldest meatloaf sandwich you could ever eat. Bring the hooch. Hide it under the seat. Bring a cooler, bring your reefer…

Diabolique: In The Cool Side of My Pillow, you mentioned that you were going to attend San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con and the 2020 Electronics Expo which were all canceled due to the pandemic. Were you going to promote the Evil Dead game?

BC: That’s what I was going to do. That’s what I was going to those conventions for.

Diabolique: What’s the status on it?

BC: I have been looking at and approving a bunch of new stuff. They are full-fledged, full bore into it. I think they are talking 2021 for an actual release. Its rolling along, looking great. It got delayed because of the nightmare of video games. Platforms change and evolve. You look at somebody else’s games and go, “Shit! We have to change everything now.” We have to stay current. I have to finish doing the voice work.

Diabolique: I know you are aware of all the rumors surrounding potential work in the future. You even mentioned in your book that you had a few offers. Is there a possibility that you might show up in Doctor Strange 2 and Mall Rats 2?

BC: The Kevin Smith thing could happen if it all winds up together but we haven’t had serious conversations about it. For Dr. Strange, everyone is at the mercy of what Marvel is going to do and this backlog of movies they’re going to do now. So, I think it won’t be until 2021. Marvel has to figure this all out. They have to figure out what movies they are going to do next, what movies they are going to delay, what movies they are going to shit can, what movies they are going to advance and speed up…the marketplace is ever fluid.

Diabolique: Do you have a release date in mind for The Cool Side of My Pillow?

BC: I have to say summer. We’re blasting away. We’re finishing graphics and photos and all that. We’re doing some legal crap. I’m starting a publishing company too. Tartan Media is going to release it. It will be my Campbell clan logo. It will be just to put things out. Movies, TV shows, whatever. That’s the new shingle.

Diabolique: Is there anything else on the horizon?

BC: Because the book isn’t going through Simon & Schuster, they’ll kind of have to find it where they find it. I’ll tweet about it. It will hopefully be available later this summer through Audible. I am going to do the audio book myself within the next two weeks because I want the e-book and the audiobook to come out at the same time. That way it gives you a choice. I want this to be a summer read.

Diabolique: Any updates on Bruce vs Frankenstein?

BC: With Bruce vs Frankenstein, I talked with Mike Richardson, who is my partner on this and we’re going to start with a graphic novel. So, I am going to adapt the screenplay. We’re going to put that out first so people in the industry can get a better sense of it. Mike has been selling a lot of projects to Netflix and he said that’s kind of the way to go with his material and fantasy stuff so he suggested we do that first. We’ll get a great artist, sell it in comic book form, people can totally see it and as a director, its kind of like doing storyboards. It’s a tremendous amount of extra prep that I can do just by going through it because I actually have to think about pages, panels and descriptions. It’s a format that’s not my normal format. Screenplay format, I can fart, I got that down. This is different with the way it looks on the page so it will be a very interesting translation process.

Diabolique: Are you doing any projects outside of Tartan Media?

BC: There’s this movie, 18 ½. It’s directed by Dan Mirvish. He’s with Slamdance. The story is about the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes and what happened to those minutes. Originally, I got hired to play a character in the movie and I couldn’t do it for a number of reasons and then the guy came back and asked if I would play Nixon.

Diabolique: So, the audience will just hear you?

BC: Yes. Apparently, it’s this 18-minute-long fight scene where you will hear Nixon in the background. Ted Raimi comes into play Alexander Haig and Jon Cryer is playing Haldeman. We did all these sessions over Zoom and we each recorded them separately (saying this in Nixon’s voice) having our conversations. They will put it all together and put it in the background.

Diabolique: Anything new to report on Evil Dead?

BC: The official name is Evil Dead Rise. We’re getting a new draft in. I don’t think anything will happen until 2021. Full bore ahead, we’re very excited about it. A whole, new ballgame. No more cabin in the woods.

#Bruce Campbell #The Cool Side of my Pillow

9 notes · View notes

weeklyfangirl · 6 years ago

Text

Frat Boy Pt. 16

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 (1), part 7 (2), part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13 , part 14, part 15

*adele voice* hello, it’s meeeee i was wondering if after all this time you’d like to reeeaaad. AHEM, in other words, thank you for reading, you lot mean a lot to me :’)

“I saw the cops on campus this morning.” Strands of hair escaped her haphazard ponytail, and she blew it out of her face. “You should really do this once a week so it doesn’t get so nasty,” she muttered, tone completely changing. She missed my shrug as she bent on her knees, foraging under the sink.

All signs of Harry had been removed since the night before, besides the faint clean scent lingering on the pillow. But even that was fading from my mom’s trigger happy Febreezing. Harry had snuck out earlier than me, just sending a text saying he had an early before-game practice.

“Mom, you really don’t have to clean this up.”

She ignored me for the upteenth time, pulling out Clorox wipes and focusing all her strength on the built-up gunk on the counter. “At least take turns or something. You do one week, Renny does the other.”

Tap Ramen must have been made by people who knew most college kids couldn’t afford more than a coffee and dehydrated noodles - on a good day. I slurped up the artificial chicken flavor and winced as the scalding water dribbled on my chin, some falling on the carpet. We cleaned whenever we could. But recently I’d been swamped and had zero motivation for any extra obligations, much less for cleaning. Renny just… didn’t. I think Renny saw a broom once, and hid it further out of reach.

More Clorox wipes were drawn and she moved to the sink.

“What were you going to say about the cops?” I asked.

“Oh, right.” She pushed back her hair with the back of her hand. “It was kind of weird. Do you know if anything’s happened?”

I offered her a bite of my ramen. She shook her head, sweat beads lining her forehead.

“Okay” - I tried to explain between chunks of noodle what was happening, but she made me swallow and start over. “Supposedly there’s some kind of gang that’s been tagging the walls around school. We woke up to an e-mail today and I guess they tagged the courtyard last night. There’s a game later though.”

“That’s frightening...”

“I think that’s why the cops are here. Extra security to make sure everyone feels safe.”

“Freaky.” She waited for me to say I agreed with her, that this was random and unexpected, but I didn’t. Fear lingered in her eyes, and I knew a couple of cops didn’t make her feel any better. In a second, she pulled me into a hug, holding me tight. “I just want my angel to be safe.”

My eyes closed, wishing it could be as simple as it was when I was a kid. When she could hold me tight, and tell me good guys always won - and I believed her. “Thanks momma.”

She gripped both my arms when she pulled back. “You don’t have any plans for next weekend right?”

I knew that tone. Some mandatory event was coming up and the thought of another something to do hurt my head. Midterms were over, but with sorority meetings, soccer games, and Zayn’s art project, I still needed to get caught up grading papers for Dr. Rhinecuff and write my own. There were only so many descriptions of the Krebs cycle I could read before the red pen sounded more appealing lodged in my eye. I rubbed my temple. “Mooooom.”

“What?” Her hand cradled my own that gripped my head, scared something was wrong.

How could I tell her I didn’t want to do whatever she was going to tell me? “I feel like I’m always doing something.” Another scalding bite of soup burned my mouth and I cringed.

“I know, but-”

“I just haven’t been given a second to myself to breathe!”

She flinched, retracting her hands. “Your brother’s coming into town.”

I faltered as she handed me her phone, bypassing her screensaver of Harry and I at the gala to pull up the text.

She wasn’t joking.

“Did he say why…?” I managed to mumble, half-fanning my mouth, trying to salvage whatever taste buds had survived my voluntary attack.

“He has a conference in Irvine. But he’s also family. He doesn’t always need a reason to come and visit us.”

I almost snorted but covered it with a cough for her sake. “Doesn’t he though?”

“Y/N!” she scolded.

“Sorry, sorry, you’re right.”

A sort of sadness filled her voice. “I know we barely see him, but he’s still my son.”

The words hung in the air. The fact that she needed to state something like that startled me more than I thought it would. She had two children, but one of them was more a stranger. We saw him maybe once or twice a year for a conference, Christmas if we were lucky. While her son was a stranger, her daughter was turning more unrecognizable every day. I softened. It wasn’t her fault she pushed out a numbers-chasing robot of a human.

“So you’re coming to dinner,” she said. The slight sheen in her eyes disappeared as she bat her lashes, a determined gleam taking its place.

I guess sometimes you couldn’t choose your family.

------

You also couldn’t replace the comfort of mom with a chai almond milk latte, but a girl could try.

My phone buzzed and I tried to ignore the way I deflated when it was Renny.

Can you bring me a lowfat latte I’m dyyyyinnnggg

Somehow, using her ridiculous charms and guiles, Renny had gotten the professor to allow her to turn in her essay a week late after spewing some story about how she was so overwhelmed from the stress of school and tonsillitis.

My phone buzzed again and I couldn’t help but snort at the dark moon emoji Renny added. The tall basketball player in front of me turned around, and I ducked my head down, clearing my throat. Shady moon emoji = the funniest emoji EVER, as verified by Renny and yours truly. Also worked as our code for beyond the world of the living. Running off two hours of sleep? Shady moon emoji. Just ran into your ex? Shady moon emoji. Well, I didn’t have any exes. But Renny definitely got some use out of that scenario.

I picked up our lattes, heading out the door. Renny was probably sitting with her head on her laptop cursing the extended deadline which only meant extended procrastination.

“Excuse me, miss!”

I stalled at the sound of authority. I could turn around, or keep walking. Unfortunately, I chose the former.

Rogue Cop from the frat house walked towards me, stalling a few feet away. “Do you have a moment.”

But it wasn’t a question. I nodded, and he pulled me aside to the grassy courtyard where kids rushed from one class to another. From the Starbucks patio, I felt eyes peering over laptops watching as he crossed his arms, his eyes unreadable behind black sunglasses. This was very… public.

“I was just on my way to your room, actually, so I’m glad I caught you. I have a few more questions.”

His name badge reflected in the sun, blinding me for a moment. Officer Ramirez. I’d shoved his card deep in my dresser drawer, but I hadn’t thrown it away.

“How do you know the Styles family?”

I shrugged. “I have a class with Harry. We were studying for our midterm together the other day.”

“Did you attend their family’s charity gala?”

Something told me he already knew the answer. I nodded.

“What happened that night?”

“I don’t know the full details of it, but when everyone was inside the auction room, the- I guess… I saw their family portrait was stolen.”

“How did you come to see that?”

“Mrs. Styles screamed. Everyone saw it, I just rushed to the sound like everyone else.”

“Did you see the image that was on the wall.”

Obviously.

“Yes?” I swallowed, hating how nerves warped it into a question as the conversation twisted.

“Can you remember anything else about the time you saw the symbol at Kean’s? Where was it, when was it…? Anything you can remember could help us in a big way.”

My eyes flitted to passerbys, each one turning to look at us once. Some had their phones out, probably zooming in for Snapchat or to message concerned parents. I hid further behind Officer Ramirez’s frame.

“It was a tattoo. On the back of the wrist.” My voice wavered, unwanted adrenaline making my body tremble from the inside-out. “Sometime in September.”

“Would you be able to recognize this person if we showed you him?”

“No. It was dark, and they were wearing a hoodie. I couldn’t see their face.”

“How many were there?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said they. How many did you see with the tattoo?”

“Only one. Outside the shop. But he was with a friend. He was shorter.” A shaky hand raised to tuck some hair behind my ear. He noticed.

“Did you speak to them?”

“They didn’t hurt me!”

My outburst caught him off-guard. He inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly. Even his breath was calculated. “I see.” He rubbed the stubble beneath his chin, looking at the two drinks in my hand. “If there was anything that happened, it’s okay to tell me. It would only help us.”

“I just saw one tattoo.”

But even I could tell my voice was weak. He nodded, unconvinced, but I knew that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to prove his suspicion right.

“Thank you for your time.”

I nodded, taking this as an opportunity to walk away.

“As you know,” he called out, waiting for me to stop before continuing. “The gang tagged the school grounds this morning. Their tags are moving towards the coast, outside of their normal range, so just be aware of your surroundings. Notice the people around you.” He spoke like a father, but beyond the sunglasses was still a cop, and I knew he was dissecting my poker face for any sign of a flinch.

“Always.” And even I was impressed with how confident how I sounded.

I turned around, closing my eyes, and pretended for a second I was sinking into the earth, the cool dirt covering my body and hiding me from the world instead of my alternative. That when I opened my eyes, the world would be too close, looking at me, gossiping about me, wondering about me.

The random girl who talks to Harry now turned into the random girl who talks to the cops. That had a spicy ring to it, but I wondered how much the two went hand in hand.

I tossed the cooled lattes in the nearest trash can, shooting Renny a text.

Sorry. Line was too long.

------

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. But I think I was used to that now. Later in the art studio, Zayn put down his brushes. He cleared his throat, and I stirred on the chair, ripped from my reverie.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s all over your face. So it’s all over the canvas.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, cringing at how the words flew out of my mouth so easily. I shouldn’t apologize so much.

He mulled something over in his mind until the annoyingly familiar look of pity appeared. I looked away from his soft eyes, out towards the window, trying to escape the sadness he reflected back to me.

Harry was right.

I didn’t like the way he saw things.

--------

“Well you never, ever, EVER have to do that again.”

I looked to Renny, one brow arched as she shoved a fry in my mouth. “One, because it was your last session. But TWO, and most important… because I will model for Zayn next time.” She made a silly face and raised her eyebrows. From the field, the band started to play at that exact moment and she burst out laughing. I smiled, glad she was enjoying herself.

We stood by the locker rooms, waiting for the boys to get a spare moment to give us their extra jerseys.

“Would you ever think that we’d both be dating guys on the soccer team?” she mused.

I gave her a look.

“Or whatever it is you and Harry are doing. It’s crazy, right?”

If you told me two months ago that the guy who’d walked into class with a black eye would be the guy I was waiting on now, I’d laugh. If you then proceeded to tell me this man was Harry Styles, I’d stop laughing and say you should never be a comedian because your jokes were too far from reality.

“Crazy,” I agreed, eyes bulging out of my head for emphasis.

“W’as so crazy girls?” Niall strolled out, arms spread open with the jersey tossed over his shoulder. Renny jumped on him, legs wrapping around his waist as if there was some kind of magnetic pull attached to their hips. Harry wasn’t too far behind and gave me a head nod. I felt my own pull.

I came up to him, suddenly feeling a little dumb for having asked for this in the first place. This was normal, though, right? Totally normal? He beckoned me a little further away around the corner from Niall and Renny who were already pressed up against the wall. Neither of us wanted to see the wordless pep talk she was giving him.

“Right. Arms up,” he ordered.

I scoffed at his smug smile, but didn’t argue, putting up my arms. I looked him dead in the eye as he aligned the jersey with my hands. The places his skin brushed mine made my hair stand on end, aware of each goosebump that was now so delicately close to him.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to take off what I’m wearing first?” I mocked.

He paused, looking at me as he tugged the jersey down a little more aggressively than necessary.

With the jersey on, he watched while I fixed my hair. “M’not into public showings.”

“I was kidding,” I mumbled.

“I don’t think you were.”

“I was!”

Scrutinous eyes appraised my flustered state, and he fought a smirk. His voice was velvet, suddenly Mr. Seduction. “You don’t have to deny yourself with me.” His fingers looped through my jeans’ belt loops, tugging me closer. Our hips touched, but when I thought he was going in for a kiss, he bit the tip of my nose instead.

“Who are you???” I flinched, but before I could say anything more he gently pushed me back so he could get a good look at me. The whiplash from being close to him had me reeling. I hesitated before doing a spin.

His lips pursed before breaking into a smile. “Waited a while to see this.”

“Worth the wait?” My confidence faltered as he scanned over my body, up the curve in my legs and the rise of my chest, until he searched my face, finding some hidden meaning in my words again.

“I’d bet on it.”

I couldn’t meet the intensity of his gaze, so I looked to his own jersey. “We’re matching.”

“I’m a little offended.”

“Why?”

“I think you wear it better than me.”

He winced as I hit him on the shoulder. “Who turned you so cheesy.”

“Oi! Offense!”

From around the corner, Niall peaked his head around. “We got two minutes, mate.”

I hid my frown from Harry as he turned to Niall, the sharp edge of his jawline made more prominent from the fluorescent lights above us. Parts of him were shadowed, and when he yelled fuck off to Niall (big smile, just banter), I noticed even his neck was attractive.

I laughed, absolutely ridiculous, and he turned to me.

“W’as so funny?”

I didn’t say anything as his hands snuck around my waist to pull me in again. But I don’t think I needed to say anything. Slowly, I leant up to his perfectly tousled curls instead, resting my forehead against his, hoping to keep this feeling locked in forever. The softest sigh escaped him.

“Did you hear about what happened last night?” he asked, softly.

“Yeah.” I opened my eyes, but his were still closed.

He hummed, tugging gently on my jersey. “You don’t have to wear this if you don’t want to.”

“Heyyy, you said you wanted to make me happy.” I nudged my nose against his, and he smiled. There it was. That’s what I wanted.

“I want you to be safe.” His brows stitched and the smile fell again. Just like that.

I pulled back, but his hands stayed firm, keeping me tight against him. The gang had been on campus. Kean’s wasn’t too far away, but a marking here was a clear breach of territory. If I was worried, that was one thing. But if Harry was worried, I was terrified.

“Stop that.” He saw my spiralling thoughts and snapped me back to the present, gently lifting my chin. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I just don’t know what they want. You can’t promise me that it’s going to be okay.”

“Fair... but I’m a strong boy, Y/N.”

“Yeah well I don’t necessarily have as many muscles as you.”

There were dark circles under his eyes and a sleepy smile on his lips. Somehow, he was going to be strong enough to go out on the field and give it his all. It took all the energy in the world for me to get out of bed this morning, let alone run a field fifty times over. “I’m going to make sure you don’t have to use any of them,” he promised, looking over his shoulder. He backed me up against the wall, back blocking us to any invasive eyes.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“How can you be so confident… and just ready, all the time?”

The roar of the crowd picked up as the announcer spoke. He’d have to leave soon. He’d go out there with the strength and infallibility he proved each game. He’d use all of the world’s bullshit as fuel to win.

But right now, he was outside the public eye.

Right now, his stubble tickled my jaw as he ran his mouth to my ear.

“Cos I’m a damn good liar.” He dipped his mouth lower, placing a kiss on that sensitive spot that made my breath hitch. His lips were light, but a hard knick of his teeth tugged on the smooth skin. The softest breath escaped me, but he heard it. I knew he did. He’d started gentle, but as soon as the breath was out he pulled harder on my skin, nibbling, sucking, the stubble scratching deliciously against my neck, desperate to hear the sound again. And again. My back arched from the pressure, pressing my body closer as he turned me to a panting mess. He was enjoying this as much as I was, I could feel him grow against my thigh, and I wanted nothing more than to drag him into the locker room and see every inch of him.

He pulled away too soon, hair disheveled, and a satisfied smirk on his face.

“I thought you weren’t into public displays?” I asked, breathlessly.

“That wasn't a display.” His fingers traced my bottom lip, mesmerizing himself with how his thumb slid down, my lip running with it until it slid back up. “That was a warning.” He smirked, turning on his cleats, looking back just as my hand covered the tingling patch on my neck.

“If they fuck with you, they fuck with me.” He shrugged, walking backwards, naughty schoolboy grin lasting but a moment before he disappeared around the corner.

I scoffed, wanting to pound my fists against the wall for having been left by him again!! Being sucked and dumped… again!!!

At least Renny was high on cloud 10000. All she could talk about was how good Niall was at kissing, and in the sheets, and UGH she just wanted to rip off his jersey and DO HIM RIGHT NOW. She shook me vigorously to get her point across. At least that was one frustration we could agree on.

Once in the soccer stadium, we struggled to find a free space in the stands. The Panthers had basically secured their rankings, and now the stands were full twice a week to see how long this winning streak could go. We looked like deer in the headlights scanning the sea of faces until we saw a platinum bob bouncing up and down. “Y/N!!” Gemma shouted, but we could only read her lips.

We pushed our way through the crowd, almost impossible to get down the aisle as everyone stood up in a cheer. I tossed a look back - the team had rushed onto the field. Harry was in the front, repeatedly lifting up his hands to the crowd. Scream louder. And they did.

Renny nudged me further up the stands, and I followed her gaze to the DGS - Viv, Karli, Shelby and others faces of their clan. I couldn’t see Lynn. I squinted harder. She was probably there somewhereeeee- WELP. Viv caught me staring. I ducked lower behind the stranger I was trying to pass. She shouldn’t be able to see me, but I could still feel her eyes burning a hole in the back of my jersey with Harry’s giant #13 impossible to miss.

Frickity. Frickity. Frack.

“Should we sit with them?” Renny asked, barely dodging the slosh of beer from someone raising their arm a little too vigorously.

“HA! I’m good. You can though.”

I finally smooshed my way past everyone, practically falling in Gemma’s lap with Renny not too far behind.

Gemma looked at the hickey briefly, but was polite enough to not mention anything. I didn’t have a mirror with me, but if how it was stinging was any judge of size, it was way bigger than a quarter. When the halftime show was on and the band was playing, Renny left for the DGs. She squeezed my hand. “I’m only going to say hi. I’ll come back.” I smiled, nodded, but I knew she wouldn’t.

The thing was, I didn’t mind Gemma’s company. At all actually. If we hadn’t seen her, I would’ve been forced to mingle, and I didn’t want to think about forcing conversation right now. I didn’t want to think about much of anything. Compared to Harry’s dark enigma, Gemma was a breath of cool light. A little reserved, sure, but not shy. And she wouldn’t press me into talking when I didn’t want to.

“Where’s Charlie?” I asked.

“Left. He had work in England. Life across the pond,” she mused. “His was a roundtrip, mine was a one-way, but I’ll be back by Christmas hopefully.”

Disappointment washed over me. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten attached to the friendly man. How funny the one person who reminded me of my brother leaves the same week my ghost of a brother returns. Could I trade them?

“He didn’t want me to come,” Gemma sighed suddenly. Her hair was drawn back in a fishtail braid, and she picked at the ends.

“Charlie?”

“No. Harry.”

She sat straighter, tossing the braid over her shoulder. “But I think a part of him would’ve been sad if I didn’t. He does that sometimes. Says things he doesn’t mean.” Her eyes were glued to the field.

“Why wouldn’t he want you to come?” My tone was sympathetic. At our sleepover, Harry had said they’d fought, but he hadn’t wanted to discuss it. There wasn’t any way I was going to drag the truth out of him, but maybe Gemma...

She rolled her eyes, irritated. ““Well…” she sighed, clearly not quite sure where to start. Or if she should start at all.

“I won’t tell Harry,” I said, “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Oh, pfft.” She waved her hand, dismissing my comment. “I know it’d come out sooner or later.”

It wasn’t a diss towards me though. I thought of Harry’s invasive eyes and my fiery tongue… and she was right. It probably would have come out. At least the thought had been there.

“I’m just a little worried about him,” she confessed. “I mentioned it’d be nice to have our mother come down and stay a while. There’s plenty of room in that house of theirs, but he’s-”

The roar of the crowd drowned out her words. Harry had scored. I clapped instantly, but it was brief, distracted by Gemma’s words.

“Are his parents cool with...your mom?” It was weird phrasing, and knowing absolutely zero history about their relationship didn’t exactly help. Gemma seemed forgiving, unphased at least.

“Lionel’s...open to it. And Mary-” Gemma looked away, not sure how to describe her. “She’s been gone recently.” She did a sweeping motion above her head. She clearly didn’t mean physical absence. “They’ve been generous to let me and Charlie stay, so I can’t imagine they’d rob Harry of that right to decide for himself.”

“Why doesn’t he want to see her?” I ask, avoiding the Mary topic for now. The flash in her eyes says I’ve asked a little too much. I should feel embarrassed, but she shrugs, hiding it well.

“He hasn’t seen her since he was a child… it’s been a long time.” I remembered Viv telling me Harry was adopted when he was seven the same time Gemma moves a strand of hair from my face like a mother would. She glanced at the exposed hickey. “How’s he been though? S’he seem fine? You probably see him more than me.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a deflection away from revealing anything more about her brother, or blatant curiosity. Perhaps it was a bit of both. I shied away from her touch, not sure how much she knew about Harry and I. Did he tell her anything about me I wonder? Or was I still the “friend” from English class? No matter what kind of tacit understanding we’d shared ever since the cops arrived at the frat house, I didn’t know how far that understanding went in public.

“I see him sometimes,” I admitted. “Between school and the sorority, and Harry having soccer practice all day every day, we study sometimes… I guess-” I shrugged “-I guess I see him enough.” But it wasn’t enough. Not really. Because every minute without him, he lingered stubbornly in the recesses of my mind, and the smallest unrelated thing could remind me of him. Sometimes that reminder was enough. Other times, the giant black t-shirt-wearing sass god that he was in my mind refused to be tucked away and sat on top of everything else - which made it exceedingly hard to concentrate on homework, work, sleep, and anyone that didn’t have curly brown hair and shadowed green eyes. I was already three episodes into the Housewives, and had only seen about two short clips of him.

It didn’t help that I now had photographical evidence he existed.

After seeing my mom’s lockscreen, I studied my favorited photo a little longer. We stood side by side, opulent and regal in my red-wine ball gown and Harry in his black-and-white elegance. I frowned at how I seemed to lean into him a little more than he did into me, but his hand still claimed my waist, fingers dipping lower onto my hip. Our masks hid different truths (or were some the same?). Each time I’d look at it again, I pretended not to have seen the image a dozen times before, opening and closing my eyes as though it’d help me look at it differently… each time, I thought the same.

We looked like we belonged together, the woman in the dress and the man in the tux. We fit.

If you took away the costumes, would it still be true?

“He is a little on-edge,” I continued cautiously. Harry ran across the field, a little slower than usual, and I remembered his reddened eyes. “I think he’s having trouble sleeping.”

She nodded as if this wasn’t a surprise to her. “He didn’t used to.” But it sounded like a question. “Sometimes I think it’d be better if I hadn’t come,” she said it under her breath, but I’d heard it just before the stands collectively groaned. The other team had stolen the ball from Harry and scored.

“Don’t say that, I know he’s happy you’re here.” Though I didn’t, not really. I gave her a gentle squeeze, not sure how else to comfort a friendly acquaintance.

She wiped her hands down her face and when they fell in her lap, she’d shaken whatever it was that was bothering her. “You’re right. Maybe.” Then, a quizzical look took over. “Has Harry told you anything?”

I shook my head. “He just said you got in a fight. Didn’t tell me about what though.”

She took out popcorn she’d hid in her purse, sly smile saying something she wouldn’t. “He must really like you.” She still had that knowing smile when she erupted in a cheer, standing to clap with the rest of the stadium.

We’d won. Everyone’s phones lifted high in the air, recording the mania they’d all been expecting. Flashes, little bulbs of light, captured pictures of happy college students and their victorious team. The videos would be one of many posted to Instagram stories, along with those from the after parties.

A crawling feeling drew up my spine. I looked around, expecting to be the subject of somebody’s photograph. Ridiculous, because I didn’t find anybody zooming into my face. No one was watching me, I reminded myself. But still, the feeling lingered.

In the crowd, Matt stood taller than the rest. He flashed his all-American smile, jumping up and down with his other basketball friends. When he saw me staring, he waved big, but his smile faltered. He pointed to my neck before shaking his head, busting up with a laugh I realized I couldn’t hear. A laugh I didn’t know how much I’d been wanting to hear until now. Until I couldn’t. But even though I couldn’t hear him, his look said it all. His teasing voice sprang in my head - had a good night, huh? - and then my own chest bubbled with laughter. But his eyes dropped lower to my jersey and his smile fell. He looked away without meeting my gaze again, and I couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of rejection.

-----------

The dangling string lights above Karli’s bed swayed into each other until they became one blurry glow. Or maybe it was me… okay yes, it was me. I was the one swaying. From the carpet, I gripped her lavender bedspread to steady myself.

“I’m not surprised we won honestly,” she said, Cartier bracelets tinkering down her arm as if her cheering from the stands was the sole thing that made the Panthers win. In my impaired state, I fought a snicker. If the gang had seen her walking last night, one mugging would’ve given them all the money they needed.

Horrible thought.

Awful thought.

Tremendously awful horrible passing thought I wouldn’t wish on anyone-

But alas, it was still a thought.

“That makes two of us,” Viv chimed.

It was sometime past midnight, and Renny and I had already taken full advantage of the mini shots we’d packed in our purses. We broke them out as soon as the official meeting had ended.

Tonight had been “get to know what we’re really all about night.” So we’d learned more their charity Service for Sight. Apparently, sometime quite soon we’d be paired with a vision impaired student on campus as a sort of “introduction” for the bigger service work to be done later at the Blind Children’s Center in Los Angeles. For the first time since joining, I’d felt an excited flutter in my chest. The only reason I was studying Biology was to eventually become a doctor, to contribute to the world in some positive way. And now the opportunity was falling in my lap to do something that felt...good. Maybe I did need to thank Renny and - oh, God - my mother for pushing me into this.

Most of the girls dispersed to post-game parties after that - including Harry’s frat’s. I tried not to think about Harry getting drunk and beautiful girls dressed in zilch getting to see his drunk flushed cheeks and taking advantage of his flirtatious nature… pressing him up against a wall, him dipping his head low to brush his lips against their ear…

I stop my imaginative self-pity and laughed at myself. Harry? Taken advantage of by pretty girls?

For what it’s worth, I also tried not to think about how my phone had remained completely silent since the game. I’d sent him a “CONGRATULATIONS!! So proud. I have to go the DGS tonight but wish I could celebrate with you” just in case he’d been planning on seeing me. It was the nice thing to do after all. I was getting antsy for him to see the message and when we piled out of the stadium, I caught him just before he entered the field tunnel.

“Harry!!” I’d shouted. He faltered, before he matched the voice with the face. I pantomimed texting and waved my phone like a madwoman. “CHECK IT!!”

But Gemma was right behind me, and his face fell, turning on his heel just as he’d left me last. Except this time the bruise he’d given me wasn’t visible. And there were helluva lot less butterflies.

Shelby turned the first floor of the DG house to an after party of her own, but as soon as friends of friends started showing up, Karli began leading a small group of VIPS upstairs as I planned my escape. Renny hadn’t noticed, already giggling halfway up the banister with Kiki while Lynn followed, arm slung around Donna.

My hand had just opened the front door when Viv called out to me.

“Stay,” she’d said, long blonde hair tossed over a delicate shoulder. It was hard to find something malicious in her tone, especially through my buzz - but I knew another intention was hiding, somewhere, even if I couldn’t see the end game. “Come onnn,” she drawled, her voice the sweet nectar of a venus fly trap. I could hear my mom’s voice now, telling me that I was being too harsh, judging too soon…

But even if I couldn’t prove it, energy couldn’t lie. Was I smarter than a fly?

I followed her anyhow.

Sat between Donna and Renny, I was starting to think that the last Jack Daniel’s shot was a mistake when Karli slammed her hands against the carpet. It was a dull thud, but it could’ve shook the whole room the way we all went rod-still.

“You guys might actually turn out to be cool,” she confided. She burst up in a fit of giggles, but quieted herself, barely. “No, really, you’ve done a great job so far.”

“Aww.” Renny placed a hand to her chest and I wanted to smack it down. I quickly glanced at Lynn, but instead of getting a can you believe this? stare, she seemed unbothered.

“It’s easier than how we had it,” Viv said.

“Really?” I always thought they’d just strolled in, flashed a nice smile, bonded over how they had the same hairdresser and BAM. They were in.

Apparently not.

Viv looked past me to the door, and in the hushed way she spoke, made me think this wasn’t exactly what they wanted everyone to hear. Or anyone, besides the six of us. Karli and Viv looked at each other in sly excitement. With a swish of her autumn bob, Karli leant forward, hands splayed on the carpet.

“We have an assignment for each of you,”

“Uh, pass, I don’t need another one,” Lynn chortled.

Karli held out her finger, scanning us in the the most dramatic pause. “This isn’t an ordinary assignment. The first phase involves you getting a DG Pretty Please.”

Donna tried to stifle her laugh. Renny hid a smirk, but she sat silent, completely transfixed.

“The DG Pretty Please is a task, anonymously assigned to you by one of our members. Think Secret Santa, but different,” she continued.

“And some of these tasks will take longer than you think, so Kiki and I are giving you plenty of time to prepare,” Viv smiled, as though it was the most charitable thing she could have done.

“Is everyone getting a task like this?” Renny asked.

Karli scratched her eyebrow, slightly annoyed. “It doesn’t really work like that. It’s something you do if you’re asked.”

But I heard the edge to her tone. This was something you did if you were told. With the way they’d watched the door for any unsuspecting party goer, it sunk in that this wasn’t technically official. It was the part everyone knew that came with sororities and fraternities, but the part no one put on paper. If getting a secret mission was as bad as DG hazing could get, I’d consider myself lucky.

“Does Shelby know about this?” I asked, boldly. Renny shot me a glare, wordlessly asking if I was really that dumb to ask that question, to have just now decided to expose the unspoken agreement carried out wordlessly and infamously since the organization’s conception.

Karli snorted. “Shelby was the one who invented this.”

“In December, we’ll have a final pledge meeting. Prove completion of your DG Pretty Please and if you do, then that same night your big will be revealed to you.” It was the only time Viv’s smile didn’t feel too forced. She enjoyed this madness.

Renny didn’t hesitate- “I’m in!”

“But!” Viv interjected. “If you aren’t successful, you forfeit a spot in the sorority. I know you all get super busy with clubs, and parties-”

“And homework,” I mentioned.

“Oh, right. School,” Karli said, partially joking. “I know everyone likes you guys right now, but this is a serious assignment that affects your ability to be a part of this sisterhood. And you can’t tell anyone what your task is. It’s completely anonymous. If anyone else finds out, we’ll know you talked. Your challenge is void. You fail. We question your loyalty, bla, bla, bla, details. Any questions?”

“Can I get my money back?” I laughed, and the girls snickered - but I wasn’t really joking.

“Ha! No.” Viv was as much of a comic as I was. “You’ll get your tasks in a couple days.”

A chime went off, and we all looked at our phones. It was Lynn’s.

“We made the paper again!!” She did a little party dance in her lap and Donna peered at the screen. “Just got the notification,” Lynn explained.

The only college student left alive that got updates of the local paper, Lynn’s parents were published newspaper columnists. After graduating Yale and having a stint of employment in the Middle East, the couple traveled to New York and continued writing for the Times before they moved west coast and settled for the San Francisco Chronicle. ‘Major literary nerds’ was Donna’s affectionate term.

“Is it about the game? Did they include any pictures of cheer?” Viv was suddenly interested. She looked at the article, lips pinching in disappointment. There were snapshots of the different players from tonight, and I struggled to focus on the screen that was lain on the floor for all to see. But there he was, mouth open as if bellowing to his teammates, legs parted in a run. My blood ran hot. Was it stuffy in this room? Was it just this photo of Harry? Or was it just good ‘ol Jack Daniel?

I drew my hair up in a haphazard ponytail, smiling as Lynn scrolled to a picture of Louis scoring and pulling some ridiculous face in concentration. “There’s my boy!!” I hollered, pointing at the screen. “He’s just so dang good.”

Kiki’s brow rose. “Wrong jersey, love.”

Lynn suddenly snapped, snatching her phone back to recapture our attention. “Dude, I saw Louis go in the locker room with Candice yesterday after Journalism. But I don’t think…”

Karli’s auburn bob swished as she shook her head. “Oh, hell no. My mom sees Candice at church every Sunday, she probably just took his dirty laundry to take home.”

“Doesn’t that mean he’d have to strip down first,” Lynn smiled.

“Again, doubt it,” Kiki dismissed.

Viv heaved a sigh of relief. “Well thank God, I would’ve been out.”

“Out of what?” I asked. This time Renny didn’t stab me with her eyes for asking a question. This time, she was just as curious.

“You didn’t hear about the money pool?” Lynn asked.

“Uhhh… no.”

“I’m with you...” Donna said, eyes narrowing.

Lynn held up her hands. “What?! Babe, don’t look at me like that.”

“It’s a game everyone in the house is in on,” Kiki said. “Whoever’s the first to fuck in the locker room wins the money. Do you want in?”

My body temperature rose another 500 degrees just remembering being outside the locker room, whereby I continued to be consensually ruined for any future makeout that didn’t involve Harry.

Viv looked completely cool, composed. “Y/N must’ve missed one of those meetings.”

“I don’t know, I think Y/N might win if she plays. Did he give you that massive thing?” Donna’s voice was low, but not low enough.

Everyone’s eyes went to my neck. I swallowed, hard. Viv’s eyes glazed over and I didn’t miss the click of her jaw.

Can the gods come down right now and blast me away??! Why did I put my hair up!! Why!! I’d been so careful hiding it this entire night!!

If I wasn’t drunk I’d be trembling. I didn’t trust Viv, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to hate me. Seeing her eyes glaze over I almost felt guilty. Almost. Until I remembered all the snide comments, the way she belittled me in front of Harry, the way she took pride in being one step ahead...

Not this time.

I channeled my inner I don’t give a damn like the perfect mask it was, and flipped my hair over both shoulders, giving them my best ridiculous smize face that made Renny snort aloud.

“Eh, I’ll think about it. But I’ll let you win for now.”

Kiki watched the scene unfold before her with a delirious smile, respect riddling her voice. “I think you’ve just given us inspiration for your challenge.”

chappie 17

#fratboy! harry #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles #one direction #1direction #fratboy!harry #one direction imagine #harry styles preference #harry styles fluff #onedirection #harry imagine #harry one shot #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #angst #frat boy

336 notes · View notes

clarestrand · 5 years ago

Text

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize Catalogue with text by Orit Gat.

The award will now be announced (virtually) on Sept 14th. For further info on how to join the webcast please consult The Photographers Gallery Website.

Image = Information

Orit Gat

1 A beginning

In Paris, an artist painting in a studio that used to be part of a monastery. She goes out and gets the largest drawing papers she can find. Surrounded by paint pots and brushes, it’s an image that belongs in a tradition of artists painting away in Parisian garrets, only this is not that story. What Clare Strand was painting in her Paris studio during a three-month residency at the Centre Photographique d'Ile-de-France in 2017 was a translation of pre-existing photographs that were ‘read’ to her over the phone by her husband in the UK. From across the English Channel, he would give her directions that would encode an image of his choosing, and she would paint it.

2 Transmission

Strand and her husband were following an existing model. The method they were using to transmit information was described in George H. Eckhardt’s ‘Electronic Television’, from 1936, in which he outlined how a photograph can be transmitted via code over telegraph. In this system, the original image is divided into a grid, with every square being given a value from 1 to 10. 1 is white, 2 has a tinge of grey, 3 is greyer, 4 darker and so on until 10, which is black. The initial source images from which Strand’s husband chose the images he would transmit to her were 10-by-8 inches, which they divided into a grid of forty-nine squares across and sixty down, each about 5 square millimetres. If it’s boring to read, imagine the couple’s phone conversations: he would call and say 24-2; 25-4; 26-5; and so on. Through conversation, with Strand following her husband’s direction, the language would form a representation of the original image. Like a human fax machine.

3 The result

Is a series of ten black-and-white paintings in acrylic on paper. The history of art brings forth associations and relations, from the development of the grid as a foundation for perspective in the Renaissance, to the nineteenth-century illusionism achieved through Pointillism. There are Gerhard Richter’s black-and-white paintings, László Moholy-Nagy’s telephone paintings, Agnes Martin’s feather-light grids. But the connection to the history of art crumbles in front of the actual framed paintings. They’re human, Strand says, as she reasserts that she is not a painter. They’re messy, imperfect. There are hairs that stuck to the paper, dust congealed into the paint. However, in installation shots of the whole series, they look like another kind of work. Photographed, the paintings seem faultless: the black, white and grey hues reminiscent of aestheticized black-and-white photography; the paintings look clean, their edges not frayed, the small mistakes blend into the frame. It’s like they have two lives, as object and as image. When I ask Strand which one matters more, she answers, ‘I don’t know. What I find ironic is that, as much I try to push “photography” into different mediums, I can never escape the camera and how it operates as a tool of representation. With each press or catalogue reproduction, the paintings are represented as photographs, which is somewhat at odds with the concept of the work – photography transposing into painting only then to be represented by photography!’

4 Utility

To talk about the history of art and about installation shots is to ignore how the objecthood of the paintings depends on their creation. This series, titled The Discrete Channel with Noise, is at once the result of and the documentation of communication and its possible failures. Looking at the paintings, I want to say they look pixelated, but that would make them more photo than painting, more final product than process.

5 The first man who saw the first photograph

The relationship between painting and photography always makes me think of Roland Barthes writing in his essay on photography, Camera Lucida, that ‘The first man who saw the first photograph (if we except Niépce, who made it) must have thought it was a painting: same framing, same perspective. Photography has been, and is still, tormented by the ghost of Painting.’ Later in the book, he writes about photography’s relationship to reality, or to the document: ‘No writing can give me this certainty. It is the misfortune (but also perhaps the voluptuous pleasure) of language not to be able to authenticate itself.’ The photo as confirmation of fact. That fact, that reality, is communicated over phone lines in The Discrete Channel with Noise. When we look at a photograph, what we’re looking for, according to Barthes, is knowledge that a thing, an event, happened. He writes about Polish soldiers in a 1915 photo by André Kertész: ‘that they were there; what I see is not a memory, an imagination, a reconstitution, a piece of Maya, such as art lavishes upon us, but reality in a past state: at once the past and the real.’ What we see, in The Discrete Channel with Noise, is a story about reality rather than proof thereof.

6 Whizzing through the air

When I meet Strand, she hands me an assortment of notes. She’s hesitant about it for a minute, as if giving me homework rather than help. Or as if she expects communication can fail, and thinks a list of references may offer a way out of an impasse. The history of Morse code; pigeon post between Paris and England c. 1870–71; Eckhardt; Cybernetics founder Norbert Weiner and American mathematician Claude Shannon’s information theory, which gave The Discrete Channel with Noise its title: Strand’s research does not explain as much as expand the work. And then in the notes is a quote from the 1973 movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory based on Roald Dahl’s writing, recreating Eckhardt’s transmission of images over radio. Here the character Mike Teavee, the winner of the fourth golden ticket, who loves this technology, explains: “You photograph something then the photograph is split up in to millions of tiny pieces and they go whizzing through the air, then down to your TV set when they are all put together in the right order”

Mike Teavee, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (1971).

That it is possible to share an image, and the labyrinthine process of it whizzing through the air is in line with Dahl’s 1971 book, in which the candy factory includes an impenetrable room-sized machine that, when operated, makes a lot of noise, takes a lot of time, and then produces a single bit of chewing gum. Unimpressive until someone chews it and realizes it is as nourishing as a three-course dinner: tomato soup, roast beef with baked potatoes, blueberry pie and ice cream for dessert.

Proof: the overcomplicated can sometimes be amazing.

A lesson: also worth exploring.

7 Thirty-six images on a journey

The ten images in The Discrete Channel with Noise were chosen from a collection of thirty-six images Strand has compiled for a previous work, The Entropy Pendulum (2015), in which each of these photographs, which were taken from a tabloid newspaper’s archive, was eroded by the weight of a pendulum over the course of one day in an exhibition, then framed. Strand rephotographed the physical photos from the archive, creating a digital output that becomes a dataset ready for reuse. The subject of those images related to what Strand refers to as the subject of her work in general – magic, illusion, the paranormal, communication, transmission, the way people thought communication technologies were magical when they were first introduced, the way Alexander Graham Bell called the telephone a way to ‘talk with electricity’. How to read the transformation of these images through the process in The Discrete Channel with Noise These images are on a journey of losing and gaining information. The project is a metaphor, if not a realization, for what images do anyway: in flux, they move and shift in meaning.

8 Shifting in meaning

Why pay attention to shifts? Because shifts in context can mean that information is lost, or misused. An art historian friend of mine regularly points out that Alexander Nix, the founder and CEO of Cambridge Analytica, studied art history in university. Art matters, images matter, she wants to say. All channels of misinformation need to be decoded. Is there a present and a real, like Barthes thought there was in an only slightly less technological time than the one we occupy, today? Or is the subject of study now how realities are fractured across channels of communication?

9 An entire history of communication

The diagram used to explain Eckhardt’s ‘Electronic Television’ has a man sitting at a table in front of a large black-and-white image divided into a grid of a woman with short, curly hair who looks a bit like an early Hollywood film star. His sleeves are rolled up, his back a bit hunched, he is clearly concentrating. He holds a long pointer stick and taps information onto a device resting on the desk he is sitting at. The cable running from that device spirals into a growing network of telephone poles that reach a window, and from that window to a box on the wall, and straight from the box to a set of headphones that another man wearing a blazer (or is it a lab coat?) standing in front of a large grid, only partially completed with the recognisable top of the short-haired woman’s head. He holds a paint brush at the same spot the other man’s pointer is. Behind him on a table are 10 boxes of paint numbered from 1 (white) to 10 (black) and some paint brushes. The caption reads, ‘Fig. 26. A Simple Method for Sending Pictures by Wire or Radio.’

Visually, it matters that the example is always a woman and the transmitters and receivers are always men. The message is that even in new technologies, even in a new world, some old signals remain. That is what Eckhardt’s diagram exemplifies. An entire history of communication reinforces the idea of who gets to speak across these lines. It is therefore fitting that The Discrete Channel of Noise is structured and executed by a female artist.

10 A piece of Maya

When Barthes writes that ‘no writing can give me this certainty’, he is asserting photography’s relationship to what he calls ‘the real’. But as a writer, he must have known that it is the rest of the above-cited list – ‘a memory, an imagination, a reconstitution, a piece of Maya’ – that is one of the potentials of art: to reconstitute is a way of reimagining the world. After Cambridge Analytica, or in line with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I want to argue that the redefinition or the exploration of that real is the contemporary condition. We come to things with suspicion, some of which is about recognising the failures of the systems around us. But we also come to them with a sense of possibility, a remnant of the Maya or the three-course meal chewing gum: the idea that the world is a story, and it can be shared.

2 notes · View notes

uglyducklingpresse · 5 years ago

Text

Backlist Bulletin #6: NETS

NETS is not strictly an erasure, so much as an idea of an erasure. The title is taken from inside the letters “The Sonnets of William Shakespeare.” Each numbered piece in the book offers a Shakespeare sonnet in pale gray text, almost melting into the page, with some words Jen Bervin has selected in full black. So the erasure exists but the source text is still discernible. In the “working note” which closes the book, Bervin states her aim of making the language “open, porous, possible,” also saying “when we write poems, the history of poetry is with us.”

The first thing I think when I hear the word erasure is Mark Doty’s banger, “Homo Will Not Inherit.” Published during the mid-late years of the AIDS crisis, it opens with a description of New York City, arriving at a xeroxed picture of jesus taped up in public space, with “homo will not inherit; repent and be saved” written on it in marker. The speaker responds repetitively to this attempted warning. In one iteration, he says;

I’ll tell you what I’ll inherit:

stupidity, erasure, exile

In a poem that finds a lot of fierce delight in queerness, this stays with me like a hook. The inheritance, which is our pain on the cultural, heritable level. The inheritance which is the queer condition of being erased, being unremembered, or remembered wrongly. In a poem which, by and large, is celebratory, I am haunted by this moment.

Claiming literary techniques as queer can be sloppy and counterproductive, at times, but it is also very satisfying. So I’d like to claim erasure as queer.

Another thing I like to claim as queer is all Shakespeare (fight me.) I could talk for a long time about the sonnets as queer texts, and about contemporary gender nonconforming queer writers like Julian Talamanetz Brolaski or Jos Charles who implement ornate, archaic language in parts of their work. Literature is one of the ways I know we have always existed.

I realize that enjoying classical trappings, and specifically liking Shakespeare, is not an original position. What I’m getting at is that people talk a lot about the continued relevance of Shakespeare without acknowledging that there is at this point a vast cultural apparatus propping up his relevance. It’s like the ur-version of complaints about remakes and sequels on successful movie franchises. There is a lot of work that probably never gets made because we are all still gagging over Shakespeare’s relevance. (I admit I’m thinking more of theater than poetry.) I’m saying I’m ambivalent about the choice of the sonnets as a source text for erasure, and even having spent some time with the book, I am still not sure about it. Is it the clearest text, for Bervin, for this project of illuminating the presence of a history of literature within the present?

What is interesting (and very queer) about erasure is that it contains, inherently, a question of which text is the true text. Is the original the truth? Or did the original contain and obscure some deeper reality which the erasure made visible?

Why erasure? Does erasure have inherent qualities? Is it easier to erase than to generate? Certainly it feels game-like, math-like, as though it sits in another part of the brain. Is erasure an act of creation, distinct from writing?

I’ve read some erasures that feel successful that are mostly strange-making or whimsical. I’m thinking mostly of Matthea Harvey and Amy Jean Porter’s collaboration Of Lamb.

But beyond the surreal or disruptive possibilities of the form, erasure is political. There’s this great Solmaz Sharif essay about that. Erasure occurs in the non-literary sense of the world, all around us. There’s active erasure, and erasures of selective attention. Some news is not news, some voices are not voices. There are structures for archiving and validating peoples’ stories which constantly erase entire perspectives, entire lives, from the record.

Erasure is political and as such can sometimes be corrective. A couple years ago New Republic put together a piece about the movement towards erasure poetry under Trump, some need emerging for a reclamation or recontextualizing of language, faced with the illogic and malice embedded in the administration’s rhetoric. I know of two writer-artists (Erin Mizrahi and Isobel O’Hare) who are making erasure poetry from #metoo celebrity apology letters. Or Chase Beggrun’s book RED. RED is taken from Bram Stoker’s Dracula as NETS is taken from the Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Chase’s project feels clear and specific, in how it relates to the source text — where the original was a story about monsters, male heroes, and woman-victims, in RED it is a woman who acts, pursuing and being pursued by husbands and monsters. It is a book about trans identity which never needs to argue about trans identity. It simply finds itself, existing within the flesh of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, like a figure inside a sculptor’s stone.

There are many beautiful moments in NETS. With the original Sonnets present as a ghost-bolster, it is easy to see beautiful things, easy to appreciate the sparseness Bervin can create from those compact, lush texts. But the most impactful single poem, for me, is not in that category. It is this:

NETS came out in 2004. The Sonnets were published in 1609. In art the specific brings the general to life, which also contains the possibility of alienation, of staying too opaquely inside of the present and making work which fails the test of time. In this poem, the potential for making work against the backdrop of history comes alive for me. In this poem I understand why this project is necessary, why Bervin needs access to a canonical, larger-than-life, ancestral vocabulary for her own experience.

— C. Bain

NETS is available directly through Ugly Duckling Presse (here), through our Partner Bookstores (here), and through Small Press Distribution (here). Purchases made directly through Ugly Duckling Presse on January 24 are 50% off, use discount code DISAPPEAR at checkout.

The backlist bulletin is a column on titles from UDP’s back catalogue, curated and written by Apprentices.

#read

1 note · View note

truempathy · 8 years ago

Text

don’t mind me, just sitting here thinking bout how much Will values the lives of others that he can’t handle coming to terms with the fact that he isn’t bothered by taking the lives of those who murder or harm others anymore, when before he couldn’t even shoot at a criminal. or the fact that Will feared changing into what Hannibal wanted him to become so much, and knowing that he would continue letting Hannibal change him even though he fights it every step because Will is curious himself to see the parts of him only Hannibal brings out

to the point where he decides that the only way any of this will end well for any of them and the only way he can stay true to his morals and not hate himself or take another life is to throw himself and Hannibal off a fucking cliff :))))) no biggie

#♞ ( THIS IS MY DESIGN. ) ᵒᵒᶜ⋅#aka im still working on my essay but im tired and thinkin of will graham and the complexities of his character instead #someone yell @ me to finish my essay pls #i have to wake up early to print it out at my college lol ... dead ass just gonna hand it in and then skip the lecture bc b O Y #i have so much work .... two coding projects and another essay and an art project and two midterms to study for #fun #death tw

3 notes · View notes

ginnyzero · 6 years ago

Text

Trivialization of Writing in Today’s Society

Writing is an important skill. Writing is more than the ability to write the alphabet and string the letters into words. Writing is the way we express ideas. It is an important tool in our society from writing business letters, making deals, interviews, pitching projects to writing sermons and stories.

Schools would teach creative writing in the lower classes. But then as students got older, this was phased out in favor of business writing, pitch papers and essays. These pitch papers and essays were touted as important skills that students needed to learn to survive in the university environment and the bigger world. And the ability to tell a story, which is what the basis of these essays and pitch papers were really about, became lost and ‘less important’ in the scheme of things. (The structure of an essay is just as important as a structure of a story.)

Writing, storytelling, the ability to string words together into a cohesive, coherent whole with a beginning, middle and ending isn’t valued. The idea that writing a book is work is actually laughed at. Writing if it isn’t journalism or scientific papers is not considered a viable career. We recommend our children become doctors and lawyers. People who follow protocols and rules, instead of encouraging to be creative and think freely.

For some reason there is a prevailing attitude in our society that anyone can write a novel and be good at it. Media encourages this view. I can think of two shows that I like off the top of my head about how Doctors, a Medical Examiner and a Forensic Anthropologist are both writers. Media has pushed that these two fact loving rational people have the creativity to write novels and write novels well that apparently have emotional appeal that connect to audiences. (I am still trying to figure out after 11 Seasons of Bones when Brennan actually has time to write these novels. And I’m not sure now when Maura has time to write her novel.)

They put forth this message that writing a novel is relatively easy and fame is assured once you’re published. However, I find it hard to believe that both of these very analytical characters are able to connect to an audience. With Brennan they try to explain that Angela is her “human editor” and comes up with the scenes that aren’t fact driven. It really burned me that they showed Clark Edison getting a novel deal while they used excerpts on how horrible writing was for laughs. They also cut out the fact he'd need an agent, not go to the publisher's directly. They made it seem even horrible writers could easily get a book deal. Thankfully, this was never brought up again. (Maura got a critic from her editor that her characters were flat and her setting didn't come alive and I cheered. Yes, constructive criticism that made sense!) Even the procedural Castle, who was about a writer assisting a homicide detective, used a writer who was already successful and just suffering from writer’s block. At least he seems to understand story and has emotional grounding to connect to an audience. But they still avoided that it takes time, effort, talent and learned skill to write a novel. (Castle always wrote off screen.)

There are a lot of people who believe that they can write a novel despite not having done any creative writing since third grade. (I think I may have done some creative writing in ninth grade for class but I went to a private high school.) A lot of people think that they have a novel in them. Without thinking through the entire process or knowing how a novel is structured. And if they’re willing to take the time to learn about structure and put the effort into sitting down and writing. Then more power to them, yay, more people being creative. However, most people do not have the fortitude or the desire to write novel even if they think they can. So those that do take the time and put forth the effort to write a novel, even if it isn’t the greatest novel aren’t taken seriously because “anybody can do that.”

No. It takes skill. It takes knowledge. It takes a certain amount of talent. And it takes practice. You have to learn to do it by doing it over and over again. I started writing in seventh grade and my first story was a horrible piece of shit that had no conflict and no hardship. For a very long time I was so conflict adverse, I could barely put it into my stories. I have chapters and chapters of stories on my laptop that have great characters, great worlds, but are in the end boring because there was no conflict. Dialogue, conflict, action, world building, characters, each of these ideas takes a certain amount of time and ability to do properly. It doesn’t come easily or naturally. It can be tiring and difficult and depressing. One has to learn to do it. Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you fail. It’s work. (And I find it fun, oh woe is me.)

I’m not a lawyer. I haven't learned the law code. I wouldn’t want to represent myself in court. I’m not a doctor. I don't know more than super basic anatomy. I wouldn’t perform surgery on myself or anyone else. I’m not a plumber. I can’t fix the leaks in my pipes. I haven't learned that skill. And I don’t expect my plumber, lawyer, doctor to be able to write even as I value their services as plumbers, lawyers, and doctors.

A doctor can heal your disease. A writer can take you to a far away place on a journey of your imagination for hours on end and distract you from pain and disease both emotional and physical.

But we aren’t given the credit we deserve. There are places where writers are barely given credit at all; movies, video games. Things that hinge on having a good story. Having a good story to hook your viewers and players into your game is just as important if not more important than having a good visual look and good game play mechanics. But who gets the credit if things go right for a movie? The director and the actors. Who gets credit when things go badly for a movie? The director and the actors. Who gets credit for a game outside of the studio? The guy in charge of the studio or the game director.

Writers aren’t really on the sets during the filming of movies. If a book writer has their property being turned into a film or television show. They don’t get to adapt it themselves. They don’t have a say in what gets changed. They’ve basically sold the rights of their own intellectual property away and have no control on how it is presented to the public. When a screen writer writes a scene that is important to the plot of the movie and the director or the editor decide to cut it for whatever reason, the screen writer doesn’t get the chance to protest that the story will no longer make sense. There are writers who get no credit for working on the script at all. They are called script fixers and it is their job to take a script and make it better.

And you would think that in fandom circles where it thrives on the exchange of free ideas it would be different. At one time, it was considered taboo to make money off of anyone else’s intellectual property. But changing times and trends and a more Japanese view of copyright began to infiltrate fandom as fandom has become more accepted and less secretive. Huge companies are turning blind eyes to copyright infringement as it brings more attention to their brand that they don’t have to pay for. There isn’t as much fear of being sued. It is almost considered normal now in fandom for artists to take fan art commissions to earn a little extra money to get through college.

But fan fiction commissions? Blasphemy. You “don’t do it.” You don’t talk about doing it. Fan creators still get greatly uncomfortable with the idea that someone could pay another person to write them something. Despite the fact it takes time and effort and talent to write as much as it takes time, effort and talent to draw. I am not saying that fan fiction writers should be paid for their work. That's a different kettle of fish. However, like a fan artist who takes commissions, there is a double standard if a fan fiction writer can't do the same. Many fan fiction writers wouldn't dream of trying to make money off writing fan fiction, just as many fan artists wouldn't dream of making money off their fandom art. However, it is an acceptable practice for artists to do so and unacceptable concept for fan fiction writers to even think about it. But, there is also now a dialogue about it in fandom circles and eventually capitalism will determine if it happens or not.

Writing is an important skill and a learned skill. The ability to tell a story in a cohesive, concise and coherent way is important in all types of work. It is too bad that our society doesn’t see it that way.

1 note · View note

haltandcatchfiretothemax · 6 years ago

Text

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2019 #19: In which Cameron reads a book

[CW: mentions of food and eating]

Things had gone back to what she and Donna apparently both took for granted as normal. Or, not really, Cameron had decided. There hadn’t been any sort of going back, things had just continued forward after that Sunday night, both of them seemingly comfortable, at least for the time being, with not talking about why Cameron had brought up the realtor. Cameron thought of that night often, she’d dreamed more than once of Donna’s chicken pot pie, probably because she habitually thought about that evening, about how warm and bright Donna’s kitchen was, and how relaxed she’d felt there even when she was self-conscious and afraid of upsetting Donna, when she was trying to fall asleep.

In the mornings, Cameron thought about work: if she should follow through on designing the game she’d been imagining for a year, whatever freelance project was paying the bills that week, and Donna’s idea. Donna was always one of the first things to cross Cameron’s mind when she woke up. But, that was how it had always been: when she’d been recruited to Cardiff, she’d thought of whatever game she was playing and the alterations she’d make to it if she were a game designer, the Giant’s software, and J*e. At Mutiny, she’d thought about whatever game they were in the middle of writing, their user base, whatever she and Donna were arguing about that week, and then, Tom. It took a long time for her to stop thinking about Mutiny and Donna after she relocated to Tokyo, or maybe she never really had. She’d never thought to question any of this. It was easy to think of it as thinking about work, rather than thinking about Donna.

With as ‘normal’ as things were, Cameron couldn’t get through a day without wondering, what if she wasn’t ever ‘ready to talk’ about everything that had happened with the realtor, with Simon, with her entire relationship with Donna over the past ten years? She wasn’t usually really asking, on most days, she worried about this instead of really considering it. She wasn’t even really sure what she was worrying about when she asked herself about this. It was a knee-jerk thing she did that she couldn’t help.

Over one of their regular dinners, Bos had asked her, “Well, that’s a good question. What would happen if you two never have that conversation?” Eyes narrowed in bafflement and slight irritation, Cameron had said, “I don’t know? I’ve never thought about it?” Bos had responded with a fatherly but gruff, “Well think about it now, then!” With minimal effort, Cameron imagined driving to Donna’s house to write code and eat various kinds of takeout every night until they were in their 80s. She knew that it wasn’t realistic, but it sounded incredibly appealing. It maybe sounded perfect.

For some reason, Cameron was afraid to say this out loud, even to Bos. She admitted that it wouldn’t be the worst thing, for things to stay as they were between her and Donna. “So then there’s no reason to worry,” Bos said. Pointedly, he added, “No need to borrow worry, get all worked up over a hypothetical conversation.”

Which made sense. So why did it feel like something was still bothering her?

The next day, Cameron got up, got dressed, and went to a bookstore.

Cameron had become a reader in Tokyo. She’d been too anxious, too full of nervous energy to enjoy it as a kid, and even a good story with an interesting lead couldn’t soothe her the way that taking apart and reassembling a computer always did. She’d gotten into the habit of visiting libraries and bookstores, mostly because Tom had given her a strict ultimatum about how she needed to get up, get dressed, make their bed, and go outside every day. The result was that she’d spent a lot of days sitting in libraries and cafes, where, if nothing else, she managed to significantly improve her Japanese reading comprehension. Sometimes Joanie sent her new paperbacks from California, and she’d usually devour them in a few days; they were one of the few things she’d regretted losing in her move back to the states. Books became a sort of security blanket, an escape that gaming and game design couldn’t be anymore, and reading became Cameron’s most reliable method of self-soothing.

She had anxiety about accruing too many books, especially after having gotten so attached to the Joanie volumes, so Cameron also finally got a library card from her local branch, and got into the habit of stopping there whenever she was out. She didn’t need to buy books, she just needed to always have something to read, a novel or essay that she could grab when she started to worry about ‘things with Donna,’ and a place to go on days when her trailer felt too small, and sitting outside, or weeding her flower beds wasn’t enough of a distraction.

On her third bookstore trip, Cameron went to a large chain bookstore that she’d been to with Haley. Feeling strangely lonely, she wandered through the same sections they’d browsed, the magazines, the bargain books, the art books, the science fiction section, where Cameron stopped to look for a short story collection by Ursula LeGuin, but didn’t find it, and the cookbook aisle, which had become Haley’s favorite section of the store. Cameron looked idly at the cookbooks in stock, wondering which aisle she should try next, or if maybe she should go somewhere else altogether. She turned around, and then she saw it, in the next aisle — a copy of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Fried Green Tomatoes had been one of the movies that Cameron had gone to see at one of the few theaters that showed English language movies in Tokyo. She’d gone by herself on a rainy afternoon after yet another battle in the cold war that her marriage to Tom had become since her last COMDEX trip, and then she’d gone another time, and another. She managed to find a vhs copy, and watching it had become another kind of security blanket, like the books, a weirdly comfortable space that felt like going home, even if temporarily, even if Cameron had never actually been to Alabama, or had fried green tomatoes. She put it on when she couldn’t sleep, when she got sick, whenever she needed background noise to make household chores and tedious bookkeeping-type work tasks go more quickly. She’d worn out her tape, another thing that had been either left behind in Tokyo or in the dumpster behind the Mutiny/Calnect/Comet office, but hadn’t known that it was based on a book.

Cameron took a giant, slightly frantic step across the aisle and grabbed the book off its shelf. It was from a more recent printing, it had the actresses from the movie on the cover. She flipped through it, and went straight to the end, and saw that there were recipes in the back, for the titular fried green tomatoes, both milk and red eye gravy, cornbread, biscuits, snap beans, creamed corn, pork chops, fried chicken…Cameron’s stomach growled, and she suddenly realized just how hungry she was. She decided to buy the book.

She looked up at the shelf where she’d found it, vainly hoping that there was some kind of Fried Green Tomatoes series, and at least 4 other novels about Ruth, Idgie, and the rest of the Threadgoode family and Whistle Stop Cafe staff. Instead, she saw the placard announcing the section: LGBT Themes. Confused, Cameron looked back down at the book, had there been ‘lgbt themes’ in the movie? Did they mean Ruth and Idgie? A tiny voice in the back of her brain said, Of course, Ruth and Idgie. Cameron felt the most bizarre combination of surprised panic and overwhelming relief. It was like making it to the next level of a game after days of trying, only to realize that the next level would be harder, but that it was okay because that was made the game worth playing. She took the book up to the register and paid for it before she could talk herself out of it.

She wound up reading the first 100 pages in one sitting, and would have gone farther, if she hadn’t had to stop and make herself breathe. At 80 pages, the book finally described Idgie, Cameron’s favorite character in the movie: “Some people are like that, you know…run from you, won’t let you love them.” “She wouldn’t let anybody get too close to her. When she thought somebody liked her too much, she’d just take off in the woods.” “But when Ruth came to live with us, you never saw a change in anybody so fast in your life.” A few pages later, Idgie was charming the honey out of the oak tree for Ruth, and eating a picnic lunch with her, "happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.” A few pages after that, Idgie was pitching a fit over Ruth’s decision to marry a man from her hometown, and then she was crying and drinking and carrying on, living down at the river for the next five years with a well-known prostitute that Idgie’s brother had wanted to marry. And all of it made sense to Cameron, even more than Idgie had made sense to her all those times that she’d watched the movie.

The passage that had really gotten to her was from Ruth’s perspective, though: “When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart….she had never felt that way before and she knew she would never feel that way again…. She had no idea why she wanted to be with Idgie more than anybody else on this earth, but she did.” Lying on her bed, in her pajamas, in her trailer parked out in the middle of nowhere, Cameron thought about Tori Loman, her first friend, her only real childhood friend, who she’d wanted to be with at all times. She was never happier than when she was at Tori’s, she stayed at her house as many nights as the Lomans would have her. As an adult, it had been easy to think that of course she’d loved visiting them; she’d hated being at home after her father’s memorial service. But Cameron vividly remembered playing with Tori every day after school before her father had been redeployed. She remembered telling him, “Tori is my best friend, she’s my favorite person after you.”

Cameron pushed that out of her mind and made herself read a little more, but she couldn’t concentrate. She closed the book, and holding it in her left hand, she reached for the cordless phone where it sat on her nightstand. She started to dial Donna’s number, but when she realized that she had no idea what she would say. She didn’t know how to tell Donna about Tori, either. I wish I knew what to say to her about Tori, Cameron thought, unable to imagine how that phone conversation might go — hey, did I ever tell you about Tori, my friend who I used to play house with? And how I didn’t realize I was playing house with her until Joanie pointed it out to me? As soon as she thought this, she realized how badly she wanted to say exactly that to Donna.

That was when Cameron decided that she needed to quit reading for the night, and put herself to bed.

#needed another night off to regroup/do household chores #this one got away from me too which is a sign of writerly fatigue #i will be fine but pls pray for me just the same #also i picked FGT for a v specific reason here but we'll talk about that another day #femslash february #femslash february 2019 #cameron howe #donna clark #donna emerson

8 notes · View notes

6stronghands · 6 years ago

Text

Goodreads interview with Seanan McGuire

Author Seanan McGuire is the busiest person you know, even if you don't know her yet. She's that busy. McGuire has 33 novel-length works currently listed on her bibliography page, and that's not counting her pseudonymous acquaintance, Mira Grant. Scroll down and you'll find short fiction, essays, comics, nonfiction, and poetry. The crazy part? She didn't turn to full-time writing until about three years ago. Along the way, McGuire has won several marquee book prizes, including Hugo and Nebula awards for speculative fiction. Her series of fantasy novellas Wayward Children was recently picked up by the TV network Syfy for development. McGuire's brain is clearly a restless explorer, and her ambitious new novel, Middlegame, maps out another enormous chunk of notional real estate. In the new book, a pair of separated twins named Roger and Dodger endeavor to solve a series of increasingly sinister mysteries. Why were they separated? Why are they being hunted? Why are they developing world-breaking powers? And perhaps most importantly—why did they get such ridiculous names? The brother-and-sister team find themselves squaring off against a cabal of eldritch predators who have cracked the ancient code of alchemy, the missing link between science and magic. Speaking from her home outside Seattle, McGuire talked with Goodreads contributor Glenn McDonald about the new book, the weird science of alchemy, and the curious case of the prescription typewriter… Your bibliography is really astonishing. Are you just writing all the time? Seanan McGuire: Well, I'm not writing at the moment because I'm talking to you. But yeah, I was writing right up to the point where my phone rang. That's pretty much my life, because I am a workaholic and I enjoy what I do. GR: When did you make the leap into full-time writing? SM: I made the transition around January 2016, I think. The best advice I ever received from anyone, about professional writing, was from Todd McCaffrey. He said: Don't quit your day job until you're reasonably sure you can pay your bills off of your royalties. My last job was for a nonprofit, and I was basically sick all the time because I was writing all these books and I was still working a full-time day job. My friends never saw me. Like, never. Then the ACA happened, the Affordable Care Act. I don't think people realize what a difference that made, for all of us that work in the creative fields, to be able to get affordable insurance. I kept my day job for a few years after I strictly had to, just because I was terrified of dying under a bridge. The attacks on the ACA that are happening now are terrifying. Genuinely terrifying. Especially if they take away the protection for preexisting conditions. GR: Were you into writing as a little kid?

I was. I did not figure out that writing was an option until I was about three. I started reading before I was talking, really. Then I started getting migraines because I was trying to write, but I didn't have the physical coordination to actually write at the speed that I could think. So the doctor prescribed a typewriter. Really. My mom went to a yard sale and got me this gigantic thing. It weighed more than I did. I started writing stories. At the beginning, they were all very factual. I would write stories about going to look for my cat. A lot of my earliest work was what we would classify as fan fiction now. There were a lot of adventures with My Little Ponies. The thing about being a genius when you're a kid is that you grow out of it. I was perfectly average by the time I hit school. But there was that brief, frustrating time when I was so far ahead of where they wanted me to be that they just didn't know what to do with me. I would write until 3 a.m. on my typewriter, which sounded like gunfire. GR: There seems to be some of that experience in the new book, with the child prodigies Roger and Dodger. Their relationship is fascinating; it's a sibling thing but also this deeper connection that suggests they're resonating on the cosmic level. SM: I love that this is my best-reviewed book so far and it's about characters with intentionally terrible names. It's a delight to have people have to try to talk seriously about the relationship between Roger and Dodger. It's terrible, and it makes me so happy. Roger and Dodger really are soul mates because they are functionally the same person. They're one person split into two to embody the Ethos [the alchemy formulation sought after in the story]. I don't think that's a huge spoiler; that's basically the premise of the book. We know that, but they don't for a good part of the story. Locking down their relationship, a lot of that was looking at my own relationships with my siblings and the places where it's good or weird or awkward. GR: For readers who might not be familiar, what do we mean when we talk about alchemy? SM: Alchemy is sort of like magical chemistry. It's this idea that you can transform parts of the world into other parts of the world. You just have to figure out the right combination of elements. The classical example is lead into gold. But alchemists also believed that there were spirits and such that could be called upon to help with these processes. It has some of what we might call sorcerous ideas. They were trying to find the magical formulae for these things, like the panacea, which is the cure for everything. Or the alkahest, which is the universal destroyer, a fluid that could dissolve literally anything. Then there's the Philosopher's Stone, which was said to give eternal life. Harry Potter fans are probably familiar with alchemy, more than previous generations, because of the character Flamel, who was an actual and quite famous real-world alchemist. GR: Did you research the actual history of alchemy?

Yes, this was the first time I really jumped into it. I did a lot of research, and research makes me so happy. I hunted down every book I could find on alchemy; they're all downstairs in the library now. Alchemy was a real thing, even if it never worked, even if they never turned lead into gold with these processes. Really smart people spent a really long time trying hard to make these things happen. I wanted to make sure what I was trying to do would fit into at least one school of alchemical thought—and there were many, many schools of thought. Alchemy sounds a little ridiculous now, but there was a time when it was a commonly accepted belief. GR: In the book you have a great villainous force in the Alchemical Congress, who are modern practitioners of the ancient art. They reminded me of historical groups that purported to be keepers of secret knowledge, like the Masons. SM: Right, or like the Order of the Golden Dawn. I never found a specific historical analog to that in alchemy, but maybe that's because they never got it to work. My Alchemical Congress is a group of people who can actually say that alchemy works. They're able to do all kinds of ethically negotiable things. With that kind of power, you're absolutely going to have a group that locks it down so it stays in what these people consider the right hands. GR: The cover image of the book depicts a delightfully creepy magical item known as the Hand of Glory, which also has a historical basis. Do you recall when you first came across that? SM: I feel like I've always known. I don't remember where I first read about that. I studied folklore in college, and the Hand of Glory was very common in certain parts of Europe. It's amazing. Everyone was chopping hands off for a while there. GR: When did you actually start writing Middlegame? SM: Middlegame is kind of unique. I'd been thinking about it for ten years, but it took me a while to develop the technical skill to tell the story and have it make sense to people who don't live inside my head. My brother must have heard me explain this story 90 times before I even sat down to write it. At this point in my career, I have the enviable problem that, for the most part, I don't get to just sit down and decide that I'm going to write. Everything has been pre-sold. I'm working off contracts until 2023. So I know exactly what I'm going to be writing every day when I get out of bed. GR: Don't you ever just get burned out? SM: Well, I think I'm dealing with ten years of systemic burnout because I'm exhausted all the time. But if you mean: Do I ever get to the point that I can't write? Thankfully, no. I think everybody's wired differently that way. So much of my storage space is devoted to people who don't exist. There's a certain concern that if I leave them alone, those parts of my brain will go offline. GR: There are fictional lives at stake! SM: There are! You don't depend on me for your persistence of existence. If I forget about you, you'll still be fine. GR: Your series Wayward Children was just picked up for development with the Syfy channel. Is there anything you can disclose about that? SM: No, not really. For the most part, for myself and other creators, we can't disclose anything because they don't want to let us know what's happening. We have family members that are going to ask, and they don't want us to be the leaks and endanger the production, so we're frequently not told things. I've basically just sold them my canvas, because I'm a wee baby author from the perspective of Hollywood. I have no properties under my belt, I have no track record. There's not a lot of bargaining power on my side of the table. But I trust the people that are involved in this project. And even if I didn't, honestly, television changes everything. The worst show that absolutely butchers my concepts—which is not a thing I'm expecting with this team at all—but the worst show in the world is going to be seen by more people than have read the first book. So that bumps my book sales, almost guaranteed. That sounds very mercenary, I'm sure, but that's just the math of it. Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, even Neil Gaiman—they weren't household names until they got something on TV. My mother raised three daughters on welfare, and she lives with me. I'm basically her sole support. I worry fairly regularly about what would happen if I get hit by a bus and can't write anymore. But what happens with a successful TV show—or even a failed TV show—is that my mom lives off my royalties for the rest of her life. GR: This is a question we've been polling authors on: When you read for pleasure, do you read one book at a time or do you have several going at once? Some people say it's insane to read multiple books at the same time, but I usually have two or three going. SM: Well, I'm currently reading six. GR: Is there anything else you'd like to highlight or discuss about the new book? SM: Middlegame is currently a standalone, but there are two follow-ups I'd really like to write, so please buy Middlegame from your local bookstore so that my publisher will let me continue!

2 notes · View notes

abyss-mal-blog1 · 6 years ago

Text

current mind-space//word vomit

it’s amazing how much can change in a few days, but it hasn’t been a week since my finals ended and i already felt so different. i have been doing f45 everyday this week (if not then some kind of workout, but i’ve really been into that recently). i am feeling so much better now without deadlines, sometimes i don’t know if i function better under pressure or not. i guess not, but then it’s amazing how much i can do and achieve under pressure. i need the right amount of pressure, and this semester it has been a little difficult for me to get around that.

last friday was kinda my last day of finals, i just had an essay to submit, and i am disappointed in myself and my work ethic because i submitted it at 9pm, went to my cousin’s (disappointing) party, and then professor emailed me to say that she cannot read Pages format (seriously smh @ my tardiness!!!), only got back at 1am that night and sent my mediocre essay. i am a little sad about it because i know that is not my 100%. idk why but college so far has just been a series of 80% effort. this paper was an interesting one, on airbnb, on the sharing economy, it’s a performance studies paper where i analyze the hospitality platform in terms of host-user relationship, parasitism and (attempted) to talk about free online labor. it is a little too late now but i kinda want to work on it again and like, submit for feedback. maybe ill ask taylor.

last saturday was kinda meh, i agreed to go to a *social* kinda event at a bar/club at chelsea, held for Asian-ivy-alumni-people that yanlin invited me too. it was at up&up and honestly a little...i didn’t enjoy it at all. the music sucked, the people were either too dorky or gross or old or weird, and the whole time i just kept saying to myself, “never again”. they said it was open bar but they only served absolut, which was shit. and then my friend’s two friends were...i feel sorry that this was their first clubbing experience. at the beginning my reaction was look at all these ivy alumni! get hitched with one of them for ~da connectsx~ (and nothing else) but no kidding i was actually interested in talking to them just to get to know what people who graduated from ivies are up to, and what are they doing at such events...and are they actually enjoying themselves because it was really kinda gross. met my friend’s friend who seemed like a really smart engineer (he asked for my number the next day lol), and a german dude at the bar who didn’t want to get me a drink. all i needed that night was a drink.....(i’m glad i didn’t drink tho because recently drinking has made me feel all kinds of bad) we had ramen after at ramen-ya (most probably the worst ramen and charsiew i’ve had but what can we do at 3am and my friend wanted noodle and soup...)

on sunday i KNow i should have left my house earlier to workout but i didn’t. i was angry at myself that i didn’t. instead, i stayed at home and emotion-ate. i must have eaten more green bean soup than my stomach would have liked. what else...avocado? i remember..two bananas? god. this was the day i felt like i was n’s boyfriend because i had to do what she wanted to do. i know i had agreed on going, but at that point i really wanted to go thrifting or something. i mean when i got to central park it was fine and things were good but the whole day just felt like i was kinda pulled into doing something that wasn’t my first choice of plans, not that i didn’t enjoy myself lying under the sun at the park. it just felt like i was accompanying someone. i was half an hour late to meet her as well, and half heartedly got a burrito-wrap at newsbar. if you think about it it is really kinda funny, we’re just buying food and taking the subway to this grass patch 50 blocks away. we didn’t walk much, we literally only stayed at a little grassy slope overlooking the baseball pitch. anyway we went to a dance class after (the class was an hour long but i felt like n had asked me about when and what time we should book the classes for more than an hour by text so i just got really sick of it) i rushed home and got dinner with my uncle who’s in town for my cousin’s graduation. i was surprised that he chose the same japanese restaurant again, after dissing it half a year ago we ate here. the omakase was crazy and it cost 230 per person. (for the most expensive set) it was also kinda dumb because you aren’t allowed to order a different omakase set from anyone else - everyone on the table has to order the same - because of “timing”. i wonder if this is how it is in japanese omakase etiquette, but in any case it really earned them a hefty amount because my uncle decided to get 230 for all of us. qiyang didn’t like and said qiqi had bad taste, hahaha. the food wasn’t bad, i mean it’s japanese fusion, but the prices were way too steep for the taste. anyway enough about the food, during the dinner i think we talked about many things though. i kinda wanted to talk to my uncle individually because i think he is the only one who knows about ah gong, but he was sick, and i could tell he was exhausted. my aunt got a little impatient because i didn’t arrange plans to take their furniture and they were going to throw all of them away and it was actually the first time i’ve seen her get so worked up - but at the same time trying to control her emotions - because she was talking to me. i could tell she was annoyed though but i tried not to take it personally, and arranged it tomorrow.

arranging the moving stuff was kinda last minute, i was walking to the library for work one day and i saw a truck that said MakeSpace. i assumed it was a kind of moving company and so i looked them up. they seemed to be pretty okay in terms of their services and so i decided to try them out. confirmation and setting up an appointment went pretty smoothly, except for the part where the guy i think his name was joseph, asked me to give my credit card details over the phone. idk why i did that! i stopped though, and asked him why, to which he replied he wanted to key in with the coupon code. this service has so much gimmicks within the first 2-3 minutes on the phone he was already telling me about how the first pick up is free, and that he will deduct 100$ off the first month...when people give you discounts too easily it just feels like a ploy and a thing they give to everyone, it’s not anything special and it’s probably calculated inside whatever we have to pay. anyway, i was just thinking it would be cheaper (assuming the maximum that i would have to pay is ~$500, as i confirmed with them on the phone yesterday), it’d still be cheaper than starting an apartment lease now and going through the trouble of finding two subletters.

well. idk, it’s also easy to have things all moved in, i have to find a place to store my perishables!

moving is so much work, and storing things. this reminds me of my paper on airbnb and about the digital nomad lifestyle. it is interesting though, that this is what it has become. but the homogenized aesthetic is something i really cannot stand, in airbnb, in coffeeshops around the world..i am sure you know what i’m talking about. a new york times writer did something about this - he termed it “Airspace” - and apparently it originated from Brooklyn. I guess that’s where the art/avant-garde stuff started. well. keep a look out im gonna write a blogpost about that

moving on

nat came to sleepover on sunday night and a few days after because the school kicks you out of the dorms you pay so much for right after your final ends. i forgot if we did something fun but i probably just fell asleep.

on monday i think i went to f45 and did cardio at Dumbo with Gi. he seems like a pretty nice trainer, the first time i went it was him and another girl Bertha (i think my first f45 was last tuesday) and i felt like i had two personal trainers with me - Gi was cheering me on and Bertha was doing it with me. it felt like such a good workout, one of the best ive had in a while. then work, where i arranged the movers stuff. i also realized i bought the wrong date for my flight ticket as my friends and had to buy one more...............

tuesday was the same f45 in the morning, and the bobst after. didn’t really get much work done at bobst. oh i also viewed a 3BR flex at 160. hella expensive and small, and dates didn’t work out anyway. also the broker who brought us to view the apartment was a very nice tall french man and his name was jean-francois which i couldn’t pronounce and asked nat but still called him jean as in jeen instead of john. this is why i have to learn french. you’re embarrassing. i also went to the itp/ima spring show with shubham which was super cool. there were many cool ideas, and i just wonder if i could create something like that. i didn’t get to see all of the exhibits which i regret, but i remember a few notable projects. one was an installation made with keyboards that randomly clicks, but when you hold your phone up it’ll stop. it’s made using 3d gestures. there’s also one at a gallery for surveillance, this team had a thing they call facebox, and it’s literally a box, that when you open it has a webcam that would capture your face, find you on facebook, and print out an invoice/receipt on how much you have earned for this giant tech company. what else...an AR project that when you scan a food, it shows you where the food comes from. nat said that she would love it if menus have something they could scan and then have pictures appear in ~holographic~ format, or maybe in the nearer future something on your phone that shows you a picture of the picture of the food. but isn’t it a surprise tho? sometimes the fun’s in the surprise, you read the description, you know what are the foods you’ll eat, leaving room to imagine or be surprised by how the chef puts it together! anyway, went for dinner with nat and jenny - got vegan shwarma (definitely wasn’t worth $14) and went to get crepes with will after.

wednesday we were gonna go to the dmv but we weren’t prepared. nat also needed to get her passport and she was lazy. wow the number of times i mentioned her, it feels like she’s my boyfriend at this point. talked to famz, sister, and beatrix. am currently considering if i should even go to beijing or just go straight home. fuck. went to bobst for work but no one was there i was just really sleepy. viewed an apartment at 55 morton (it’s a nice quiet residential street that seems to be tucked away from the loud cars and bars and people) then i went to f45 again-varsity!!! cardio!!!, walked across brooklyn bridge (a little regret although i wanted to walk, but my bag was heavy and there were too many tourists to brisk walk)

also the reason for this is that after my soba/miso/salad/shrimp dinner last night i was just watching a bunch of netflix shows and it was probably the caffeine from puerto rican roasting company - the barista made me a chai cappuccino with almond milk (3 SHOTS!!!)

me and nat couldn’t sleep, i really think i slept for an hour. i watched so many different shows, yoko and john’s documentary, while we were young, anthony bourdain, i was seriously flipping through all the shows and alternating between amazonprme and youtube and netflix and i even tried watching peaceful cuisine and making the brightness lower and had the sleep mode on and wow i just couldn’t sleep

so yeah the birth of this word vomit

i am going to create more things

1 note · View note