#intensely and deeply unrelatable

[lucky-aces]

I feel like my worst and most controversial take about TV is that if its released weekly/any way other than a whole season at a time, i am straight up not going to watch it. In the old fandom days nothing would immediately kill my intense interest in something like catching up to where the show actually was and having to wait between episodes.

[hungryslothwrites]

#i have a lot of sympathy for the violent god murder pomegranate baby deer greek tragedy writers #mostly because it comes down to this: 1) writing is always in some way very personal 2) writing is always in some way deeply embarrassing #even the good writing‚ however you choose to measure it: be it technical structure in plot or prose or knowing all the classics #being wideread or deeply connected to a particular literary tradition #writing 'honestly' and 'from the soul' #(i put this in quotes because i believe an element of honesty is always present and what people usually mean by this is technical skill- #in expressing themselves in a way that feels real‚ personal. #to quote ocean vuong 'I used to cry in a genre no one read. what a joke‚ they said‚ no fire'.) #so clinging to larger than life things helps in two ways: to create the distance between the writer and the thing written #(which is not always the same as dishonesty. some things can only be described from outside of them) #and trying to grant oneself some air of validity. look at my big boy shoes‚ I'm not sad‚ I'm in a greek tragedy #I'm not kissing a girl like my mother told me not to I'm eating her heart and the chistian god is crying personally. because of me #this is not to say this writing is Good. it often hinges on clinging to ideas of grandiosity that is quite shallow #it has to be‚ to support all the things it's not. #this is not even to speak of how white colonialist these aesthetics are - #challenging that would be undermining the shield of authority they grant. #even just your local theatre requires for you to divulge something #in some ways the baby deer pomegranate genre is almost the witch finding a lost cat in the alps genre #while the witch is explicitly stripping the political context to create a cozy comfy default feeling and in that reveals a lot #the baby deer pomegranate is a shorthand for intense emotion #(which i will not call angst because i have some respect for my fellow human beings even if they're being stupid) #that attempts a similar Defaultness. we all have Christian trauma of one of the sects popular in north America. we are all queer #but abled enough to leave an abusive environment in a cathartic way #(which doesn't involve leaving the country because this isn't about countries where queer safety and community looks very differently) #in the end it comes down to trying to say something without having to go through the ordeal of being too up close and personal about it #which is something i can very much understand #writing about personal things is fucking terrifying especially if you're far enough from pomegranate default to be 'unrelatable' - @/writing-is-a-martial-art

[irrealisms]

☕️ + we know the devil. i know ur icon is venus wktd & i’d LOVE to hear ur thoughts on the game if u’ll indulge me

ABSOLUTELY so we know the devil is something i have.... deeply and profoundly bittersweet feelings about

when i was 14 and had my first real experience of The Divine which led to me getting put on antipsychotics i latched onto Venus very very hard. i had the same haircut as venus and i was constantly kind and self-effacing and sincere and compulsively apologetic and i saw lights and angels around every corner and there was Something i wanted, and it was connected, the wanting and the lights, i wanted it in and around me and the entire world, but i didn't know what i wanted or what to do with all the want. and my previous blog's avatar was venus wktd not in her devil form but as a human.

and now i am 21 and i am not a queer high schooler, i am Catholic, and the thing I wanted so desperately that my entire life was bending around that want wasn't the devil or being trans or gay sex? it was God, the God that the game is so intensely angry at, the God in whose name troubled teen camps are made that convince high schoolers they are the devil & the devil is freedom and love & God is everyone you are afraid of and told you that you are not good enough and you are going to hell. the thing that I wanted wasn't what the girls in wktd want, it was the thing that hurt them. and, like... what do you do with that? bc the game is coming from a place of such trauma that i can't be mad at it, only mad at every church that caused it to exist, and at the same time it still speaks to the part of me that is 14 and seeing light that i know i should be afraid of and wanting it instead, and being desperate for a story in which this is [holy and good and beautiful and Right, the sort of thing to show the whole world] and not the sort of thing that gets you sent to the guidance counselor or the hospital

and my icon then was venus's human form and now it is her devil form because.... i get to have what i want now, i guess.

and i've also thought and talked somewhat about venus as psychosis narrative/as a textually psychotic character lol & there's also absolutely something abt, like, me age 14 was incredibly incredibly scared of myself & pursued/went on antipsychotics/therapy/psychiatry willingly vs. i started this blog not long after Going Off antipsychotics and being very critical and wary of therapy/psychiatry

also this whole thing is about venus but i do also have an immense outpouring of thoughts about jupiter.... i have a lot of the same ocd [i am too much Want and it is going to hurt everyone and there is nothing i can do about it, i am evilwrongbadcontaminated for my Want and i cannot stop it, i am inherently violent and hurting others by Wanting] Stuff as she does. however it's uh kind of super funny-inconvenient that in a lot of ways i have them in the Opposite direction recent years-- see, well, a lot of the above... i wasn't raised Christian and i actually feel quite guilty a lot of the time about being and wanting to be Christian! because it hurts people in the way Jupiter is hurt! but at the same time i find that [repressing myself and my wanting] to be so deeply relatable. and it's not that i don't find Jupiter's direction unrelatable, either... i have a lot of issues around [finding kink very appealing] which are very Jupitercore lol

and also on a surface level in general i spent my childhood and teen years in girl scouts in a group of Three Friends where one of us was perpetually being left out due to The Buddy System and it depended on the year which of us it would be. and now they have both graduated college and moved away and i have not been in a group of three or at a scout camp making bad decisions at 3am in years... it's very much a game that was made for me at one time and now i have outgrown in some ways. it's complicated!

anyway this post is long enough but. point is. ohhhhh it was so influential on me and it shapes the narrative of my life and also i am at a point where i am opposed to it (in the sense of, standing on the opposite side from) in many ways and this is kind awkward but also it is still a part of me. feel free 2 ask/talk more to me abt it i love talking abt it tbh

[teaandinanity]

Unrelatable aro-ace rant and slight spoilers for something in the first half of the third Scholomance book ahoy:

So, here’s the thing. The entire reason I, very deeply aro-ace to the point that I was deeply repulsed by the idea of sleeping with someone I wasn’t absolutely twitterpated about even when I was absolutely being COOKED in a stew of adolescent hormones, enjoy romance in fiction? Is because it’s usually written to be in a slightly altered register. In reality, a relationship in which two people love each other as intensely as I like to read about would be codependent and unhealthy. But that intensity makes it possible for me to believe in it, to feel something along with the characters, in a way I usually don’t. (Your aro-ace friends are not good people to talk to about relationship troubles because I have actually said ‘why do most women settle so hard they leave impact craters’ about allo relationships. I have probably said something in that vein more than once. I can, will, and do appreciate when a friend’s SO is being cute and I’m delighted when the people I love get the affection they deserve, but when things are rough I’m far more likely to be like ‘do you want me to beat him up’ than I am to say anything remotely constructive.)

Anyway. Codependency! Not healthy IRL. It’s still what I want to read about, because I find the idea of One Person As An Exception far more plausible than being allo. Yes, I know most of the population is allo. No, I do not care. I have no idea what that’s like; it is an alien planet that I have never visited and do not want to even do a flyby of, and I find the idea of any of that nonsense happening to me KEENLY upsetting.

Which is why when a book introduces me to a pair (or a trio! My usual reaction did not happen in Iron Widow because it was made clear to me before the book was out that it wasn’t a triangle and would resolve with poly and because the level of devotion was at that heightened register where in reality it would probably be terrifying.), I begin looking to be convinced.

I want to be convinced, but I do require convincing. Basically, I find primary sexual attraction less plausible than actual magic.

Which is why I’m probably never going to reread The Golden Enclaves, if I manage to finish. I stopped and I’m having to mentally beat myself to try to keep going.

I have the audiobook because I couldn’t pick up my preorder this week, and I’m not in a hurry, now. I paused it and I haven’t turned it back on, even though I usually like to have a podfic or audiobook going in the morning just for background noise.

I saw the idea that El might sleep with Liesel floated somewhere before release and I was angry about it at the time - that couldn’t be possible! Liesel was introduced in BOOK TWO! How would that even make any sense as part of a romance arc! - but I’m now very grateful to whoever posted it. Because if I’d tripped over that chapter unexpectedly, I would not be writing a vent post, I would probably still be crying. I can already tell based on this reaction, post-thought-innoculation, would have been like the time I hit a squick in an in-progress fic because I failed to read the tags, and THAT apparently managed to trigger me because I spent the rest of the day weepy and sick and the rest of the week upset.

Instead… well, I’m still upset and I WANT to cry but have managed to refrain.

I know this is not a relatable problem. I just needed to complain, because now that it’s morning and I’m not exhausted, I was too upset to just go back to sleep until my alarm. I have to go to work today and I cannot pull off ‘wide-eyed and tearful.’ I am not a Disney Princess.

But god, I hate that I’m now so upset at a protagonist I loved and I feel so uncomfortable in her head that I don’t want to go back in.

[firespirited]

Today’s watch was Ingrid Goes West to compare and contrast with Mainstream 2020 as it comes up as the superior film in reviews.

It didn’t land as well with me, i’m guessing it’s partly because I don’t find Aubrey Plaza inherently adorkable or whatever, her roles have to earn it (yes, in Legion she totally earned it!) I feel other roles have been rehashing her Parks and Recs character except now she gets to say fuck. Another thing is, I don’t like instagram, maybe my feeds have been broken but I feel pushed into consuming stuff or experiences anytime I venture into the explore page and the app made it difficult to connect with other thrift and recycle folks. I made an effort to deliberately seek out 1/ the dollblr folks and 2/ people with the same janky, still learning, level of skills but the algorithm keeps pushing professionals and high earning collectors and when it comes to body image and lifestyle it’s like normies just don’t exist.

Either way it’s hard to connect with a film where everyone is deeply unpleasant with like no character depth except ice cube’s son’s character who gets treated like an idiot, centered around an app i havn’t had any meaningful connections on, with a story about a lifestyle that is entirely unrelatable. It’s also presented as easy for Olsen’s character like she’s curating this lifestyle on her own. I feel like part of the unraveling should have been realising the amount of work, calculation and even artifice involved in making a life appear spontaneously perfect.

I get what it was trying to be about and how easy it is to get swept up in the aura of someone who seems really nice or really enviable. The way everyone’s faking it just on different levels and scammers recognize scammers. Billy Magnusson magnetic and intense as always. Olsen really convincing as the girl who gets it all with a smile but i kept waiting for some extra dimension, the actress was hinting at more but the script doesn’t really deliver.

It’s been 4 years since the release and we’ve delved real deep into parasociality since so it’s not really fair to judge it by the dozens of hours worth of video essays and articles going further when this would have been fresh in 2017. The ending is wierdly trivial about mental illness and a lack of consequences: this is the internet after all: milkshake duck gets revealed as racist within the week. 5/10 beautiful scenery, well paced, white knuckle cringe moments. harsh point removal for not treating mental illness with the seriousness it deserves.

[askallianything]

"Subtiles... Ah fuck! Did you want me to turn on Jap subs? I've seen this movie a dozen times so- Mmh? You... want my commentary? Really?"

Usually when Alli watched movies with others, she'd have to refrain from rambling the entire time. Afterall, why watch a movie with someone if you're just going to sit beside them in silence? She never understood. But Jiro actually wanting her trivia sent a rush of... something through her. She didn't have time to name emotions- The person she cares for the most wants her commentary!

"TCSM is the movie that really popularized American Slasher films- which is actually one of my least favorite generas. I hate movies where the main appeal is seeing teenage girls with their boobs out get sliced to bits. Of course, not all slashers are like that.... just... most. I prefer the kind of movies about death games or competitions! Like the saw franchise or Alice in Borderland! - Though AIB is actually a manga series that was turned into a show. Leatherface, the main 'slasher' is what popularized movie killers having some kind of mask and a signature weapon~ You know- Leatherface was also featured as a DLC character in Mortal Kombat X?"

And at that, she stops, allowing a moment to focus on the movie. Only a moment though. It's not long before she's chirping again.

"That guy there, the hitchhiker? He's my favorite character~~ He's a little kooky... but I like that!"

"A little kooky" she says as the man on screen proceeds to cut the palm of his hand with a knife and show off the laceration to the main cast. Eyes glued to the screen, Alli grabs another piece of konpeito and takes a moment to savor it.

"I think I heard somewhere that the actor based the hitchhiker's mannerisms off his schizophrenic cousin? If I was the cousin... I'd feel a little hurt having my image in who is clearly supposed to be an unrelatable villain."

Reaching for another candy, she suddenly stops and looks up at Jiro with sympathy.

"I feel bad that you can't have any...."

She mumbles, taking the piece her fingers were lingering over and bringing it to her mouth. Alli licks one side of the star before gently grabbing Jiro's face and straddling his lap. She drags the wet side over his lips- covering them with a thin layer of sugary sweetness while an intense focus dresses her face. Alli stares deeply and intensely at her beloved's lips, moving in close and tracing his lower lip with her split tongue before kissing him.

"Sorry. That wasn't the plan...."

Alli whispers as she pulls away, reapplying the sweet residue to Jiro's lips. She purses her lips, resisting the urge to kiss him again.

"There! Can you go 'mmm' for me?"

jiro!!!!

which one is ur room

I think I found it

but I can't read kanji so idk if it's urs :P

oh rite!!

I'm @ mrtkrnken for our sleepover!!

He hadn't expected her to come over so soon, but the timing was good at least. Jiro was filing the last of the patient records away when he received her message. He could just message her to head to his office. He could confirm his room was the only one where the nameplate was only in kanji as opposed to both. He could even say he was on his way... But that wouldn't be as fun, now would it? Grinning to himself, he makes the trip back to his dorm. He spies Alli standing in front of his door looking through her phone. Taking advantage of her distraction, he walks up behind her placing a hand over her eyes while the other hand secures her phone in case she drops it. He whispers a quiet "Boo" in her ear before planting a kiss on her cheek.

[daily-rayless]

favorite games of the 2010s

Games with an American release within the 2010s. Arranged roughly in the order I played them, because figuring out favoritism is hard. Spoiler-lite. Also, in case it needs to be said, saying a game is my favorite doesn’t mean I endorse everything the game endorses.

Also important: this is about favoritism, not quality. I’m not saying these are the best games.

Okay.

Persona 3: Portable (Atlus)

P3 was always secondary to P4 to me until Persona 3: Portable came along. This isn't everyone's experience, but being able to play games as a female character is a big deal to me. FeMC's positioning as a capable, respected leader who isn't temporary and isn’t just some guy’s love interest is so wonderful. And I love that the game allows her to social link the entire main cast. While Ken's romantic option was a terrible choice, many of the others benefit: her friendship with Junpei is rich, touching, and believable, even when it devolves into resentment; Akihiko's and Shinjiro's arcs are sweet, but also melancholy; Yukari, Mitsuru, and Fuuka are supportive best friends without all the baggage of the male MC's love routes; even Koromaru gets his spotlight. Ryoji's social link adds important depth to his character, reframing the later stages of the game. As wonderful as Elizabeth is, I find I like Theo even better. The battle system is vastly improved, and while the visuals suffer in the PSP transfer, the story's still told well. P3P remains one of my absolute favorite games and was a great start to the decade.

Nier: Gestalt (Cavia)

Something you’ll see repeated across this list is that I love strong, complex character bonds. The emotional core of a game is really important to me. In combination, this game has one of the most unique main casts, and, in their closeness, one of the most powerful. The jaggedness of Nier, Kainé, Emil, and Weiss fit together as an intense and sympathetic whole. You want so much to see them all safely escape the dark stories surrounding each of them. Nier's secondary strength is its New Game +, which is wrenching, but reminds the player that you never see the whole story in just your first glance.

Fate/Extra (Type Moon & Imageepoch)

For seven weeks, Hakuno fights her way through a blood tournament; the story never spares her from it. Most often, a repetitive story structure is a liability, but in Fate/Extra, it builds the drama. Knowing from week to week that most of the cast is going to die – understanding, increasingly, that Hakuno may not have a happy ending waiting for her – the repetition and inevitability adds to the experience. All three of her potential Servants are interesting, funny, lovable, and morally troubling, and each plays well off of Hakuno's personality. Which Hakuno, despite being a silent protag, has plenty of. The game falls short in a number of areas, but for me, intercharacter relationships are always a big deal, and Hakuno's bond with each Servant is detailed, compelling, and develops across the entire game.

Tales of Xillia 2 (Bandai Namco Studios)

The original ToX is the richer, more complete, more epic game, and definitely the place where you should first meet these characters and this world. But for me, ToX2 edges out its parent for the uniqueness of its premise, its endearing silent protagonist, and the shattering twists and turns of its later plot points. I don't usually like kid characters, but Elle is a useless sidekick worth fighting for, every inch of the way.

Resonance of Fate (tri-Ace)

Set in a broken post-apocalyptic city, this game feels like a combination of Wild Arms and Xenogears. The story is intense and cryptic with a carefully controlled delivery to the player. The three main characters hide their wounds as well as their strengths – until circumstances force them into the open. There's some regrettable juvenile humor, and the story remains too shadowy in places, but Vashyron's, Leanne's, and Zephyr's bond kept me wanting to know more about them and the punishing circumstances they've been left in.

Nier: Automata (PlatinumGames)

Nier: Gestalt taught me that not everything would be as it seemed, and Nier: Automata fulfills that warning a second time. But what makes me love it are the three protagonists, 2B, 9S, and A2. Throughout the different story paths, each one sees their role change from hero to antagonist or antagonist to hero relative to the others' positions. This is such a stand-out concept, and it's written very well. Even when a character shifts from hero to antagonist, they still keep your sympathy; perhaps you don't agree with them, but you still feel for them so much. Incredible music and rideable moose are also a plus.

Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerilla Games)

I can always find room for improvement, but, for me, there's just too much to love about this game. Traveling over the gorgeous environments is wonderful by itself. The gameplay is engrossing, allowing you to try so many different strategies across different fights. The npcs are intriguing. The setting is unique. The monster designs are fantastic. The game gives you reasons to want to fight the villains, yet doesn't leave them unrealistic or ludicrously unrelatable. The hero, Aloy, is no-nonsense but not invincible, practical but also tender, and it's so satisfying building her legend alongside her. The story ends satisfyingly, but leaves the world wide open, just waiting for a sequel. This is a horizon I want to cross again and again.

Transistor (Supergiant Games)

People complain about the story being too obscure, and that's justified at times. But the heart of the game isn't about plot – it's about emotions. Specifically, the emotions Red and Boxer have towards the city, and the emotions Red and Boxer have towards each other. The game organically builds both of these relationships across five hours of gameplay, latching right on to the player's heartstrings and making you worry and fight every step of the way. The gameplay is deeply customizable, the art direction is velvety and lush, and the music is not only gorgeous, but sometimes subtly intermixed with the narrative. The world is shrinking around these characters, and you want to see them through to safety – and you wish you had more time to know them better.

The Banner Saga (Stoic Studio) (all three games)

Its narrative overlaps different plot arcs. There's more than one hero. The story is mature and serious, often threatening you with despair, but still urging you to believe that somehow your brave characters can make it through safely. Your decisions directly influence who lives, who dies, and where the story turns. The music is haunting. The game evokes Lord of the Rings, from its art style to its Norse influences to its focus on the significant actions of humble people. But it still shoulders its way out of that shadow with its giants, centaurs, and multiple central female characters. A game you want to play repeatedly, if you can stand the responsibility of having so many characters’ lives in your hands.

Pyre (Supergiant Games)

Purgatory Basketball sounds like a nightmare premise for me, focusing on the kind of gameplay I'm terrible at. However, the game is accommodating enough that I not only won my rites, I enjoyed the process. Even when I was bad at it. But what makes me love the game is its cast. While not all characters can get equal focus on a single playthrough, each is interesting, some very outside the typical RPG character cast. The main villain is handled atypically, and the story avoids many of the tired plot beats I've gotten sick of over the years. The main character, the Reader, is given a surprising amount of flexibility, and they're just another one of Supergiant Games’ protagonists who are silent, but still make a definite impact on the game's story and playing experience.

In short, this was a good decade for me, game-wise, especially in the last two years. Hopefully there will be lots of stand-outs in the 2020s too.

[britneyshakespeare]

🔥 HMM idk what topic but spill the tea!!!

Hmm. Well. This’ll probably come off as a pretty aimless rant but it’s something that’s been on my mind.

I don’t care for art if it’s “realistic.” I don’t. I don’t want art to be lifelike, I want it to be better than life. More beautiful and intriguing than life. I mean, I could have a whole separate rant on how people interpret the word “realistic,” ie especially to mean something’s dark or gritty in tone, which is, a lot of the time, batshit stupid. But you know.

Art should be well-made and satisfying. One of my favorite books of all time is Jane Eyre, and I know it’s wildly unrealistic—that’s why it’s so appealing! A premise of such a book is already unrelatable. Any young governess should be cautious before marrying an older, grimmer gentleman who owns the estate she works for. I know. If Edward Rochester really kept his mentally unstable wife in the attic, who tried to kill him multiple times, I’d say fuck ‘im! But the way mental illness is portrayed in Jane Eyre, is not realistic, nor is Bertha herself. Therefore I can separate those forces and justify it being done (of course, when talking about the novel in a historical context, these, and also the theme of race [as Bertha was likely a WOC] need to be analyzed from an ethical standpoint, but for my own enjoyment’s sake, I can write it off as too ridiculous to take seriously). Rochester certainly isn’t realistic. The soul connection he has with Jane, is completely fantastical. But the book is grounded in its own setting; the character development, while too tumultuous for some, is just intense enough for my taste; and the sequence of events, is arguably very silly. I care about all of it deeply. I care about it because at the end of the novel, I connected with the story in my own personal way. I read what I did in it and enjoyed the words written on the page. I can analyze it critically and still enjoy its vision, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

But, I know there are a lot of people who hate Jane Eyre, mostly for reasons related to ones that I listed. Not just because it’s unrealistic, but a lot of people read problematic traits in it, and don’t like Rochester in particular—I don’t feel much that way; I see his flaws as a character but I believe enough in his character development, and I never feel in the novel, that Jane is ever unaware of his own shortcomings, blinded by her love for him. Jane is a very critical lover. But now I’m getting less on the course of my philosophy of art and more defensive of the qualms some people have with Charlotte Bronte. Back on course.

I think I came to be this way with my art, preferring fancy over fact, through mainly two wildly different but equally silly means: my love for Elizabethan theater, and my love for twentieth century American comic books. Both of them are campy inherently, lots of dumb tropes and mixed and matched archetypes as main characters, but each one is made distinct from each other when written well. Oh, and HIGHLY stylized—I love things that are stylized so long as they’re stylized tastefully.

Ultimately, I just prefer art to life. I think it should be better. I think it should cut the fat and season the meat. Call me a fop for it!

Send me a 🔥 for an unpopular opinion.

[bmacreadz]

"From Blood and Ash" by Jennifer L. Armentrout

"From Blood and Ash" has... has left me... very... very confused...

I am rarely left speechless from a book, and it's even more rare when the loss of words is due to less-than-great reasons. "From Blood and Ash" is a book of rising action, with no real climax (irony intended). It is a book of build-up, preparing the reader for something major, then giving them nothing.

Don't get me wrong - there is a lot that happens in this book, but it is fruitless action. The author clearly had a lot of ideas and wanted to share them all in a fast-paced story that basically just ended up being one very big info dump.

I was intrigued enough to finish, but I did not enjoy "From Blood and Ash." The story was extremely hard to follow, and I get the feeling that Armentrout was trying too hard to make an intense, jaw-dropping novel, so she blasted the reader with all of these ideas and personally left this reader jarred and reeling. Let me be clear on the fact that I don't think this book was intended to be labeled as Young Adult, but the amount of cringing, eye-rolling, and sighing that I did while reading it left me with no other option than to compare it as one.

First off, the romance in "From Blood and Ash" was barely romance. It was the cringiest element of all, in my opinion. Poppy and Hawke's "romance" was labored and perverse, and there was nothing in me that wanted these two characters to end up together. And when they did come together, it was entirely unbelievable, unrelatable, and undeserving of either of them.

These characters, as well as this entire story, in my opinion, was immature. It was underdeveloped, and because Armentrout tried so hard to share something "special" and compelling, she forfeited this story's potential.

A good book does not require one million different ideas. It does not require jaw-dropping intensity, and it does not have to leave the reader speechless. When an author tries too hard to get this effect, it comes off as a forced, unnatural story. Everything suffers when this happens: the story itself, the characters, and the reader. A good book does not always have to have everything. In fact, some of the best books, in my opinion, are the ones that tell a much simpler story. Granted, these stories end up not being so simple, but that's because the author digs into, and focuses on, very specific parts of the story, instead of grazing over a hundred different things. Every element in "From Blood and Ash" had the potential to turn into something really good, but all of the elements forced together at one time made them superficial and trivial. It could've had so much more depth if the author had only focused.

My last greivance to air (though, there are still so many) is the writing style. Armentrout and I are not of the same understanding when it comes to effective writing. I did not find her characters relatable with their constant, quip remarks and I... I could not get over the excessive use of ellipses. I found myself having to constantly re-read some of the more intense moments in the book because the way the characters came to certain realizations was unclear. These grand realizations ended up being not-so-grand, because I could not understand how they occurred or even - sometimes - when they occurred.

Now, I understand that Jennifer L. Armentrout has garnered a following from "From Blood and Ash." She has been very successful and there are hundreds of thousands of people who feel deeply about this particular story. I'm sure some of them would have my head if they read this review and cared at all about my thoughts. I am just not someone who found this book enjoyable in any aspect. In fact, this book has left me a little bit scarred because I put it down twice, thinking I just needed to give myself a break and dive in later with a fresh perspective. (I had come off of a couple of books that were unfinishable, and thought my dissatisfaction was leftover from those experiences.) I picked it up one final time and powered through, and I can't say I fully regret it, but I could have lived my whole life without this story and been glad for it.

Needless to say, I will not be reading the rest of this series.

[post-teen-sadposting]

The more I turn inwards the more alone I feel. I remember that early in high school I felt that I would never really feel known - fortunately for me that fear was quickly remedied by people I still hold very dearly in my heart. As time has passed and I have had people come and go I once again beginning to feel unknown and unrelatable, outside of my loving partner and my immediate family I rarely find the opportunity to express the depths of my emotion - leading people to believe me to be light hearted, jovial, and perhaps a little cold. Only recently, at a dinner party with two of my dearest friends was it revealed to them my sudden bouts of overwhelming sadness that render me entirely helpless until I fall asleep, or the periods of time I spend sobbing in the shower reminded of a horrible thing I may have done. To them this was surprising , to anyone else I know this probably would seem impossible, but I think a majority of the time I do let myself feel entirely consumed by feeling.

Recently, I have been watching more film, reading more books, and consuming less general media. I am convinced that while at first this greatly improved my state of mind, the constant bombardment of intense emotion is starting to turn me into a mechanism for desire. As Zizek says, film is the ultimate pervert's art, and I can see myself falling into that pattern. Unable to see or hear anything without immediately reading into it libidonal sub-text, the strange fixations of people or sexual desire. As with basketball, I am becoming unable to enjoy popular past-times in a normal way that doesn't deeply alienate the people surrounding me.

[blyedeeks]

ohmypreciousgirl replied to your post “ohmypreciousgirl replied to your post: ...”

Y E S, and i think that's why i'm so drawn into frank's character. he kills, he's cruel, but he's also a loving man who feels intensely and can't avoid loving more people - even though he knows he will hurt later. damn, the fact he's on his way of being deeply in love with karen says a lot about his character

YES YES IT’S THE SAME FOR ME?

Truth be told, i  didn’t feel like watching ANY superhero anything in years. No tv show, no movie, no nothing. I didn’t watch civil war, i didn’t watch batman versus superman, i didn’t watch anything after, even spider man - which is one of my fave heroes.

And that’s for one simple reason.... i just, i can’t relate to them anymore. It’s not that they are unrelatable, bad characters - the long list of fans sure say otherwise. But the thing is, to me it always felt like there was something lacking?

The darkness was missing. And this is not to say I like what frank does (i love him, but i don’t), but this is to say... if you wanna make a superhero story realistic - there has to consequences. REAL consequences, not - oh this villain is badass i hope they take him down or, oh no they are gonna fight among each other because of their different idealism but I’m here sitting comfortably on my chair picking the side i like best.

I’m talking about bothering the audience, like you feel your stomach turning while watching all the violence all the while you’re questioning yourself whether you think it’s wrong or right and then you’re punishing yourself for even considering it’s right but then again you’re SO ANGRY. It’s all of these complex emotions and REAL questions: do we trust the law? is the law enough? is war worth it? are everyone that comes back from war stable to be around the population? Is society taking care of these people? Do i blame them for wanting to murder people that murder his family?

LIKE HECK MAN. SO many RELEVANT moral questions. They all make Frank, and what he goes through, REAL.  

I don’t like Frank because it’s easy to like frank, because he’s gonna be on the corner fighting without killing, because he has an awesome superpower (that well, would allow him to make the choice of fighting versus killing easier), i don’t even like him because he’s handsome. I like him because he’s real. Because I can believe someone would go to war, see their family get blown up in the process and get heck crazy over it. As as much as I also don’t think killing is right, i GET IT - because i’m human and I can understand the things he went through.

 It’s scary cause you believe it. People hate that violence cause it’s real. It’s not game of thrones, i’ll see people get their heads cut off but it’s not my problem, it’s real life violence. 

And with all that, it’s more than gratifying when we see Frank loving someone. Loving Karen the way he does - because we are already cheering for him, we are connecting to him and we believe in his horrors in such way that it feels impossible to see him loving the way all superheroes did their love interests (hence, dark fics). But then he reminds us he’s only human and the reason why he’s so angry and blood thirsty.... is because he loves so intensely too

[oswednesday]

like not to be super serious off that train of thought but avpd is like diagnoised and characterized or w/e in a way thats super unrelatable i think to most avpd people and i think thats why a lot of people dont know if they have bpd or avpd when theyre trying to figure out whats Wrong with them, themselves like avpd has emotional dysregulation in a way other cluster c types infrequently deal with and the key difference between the two disorders (avpd/bpd) is the inhibition/uninhibited in the way feelings are expressed and how deeply a feeling is in effect like it takes me a lot to have like a noticable feeling and i can get like mood swings that effect me or if i feel a genuinue appropriate at that time full human emotion and that basically knocks me out i feel something for like five seconds and have to take a nap we move through our lives like self numbing, i once read a study about taking apart avpd through the lense of the cluster a types and that makes sense to me too, and like bpd is different right where the feelings cycle through but are all felt really intensely and all get acted upon like positive and negative whereas someone with avpd may cycle through the same feelings felt at like a really low volume except for like negative expressions and those ones get acted on typically like everyone is an individual and symptoms may be like at a different level but anyway like avpd diagnoises while like true symptoms are often like the loudest more obvi ones out there and arnt like the real detail of the odd but not socially Harmful behaviors of the disorder and thats why avpd is so hard to treat in therapy like all pds are but its almost like universally recommended that an avpd does cbd before getting into dbt and getting dbt before generalized therapy for trauma because its like, teaching a human how to, be human for the first time? in a way all pds are but i think its a special challenge for someone with avpd cause unlike the cluster a types there IS like, that storm of uncontrolled emotions and a yearning for connectivity its like this disorder specifically is at a crossroads with symptoms that span outward throughout types, and i mean a lot of peoples lived experiences with any pd can be like that, giving things archtypes and names isnt super helpful always and im big in favour of like treat the symptoms and not the disorder style of treatment specally when people with pds can latch on to the disorder as like their sense of self, anyway thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[johnrgordon]

Thoughts on Christianity and Homosexuality under Slavery

My 2018 novel, Drapetomania, is an antebellum epic that follows two enslaved Black men, Cyrus and Abegnego, who become lovers. After a flood threatens to bankrupt the plantation on which they toil for the benefit of their enslavers, Abednego is sold away. Broken-hearted, Cyrus makes the momentous decision to flee the plantation on which he has spent his entire life, and attempt to seek out his lost lover: his true north star.

One premise behind my writing the novel was to use fiction to restore to life and to cultural memory the sorts of lives that passed unrecorded. For of course no-one wrote a gay/sgl slavery narrative in the C19th — such an endeavor would be almost, if not entirely inconceivable. Following the advice of Toni Morrison, I wrote the book I needed to exist.

While responses to the novel have been overwhelmingly positive, an interesting critique came my way from a (white gay) reader, who found my representation of the lack of guilt and shame Cyrus and Abednego feel over their sexuality and relationship unrealistic. Why, he asked, do they not writhe in the self-loathing that would have been, and has continued to be, planted in gay men by conservative Christian moralizing? Certainly there would be no countervailing liberal or progressive tradition to which they would have any sort of access.

I found the charge interesting: had I, as a gay man, been guilty of sentimentality? Given the years of research I had done in order to render a realistic portrayal of various experiences of chattel slavery and the psychology of its brutality and oppression, had I stumbled here, out of the impulse to allow my characters an implausibly heroic mode?

I reflected, and on consideration decided I had not. In fact, I concluded that my critic was guilty (as it were) of his own particular anachronistic thinking. He took the current Evangelical fixation with homosexuality as the singular locus of moral depravity (much worse than murder, adultery or stealing) and projected that current cultural centrality 170 years backwards into the past. I don’t think contemporary reactionary Christian concerns map onto previous centuries tidily. The feverish religious homophobia of today has gained its focus through LGB people asserting their rights on identitarian grounds analogous to those identities based on race (and so modeled on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements) and gender (feminist movement.) That recategorization removes sexuality from the religious frame altogether — moves it away from sin — and Evangelicals are much exercised trying to claw homosexuality (and its kin) back from the world of human rights based on identity, and into sinfulness. It’s this categorical escape (or refiguring) that drives contemporary religious homophobes mad, and leads to them positioning themselves as victims of a supervening, ‘bullying’ secular discourse.

None of that pertains to the world of America in the 1850s, when Drapetomania is set; a time when by and large ‘homosexuality’ as an identity had not been conceptualized — or certainly not beyond the figure of the performatively effeminate Sodomite (whose ‘freakish’ disordering of gender roles also prefigures later trans discourses). It seems to me unlikely that Cyrus or even the somewhat more worldly Abednego, would have experience of such a person or knowledge of such a concept — and would certainly not see themselves as represented or embodied by it/them.

I think one can also ask, what would have tended to be the focus of the Christian preachers and teachers of the time, in terms of the lessons they sought to impart to the enslaved flock? The historical record is informative. With the exception of active abolitionists, (who could expect to be beaten, tarred and feathered for their efforts), white preachers focused on how slaves should obey their masters, render unto Caesar, set little store by acquiring worldly goods, and endure ‘unimportant’ earthly suffering in anticipation of far more important heavenly rewards. Going forth and multiplying was another tenet, though as an ‘animal’ function it was deemed not to need emphasizing.

What would these white preachers have said to the enslaved about sexual morality? First one might ask, would the enslaved have paid serious attention to anything they said, given the exploitative nature of slavery, and the defenselessness of the enslaved in the face of sexual predation and violence. Any sermonizing on sexual morality would surely have been viewed most ironically, and not be seen as having any moral weight.

Moreover, in such a context, without a trigger or catalyst — that is, an event publicly noticed — why would a white preacher bring up the sins of Onan or Sodom? The pseudo-scientific race discourse of the times gave rise to the notion that ‘Negroes’, being closer to the brutes of the fields, were ignorant of the possibility of sexual ‘deviance’, it being a product of perfumed decadence. Why chance planting such decadent ideas in pliant minds, however limited those minds were assumed to be? Better to say nothing. Better to urge marriage, however little it would count for; to urge reproduction.

What, then, might enslaved preachers preach among their fellows? This, of course, is much less recorded. However, we can reflect on its likely focus. Here a guide is surely sorrow songs and spirituals, imprecating the Lord to ‘let my people go’, drown Pharaoh’s army, and liberate the Children of Israel from slavery. Talk of a Promised Land that for white preachers was located conveniently in the hereafter, was a way for Black preachers to model liberation for other Black folks, share notions of a better life, and even outright rebellion: the North might be at least a version of that promise.

Given the vicious (and vastly predominantly heterosexual) sexual oppressions of slavery, pious talk of sexual morality amongst the enslaved must have dwelt in an ambiguous, uneasy realm, and in the slave narratives, and the sermons at times mixed in with them, we see talk of loving friendship and support between man and woman, husband and wife, championed as key virtues. Within this matrix, it seems to me inconceivable that homosexuality — in particular the tale of Sodom and the strictures found in Leviticus — could be in any way a focal point of sermonizing. It could only conceivably become so as a consequence of homosexual relations occurring in some measure publicly, within the immediate environment.

Indeed, it’s at that point in the novel — when the intensity of the friendship between Cyrus and Abednego becomes noticed by the other hands — that Samuel, the slave preacher with whom Cyrus shares a cabin, hints at the issue. However, he references the tale of David and Jonathon, rather than that of the Cities of the Plain. To his question, is Cyrus and Abednego’s relationship like that of David and Jonathon, Cyrus simply replies yes, and is sufficiently imposing (and indeed well liked enough) to foreclose further comment.

I felt that was realistic. Samuel is confronted by two people he has known all his life, and so the Bible tale he goes to is one about two individuals, rather than the tale of Sodom, with its fairly unrelatable power dynamics — stranded wanderers; a lynch mob of locals — its peculiar aspects (handsome angels as houseguests), and queasy foundations (‘Rape my daughters instead,’ Lot offers) that could hardly have sat well with an enslaved man who has witnessed such sexual violence against women at first hand.

Cyrus and Abednego, then, in somewhat differing ways (Cyrus being at heart a pre-Christian animist, and Abednego anticipating the modern secular man to whom religious doctrine is marginal), both inhabit the tale of David and Jonathon’s loving friendship, and find no reason to connect their experience with the tale of Sodom. I think here love is key. It is love that reveals their desiring natures to both each other and themselves, as opposed to experiencing a desire to perform certain sexual acts with someone of the same sex, and seeking out someone who responds to that desire — though the more worldly Abednego is more aware of a desiring identity as a possibility, prefiguring modern conceptions of self, than is Cyrus, the novel’s primary protagonist. Cyrus’ sense of identity formation is brought into sharp focus later, through his encounter with the white coachman, James Rose.

And so I think my interpretation stands. But it was deeply interesting to be given a reason to reflect upon it at length.

John’s new novel, Hark, a haunting tale of gay interracial teen romance that begins the night a Confederate statue is pulled down in a dying Southern town, is out on Sept 18th, and can be pre-ordered here (US) and here (UK). Drapetomania can be bought here (US) and here (UK).

[recentanimenews]

4 Characters, 4 Million Years of Scientific Discovery–Meet the Cast of Dr. STONE

  They survived the end of civilization...

...and now they will change the fate of humanity.

  Crunchyroll just announced Dr. STONE as part of its Summer 2019 lineup. This adaptation of the wildly popular Shonen Jump manga has the potential to revolutionize shonen anime. The series follows protagonist Senku as he awakens one day thousands of years after human civilization grinded to a halt. He soon discovers that nearly all of the global population has been frozen in place as statues. Senku vows to use science to revive every last petrified person and rebuild the civilization that he knows and loves. Dr. STONE takes the intense battle structure of the Shonen Jump titles that preceded it, but recontextualizes them as scientific problems protagonist Senku and his allies must overcome. Where Dr. STONE differs from other left-of-center battle anime like Food Wars lies in the fact that the cast of STONE fights not against one another (though that does happen occassionally), but against the entirety of nature itself! These characters are on a mission to revive human society, and they'll have to blast through multiple millenia's worth of scientific discovery to get there.

  Without a strong cast, such a broad premise risks coming across as unrelatable, but, luckily, Dr. STONE has a remarkable cast of characters with deeply human motivations and personalities! 

  Senku

  Voiced by Yusuke Kobayashi (Subaru Natsuki in Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-)

  A former highschooler, Senku is a scientific fundamentalist with a superhuman brain. Though the world has been reduced to stone age ruins, Senku seeks to use the power of science to restore human civilization from the ground up! While he comes across as rational and cool-headed, Senku is actually quite passionate and cares deeply for those around him. 

  Taiju

    Voiced by Makoto Furukawa (Saitama in One Punch Man)

Taiju is Senku’s best friend, and, where Senku is frail but brilliant, Taiju is strong but dim. Taiju harbors a secret love for his childhood friend Yuzuriha, and it was his love for Yuzuriha that sustained him through thousands of years of petrification. Taiju refuses to fight, but possesses immense physical strength and endurance.

  Yuzuriha

    Voiced by Kana Ichinose (Ichigo in DARLING in the FRANXX)

  A childhood friend and classmate of both Senku and Taiju, Yuzuriha is a quiet, bright, kind-hearted girl with a talent for handicrafts. While she may seem timid at first, her skills just might be the key to Senku's plans of scientific progress. 

  Tsukasa

  Voiced by Yuuichi Nakamura (Bruno Bucciarati in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind)

  Tsukasa is an extremely powerful fighter, known far and wide in the pre-petrification world as a celebrity for his amazing strength. He is able to take down wild beasts bare handed, but his strength is tempered by a cool, thoughtful demenour. He disagrees with Senku's plan to revive every single petrified person, preferring instead to seek out a world where only the worthy and uncorrupt are allowed to live.

  ---

  ➡️ Dr. Stone Official Show Page

➡️ Japanese Twitter Account

➡️ Official Facebook Page

➡️ Japanese Website

➡️ TMS Anime

➡️ Dr. STONE on VIZ

---

  Cayla Coats is the Editor-in-Chief of Crunchyroll News. She tweets @ceicocat

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[joegalbadancehistory]

Week 10: Postmoderns - Political Radicality

         It is has been so wonderful delving into the world of postmodern dance. As this area of study finds its conclusion in this course, we are left with the topic of political radicality. Reading Ananya Chatterjea’s “Danced Disruptions: Postmodern Preoccupations and Reconsiderations,” was certainly a challenge. Until this point in the course, “postmodern dance” has fallen under an umbrella of not meaningless dance, but “meaning-…less” dance. That is to say that dance works and explorations of this time period have tended to focus on exploring task-based and pedestrian movement that does not transmit concrete narrative. Of course, we have seen works that comment on the nature of performance itself, such as Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A, and works that are created out of a desire to break from traditional norms of the proscenium stage. Developing during a time in which personal expression and rebellion were main points of artistic focus, postmodern dance inherently comments on these elements without being blatantly driven by narrative meaning. However, with Chatterjea’s text we are forced to view postmodern dance through an alternative lens. An ever-present through line in the work of postmodern choreographers and dancers is the desire to democratize dance. Dance should be accessible to dancers and non-dancers alike. With that being said, some postmodern choreographers work from a more political place than others. I found Chatterjea’s text to delineate this distinction, while also muddling and blurring the line further. Much of the reading, for me, was hard to follow. A combination of dense language and personally unrelatable subject matter combined to foster a challenging reading experience. Several dichotomies presented throughout this piece, though, have stood out to me: Tradition vs. modernity, Western vs. “the other,” and “Anti-“ vs. reconfiguration.

         One of the major points that Chatterjea brings up throughout the reading is this question of inclusivity: why have “the others” been largely written out of postmodern dance history? When referring to “the others,” Chatterjea is referencing any creator who is not of Euro-American descent. Although there is a vast range of interpretations of what “postmodern” actually means in regard to dance, Chatterjea points out that one of the most consistent definitions focuses on experimentation as a method of de-essentializing concepts of artistic validity. Why, then, are black choreographers who have worked across boundaries/genres in an effort to blur the line between high and low art disassociated with the term “postmodern”? Chatterjea highlights the period between 1968 and 1973 in postmodern dance history. This is, according to her, a period in which three new themes were introduced to postmodern works: political issues, audience engagement, and non-Western influences. While white choreographers of the time include inspiration from dance forms of other cultures, such as Yvonne Rainer with Indian dance forms, non-white postmodern choreographers are dissuaded from doing the same. Why? Here is where the dichotomy of tradition vs. modernity comes in. Choreographers of color, according to Chatterjea, are belittled for incorporating Western themes and movement into their work. They are belittled for “flattening” their cultural traditions. Why is the opposite, then, often praised? Why is it okay (if not innovative) for Euro-American choreographers to draw influence form other cultures? I am unable to locate an answer. It is surely confusing to consider the fact that so many choreographers of different cultures are disconnected from the term “postmodern” while operating with similar methods, ideologies, and radicalism.  

         I was quite excited to see the Urban Bush Women, 30 Years Strong video. I am however, questioning the connection between the work of Urban Bush Women and the larger frame of postmodern dance. The company was founded in 1984, yet I am under the impression that the postmodern era lost much of its fervor after the 1970’s. However, as Chatterjea suggests in her reading, the term “postmodern” is constantly attaining new meaning. It is quite possible that postmodern dance lives on in different forms through different decades of time. Certainly, the methods and ideologies of postmodern dance live on. This is undoubtedly true in regard to Urban Bush Women. The video shows several pieces that are distinctly inspired by political unrest. Clear themes of social justice are evident. These themes fused with contemporary, modern, and tap dance. Now that I write it out, it would seem that the company is working from a similar place of cross-boundary and cross-genre creation as postmodern creators.

         It is intensely interesting to note the many different forms that postmodern dance reveals itself in. The readings throughout the last several units have shown that postmodern ideology ranges from no meaning to inherent meaning to political/radical meaning. It is also clear that postmodern dance possesses a divided and unequal history, at least in the form of historical documentation. This is an area of study that I would like to investigate more deeply, as I am largely unfamiliar with the work of postmodern artists of color. I will continue to question deeply as I move forward in my dance studies.