#i just think its interesting especially how their transformations are treated in the text

[hazellvsq]

frank and piper are interesting counterpoint narratives to me. both of them have relatively mundane problems compared to the rest of the cast yet their parent's domains represent the heights of human passion as defined by the series, despite piper and frank both being (outwardly) dispassionate and (inwardly) mopey. the good end of these domains is love and protection (selfless), the bad end is heartbreak and bloodlust (selfish), which both of them try to resist. they both get claimed last out of their trios and had beforehand assumed that they were the children of someone else. both also experience perceived rejection from their mortal family directly before the series begins - both express anger and hurt at being "sent away". their rejection and unexpected claiming, back-to-back, results in discombobulation for them both, and feelings of humiliation brought on by both sets of parents.

they also both go through forced physical transformations by their parents to fit an ideal they don't want. all of the characters experience issues of identity and self-esteem but i think its the most pronounced with these two in the series. neither of them really knows who they are, and are pessimistic about their own capabilities. they are also counterpoints in that they feel disconnected from their own looks - both are very self-conscious people, but, based on how they're described by other characters, piper is probably the most beautiful member of the 7 and frank is probably the least. piper is frequently harassed and objectified, whereas frank is teased constantly about his looks. he neither feels as childish as his face is nor as grown as his body is, and he doesn't understand how to move through the world. both of which are common experiences throughout puberty - suddenly being treated differently on the basis of a body that's changing faster than you want or understand.

(discourse alert) i don't have a lot to add to the piper transformation discourse except that i do think its interesting that her blessing was temporary within the book and her love interest actually self-reflected on his reaction to it and realized that he should not have told her that she looked hot in that instance. rick did reverse frank's transformation five years later and i'm curious about his thought process about both writing it in the first place and in reversing it, and what feedback he received, if any. piper's transformation was a makeover whereas frank's was a puberty, which later rick walked back with "actually frank is still going through puberty". piper's was cheesy, sure, but frank's falls so flat bc that's just not how it works. its too much of a stretch. i don't even think it was in rick's og plan for frank, maybe he just watched captain america and was like "hell yeah i should do that" and flipped a coin between frank and leo, bc again frank was already initially described as physically grown in his debut book. and i can't even talk about hazel's reaction to to it bc its not real to me and i can't read suddenly. idk frank's plotline in general was too rushed in that book and he should have gotten another pov chapter set at least bc rick was trying to do too much too fast and relied on idiocy like the transformation to support it in the place of real character work when it wasn't even necessary for anything he accomplished in the book. he could've just walked around with better posture and achieved the same effect.

[thenamesblurrito]

so. Transformers ONE was a good movie

i HIGHLY recommend going in blind, i do think it's incredibly effective with as few spoilers as possible beforehand! seeing it on the big screen is really really nice too, i encourage you to watch it in theaters without reading up on it first if you can!

long full-spoiler review and dissection of elements below (i reached the text block limit a couple times oops):

general stuff:

gorgeous. just genuinely visually gorgeous. so many details, colors, textures, everything was so beautiful. the stylization itself may not be my favorite but it was executed so well that i ended up loving it. their optics! their colors! their movement! the way the visuals serve the lore and the story is extremely well done too, i felt like everything i was seeing was deliberate, relevant, and a treat for the audience instead of just "ooo visual noise look at how powerful our cgi rendering is" (which is how i felt about the "live action" Lion King prequel(????) ad they showed before). all the little cameos and repaints and everything in the background? mwah. GORGEOUS MUSIC TOO AAAA THE WAY THAT TFP'S MOTIF IS IN THERE AAAA

the visual effects and action, the way they USED their roboticness/transformation sequences/vehicle modes in fighting and moving and emoting, it was VERY GOOD. Orion grabs a Death Tracker and RIPS THEM INTO PIECES BY TRANSFORMING AROUND THEM AND FORCING THEIR FRAME TO SHATTER. insanity

this is ABSOLUTELY the origin story movie the fandom has wanted. even if it wasn't your preferred origin story, this movie SHONE with love and respect for the franchise and drew on so many influences to craft a powerful version of the beginning we all wanted to see

in some ways i wish we had more, i think it would've been extremely effective to see things expanded upon, especially D-16's emotional descent and maybe some more Quints. actually looking at the content and pacing of the movie though, and the audience it's aimed at, i don't think there's anything they should've cut in favor of other stuff. i understand why it wasn't dwelt on more, but hooooo i would've liked to see Dee breaking apart a little more thru the middle of the film. apparently the novelization has more scenes of this and i would love to read it

i had so much fun watching this movie. it was a rollercoaster. it was a TREAT. i was sitting there enjoying every second both times i saw it because it was a good film that rewarded me greatly for being a Transformers fan, giving me so many easter eggs and injokes, while also being perfectly understandable and fun for a complete newbie. excellently balanced appeal to old and new fans alike

there was no wink to the audience about how stupid and childish a movie about robots is, there was no lampshading of how silly sci fi is, there was no betrayal of the emotional tone of the film. so many stories now kneecap themselves by mocking their very concept, and the audience watching them, in a very cinema sins-style irony poisoned way. this movie never does that. its humor is fitting, its drama is real, its emotion is all SINCERE and i love how i was never mocked by any part of the movie for engaging with it sincerely

this movie loved being a Transformers movie

anyways. specific stuff:

love how Wheeljack managed to explode everything despite not even being a scientist. he's just THAT good

THE INJOKES AND REFERENCES. "you don't have the touch OR the power." calling them Gobots. the corny More Than Meets The Eye bits. "don't be a glitch" is a headcanon swear i've been using for years now and they canonized it!! "High Guard, eject". "paging doctor Ratchet." the new take on "all are one". the really interesting way that the term Transformers is an actual significant in-universe name, and how Orion and Dee ARE NOT Transformers at first!

the sheer number of cameos is ASTOUNDING. what an excellent mix of masc/fem designs too, they really made it normal on this Cybertron which i appreciate! apparently Blurr exists here, his name was on the leaderboard!!!!!! good job Chromia i am so proud of you for winning. and the shots of the bots getting cogs at the end was aaAAA!!! <<33 my HEART! Jazz's little smile looking at his new doorwings!!

I GOT ALL MY SILLY OLD DEMIGOD FAVES I GOT THE THIRTEEN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AAAAAA ALPHA TRION MY GRANDPA god i'm so sorry you're dead but i can't believe you showed up on the big screen <<333 you and your rockin rhino unicorn lion alt mode. and your superpowers. god you're so cool. "old timer" NUH UH HE'S STILL BETTER THAN YOU!!!!! using Zeta for the thirteenth was an interesting choice! i did think he was Overlord for a hot second. it's the lips. Solus wasn't fridged by virtue of everyone else died too yippee!! ALSO MEGATRONUS THE COOLEST ONE WOOOO HES NOT JUST A FIERY EVIL GUY!!!!

the way Dee himself was, in a way, the Fallen of this continuity.... 😭

the way Sentinel was handcrafting his downfall with each touch of the blowtorch. carving the sigil of the Decepticons into the one who will kill him. dooming Cybertron in a moment of petty mockery. AND HE DOESN'T EVEN DRAW IT WELL IT'S LIKE A MESSY CRAYON DRAWING CMON

planetformer Primus in a blockbuster movie? CANONICAL EXPLICITLY STATED PLANETARY ROBO MPREG BIRTH IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES???? THEY USE THE WORD BIRTH. BORN. we are never escaping the reproductive insanity in this franchise

Shockwave you whiny tantrum throwing wuss. let Elita beat him up more. it's good for him. also love how that could be construed as a ref to her G1 resistance force

CASUAL MIND READER SOUNDWAVE???????

Elita was perfect, no notes. i would not like her if i met her but i respect her so much. she really is better in every way and down to business. Best First indeed

so much cool implications and fascinating timeline confusion. 50 cycles since the Primes were slaughtered? the way Sentinel leveraged their reputation to make himself beloved, casting himself as their peer? the way he didn't choose to villainize them, the way he apparently openly admitted to the loss of the Matrix and how it impacted the planet? when did cog theft start, and how old is Orion since in the novelization it states his entire generation is cogless? who remembers the og Primes? who is in the know about it all?? hoooghhghhh fascinating.

the implication that the High Guard worked with the og Primes?? the possibility STARSCREAM was a loyal guard for Cybertron's DEMIGODS????

okay i was not expecting a backstory for STARSCREAM'S VOICE in this movie but holy. god. the shippers will be going insane over this one. hoogh holy fit. what is wrong with you. the utter contradiction of being both an instigator and a coward when he gets in over his head and immediately backpedals

also obviously this is the I Love Divorce movie and megop shippers will be having a field day but i DEEPLY appreciate just how solid a friendship Dee and Orion have and how badly they fall apart, even thru a strictly platonic lens. i also appreciate how there was no forced comphet attraction/romance!! i was dreading the possibility of it, i mean Oplita was RIGHT THERE but they didn't force it at all thank youuuuuu. i would rather have this dynamic with its zero intended romance than awkward, OOC attraction shoehorned in to detract from the plot

Bee was actually good! like yeah he's def the kid appeal character and i prefer it when he's in a younger gen and not OP's peer, but he was wayyyyy less annoying than i was expecting! i think he fit the movie and did his job in it well, and i absolutely laughed at him multiple times. "i get to work for the GOVERNMENT! :DDDD" bee. please. the fact that he's been going insane and desperate after isolation for so long really helps make his character work instead of being just irritating

Airachnid you are so cool. you are TOO COOL. PLEASE TONE DOWN YOUR COOLNESS. i adore how she is not good at facial expressions thank you evil autism moments. love how her signature move is stabbystabbystabbystabbystabbystabby

Sentinel. god. Sentinel. SENTINEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i need to draw him getting ripped in half. it's like they distilled the worst parts of every single iteration and combined them into a SuperBad version. horrifically realistic kind of guy. i love to hate him. real Metro Man from Megamind energy. and megachurch pastor energy. the IRONY that Orion and Dee were probably actually helping him, that he was probably being genuine in the medbay when he said he loved what they did by racing, that he may have been honest when he said he was gonna have them fixed up in his own facilities and had them tour the mines! because them racing increased energon production by 150% and Sentinel needed that!!! he needed that for the Quintessons!!! i think he was being genuine when he first met Dee and Orion and then Darkwing ruined everything!!!

Darkwing is the curly straw of this continuity

the Quintessons were hoooooooooooooooo. whoooooooooogh. hoohhhhhhhhhhhh. the biomechanical. the shapes. the textures. eugh. icky. creepy. excellent. the way their ships looked like the Nemesis. the way they're STILL a looming threat. i wanted to see more of them but i get why the movie wasn't about them. i hope we see more in the future

the way Orion is the kind of guy who, in an attempt to be selfless, keeps making selfish or thoughtless decisions was SO INTERESTING. it set up the dynamic of his and Dee's friendship very well, with Orion always wanting the best for his buddy but ultimately overwriting or ignoring what Dee says!! the way Dee clings to the social contract of protocol for safety because that's all he knows and his ANGER when it's broken, even when it's Orion breaking it, because that's not SAFE it's an UNKNOWN it has CONSEQUENCES WHEN YOU DEVIATE. and then it's revealed that the social norms have been a lie the whole time and Sentinel has "broken protocol" more than ever and Dee has no safety left because it was always broken. Orion wanted to be more, he could feel there was more. Dee just wanted security

Dee spent so much of the movie complaining and arguing and it was very funny and good characterization but it was also a hint at how much bitterness was under there the whole time. so much of his complaints were threats of violence. he always had Orion's back and then when he learns the truth he abruptly. stops. do you notice he doesn't really have Orion's back after this? he's no longer by his side? he's there, but he's not... there. he was the first to shoot an enemy and took joy in it. all of his emotions were so justified and then what he does with them is what makes it a tragedy. he didn't have to do this. augh

i really, really like the fact that they managed to pull off the ending without it fully turning into a "boohoo if we do anything violent we're as bad as the bad guys waaaa". the specific phrasing of "rebuilding cannot start with an execution" went HARD. and it's demonstrated in their actions too like, Dee was out for REVENGE and it was PERSONAL, Orion was fighting for JUSTICE and it was UNIVERSAL. Sentinel was beaten, everyone knew the truth. it was over. but Dee in his (very justified!) anger and broken trust was too overcome to back down. they were given the power to change their worlds, but Dee was thinking only of his world. Orion was thinking of everyone

ironic that as soon as Orion starts thinking of other people and considering what they need instead of forging ahead, Dee decides to center his own feelings and actions to the point of murder. even after Sentinel was dead, he just kept shooting, he did NOT AT ALL care that some of those shots were clearly hurting innocent civilians/going wide and shooting out into the city/damaging actual important infrastructure and not just Sentinel statues. i believe it's Bee who said "he's gonna kill everyone" and he proves it by attacking Elita and saying "I won't stop until every last one of his followers is dead". THE FACT THAT HE FELL SO FAR AS TO SEE ELITA, HIS PEER AND FELLOW FREEDOM FIGHTER WHO WAS THERE WORKING AGAINST SENTINEL WITH HIM FROM THE START OF THIS QUEST, AS ONE OF SENTINEL'S FOLLOWERS.... by the end of it, Dee really was nothing but blind anger

and the way kneeling was a common thread!!!!! aaaaaaa. Sentinel betrayed the world by kneeling to the enemy. Dee won respect by refusing to kneel. Orion gained followers by willingly kneeling to his peers. hooghh

Orion jumping and stumbling and falling this whole movie because he just THROWS himself into things because he BELIEVES in things, he's the one to take leaps of faith, to take that step out into the unknown! and Dee refusing to save him as one final nail in the coffin, so clearly feeling like Orion jumping in front of the blast was yet ANOTHER way Orion is forcing his hand, corralling him into doing something he thinks is best but did not consult him on, finally FINALLY saying NO and leaning in to the tragedy!! and in the exact same way Sentinel handcrafted his enemy in Dee, Dee has now handcrafted his enemy in Orion!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and now that Orion took that last leap of faith and fell, now is when he RISES. ONE SHALL FALL AND ONE SHALL RISE. god. it reminds me of Spiderverse, the way they use falling and rising

the way the tragedy is worse for how well everyone was working together.... for one shining moment, the miners and the High Guard, the rescue mission, it was going so well. they were doing it. they were winning. it didn't have to turn to slaughter. if there was to be an execution it should've been by trial, by the voice of the people, not Dee deciding for Cybertron as Sentinel decided what truth was. augh.

in an abruptly different note, the way they have characters move and fly is so cool. i love the jetpacks. i love how flight is not "flyer" exclusive. it's fascinating and i think really fitting for the general city of Iacon itself. all those towers going up and down

THE TRAINS!! THE MOVING ROADS!! HOW COOL IS THAT!! LOOK AT THAT WORLDBUILDING IM OBSESSED WITH THIS CYBERTRON HOOGH. this movie was VERY good at building a rich, functional world of detail and making it very alien in a way i want to chew on forever. the moving mountains and greebled energon mines. the living planet. the deer!!! ooghghh. PRIMUS LOOKS LIKE A STAR

i do like this Primus actually, yeah it was a deus ex machina but that's the POINT. Optimus himself is an act of god and his presence heralds miracles. Dee couldn't bring justice to Cybertron because justice is restoration. justice is healing what was hurt and doing right by the wronged. yes that often means consequences upon the perpetrator but that's NOT what Dee was doing, he wasn't even THINKING of anyone else!! would killing Sentinel get ppl out of the mines? would it restore their cogs? would it bring equality to a clearly oppressive society? like he LIVED this (cogless bots with limited options, the talk of tiers as if they are social castes you can be demoted from, lower city levels where ppl can be banished, etc) but it was Orion who ultimately addressed this. i'm sorry if it feels like insult to injury to rub his Primacy in your face, Megatron, but stealing a cog just like Sentinel and declaring the age of Primes over, when it was the age of Primes ending that made you cogless and oppressed in the first place, is only an extension of your trauma, anger, and violence, and is not solving the problem!

a cog stolen from him at birth! and then he steals it from Sentinel in symbolic revenge, stolen again, but even that wasn't Sentinel's, it was stolen too! the way he discards the cog from Onyx, willingly gifted to him, to continue the trend of desecrating the dead! man. MAN. the name he took, the cog he took, the symbol he took, all from his hero, the one he looked up to, the coolest Prime, and THEN DECLARED THE AGE OF PRIMES OVER

the gilded pompous showmanship of it all was so gross, the way Sentinel's face was everywhere, the way he had instant access to everyone in Iacon via announcements that took over the media. but this was clearly derived from the previous Primes!! we see their statues, we see their stately tower, and unless Sentinel had all that built in "mourning" (which is totally plausible imho) he was really just setting himself up as an inheritor of that hyperwealthy standard! we don't know anything about the rule of the og Primes beyond that they're favorably remembered and loved (possibly because of propaganda but i think it was also genuine) and that they may have been losing the Quint war (considering that info was from jerkwad supreme i find it suspect) but just by comparison to Sentinel i think they HAD to be better rulers. there weren't cogless bots forced to mine for 20 shifts in a row back then!!! Sentinel is stealing their aesthetic as if that gets him the same power and acclaim. he's trying to steal their legitimacy. he paints himself across the face of Iacon to hide the fact the planet itself went into a coma because of him. he has ALWAYS been rejected. i call him a megachurch pastor but really symbolically i could say he's a fallen angel, and his visual design really fits too

i'm coming back to the deus ex machina thing bc i know it may be considered weak in a plot construction sense but i want to engage with it as literal. like, there is a literal in-universe god in the machine. they know it. they worship it, at least a little bit. i would consider this story to be analogous to Prince of Egypt, in that the deific is a real and tangible character with impact on the plot, and not a meta excuse to save the day. Orion made his choice, and as a result Primus made HIS choice. it's not necessarily a happy ending but if even Megatron acknowledges that GOD mandated this guy to be a Prime and the planet itself responds by COMING BACK TO LIFE.... i keep thinking of it like a cityspeaker, how they're the ones who commune with Titans to know their needs and tell them what needs to be done. is a Prime just the cityspeaker of Cybertron, able to help it remain healthy and functional?

the divine right to rule is REAL on Cybertron. you can like it or not but you have to contend with that when discussing fair leadership, political accountability, and representation of the masses re: Cybertronian government and Primacy

god i'm still so obsessed with the Thirteen i need to see them better i need to look at them. i love them. insane. i really need to invest in a chewtoy

also i know it may be a throwaway line but i'm very curious why Primus had to transform and sacrifice himself to save the universe. Unicron, maybe???

also how did Alpha Trion narrate the archival stuff telling the fake story of how the Primes died and the Matrix was lost. did Sentinel get a deepfake of his voice?? is that part of how he made the transition to power?? AUGH THE DISRESPECT KEEPS COMPOUNDING

Alpha Trion. my blorbo. my old man. holding you so tight. like an ancient rescue dog. im gonna groom you and give you treats and buy the biggest plushest dog bed from costco for you

anyways

good movie, guys

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

Youtube Essays Shill Post

I'm getting close to 1000 subscribers so I'm gonna make a shill post for my channel. I make videos on independent RPGs (no D&D/Pathfinder etc), highlighting narrative moves, the intersection of mechanics and themes, and analyzing them in parallel with books, movies, and game theory. I've had a really great crop of essays this year, and I bet at least one of them will do it for you:

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Spire RPG & Babel: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence (52 min)

I read Spire: The City Must Fall in parallel with RF Kuang's Babel: An Arcane History, and try to make the connection between Spire's worldbuilding and the British Empire's historical methods of extracting labor and resources from its colonized subjects. I'm especially proud of how I work through the ways in which Spire's Drow are treated as commodities, emulating how Britain's most valuable resource was human beings, and discuss why there's not an alternative available to the Drow except for violent uprising.

Heart RPG, Annihilation, and Sangfielle: Brainworms all the Way Down (38 min)

I follow the themes of compulsion, infection, and dissemination of a supernatural intelligence that I found both in Heart : The City Beneath and in Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation. It's kind of gross, but if you like reading about parasites, strange urges, and transformations that destroy the self, you'll probably be into this. I also make a few references to Friends at the Table's Sangfielle season, if you're a FATT fan.

Apocalypse Keys and Desperation to Belong (15 min)

Apocalypse Keys is a really interesting game, but it's also the most emotional game I read this year? It's all about heartbreak, longing, and trying to hold on to the people you love, even though you know you'll lose them in the end. The essay is also very much tied up in my feelings on diaspora, faith, and what it's like to be excluded, except for the home you make for yourself. It's also like, undeniably queer in a way I think a lot of folks will relate to.

The Endings of Hellwhalers and the Fewness of the Saved (28 min)

Okay I actually talk about being an ex-Catholic a lot, but this is my most explicitly religiously-inspired essay. I compare the text of Hellwhalers and its interpretations of Christian hell to the actual Catholic doctrines of hell, including the sermon that eventually made me break away from the Church altogether. If you like whales and religious trauma, please check this out.

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Please consider taking a look at my channel! I hate having to beg for viewers, but there's just no other way to build an audience, and I'm really proud of the work I've done this year!

[edwad]

If you had to pick one book to give background on the political economy Capital is criticizing would you suggest Rubin's History of Economic Thought? Any major issues you have with it? Also wonder what you think of Catherine Colliot-Thélène's claim in the afterword that: "If the ‘naturalness’ of economic laws is definitely illusory, the critique of political economy must deny the very existence of the object of political economy"?

rubin's history is written from a pretty sophisticated/defensible marxian perspective so it definitely has a lot going for it in that regard, but that is also its primary limit because it treats marx as the chief authority on the history of economic thought. this might be helpful for thinking through marx's project as he understood it, but it's not as good when it comes to taking a step back and estimating marx's performance by any other standard (eg 100 years of HET scholarship since rubin's text, 150 years since marx's, etc)

as far as the afterword goes, this message pushed me to take another look at it. i tried to read it a few years ago and found it basically indecipherable lmfao but this time it was pretty easy sailing so im not sure if im just more comfortable with the language now or what but it seemed to hit a lot similar notes to the kinds of things ive said here. it is very clearly indebted to a lot of the same post-althusserian stuff that ive been talking about (MCCT is cited approvingly several times and really seems to be the chief text that colliot-thélène is working with), so im sympathetic to some of the broad stroke theoretical problems being posed, but i would quibble with some of the assumptions at play.

she acknowledges the changes to marxs plans for the CoPE and even some of the theoretical transformations, but i think she draws too generously from the pre-capital marx of the grundrisse and the 59 contribution (or sometimes even further back to his work in the 40s!). there are both valuable texts for illuminating certain elements of marxs work/thinking, but you have to be careful in how you use these texts to make claims about marxs later work. she also has a tendency to hone in on the word "equilibrium" which comes out of the secondary material she's working with (namely MCCT) and not from marx, which then turns into her spending a lot of time hammering on about marxian equilibrium that i think is less textually justifiable than she believes, although it's crucial to her argument. how this bleeds into the stuff on "capital in general" is especially confusing because, as she notes, rosdolsky is probably right to believe that this approach to the object is dropped by marx (so why does this get held against him here?) etc etc.

regardless, it has an obvious family resemblance to the species of critique im working through, because she shares the same concern over the object of critique itself, but it is much narrower and i think too bogged down in categories which more properly belong to 20th century economics and the particular style of post-sraffian ricardo interpretation which dominated the minds of intellectual historians in CSE circles around the time she wrote this.

the result is that i think she misses the mark in pretty important ways, even if i think the conceptual difficulties of marxs categories are worth pointing out. the problem however is that these are the same kinds of issues which have been pointed out by clever marx-reconstructionists since rubin himself. this might be interesting marx scholarship, but it's not necessarily damning to his project, as all of the attempts to salvage him have made relatively clear (some of them have been quite successful even!)

when it comes to her specific claim about the naturalness of economic laws, i think this basically forfeits the epistemological element that she herself tries to raise. her entire critique could basically be summarized as follows:

marxs categories are non-empirical, but their merit is supposedly in their interconnections akin to an organic whole, so that, like a biological process, the invisible mechanisms are demonstrated in the surface results (relative prices etc). marx does this because the bourgeois economics which he is critiquing is modeled after natural science (specifically physics, although this is never really named in her critique), however the economy is not like a natural science at all. therefore we have to ask why marx's assumptions take this naturalistic assumption for granted if he is trying to prove that these are not natural categories etc etc.

this basically poses the question which marx himself tries to account for, as if he is failing for beginning with the exact problem she wishes he had addressed. its a very confusing place for her to end up, and i wonder if her afterword was rushed to completion because she suddenly reaches this point in the last couple of pages (the main criticism as you've quoted belongs to the last paragraph) after what strikes me as a very carefully written and thought-through piece until maybe the last third of the text. to suggest "if economic laws aren't natural then they must be fake so why bother trying to study them unless you're guilty of the same thing" fails to ask why the political economists would ever begin to conceive of the phenomena in this way. she is disinterested in the plausibility of the bourgeois conception, as if it's simply an erroneous collective accident and the fact that so many people's beliefs are structured this way isn't noteworthy once we admit that it's wrong. the irony is that, unlike marx, the result is that she basically takes this for granted by simply dismissing marx's immanent critique of it as being more of the same.

[onewomancitadel]

I'm reading Goodreads reviews of Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy trololol.

This excerpt is funny:

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because I said the exact opposite in my earlier post. It feels like classic Western science fiction. Certainly, there are Chinese literary sensibilities, especially amongst the character dynamics and the cultural background at large of the story, but it feels right at home in the science fiction canon... just not modern science fiction. But who cares for canon, right? Either way, it's not an indictment or really something to be overly celebrated, I just think it's interesting how much sensibilities have shifted over time.

And I don't think it is normal everyday life it fails to capture. It's really more about psychological closeness. Human psychology is small and irrelevant, spiritually vacuous. There couldn't be a bigger difference between something like this and Dune, where the personal psychological world is transformative, momentous, mythic. It's very interesting. I prefer the latter over the former for vast philosophical reasons, but it's interesting when people describe something close to the truth - something disturbing them - and don't quite appreciate the actual point I think they're trying to make.

Excerpt from another review:

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I mean, that's not what a Mary Sue is, but this review is from 2016, so the height of toxicity online regarding this issue. It's interesting because Cheng Xin is a character whose biggest effects on the story are a consequence of inaction. The story most emphatically does not treat it as mere survivor's guilt, but you'd have to outright ignore the condemnation the story makes against the 'femininising of humanity' leading to its end. But I think the reason her moral culpability seems lessened is because she's female, and this seeming affliction is treated as lifelong infantilism. She's not responsible in the way that a child would not be responsible for condemning humanity. This is in the text. It's interesting how this seems enviable - to not have moral culpability seems like something bordering on a type of female privilege, to be free of blame and guilt - and yet, to deny moral agency is not really enviable at all. She's a pathetic character.

Certainly a choice that the two central female characters condemned humanity in three different ways.

I'm getting a sense, from the negative reviews of the third book, Death's End, a lot of people feel the ending is a meandering indulgence in grim vacuity. I suspected this would be the case when the second book ended on a hopeful, beautifully cathartic note. If you've answered your seeming tragedy that early, it's only down from there.

This is why the apotheosis of a work is so important. I can only really draw conclusions about the author's intention in the earlier works from how he ended it, and what his observation on the brief gasp of humanity's beauty really is... an irrelevant footnote in the vast universe.

But in terms of narrative structure, it feels cheap. It's an up and down rollercoaster of an encyclopaedia entry. This is what I meant about hysterical realism bleeding into hard science fiction. It feels hysterical. It's almost melodramatic. It's like when the soap opera pulls out the miscarriage storyline or the car crash or whatever - it's the same antics.

[c0rpseductor]

ive had my bagel. coffee is brewing. it is time for me to be mean to jean webster about daddy long legs.

the first thing you should know is that daddy long legs is a book blithely unconcerned with its text, let alone its subtext. i think saying it has any subtext is also really generous and magnanimous of me, because it's certainly all in there by fucking accident. this novel doesn't have time to think. it's too busy being twee.

i liked judy at the beginning. generally i still like the idea of her, but reading daddy long legs is like reading a toothache, and you begin to resent her a little on principle, privately, in a dark mean corner of your heart. i rather suspect the beginning chapters are more organic because jean webster had not quite yet discovered that she'd struck "from the mouths of babes" gold* with this character, and once she figured that out there was no turning back. (it's worth noting that not only is this fucking grating, but most of this bizarre infantilization happens once judy is well past 18.)

the part that sticks with me is this. everything endearing, everything clever, everything judy about judy is what we're shown at the beginning of the novel -- her irreverent humor, her justified disdain for authority figures who don't earn the respect they demand, her stubbornness and mischief, her own idiosyncratic way of thinking and her hand in little private rebellions. this is why (retch) jevis takes any interest in her to begin with. it's really worth noting that, beyond her humor, this is all treated as immaturity to be corrected, especially if it would lead her to question jervis/mr. long legs.

there was the shadow of something good in it, for certain. having jervis' manipulations be so readily fucking apparent to the reader but not judy (who was perfectly oblivious) makes her read as kind of a blithe idiot, really not in keeping with her portrayal as otherwise fairly intelligent, but i think it was at least in part an error in craft since webster locked herself into an epistolary format and that strikes me as like, a very difficult format in which to pull off this particular twist. in part, too, i think any intelligence she grants judy has to be harshly reigned in, because judy is a young woman, and, well, this novel is kind of glaringly misogynist

and like, okay, i should give some slack where it's due, it was 1912. at the same time, though, it's kind of inescapable -- if anything the whole premise is built on it. the first winking reference to Silly Vapid Girls And Their Sartorial Fixations was sarcastic and funny, more a jab at what judy imagined jervis' misogynist thought process must be than anything else, but the continued winking references were less sarcastic and accordingly not very funny at all. again, a lot of her personality traits Mellow Out in a way that directly suggests they ought to be corrected, and i think this is one of the primary expressions of the novel's implicit misogyny: if judy continues to be willful and independent she can't marry and serve a husband, so she needs to learn humility, is more or less the thesis behind this transformation. it's kind of fucked when you consider how deep her self-esteem issues run; granted, she grows out of them once she begins to live a more independent life, but a kinder novel wouldn't have punished her for exercising this newfound confidence and agency when her prospective stalker-husband didn't much like it.

in that regard ive been thinking all morning (well, i just got up, it's morning for me) about a particular letter where judy is lamenting the trouble in writing her novel. with a bit of distance and a good night's sleep it strikes me as very unintentional and very telling Hand Of The Author; judy complains to mr. long-legs that she cannot make her heroine behave as she wants her to. i think this is kind of a twofold telling on oneself moment. on the one hand, it comes directly after a spat over judy disobeying mr. long-legs about where she ought to summer -- given his sort of shadowy manipulations and insistence on controlling her behavior, he's certainly having this issue, and webster may have meant this bit intentionally. i think it's also a problem webster, perhaps, was having -- given this girl who has every reason in the world to want to make her own decisions rather than have them handed down by a stranger, how can i possibly frame her as in the wrong and convince her to obey her love interest slash idealized father figure? the answer the text so helpfully supplies is Because He Is A Man

there's really this undercurrent beyond the "haha look at her she's such a fun liberated ragamuffin!" bent that essentially puts forward that she's allowed to be this way, temporarily, because it is silly. it's such a clever little joke for her to mention wanting the vote! the humor in her implying she might be a valuable citizen is of course that women are barred from civic participation due to their Silliness! she has got such funny ideas! isn't it so hilarious that she has any political thoughts at all? heehee! oh, judy! i found this insufferable

closing out, there's a passage where she mentions that she's found out jervis is a socialist. she thinks she might agree, but she'd like to investigate a little more to make a decision on what type of socialism she finds most compelling. in the end, she says this:

Hooray! I ’m a Fabian. That ’s a Socialist who ’s willing to wait. We don’t want the social revolution to come to-morrow morning; it would be too upsetting. We want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all be prepared and able to sustain the shock.

i think that is the thesis of this novel more than anything else. perhaps one day women might be given the latitude of independent thought and expression, and not need to revere their husbands as godlike father-authorities. but not here, in 1912, in this novel.

[cipheramnesia]

Can you talk about Thelma (2017)?

Thelma is too much for one ask, but I can try. I'm fairly confident there are some specific religious and cultural touchstones I'm not familiar enough to unpack for starters, and the movie itself is so dense with possible readings that I could approach it from at least three separate angles. It's like... where exactly do I start at this?

Just on the most surface level, we're looking at an X-Men situation with the sudden introduction a superhuman ability in someone's life is used to parallel a wide array of different experiences of systemic oppression - I think mainly patriarchal, sexual, and religious but these are all wrapped together in much the same was as they tend to be in individual lives.

What personally gets my heart aflutter over Thelma are its queer elements. Not that these can be neatly separated from the others, but the way it plays with a level of ambiguity in the attraction between the protagonist and her love interest feels especially true to the queer experience of wondering if we're experiencing kind of real mutual attraction, or if we're only seeing things in our imagination - the way queerness is treated as something taboo, even when it's socially permissible, makes finding personal connections a delicate process of hope and guessing. It transforms the relationship elements of the movie seen through that specific lens, including moments where our protagonist is struggling so hard against herself that she tries to make her own sexuality vanish.

But it doesn't operate exclusively as a queer movie, and that's part of why there's just... just so much stuff to try and work through here. I feel like a huge amount of the underlying text of the movie rests on how her capabilities horrify her parents and prompt them to find ways to suppress them, to keep her under control. Additionally, the way she works her way through the medical system as they find themselves at a loss to discern any easy answers to her symptoms. And for that matter, the notion that her supernatural abilities are themselves something wrong with her is also rife with meaning to any disenfranchised group, not just queers or women or non-xians.

I suppose it's a little weird to discuss what I think the movie is about without bringing up... what the movie is about, but there's not a large amount that happens precisely. Or more directly the plot, unadorned, is not particularly complicated. Although I expect if you're hanging around this blog, you might be really interested to learn about a movie which is all about a young woman developing supernatural powers to control reality, and eventually breaking free from her oppressive (albeit loving) xian parents.

Not to sound pretentious, if this was made in the USA, it would be quite a bit more spectacle and flash. Thelma the movie and protagonist both are quiet revolutions, tense with knowing something extraordinary is happening, but not knowing how much will survive it. Some of it put me in mind of Dario Argento, even if it's not quite as flamboyant, there's an emotional intensity and an obsessive focus to the camera work that feels familiar. The colors are not quite as bright and primary as Argento's work, but they feel dense and saturated in the same way. If a movie like X-Men captures the explosive emotions and anger of learning you're different in some way society does not accept, Thelma captures its alternate quite despair and seething rage.

But this all really just gets maybe a little under the surface. I would happily translate the family losing a son to their daughters power as metaphoric to how some families treat their trans children. The ambiguity of the ending, the significance of the birds and snakes as metaphors, the use of symbolic reflections all need greater exploration to the point where this film has a fair thesis worth of material contained within. It's a rare, special, and complicated movie which I would hope everyone takes the time to see (with the exception of people with serious medical concerns over flashing lights, it has A LOT of those). Thelma is about making the decision to burn bright while everyone around you sits with quietly folded hands.

[cmccormicksvad2022-2025]

Week 5: Project #4 - Remaking Language

I have been dedicating most of my time this week to Project #4, which has the ambitious goal of designing the 27th letter of the English alphabet. As I highlighted in my previous blog post, the primary objective of this project is to familiarize myself with typography terminology, specifically serifs and sans serifs in typefaces. In general, the project is proving to be a valuable opportunity to enhance my comprehension of typography and its significant contribution to design.

During my experimentation period, I devoted the majority of my time to exploring different fonts and typefaces with the aim of improving my comprehension of letterforms and the various elements that constitute the final form. After testing out various alternatives, I ultimately settled on Roboto Slab (regular) for my serif letter form and Ubuntu (regular) for my sans-serif letter form. I selected these fonts because they have a timeless and structured feel, and their styles and shapes are quite similar. To dive deeper into these choices, I created 21 sketches that encompassed multiple concepts for a potential 27th letter, with 12 ideas for the serif letter form and 9 for the sans-serif letter form.

After receiving feedback from my peers and professor, I realized that I needed to broaden my experimentation with letterforms. They advised me to further break down the shapes and create a more cohesive flow between the selected letters. Although the shapes were intriguing, they were too obvious. To gain a deeper understanding of how to deconstruct these concepts, I opted to transfer my work to the computer for additional experimentation. Nevertheless, this phase of the process presented some challenges. Creating these letterforms without distorting the type was difficult, and I had a learning curve when manipulating the letter forms in Illustrator. Fortunately, my professor supplied me with extra videos and resources to help me overcome these obstacles.

Once I've chosen two ideas from my sketches, I'll transform them into vector graphics using Illustrator. These vector files will be exported to InDesign, where I will design three specimen spreads inspired by Emigre Type Foundry's famous specimens or Lost Type.

The readings for this week have provided me with crucial concepts and ideas that can assist me in my design process. Kerning, tracking, line spacing, alignment, and vertical alignment are all vital factors that must be taken into consideration when designing a layout for a spread. Of particular importance are tracking and alignment, as they can impact the expression of meaning and the commentary on conflicts between different types. According to the text, the author states "You can express the meaning of a word or idea through the spacing, sizing, and placement of letters on a page…combining different types can comment on conflicts between hard and soft, industrial and natural, and planning and chance." The exercises conducted on these pages have been inspiring, as they have shown me how type can be utilized to foster a sense of emotion or clarity. Words are not just a means of conveying information but can also contribute to the mood of a page. This is especially relevant in magazines or printed advertisements, where the placement and shaping of text can add to the overall emotion or feeling conveyed by the material. Although text is a form of information, it should also be treated as an object or material that can add interest to the piece. However, it is important to exercise caution and review to ensure that the text remains legible and organized. These factors will be crucial as I move forward with the second portion of this project. All of these elements are necessary to create a successful layout for my three design spreads for my 27th letter.

Lupton, Ellen. “Kerning, Tracking, Line Spacing, Alignment, Vertical Alignment.” Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2010, pp. 102–123.

[teaandcrowns]

Something I've been thinking about recently, especially in this age of rehashing media and squeezing IPs until they're beyond the last viable entertainment drop, is how unsatisfying so many of them are after a while. I'm thinking of all the reboots, the spinoff series of things, and also including adaptations of other media (I'm looking directly at you, Wheel of Time and Witcher). What I find exceptionally interesting regarding this trend is the long-standing disparity between mainstream fans traditionally and historically looking down on fanfiction(1), when arguably all this expanded, redone, and multimodal work would fall into that same transformative realm that fanfiction does, only with an official stamp.

The fact that studios and corporations are pushing now for more expansion of original texts (in a multimedia sense) coming with the most acceptance fandom has experienced to date in the modern era is no coincidence, either. But, within that recognition of fans wanting to spend more time in a particular story world and thereby pushing for more stories (or more rehashed stories) in it, I find it incredibly interesting that there doesn't seem to be much credibility given to the idea that writing good fanfiction is a nuanced skill in of itself. It feels to me that there are a lot of show runners(2) and writers who are asking for and/or being given the task of continuing a story with the same characters or mood/tone of a story who are unfamiliar with how to do it satisfactorily.

I don't say this to imply that they cannot write satisfying stories, but that there is a different sort of skill that comes with writing well-executed fanfiction which satisfies the feeling of the original text that, if a writer has not practiced this skill before, can be difficult to capture.

I would argue and theorize that is a large part in why so many spinoffs or expansions of existing stories and original texts fall woefully short--including both works that are in the original medium as well as multimodal (meaning both things like a spinoff show of a show and a comic expansion of a show). To put it simply: they're asking people who have never been fanfiction writers to write fanfiction.

Of course there are writers who can do that without having delved into the world of transformative works before, but for many writers it's like having to learn how to write in the conventions of a different genre, mostly because I would ague that it is its own discrete genre in a lot of ways. Some writers naturally are more adaptable and pick up on conventions more quickly than others, but many writers have to practice at it, which takes more time than having to write on a strict deadline for a show or comic or something else would permit them.

I've often wondered if we would see improved spinoff, expanded, etc. stories if either fanfiction was treated more seriously as having its own viable writing skills that writers took the time to practice or if actual fanfiction writers who produce excellent works had the opportunity to work on these "official" stories.

Rhetorical flexibility is also a really big part of this (and something I teach my Comp 101 students) when moving between modalities, and is something that also needs to be practiced and reflected upon for improvement, and I also wonder if that, too, is being treated as a "given" the same way that it's assumed writers will just be able to write whatever is given to them, regardless of if they've written in the genre before or not.

____

(1) I specify fanfiction here and not just fanworks because, by and large, fanart and fancomics have been more widely viewed as "acceptable" ways to engage in performative/transformative fandom, that is, they are not typically seen as "stepping on the toes" of creators, while fanfiction has often been regarded as doing so (especially if the original text was in written form)

(2) Something else I've heard about a couple of show adaptations is that the show runners wanted and got those projects because they wanted to change them drastically because they didn't like or understand the source material. I would call this potentially unconfirmed but seems very likely, as I think I recall certain show runners more or less confirming this on their social medias at one point, but I don't have the time (and am not on said specific social media) to dig up the receipts, so I'm calling this unconfirmed but strongly suspected for my purposes

Re: canonnicity of comics/satellite media; to me, it depends how sound the narrative is compared to the original piece. It ‘flowing’ like the original is what matters to me.

So to me, the comics just don’t feel canonical.

that’s fair! as i think i said in the post you’re talking about, i think that “flow” is hard to achieve through digging mediums. not impossible, but i often find switching a story from one medium to another loses or changes some of the heart of that story. certainly not always the case, but something i think about a lot.

[crazyexdirkfriend]

Hi Tony i want to ask something of you. In fanon more often than not i see Jake becoming slightly more unhinged and unnerving as he gets older. Do you think this would hpapen canonically? Or are all these fanartsits and writers just projecting what they want from jake on jake

This isn't a hate on it by the way, I just realised the other day I see more often the idea of Jake becoming more unnerving as he gets older alongside Dirk and that i'd accepted it and I'm unsure if its canonically viable or not.

I actually think the nature of Jake is that people project what they want on to him-- be you an author, an audience, or a character within the text. It's an interesting concept because Jake is a character who is never afforded free will and even in fanfiction and transformative works made to give Jake free will, he's still a character doing an author's bidding ultimately.

There's a bit in Meat that discusses this with Calliope and Dirk iirc. Calliope wants Jake to have free will, but Dirk argues that Jake is incapable of free will. And truly, even on a metatextual level, the existence of a narrative voice renders basically everyone, but especially Jake, incapable of free will within a narrative.

I don't know if you've seen Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there's an exchange in Utena that I believe they're referencing intertextually here between Utena and Touga about Anthy. Utena insists that Anthy does not want to be the rose bride, and Anthy confirms this. But when Touga defeats Utena and takes Anthy as the rose bride himself, Anthy claims being the rose bride is all she's ever wanted. Touga then says Anthy is incapable of free will and her expressions of "wanting to be a normal girl" when with Utena were just Utena projecting her own wants on to Anthy and claiming them to be free will.

(pinch of salt, I haven't rewatched Utena in a few years, but this is how I remember the scene)

In many ways, this is what Calliope, and us as authors, do to Jake, and what in text Dirk is criticising as a concept. He's like, well I'm projecting my desires and wants on to Jake and you say that's bad but at least I'm being honest about it. I'm treating Jake like a puppet, but that's all he's ever going to be anyway.

Er. I think I've got wildly off topic from your actual question.

I think getting older in many ways is realising that being 14 is a state of mind and that's just who you occasionally are for the rest of your life. So yeah, I think ageing does come with this element of derangement. I have a lot of thoughts about Jake as effectively this ageing child star, put on a pedestal on Earth-C at 16 and it becoming insidious, exploitative.

Jake is self aware of his lack of agency on a literal level within the narrative, perhaps even of the narrative itself-- like a gilded bird cage of his own making and he probably could slip out between the bars but then who would he be, where would he go, would everyone hate him and abandon him? He'll just stay trapped, stay pretty on display, stay hurt until everyone probably leaves anyway because an audience is a very very fickle thing.

And I think that does sort of lead to an angle for me of Sunset Boulevard, tearing the yellow wallpaper, the starlet breakdown. Which is the depressing, almost Swift approach to it. And then you have the Ultimate Jake approach to it, the Snap. And yeah, I think historically Jake takes and takes and takes and bends and bends and bends and is called selfish for that and eventually that would snap anyone. If on top of that, he's aware of Dirk's actions and of the narrative, of being on display constantly even if he escapes that little bird cage, if the only way to ensure people stop fucking looking at him is to destroy the audience itself-- yes, I would accept that story as viable for his character.

[bigskydreaming]

I’m almost more bothered by fics that don’t take an actively antagonistic stance towards Dick’s character, because what’s so often viewed as a GOOD storyline for Dick in fanfics is just like.....100% connected to my issues with fanon.

What I mean is this:

So many Batfam fics, even when they think they’re being kind or generous to Dick’s character, treat any relationship Dick develops or demonstrates with Jason in-story as Dick’s redemption arc, for being a shitty brother/person before a certain point.

And then on top of that, a ton of fics that include all the way through Damian by their starting point, then proceed to use any relationship (or attempt at one) between Dick and Tim.....as Dick’s redemption arc, for being a shitty brother/person to Tim at the Robin-Red Robin transition.

And then on top of THAT, you have the Batfam fics that focus on post-Spyral interactions with his family as....Dick’s redemption arc for being a shitty brother/person there, and during the Ric Grayson era we had ‘fix-it fic’ after fic whose idea of fixing it was picking things up at some point after Dick got his memories back and then proceeding to write Dick’s redemption arc for Ric being a shitty brother/person there. And even going all the way back to Bruce and Dick’s era of estrangement before Tim came along, there’s still absurdly so many fics over the years dedicated to....Dick redeeming himself in other characters’ eyes for that chasm with absolutely no effort in the same fics shown towards having Bruce work towards any kind of remption for his own behavior.

Historically speaking, the vast majority of fics tagged as Dick Grayson, stretching back years and still very much present now as well, are almost predominantly ALL somehow some kind of redemption arc for Dick.....

Specifically in regards to events and dynamics which have absolutely no basis (or at most an extremely skewed and one-sided one) in the source material. 

In fact, in the majority of most of the situations Dick’s being ‘redeemed’ for in fanfics, he either did the complete OPPOSITE of what he’s being punished/forced to make up for in fics, such as how his efforts in reaching out to Jason despite his own understandable bitterness stands in direct contradiction of the years of neglect and bitterness towards Jason that fics posit and theorize existed purely so that he has something TO redeem himself for in fics.....

Or then other times in the source material, he’s the literal actual victim of the things that he’s not only being held solely accountable and in need of redemption for in fics, like when he was beaten into going undercover for the sake of his family.....and then has to redeem himself for that in his family’s eyes......or when he was alienated, neglected and gaslit by his family while amnesiac.....and then has to redeem himself for that in his family’s eyes.....

And even in the cases where its SAID within a fic’s narrative (or more accurately, usually its said in the comments sections of fics as fic authors respond to people being disgusted with Dick by saying ‘no don’t be too hard on him’ and offering up justifications for Dick’s actual actions and understanding for his POV that for some reason never make it into the actual text of fics), like, even then, at most these fics TELL us that the flaws of Dick’s that they’re focusing on are understandable and its just human of him to be resentful of Jason as Robin, or overwhelmed and grief-stricken when he made Damian Robin at Tim’s expense, or traumatized and not thinking clearly when he ‘agreed’ to go undercover at Spyral.....

But meanwhile, what the fics actually SHOW us, beyond a few half-hearted defenses of Dick that usually are not at all substantiated by any other characters.....is Dick remorsefully doing the work of making up for the things he did so terribly, terribly wrong and that there’s actually no excuse for.

With this showing being a lot more evident and focused-upon than we ever see fics show Jason working towards earning Tim’s forgiveness and trust for almost killing him, or Damian doing the same, fics just skip past these things entirely to say ‘oh they’re better now’ but like....with Dick....its like the only storyline a ton of writers have any interest in writing for Dick....

Is a redemption arc.

Actively focusing on and SHOWING Dick putting in the work of being apologetic, remorseful, self-loathing, and absolutely committed to doing better by his siblings even if they never actually forgive him - with whether or not he can eventually ‘earn’ his way to a positive relationship with them far from a given - and any and all of his positive attributes or the positives of his actual relationships with various characters all but completely ignored or glossed over, to keep the focus entirely on Dick learning to do better.....

Than the crimes or slights against his siblings that authors first manufactured or exaggerated or took completely out of context, just to HAVE a reason for Dick to need to do better in the first place.

As I’ve said many times before, anyone is free to do whatever they want with fanfic, its an innately transformative medium, but its always going to be significant and worth attention in my mind, that so much of the transformation from the source material when it comes to Dick Grayson is entirely focused around and committed to transforming him from a hero that everyone loves and respects, a guy that always does his best to go above and beyond for family even when he has understandable reasons not to, and the literal inspiration for almost every second generation hero out there, including his own successors......

Into a guy that most people can’t stand, regard as irrelevant to their own careers let alone anyone worth looking up to, and constantly letting people down, especially his family.

All while there’s little to no attention paid to all the reasons in the source material that other characters most definitely have things they’ve said or done to Dick Grayson that need or deserve redeeming for.

Like the physical violence every single member of his family except Duke has inflicted on him at some point.

Or the victim blaming that’s so ingrained into his storylines and reader receptions of his storylines that even the fics that tackle redeeming Jason, Tim, etc for their behavior towards Dick post-Spyral limit this particular redemption to ‘we’re sorry we treated you badly when we didn’t know all the facts’ instead of ‘we’re sorry we treated you badly, full stop’ and ‘we’re sorry we passed judgment without even TRYING to know what all the facts were’ and ‘we’re sorry we display so little interest in your life or your traumas that even now when we’ve been informed you actually died and had to be forced into pretending to stay dead, we have zero interest in exploring if there’s anything else we might be missing if we could miss out on the whole ‘oh you really DID die’ part in the first place, and forget about us actually owning and apologizing for the specifics of how our behavior towards you was unacceptable even if we HAD been right in our interpretation of events.’

Or when mentions of the slutshaming and victim-blaming he endured during the Tarantula and Mirage storylines are limited to just that....mentions made of offscreen characters like Babs or the Titans.....with pretty much no stories I can think of, existing as ‘redemption arcs’ that tackle those characters actually working to redeem themselves for their behavior and trying to earn back Dick’s broken trust in them. Its usually just Jason and/or others finding out, telling Dick ‘hey your friends shouldn’t have done that either’ and then going off and murdering Mirage and Tarantula, the end, because....that fixes everything?

And forget about Bruce redeeming himself for his behavior - the way he works to put in the effort and fix things in so many ‘Jason returns to the family’ fics - but even when actual mention is made of the things Bruce HAS done wrong to Dick or needs redeeming for, its mostly just waved off as ancient history that he’s remorseful about but there’s no apparent need or effort to focus on Bruce putting that remorseful energy into action and actively on the page trying to bridge the gap he created in SO MANY storylines, again and again and again. ‘Bruce is just like that,’ a lot of stories shrug, about the time Bruce made Dick actually feel unwelcome in his own home and forced him to be the one to leave, unlike the way ‘its unacceptable for Dick to be like this’ energy is applied to stories about Dick forcing Tim to leave Wayne Manor....an action that has to be invented for a story’s purposes, of course, given that in the actual source story, Dick relocated himself and Damian to the penthouse anyway, and Wayne Manor was open and available to Tim and Dick never so much as implied otherwise.

Or look at how the adoption issue so often plays out....with it treated as though Bruce finally adopting Dick in adulthood just ‘fixes’ all the angst before that point, like it just overwrites everything he felt or experienced before and up until that.....with very little fandom energy paid to neither just castigating Bruce for not adopting Dick earlier or acting like adoption is a magic all-better now band-aid, but rather examining that both these things can coexist, and Dick can be happy and relieved and pleased to finally have the adoption he not-so-secretly wanted, even if only in adulthood, but that doesn’t mean the mental and emotional upset of his later teen years when he really, really, really could have used that declaration of being family rather than just a ward....like, there’s room for that to have still taken a toll and be worthy of awareness and regret on Bruce’s part, not for taking so long to adopt Dick, but for the damage Dick felt and suffered through BECAUSE of it. 

Its not even about vilifying or punishing Bruce for this, because ironically, like....redemption arcs aren’t actually supposed to be just about punishment or whatever? Its about acknowledging where wrong was done and GETTING what that means for the person who was wronged.....even if it can’t be undone.

People can get this when its Dick being written as having the redemption arc.

So where the hell is this understanding of what actual redemption MEANS, when its Dick that other characters have things to make up for?

The funny, ironic, cognitive dissonant thing about Dick Grayson in fanfics, is the vast majority of his appearances and storylines all somehow come back towards being his redemption arc in some way or form.....

For the made-up or exaggerated fanon crimes applied to him in fic, but that HE’S usually the actual recipient of in canon.

See, its not an obsession with canon that’s the reason for the disconnect between Dick Grayson fans and the takes favored by fans of most other characters.

Its the fact that the transformative energy of fanfiction, in his case, so often is utilized to give HIM reason to tackle the redemption arcs that OTHER characters owe HIM, but that so many of these fans don’t WANT to write their own faves being subjected to.....because they’re fans of these characters as heroes. They have no interest in reading or writing their favorite characters redeeming themselves for actions or behavior they personally don’t view as in character for them.

.....with the cognitive dissonant part in particular, being the way so many of these exact same fans turn around and express shock and bewilderment that Dick’s fans are simlarly uninterested in wanting to read nothing but their favorite character redeeming himself for actions or behavior we personally don’t view as in character for him....because it usually isn’t, according to the original stories BEFORE fanfic transforms him from victim of other beloved characters into victimizer of them instead.

And lol, many of us don’t actually want to see him as victim of other beloved heroes either! We’re in agreement there! Its why we come to fanfic instead of canon in the first place....to find stories where he’s not casually and regularly mistreated by other characters we like. But instead we usually only find stories that take everything people don’t want to see other characters doing to him, and making him do it to others. That’s not an improvement for us, lol! That’s just taking one problem and exchanging it for another. 

Flipping the script to make Dick the victimizer instead of other characters only fixes things if the only concern is making sure those characters aren’t seen as victimizers.

The really annoying part is how so many people can be so clear and cognizant of not wanting this for their own faves....yet are surprised, dismissive and disdainful of Dick’s fans....expressing the EXACT SAME FEELINGS.....about our own fave.

[comradelionheart]

This is where I feel safest.

In the blueness of this site, held in comfort as if under my blanket of soft fur.

No one here will ever know who I am or the people I speak of. No one can find me here. I have a questionable habit of running off to avoid being witnessed when I fail or am in pain, and this is where I run to. It is luckily not a boy this time. Well, it’s sort of that too, but not predominantly.

I haven’t shut G out this time. When I thought I’d lost my shot at the job I deleted my WhatsApp and all other social media, and refused to surface until I was willing to face people again. This isn’t unlike when I graduated college uncertain of what to do with life next and just... vanished. I’d a pretty promising presence on Facebook that could potentially have introduced him and I sooner, but I guess life unravels at its own pace and nothing can force it to go sooner or slower. I’ve grown rather accepting of failures because I have unfortunately grown accustomed to them. It’s almost like I expect to meet with resistance or failure each time something nearly works out and in this case I can’t say I willed it upon myself. I literally tested positive for TB. Which is amusing since those are my ex’s initials, and is yet another TB which seems to be hampering my progress. 

Dry humour is what I’m best at if I’m being my authentic self. I must unfortunately smile and wave because I’m a woman and need to be likeable to get anywhere in my line of work. That isn’t to say I’m a sociopath or hate people. I just wish I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in their lives and feign amusement at their not so novel ideas. Pretty sure I’ve not so novel ideas too, but I don’t need to be indulged for the sake of my (not) fragile ego. Anyhow.

I applied for this job early in the year and didn't expect to hear from them (because the first few years of my work life had me flailing and coping with depression instead of steering my career, and I know I shouldn’t grudge her for this but I do). But I did hear from them. And everything went through. Including 3 rounds of aptitude tests and a personal interview (which I thought I bombed but didn't somehow). Until I tested positive on a skin patch test for TB. Why do these stupid standard sets of tests get prescribed world over? Honestly, if I’m ever supreme leader of anywhere I will ban standardised tests. Not in the way that I say medicine is a sham, not at all, but in the way that WE LIVE IN THE THIRD WORLD AND WILL OF COURSE HAVE TAKEN THE BCG OR HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THE BACTERIA AT SOME POINT BUT IT’S NOT NECESSARILY EVER GOING TO BE ACTIVE SO USE A BETTER AND MORE CONTEXT SPECIFIC TEST INSTEAD OF GIVING ME ANXIETY AND EXISTENTIAL CRISES LIKE THESE, JFC. 😭😭😭

But I’ve taken the other test and that’s also got the drawback of being unable to differentiate between inert and active TB. So I took an HRCT scan. I’m so sick of running around hospitals, there’s a literal virus in the air. But Monday is when I’ll know the medical verdict. And then there’s the whole security check process. I hate when this happens but I’ve lost so much time to grief, I simply cannot sit around moping any longer. 

Earlier this year I interviewed with the **. I was given a verbal confirmation and had a text message implying an offer was made to me, because I received an acknowledgement to my acceptance of an offer. If I was the person I was in 2014, I’d have kicked up a fuss and made sure that offer was honoured, but 2021 me knows that working with bosses who go back on their word slyly and cave to nepotism usually need their cocks sucked. And I’m not only incapable of that, but have also dealt with enough workplace harassment elsewhere to be adamant about a brand at the risk of my mental health. But really, he can go suck it because I have confirmation from staff that he is EVERYTHING I read him to be. I’m not intuitive or anything, I just read people very well because I was hurt so bad by them (repeatedly since childhood) that reading people became a thing I did for survival. My sharp instincts serve me well, but are a trauma response. I am very self aware too, yes.

I then interviewed and got through an NGO that was willing to pay me 24L. I turned it down because the founders were running around like headless chicken with their inability to distinguish PR from Marketing Comms (me) from Marketing for business development. I know I was being paid a lot of money, but I will not kill myself performing all three functions while being acknowledged for just the one on my offer letter. I’ve learned to value my labour capacity and assert myself in the economic and political spheres. 

Personally though? I sometimes still think I’m a romantic pushover.

But this is about work because I need to weep a little before being calm about how this year has treated me. Especially since I’m maintaining a cool demeanour in public and literally hate sharing things I’m burdened with. Idk man, it makes me feel vulnerable and I don’t like feeling like I’ll get a knife twisted in the spot that's most sore. I AM SCREAMING BECAUSE I HAVE LET G WITNESS ME IN PAIN THIS TIME INSTEAD OF RUNNING AWAY and will someday file copyright over An Enduring Romantic because that’s very honestly me. But ofc it isn’t going to be the legal Copyright, just the sham notice like the one I’d sent him to up his Instagram game. Or he could just operate my Twitter and I’ll run his gram. It’ll even feel natural.

Sometime around May an environmental journal asked me to come on board. Work from the office at the height of the pandemic with no travel compensation and very little money. I turned them down. Then came II**. Which I again turned down because they wouldn’t pay market rate for skills I’ve perfected in 4 years just because they wanted 8 years experience on paper for my quotation. I will do a lot for causes I love, but I also really enjoy being paid fairly and acknowledged for the value I bring to the table.

Then came the start up in Del. Which I turned down because the uncle running it in his wife’s name expected 24*7 labour availability for 12L with no health insurance.

The latest in my list of things I’ve turned down is the ** Gov. Which I can obviously go back to since my reason for turning it down was another job, but 14 days of leave all year? 7 day work week if needed? Hell no. I enjoy having labour rights. But also when I told the dude I’d be reporting to if I accepted that I cant accept due to covid concerns his reaction was “sure, send me an email so we can start looking for someone else immediately.” Like.... we just had a second wave, what if something was wrong? I wouldn’t risk losing my job because they expect work even if I were hypothetically coughing up blood. So best not to touch with a bargepole. Now I’m less sad, but also really hope the TB results are negative. This job I want and have said yes to ticks off all of the boxes in my head and I will truly be disappointed if I lose it to disease paranoia despite being completely suited and picked for the role 😞

Just to be on the safer side, I have taken one last shot at achieving my goal of ‘learn how political systems work so you know what you’re talking about first hand in that PhD.’ I hope my Plan A works out instead, though.

Since I’ve brought him up in this, it will be interesting to note that a year ago I did the erstwhile unthinkable act of cutting a friend of for attempting to steal a man I love. A year ago to the date, literally. Funny how this year is more calm, but I was maxed out on endorphins from him last year. Until this March even, if I’m being truthful. I don’t regret cutting her off.She crossed a vvvv red line. ALL my other friends are celebrating. They detested her. 

Another thing that happened last year was me letting him know that I only get hotter with time, but along with this work drama I have also had a run in with intense grief which I thought was a mood disorder (because it was intense, I mentioned?), cholesterol, thyroid, sugar addiction and now, le TB (PLEASE BE A FALSE POSITIVE YESU KRISTU HALP). So needless to say, I haven’t been most fabulous and undergone my physical transformation and these mental health struggles (are getting better now) strapped me to my couch along with the pandemic and its many lockdowns. I have also not studied for the GRE because I’m stimulus seeking via social media and fear of sucking at math has kept me locked in place. I still have a lot to work through on this front and would really like to make his cover right too, but my creativity isn't working and I keep fucking it up. I am not as spectacular as I was last year. The separation has also weathered my dazzle out a little and while I’m living with it, I still have small waves of sadness that show up once in a while.

I might have also accidentally flirted with someone into falling for me. It was all fun and games and for my pride, but now I’ve to gently let them down since I’ve cold feet and am chicken. Because I’m as emotionally unavailable as a streetlamp. Is this why they call me a Gurgaoni fuckboi?

[flufflebones]

some more fun hcs about delphine [mc 1.... closest 2 my heart since ive used her in various settings for a While]! it’s a little long so im slapping it under a cut but its all sfw and all very much in good fun.

you know, mostly. i only really got two headcanons down and one is brief/about michael and the other is about pets in the devildom

- can and will fight michael do you think they saw the angel/anni event and were ok with it? yeah? no! just going to kick him hard enough in the shin to....... probably bust their own foot but its FINE 

- has an approximate accumulated f*ckton of devildom native and possibly (definitely) magical pets

[The list:

Sosig / Sausage - Hellhound - Gift from Beelzebub!:

A beast of considerable size and [reportedly] god awful temperament, bearing charcoal fur and the lingering [faint] scent of sulphur. More vulpine than canine, their frames are typically gaunt, with the flames that fuel their bodies licking out from the ends of their tails, their ankles and wrists [on their normal quadrupedal legs], the inner portions of their ears [leaving them at a disadvantage when it comes to hearing], their somewhat visible / open ribcage, and the corners of their mouth. 

Despite this general introduction, hellhounds are wildly varied and have a number of breeds and variations in recent history, typically intended for one of three purposes.

Companionship - These hellhounds are typically smaller in stature and less sturdy, with a tendency to bond strongly to one or two masters [with some consideration/leeway for those close to their master: See- Cerberus]. Arguably the most docile of any class of hellhound, they are still dangerous if not raised correctly, and have a nasty bite. Though not a true classification and with no formal means of training a hound to do so naturally, some companion hellhounds serve as a psuedo service dog, heavily attuned to the needs and potential problems unique to their primary master. This isn’t to say that they are an alternative to service animals, or anywhere near as well trained, *of course*, but the devildom is hardly the safest place for a regular human realm animal; And sometimes, you’ve just got to work with what you’ve got.

Sport / Show - Typically very much breed standard. While raised to tolerate handling and grooming, these traditionally built hellhounds are temperamental at best and borderline terrifying when their willful nature comes in direct conflict with a demonic handler who bit off more than they can chew. Heavily regulated, and typically owned by the elite.

Protection - The devildom is dangerous, and nobody is questioning that. Demons with a knack for animal handling [or demons who can afford to hire someone skilled with animals, of course!] breed and train these creatures to guard many things; People, places, objects, etc. They’re typically territorial and hard to train as a rule, as one cannot allow for a beast such as this to be tempted by treats or good petting from *anyone*, yfm?

Sausage is a bit of a mixed bag. Born from protective stock and bought by Beelzebub after overhearing Mammon trying to convince Lucifer to get Delphine/my mc a pet [who lays eggs, we’ll get there, that he can sell for a massive profit]. Being the youngest present brother at the time, anything capturing his interest other than food is both welcomed and encouraged in an attempt to positively reinforce him to not put the devildom at risk of a famine.

Delphine unintentionally raised this brick house of a hellhound puppy into a sort of in-between of companion and protector, with him being very social, very sweet, and *fairly* defensive and willful if things aren’t going his way. He’s typically the one to step in most successfully to motivate her to move around [yes, moreso than the brothers!] and do her day to day tasks, and is probably the best way to find out if something’s wrong with her-- Past being able to just kind of drag her off due to their size differential, his general wit and ability to communicate his needs and wants have led to unexpected food deliveries, blankets spread over her shoulders, and human world medicines arriving a few days before she shows any real signs of illness that she can see.

He’s also spoiled as all get out. If you’re sharing a bed/couch/blanket/etc with her, you can bet Sausage is soon to follow. Sorry, Mammon! He loooves table scraps and is almost as bad as Beel when it comes to eating things he shouldn’t [and looking too cute to be scolded about it too heavily].

Rocky - ... That’s just a rock, dude. - Gift from Belphegor:

It’s really hard to tell if Belphegor is messing around when he presents Delphine with a rough hewn black rock bearing two googly eyes, a pair of hilariously out of place crystalized horns, and a pair of similarly out of place crystal wings, but I swear on all things unholy, he’s doing it for a reason.

Though not... Really sentient, initially, Rocky just needs a good, possibly year long charging. Soulstones are sort of... Weird, in that they are inert and lifeless for as long as they remain with the boulders from which they are harvested. but typically-- After being exposed to a single party’s magical runoff and signature for a year or so-- absorb enough energy to come to life, their coloration and mineral makeup adjusting to fit the nature of the being they owe their life to. Delphine’s takes the form of a celestine and blue goldstone peryton; A winged stag. With crystalized wings and antlers, Rocky would almost look majestic; If it weren’t for the fact that the googly eyes have remained a feature that she has never been able to figure out how to remove. Soulstones are typically quiet observers, not requiring active care to thrive but delighting in contact [especially immediately post spell casting or magic use]. They are attuned to the needs of their magic bound masters, and typically exude an air of-- if not positive-- reassurance.

In Delphines Little Canon Divergence Corner, it’s likely that rocky coming into her care is one of the first of many attempts at reconciliation that Belphegor makes with her post chapter 16; And it honestly really, really sets him back, like, even when she returns to the human realm. Forgotten but included in her luggage, it’s a few weeks into her settling down on Earth that she finds the dinky little stone, and an overload of magic-- Possibly emotionally sourced, possibly due to unresolved tension/a discussion that never got to happen because he was being a little jerk about it-- sets off the transformation, which occurs overnight.

She recognizes the little stone figure when it approaches her in the morning, and one of her first texts about it is a simple, succinct “WTF” + an image attachment sent to Belphegor, specifically in the dead of night with the intention to wake him.

Henry “Pogchampion” 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0, A.K.A: “Pip! Minette! Beans!” - Infernal rats - Gift from Leviathan:

A note: If you don’t care for rats or you’re more familiar with their popular association with illness or disease/classification as vermin, and are only capable of thinking of them in that context, I don’t care. I am specifically talking about rats in the context of them being pets-- And good pets, at that. If you want to talk about how much you wish they were dead/didn’t exist, thats not my problem. Just don’t do it on a post discussing them as a pet, or I will block you!

Anyway!

Leviathan is probably the most appropriate person for them to get pet recommendations from, but her asking never winds up a necessity; When he finds out that he’s got another pet enthusiast in the house, he’s *all* about it, and when he finally [very unsubtly] weasels his way into the information he needs, he gets them to come along with him to what’s supposed to be a routine supply trip for Henry that just *CAN’T* be accomplished online. It’s a trip to *a* shop, but not what she’s expecting, especially when she gets to meet a handful of very curious, very playful, larger than a medium sized dog mice and rats. These guys are very much pests turned pets, with a small niche of hobbyists raising them and breeding them for temperament and overall health and disease resistance. Very social and very intelligent, they tend to thrive best in groups if one is not devoting all of their time to them as an individual. The type Leviathan recommends are on the smaller side, with cloudy, soft fur and sweet temperaments. And massive teeth, nubby horns, spade tipped tails, and very large, typically bony or leathery wings.

Levi is... Probably the one who wanted them, really. They get a little big, and tend to like to roughhouse, and they chew like nobody’s business-- And while he can’t risk his figures or merch or other Otaku Trappings or wires for everything in his room, he *CAN* risk Delphine’s. Plus, Sausage needs a friend, right? Or three?

They pick up three, all of whom are sisters, and all of whom on paper are named Henry “Pogchamp”, 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0, since he *is* technically the one paying for them and at least gets to do that much. Even when they start being named Pip, Minette, and Beans, in casual conversation, he can still hold on to the fact that they’ll always be Henries in his heart of hearts.

Sausage loves them to bits, for the record, but their interactions tend to be supervised/very brief even without the worry of him being able to harm any of them due to the general (and very appropriate) ill advisement of large predators interacting with smaller prey animals. It’s cute, sure, but it can be dangerous, and Delphine (and Levi, to a lesser extent, because he’s using the excuse of them being friends to keep Lucifer off of his ass for adding another animal to her menagerie) isn’t about to risk it.

Sweets - .... A black cat? That glitters? - Gift from Satan and Asmodeus:

Small, sleek, and independent, Sweets is probably the pet people see the least of all of Delphine’s little collection-- Though that doesn’t mean she’s not well loved. A pet project between Satan and Asmodeus, Sweets isn’t *technically* a cat; They’re a being comprised of shadow, somewhat similar in nature to a familiar without the connotation of them technically being a demon slash demonic. Who just so happens to have been enchanted to appear like and generally function in their day to day life as a cat. That sparkles, the only concession Satan was willing to grant Asmodeus in return for his help obtaining the materials necessary to create  the little beast (and in return for him taking the heat when Lucifer inevitably got pissy about it). Given its unique nature, very little is actually known about the little being of shadow past basic care and assumptions based on its generally feline behavioral patterns. The rats scare the hell out of it, however, and it tends to be out of sight except when called, hiding in shadows and only occasionally emerging on its own.

... Oh, and be careful. Satan hasn’t told Del yet, but it seems that the belly rubs this shadowy kitty offers tend  to bite off more than they can chew if they’re not careful. Asmodeus thinks its horrible. Who wants a pet with a massive maw of teeth in their stomach? Satan desperately wants to use this quirk in Sweets’ nature for a prank. Delphine already knows, but is playing dumb for the sake of faking surprise when its formally revealed.

Elysia - Gilded Crow - Gift from Lucifer and Mammon:

SO, i”M going to keep this short because i’ve been writing this for several hours at this point on and off and i really really want to be ready for my dinner when its ready, but!

Elysia is a sort of... Special circumstance. Literally. Devotees to Mammon-- And yes, there *are* people who think he’s a legitimate demon lord, the only people really allowed to treat him like garbage are his brothers and a few choice officials too strong to be eradicated as any lesser demon might have been-- with a background in magical augmentation specifically enchanted this line of crows to reflect that which is most valued by their Lord; Riches. They’re technically not legal due to their status as something of an organic money generator, but a select few in a small flockare kept under the watchful eyes of the Demon Lord and his immediate family, and those who have been trusted by his family members. This is where Lucifer comes in.

Understandably, Mammon is not allowed to have care of his flock, though he certainly wouldn’t be the worst at caring for them. He’d just also be selling their products illegally, and you can’t have that!

Elysia wears a small enchanted band comprised of dull, unimpressive iron-- The kind of thing Mammon would neither notice nor have interest in. This band is enchanted, and serves as a sort of storage space for any of Ely’s dropped organic components. Talons, feathers, eggs-- Everything is automatically absorbed into the band, rendering the bird borderline useless outside of being a gorgeous pet, and a gigantic nuisance. 

Lucifer hates to admit it, but he really is a fan of the large, intelligent, gorgeous creature; And Mammon thinks it’s really funny to teach her to take shiny things (like grimm, loose jewelry, gum wrappers, etc), even past the sentimental value of the bird itself and what her kind represents to him. 

Delphine adores her, too, and is about as good an influence on her as Mammon is-- Teaching her to speak, in some capacity, simply by repeating certain words or phrases to herself as she does things in the day to day, especially during feeding time. It’s all fun and games, until this pretty golden bird calls Lucifer a ‘motherf*cker’ while she thinks he’s out of the room while visiting with Diavolo for an update on her health.

[countdown-to-destruction]

Inuyasha Sequel: a rant

Put this up this earlier on a post I re-blogged, tried to edit a part or two where I didn’t like the way I had phrased it, and ended up messing up the whole format I wrote this in. Luckily I wrote this as a draft earlier anyways! So I did a some fixing and now I’m just copy-pasting it again and making it a text post instead. This will be very long and a little nit-picky but I wanted to make a post ever since I heard about the upcoming sequel to Inuyasha, Hanyō no Yashahime. I did put a TLDR at the end for those who don’t want to read everything. Not sure how many people in the fandom still follow me and will see this, as it's been a long time since I was actually active in the fandom, but it's hands-down both my favorite manga and anime of all time and I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately so I had to post something. Before reading this be sure to read all of the translated character bios for Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha so that this makes sense.

When I first heard that Inuyasha would be getting a sequel I was excited! But after reading up on it, to be completely honest I'm not feeling this sequel anymore. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but hear me out. Firstly, it seems like Rumiko is mostly involved in the character design aspect and the writing is up to Katsuyuki Sumisawa. The music will be produced by Kaoru Wada which is great! And from what I’ve seen and read online a number of others who worked on the original series will reunite so hopefully the story will go well. However, knowing Rumiko isn't personally writing and not knowing how much input she has or will give makes me unsure about watching. The original Inuyasha anime followed and was based off of the events in the manga, and there was no manga prior to this for it to be based on. Depending on what happens this could be an alright sequel or a total miss. Unfortunately sequels in general are known to be disappointing in some way. 

Secondly, if I hear anything about Rin being the mother of Sesshomaru's twin daughters I'm out. This part will be a SUPER long and in depth explanation on why I think this way, feel free to skip if you're not interested. Please don't come for me on this, I'm here to explain my thoughts and feelings on the sequel and the theories around it so far, not start an argument. I'm more than aware that there's plenty of controversy out there on this pairing and personally I do not support it. I never saw their relationship as more than a friendship, or something akin to child and guardian as Sesshomaru and Jaken are basically Rin's caretakers up until she goes to live in the village with Kaede. He definitely cares for her deeply but I can't see it in a romantic way, being that Sesshomaru isn't even a character focused on romance to begin with. He learns compassion through Rin's second death but that doesn't mean he loves her romantically. As a reminder his main goal is to seek power and be powerful, and it's stated that he needed to learn compassion and grief in order to mature. It's what helped him learn to wield the Tenseiga at its full potential. In addition, she was really young when they first met and still was when she went to live with Kaede. The idea of Sesshomaru (an adult) having romantic feelings for a kid under ten years old (around eleven at the end of the series, and still a literal child in all ways) and waiting for her to age with the intention of marrying her sits totally wrong with me. Age wise I realize that Inuyasha is decades older than Kagome and that his father was much older than his mother, Izayoi, as well. The difference here is that Kagome was a teen when she met Inuyasha (who not just physically, but more importantly mentally was also a teen) and clearly Izayoi was old enough to conceive Inuyasha and give birth. As far as the audio dramas (more specifically "Asatte") go they're generally considered as an outtake reel and are essentially parodies, or a form of satire. Some will debate on this but realistically there’s plenty of reasons this is true, and those who take the time to properly check them out understand that. For me I've always had a headcanon that at some point in her teen years Rin would inevitably develop a one-sided crush on Sesshomaru and that he would ultimately set boundaries and reject her, seeing her as more of a close companion than a love interest and wanting her to live with someone she can grow old with. He gave her the choice to follow him and it's most likely that she would, but I think that once she began aging he would want her to have somewhere to settle, given that he enjoys roaming and seeking out other powerful beings to battle. It's strange to me that they decided to give Sesshomaru hanyō/half-demon children in general but based on the artwork we've seen it's fair to guess that they might have made Sesshomaru and Rin a pairing in this sequel.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to clarify that if you ship them together I'm not writing this here because I want to hate on your ship for no reason, or in order to create an argument on if the pairing makes sense, these are my thoughts and opinions on the matter and I’m voicing them because it’s what I believe. I already know that somebody won’t like this and will take it personally. People usually say that once Rin is an adult the pairing is acceptable but I disagree. I find it quite creepy that someone would think it would be alright for an adult to wait around for a kid to grow up with the intention to marry and/or sleep with them. Watching from a distance is the same exact thing, after making an impression on the child... let’s not normalize this. In this situation it would be grooming. We all have our own opinions when it comes to our ships and fandoms and I try to respect that but I can’t get behind this one.

Next we have the apparent lack of parental figures for the heroines. Where are the original Inuyasha characters at? Moroha's character bio says she barely knows her parents (Inuyasha and Kagome, our former main protagonists) and has been alone since she was young! It makes me think either something has happened to them or some kind of bizarre event separated them. And sorry, not related, but why does she transform by PUTTING LIPSTICK ON?? That part threw me for a loop.

When it comes to Setsuna and Towa their parents are absent too. I find it difficult to believe that Sesshomaru wouldn't keep track of his children given how he treats Rin and reacts to her going missing in any capacity. Especially if he happened to be fond of whoever their mother is. One daughter works as a taijiya/demon slayer for Kohaku and the other mysteriously transports to Kagome's era and is raised by Sota (I thought we had finished with the time jumps when the well closed but apparently not. When the Bone Eater's Well closed after Kagome's return it gave a sense of finality and closure to the story, and showed that Kagome had chosen where she was most happy and felt she belonged. I think that bringing the theme of time travel back into the sequel makes it feel repetitive, like something right out of a predictable fanfic. Props to Sota for taking in and raising a child who showed up out of nowhere though).

Another thing that came to mind when I read these character bios was why Inuyasha and Kagome's daughter and Sesshomaru's daughters are the exact same age. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. It only struck me as odd because suddenly everyone is having kids at the same time. And so far there's no mention of other characters like Sango, Miroku, Shippo, Jaken, Kaede, or Miroku or Sango's three children or where they are. One might expect that a story focused on the children of some of the original Inuyasha's main characters would feature appearances from those who had important roles in the previous series and their children. Which brings me around to wondering what made twin daughters a trend? Two sets of twin girls is a unique choice (Sango and Miroku's twin daughters. For such a small group of parental characters, what are the odds of two sets of twin girls? Where is the creativity and again why the repetition?).

Lastly, Sesshomaru's daughters lack some of the common yōkai/demon characteristics we see on Inuyasha and other characters. Their ears are human, and they have no markings or otherwise (that I noticed) with the exception of Setsuna's mokomoko/fur which is similar to Sesshomaru's. So perhaps they take more after their human mother? Given that Inuyasha seemed to inherit strong genes from his father it's interesting that they did not. Their ages also interest me as they appear to age the same way as humans do. Yōkai/demons are known to have a longer lifespan than humans and appear to slow down or almost stop aging at some point. Perhaps this confirms that the slowdown in aging occurs once they reach the equivalent of a human teen? 

Overall Inuyasha was a fantastic manga and great anime on its own, and I never got the feeling that it needed a sequel. As a stand-alone it was everything it needed to be. I thoroughly enjoyed both formats of the original, though I do have a tendency to disregard certain parts of the anime. I always preferred the manga more when the anime dragged out certain scenes (Shichinintai/Band of Seven arc for example) or straight-up excluded, changed, and added others. Taking that into consideration the sequel might end up being the same for me in that way, but rather than one scene that plays out for too long or an excluded, altered, or unnecessary added scene, if it’s not any good I’ll simply disregard it altogether. When the anime comes out I certainly plan to try watching it out of loyalty to the fandom, and due to the fact that it's "technically" canon (without Rumiko being the writer I don't necessarily consider it canon, much like how some folks do or do not consider the movies canon) but I get the feeling that I'll wind up giving up on it in disappointment.

TLDR; Overall I'm left questioning if the sequel is worth watching (for me) given what I've read and heard so far, but nonetheless I will give it an optimistic try! I'm currently wondering how much we'll see of the original Inuyasha characters, if we get to find out what happened to them, if the number one pairing I'm not fond of will make an appearance (and cause me to drop the whole thing), and questioning parts of the character backstories and designs (why is there a repetitive and recurring theme of time travel and does it end up hindering or ruining the story, why do the protagonists all lack parents, and why do the hanyō/half-demon characters lack common yōkai/demon traits and does it make them more human than demon?).

[otterknowbynow]

Altean Home Economics (14/?)

Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access, even if that does mean figuring out some extraterrestrial foreign substances and ending up with a lot more than he bargained for. Set between 2x07 "Space Mall" and 2x08 "The Blade of Marmora," stretching time a little bit.

all chapters in this tag | full work on ao3

Edessa isn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't this. The quarters they enter aren't nearly as...sterile as she would predict from a couple of medics and their councilor wife. Renturin leads her into a front room set with somewhat mismatched comfortable-looking furniture -- with the small heat stove in the corner, it looks downright cozy. 

"You can sit down," the boy says, gesturing an arm in a way that encompasses the whole room and makes it clear she's free to choose her seat. Edessa nods and makes her way to a round-backed chair with wide armrests, framed out of some kind of strong dried brown plant matter, but cushioned with blue-green pillows. It's near the heat stove, and when she lowers herself into it, she's pleased to find the cushions are just firm enough to be comfortable with her back the way it is.

“Now, your papa and sasha --” Edessa begins, but she cuts herself off at a clatter from further inside. 

“Ren?” a voice calls warmly. “Is that you?” 

“Yes, Papa,” the boy calls back. “Wait here. You can’t -- well, anyway, just wait,” he adds to Edessa, and disappears down the hallway further into the house. Edessa frowns, looking around the room and considering her options. She could stay here, sitting in what is admittedly a highly comfortable chair. She could leave -- that doesn’t seem likely, there’s much too much interesting going on. Besides, Renturin -- maybe he did prefer Ren -- came to find her on purpose, even if he was a bit shaken at the time. She could follow, which does admittedly seem like the most appealing option, even if she’s not usually one to overstep -- there’s a child involved, and he had said his parents were sick. 

She’s saved from having to follow through on such an endeavor by Ren’s return. He’s picked up a face covering somewhere, which stretches across the bridge of his nose, covering the sickles on his cheeks and securing around the back of his head. It looks almost like a bandage, and the curious nature of its appearance causes Edessa to take a moment to realize he’s holding another similar covering out to her. 

“Put this on, please,” he says. “It’s...you need it. Papa says.” 

“Alright,” Edessa says slowly, taking the covering from him and holding it across her own sickles. She frowns as she tries to figure out the straps, and Ren flaps a hand at her to get her to kneel so he can reach to secure it around her face. She thinks about asking him what it’s for, but it seems to her the child’s been through enough this morning already, and presumably if she gets to see some adults -- she wishes she could remember the medical attendings’ names -- they’ll be in a better position to explain. Leading her down the hallway, Ren runs one hand along the wall beside him, which Edessa notices is made of some kind of light brown paneling, rather than the usual smooth white metal. The opposite wall is mostly windows, letting in plenty of morning sunlight filtered through the dome. They pass a number of doors, where Ren seemingly automatically hops his hand off the wall and back on again. All the doors are shut, with command panels next to them just like the ones she’s seen in her own stays in the medical sector. No labels, but then, they wouldn’t need any in a home, she supposes. 

“Sasha’s asleep, but Papa’s up, or at least awake. I told him you’re here, and he said to bring you back and he’ll explain better -- inform you about precautions.” Ren stops for a moment and looks back up at her. “I think he means about the face things.” 

“Alright,” says Edessa, nodding. She’s still holding the small bag of tarts, and she wishes she’d thought to bring more, since their dwindling supply won’t get them too far if they need to be nursing two sick adults all day. Still, if at least one of them is conscious, that’s a good sign. The hallway is long, but the door at the end is open, the panel glowing with a soft white light, unlike the six or so they passed -- Edessa had lost count when Ren started talking. 

As they approach the open door, she starts to hear the low hum of machinery over the rest of the background sounds of the house, and Ren leads her into a neat modest bedroom. The bed in the center is made of the same kind of plant fiber as the frame of her chair in the front room, with one figure curled up under its ocean of blankets. This in itself immediately strikes Edessa as odd -- it’s quite warm in the house -- but she’s distracted by the other figure in the room, who must be Ren’s father. He’s tall by Entuk standards, wearing one of the same face strip coverings that Ren brought her, and would cut an imposing figure if not for the warmth in his eyes and the smile on his face. 

“Edessa, a delight to see you, if anything especially given the circumstances,” he says, and Edessa keeps from slapping her own forehead to try to remember his name, but it’s a close thing. 

“Likewise, medic,” she says, hating it as soon as it’s out of her mouth. There are only so many people at the outpost, and one of their head medical officers shouldn’t be a difficult pull. 

“Zoric,” he says, tone still impossibly kind. “I wouldn’t expect you to know -- Lenida’s usually the one who gets all the press, so to speak. Speaking of which, she’s, well --” He stops and gestures toward the bed, where the figure under the covers stirs and rolls over back into the pile of pillows. “She’s not doing as well as the rest of us, I’m afraid.” Zoric doesn’t look like he’s doing so well, either, if the bags under his eyes or the shaking in his hands are any indication, and Edessa is pretty sure if it weren’t for Ren’s return and not wanting to frighten the boy, he wouldn’t have made the effort to get out of bed. 

“You should probably lie down also,” Edessa says firmly. “Or at least sit -- you can talk as well from sitting, Zoric.” She may have only met him on a few occasions, but Edessa has dozens of sun cycles of experience more than the good medic, and that’s enough to lend her some authority in this situation, she hopes. 

“You’re --” Zoric cuts off to cough into one white-sleeved elbow, grimacing. He nods, and moves to an armchair in the corner by the headboard of the bed, nearly identical to the one she sat in in the front room. The furniture in here is far better coordinated than it is out there, Edessa notices. It’s not until Ren appears by Zoric’s side with a small silver pouch and a straw that Edessa even notices he left the room, but Zoric takes the pouch gratefully and pierces it with the straw with trembling fingers, taking a long drink before speaking again. “I don’t think we imagined we would all come down with it at the same time,” he says. “What do you know about this sickness, Edessa?” 

“I know it started a few moons ago,” she says slowly. “I know a number of people have recovered from it, and there have been no deaths. I know transmission seems to be somewhat limited, though we haven’t quite figured out how yet.” She takes a deep breath. “And I know Councilor Hilvra took ill a few days ago.” 

“All accurate, though it’s also true we’ve been learning more with every new case that arises,” Zoric says. “Unfortunately, medical has had a time trying to get any solid data on how to treat it apart from treating symptoms...like you said, that usually works, but in Councilor Hilvra’s case, we haven’t been seeing much of an improvement. Lenida and I have been staying with her as much as possible, running any tests we can think of and trying to treat her symptoms. Unfortunately, that seems to have come around and bitten us in the ass.” He smiles ruefully at her. 

“Papa, language,” Ren says, so sternly it takes Edessa until Zoric laughs to realize he was joking. 

“Anyway, the thing that’s truly maddening -- and I tell you this in confidence, Edessa -- is that Lenida found some texts last week, ones that seem to indicate --” He’s cut off by a series of demanding beeps, and he frowns down at his wrist communicator. “Oh -- I need to take this,” he says, putting his hands on the arms of the chair to go to rise. 

“No, stay here,” Edessa says. “I’ll take Ren out, if you need us to leave.” 

“Oh, it’s not that, he says, I need my -- yes, thank you, Ren.” The boy moves quickly and nearly-silently, Edessa thinks. He’d make a good scout. In any case, he’s brought Zoric a small tablet and stylus, which the medic balances on his lap as he brings his wrist communicator up to his face and presses the release. A small hologram appears in front of him, and Edessa feels a jolt of surprise as she recognizes it as Councilor Hilvra. A Councilor Hilvra that looks more tired and shaky than she’s ever seen, but Councilor Hilvra nonetheless. 

“Zoric,” the councilor says hurriedly, and Edessa is partly relieved to hear she still sounds like Hilvra, even if her appearance is more disheveled than she would ever appear in public. “It’s time. It must be.” Zoric, who had apparently been preparing to take notes, drops his stylus in surprise. 

“Are you sure, Councilor?” he asks, eyebrows lowering as his kind face transforms into a frown. “We haven’t exhausted --” 

“We have,” the tiny hologram interrupts. “We lost Lim this morning. It’s all over the sector. I hope Yeskia and the others have heard, because --”

“-- we can’t waste any time. I’ll handle things with the Councilors,” Zoric says. “You rest.” He hits a button on his communicator to cut off the transmission and turns to his son. “Ren, I need you to go to the lab; there’s a box in the corner --” 

“-- with the alarms, I know. But which one --” 

“-- take the key from Sasha’s hook, and mine, here --” He passes the boy a small silver key. “And take Edessa, you need to activate the off-world signal. We’re not getting through this alone.” 

[louisa-magcd]

Reflection

From last week tutorial, I gathered that I was being too scattered and kept on changing directions too many times. This very relevant observation was difficult to realise. I wasn’t happy with the <<progress>> of the work I had made, and lost track of where I was going and what I was doing.

This week I deeply reflected on what truly interested me and what I really wanted.

My work directed towards “form over content” wasn’t made intentionally; I took that direction because of my incapacity to find a “content” that I would feel truly invested or interested in. I felt insecure towards a more personal approach to my work as opposed to something more academic.

“What is the use of creating emotion-based work?”, was a recurrent question that came to my mind.

The constant switch between visual styles was also a struggle of mine as I was paradoxically trying to “please others”, in the sense that I wanted to create something that would be liked by a bigger audience.

I felt confused by the terms “position”, “practice” and “critical position”. Do I really need to define them this soon, is there even a need to define them? Is it wrong to be or feel lost?

Maybe the sense of loss or the loss of self could be a position?

I have always been quite precious with my work and value quality over quantity, and this entire project has been difficult for me so far as the whole point of it is to produce at a high volume (which I haven’t been successful with, at all).

The reason why last tutorial didn’t go well in my opinion (in terms of what I had done), is that I tried to change direction again, out of indecisiveness and my fear of making “meaningless work”. I tried to switch the direction towards something I thought would be more lighthearted but also something that would be more accepted.

I realised this week that I had to find a way to ground myself, and after writing my essay and doing research, I realised that I was clearly more interested in personal and intimate work.

I remember being particularly confused after reading “the death of the author” and it really made me question my own position: am I an author? Is authorship really dead? Is it really impossible to be an author at all?

These questions aside, I was also wondering if it was “wrong” to create around oneself, and if it was really an egotistical and selfish act.

So instead of thinking about how people would perceive me based on the work I produce (something that holds me back a lot), I started thinking about the artists I like and the art they make or made.  

I have also been significantly drawn to my Moroccan and French heritage and how I could potentially implement elements of my heritage into my work in subtle ways, and maybe merge them together.

I have been researching around Moroccan female artists specifically.

One of them is Chaibia Talal, one of the most influential Moroccan artists of the 20th century. Her story is especially extraordinary and touching. She was born in 1929 in a small village and married at age 13; her husband died when she was 15 years old. As a young widow and mother, she had no choice but to work as a cleaner in order to sustain herself and her son. She was illiterate.

She began painting in 1963 after having a “prophetic” dream that encouraged her to start painting. Her son had a painting studio, and that is where the art curator Pierre Gaudibert discovered her art work for the first time.

Chaibia Talal was a self-taught artist and she was exhibited all around the world. Although her work wasn’t well received in her time, she is now considered as a pioneer figure of Modern Moroccan Art.

The reason why it is important for me to talk about this artist comes from a need to discover more other Moroccan female artists that I can look up to.

Her work is extremely colourful; she was influenced by the “COBRA” avant-garde European art movement, but also pulled a lot of her themes from moroccan culture, depicting moroccan women in traditional costumes. There is an evident play with figuration and abstraction, and the very consistent use of patterns is also an echo to moroccan culture and craft.

Pattern making and symbols are an inherent part of Moroccan culture, even before it was a country. The west part of North Africa was actually constituted of nomadic Berbers.

These nomadic group of people would worship different divinities and symbols would be used both as protection, directly on the skin in the form of tattoos, or on the fabric they made and wore. Clothing was especially important as it was an indication not only of social status, class and wealth but also an indication of the nomadic group they belonged to.

Symbols had associated meaning with different purposes.

Pattern making became even richer after Islamic influences arrived in North Africa. Indeed, it is prohibited in the religion to depict God or any divine figure to Man’s image. Subsequently, symbols and patterns were used to palliate to this. Calligraphy was, and still is, a highly valued form of art; Koranic texts would be embellished and treated as images as opposed to just writing.

Geometry and symmetry was seen as a high form of art as well; there is an element of repetition, interlacing shapes, texts, and symbols that is prevalent throughout Moroccan Art, and craft History.

Symbols have always interested me whether it be part of my heritage, or other new found interests, such as the occult. I have always been fascinated by how different meanings and interpretations can be pulled out of one image or symbol. How visuals can be transformed and used as a new form of language.

There is also a very superficial reason to this as well. There is something about looking at an accumulation of symbols on one images that is, to me, pleasing to the eye. Even if I can’t necessarily fully comprehend the artist’s intention behind every details of their work, I naturally associate a meaning to it based on my own experience and subjectivity.

A good example of this would be Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”.  

I am aware of its religious ties, and there are extended interpretations made of this triptych oil painting. Yet, I much prefer look at it and create my own narratives out of the images and symbols I can observe from it. I enjoy the fact that there are a multitude of narratives enfolding on one big image.

In tarot as well, each card is illustrated with specific visuals that aid in the interpretation of its messages. The cards, put side by side, form a narrative that is enriched by a diversity of symbols.

Folklore too, have consistently used symbols and metaphorical analogies to express a deeper meaning.

The French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine is well known for using animals, insects and plants to convey more sensitive messages, at a time where criticising the King and his court was a real offence and a punishable crime.

After listing down all of the things that I loved, I realised that they weren’t so impossible to connect. At a first glance, they seemed impossible to link, but they all share a similarity: they all use symbols and images to attach personal meanings to them or convey certain messages or narratives.

In conclusion, I would like to develop my own “Visual Dictionary/Library”, or at least start this process.

Through this project, my aim refocused on its intended purpose, which was the expression of self through a diverse set of symbols and images.

By doing so, I go back to my very early iterations from Elaborate, where my work was more emotion-based; I intend on keeping the idea of self-reflection through making and researching, in order to develop my own visual language.