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theokusgallery · 2 years

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I dislike and have always kind of disliked Aubrey so I'm gonna explain why here because I need to put it somewhere

First of all, I've been told that it's because I don't understand her character, but I'm working with a "people" perspective rather than a "character" perspective here -- also, keep in mind that it is my personal opinion that I'm trying to develop here. Aubrey as a character is very interesting to me, mainly because of the way she copes with her trauma about Mari's death but also how her home life affected her, and how her personality changed a lot in four years — but here, I'm making a difference between a character being interestingly constructed and how she is as a "person" in-game. Now that that's out of the way — 90% of my content recently has been Basil and nothing else, so I am very much aware that I am not objective in the slightest lol. But I'm going to try to explain my biased perspective in the least biased way I can if that makes sense.

I'm going to start with the most obvious point that has been stated before (can't remember where): I don't understand (and it's the game's fault) how Aubrey can be a both bully and a endearing character at the same time, like she's represented in the literal game. The game makes the Hooligans look like a bunch of happy, sweet, dumb kids who like candy and card games as a last impression — which is pretty weird considering their first appearance was them gang bullying Basil, 6 vs 1, and the second was them trying to kick him out of a public place that Aubrey knows must have meant a lot to him. Basic bully shit. But the fact that the last day is the day you see them doing dumb stuff also means that it's the impression that's going to last. And that you'll forget about the bullying, most likely. It's very much the game's fault because of how the events are organized throughout the three days in Faraway, but the bullying is just easily forgotten.

In any case, when talking about the Hooligans in-game, the lasting impression is a good one, making the four years of heavy bullying invisible and meaningless to the player (maybe because, you know, OMOCAT fucking hates Basil. Could be wrong) possibly because of the fact that we see Basil waaaaay less than Aubrey, including in Headspace, and the player gets attached to her very easily. And yes, if I'm taking a "people" perspective on this I have to be aware that people aren't unidimensional, but that's just not how it works, and if they do bully Basil and then go live their happiest lives afterwards then I dislike them as well.

Now, Aubrey herself is strange to me. She's mean throughout the real-life part of the game constantly, including to Kel and Sunny, but turns out to be a 'poor sensitive girl' out of fucking nowhere. (re-reading this, I'm using 'poor' as in pity, not her financial situation.) I know that the "though on the outside, soft on the inside" trope is a thing, but she has been quite literally the least 'soft on the inside' character until there.

It doesn't make sense to me how she's set by the game to get all of this pity from the player for being sensitive while, if she were really that sensitive, she probably would've cared about her own childhood friend that she would've ruined the life of if it hadn't already been destroyed a bit more. Or, if she really is that sensitive, it's pretty selfish not to care the littlest bit about him. She's also given an emotional scene where she cries about how Sunny and Kel "keeps coming back" while screaming about them leaving the whole time.

The attention of the player is set on her and her emotions and her, I'm sorry, tsundere behavior while completely forgetting about the guy who's still crying and terrified from her bullying in the background. (I'm. kind of guessing at this point that OMOCAT hating Basil and giving him like, three lines of dialogue probably didn't help with that either). She, again, complains about how "everyone left" when she knows full well that they were all individually alone (or she didn't notice, which would be weird) and even if she didn't, she did way worse to her friend than just leaving him alone and complaining about it seems extremely selfish to me as she visibly didn't reach out to Kel (only available person at the time Mari died) either. To me, it sounds as she was just kind of expecting everyone to only think about her while greiving themselves, when she apparently didn't reach out to anyone herself (she says later in Sunny's garden that she "was the one pushing everyone away").

She only starts thinking that maybe she went a bit too hard on Basil after she's told she was cruel by the other characters, and that's only after almost killing him. (No, I'm not going to take any Sunny-based arguments on that one, because it is emotionally a whole other situation no matter how you look at it.) I'm rambling a bit here because I genuinely don't understand how her behavior makes any sense, but that might be a character-making thing so I'll just move on.

--I'm going to address as briefly as possible why I think her situation at the lake is a lot different from Sunny's at the stairs of his house, just to make sure that's out of the way lol. First, Sunny did not bully Mari for four years. He didn't chase her out of her own comfort place that contains all of her childhood memories. He didn't push her around and cause bullying from other schoolmates as well. In, fact, Mari was the one who had unintentionally pushed Sunny too far, which caused him to snap. Mari was yelling at him, mind you, not the other way around. This was the only time that we know of that Sunny even hurt Mari. Second, Mari and Sunny loved each other. Aubrey detested Basil when she pushed him. Finally, while Sunny and Mari were arguing right at the top of the stairs directly, Aubrey had to walk a certain distance to get to Basil, and pushed him as Basil was trying to reach out, telling him to "get away from her" (she was the one walking towards him in the first place??). (I hope that makes sense)

In and of itself, Aubrey doesn't have much of a personality besides being mean but actually soft and sensitive and sad :(, and maybe being friendly with her group of friends -- I'd call it a classic overdone trope but she doesn't actually have enough real world screentime for me to juge that. I can, and will, however, call her emo on the inside. "I'm mean but I'm also deep, actually" lol (And yeah, every character is kind of stereotypical/tropey, except Aubrey's supposed "trope" is meant to induce a feeling of surprise and it just... doesn't. While, Kel being neglected, for exemple, was genuinely surprising to me.)

I'm not going to talk about Headspace Aubrey, simply because from a "people" perspective that's not Aubrey. And, since we're on the "people perspective" business, I'm not saying that Aubrey is a bad "person" (she's doing what she can there she's got like a ton of other issues and Kel sure as hell isn't helping), simply that I personally dislike her. And again I know that like 85% of my explaination/ arguments were about Basil but, well. We don't see a lot from her apart from her business with Basil and the Hooligans (except for her cute, nice little friendship with the sweet, sweet gang of kids who have such a bad reputation for no reason, sob... But I've already talked about that.)

I have no idea how to format this so that it's not just a giant block of words oh god. Apologies

#this is way too long oh no.#omori #aubrey #any aubrey liker is free to scroll btw!#omori spoilers #a long part of this is also about basil so any basil hater is free to scroll as well #i just enjoy extensively paraphrasing my own thoughts. I like making my simple opinions a 10 meters long text #it's Fun.#1322 words on how i dislike a character. fan behavior

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soria-mori · 2 years

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white oleander is such an odd movie.

it's quite beautiful and the dynamic between the characters has so much potential, but it's consistently lacking in almost every aspect. the dialogue is stiff and bland. it is possible to argue that this was an artistic choice, but i don't think it was well executed at all. astrid is cold and her responses are short and to the obvious. if this was a conscious decision, it's extremely hard to tell.

to be completely frank, the women in this movie were written terribly. astrids mother is the most relatable female character and you can tell she's sort of an edgy self insert for the author. between astrid and ingrid it's obvious the author divided up herself to create two character with turmoil. portraying yourself as a mother daughter relationship has a lot of potential to be heart-wrenching; unfortunately in this case it seems to have been done with little to no actual reflection of self.

the men in this movie are written just fine, they don't serve too much purpose- but it's clear they aren't meant to. this isn't a man's movie. ingrid has a clear distain for not only men, but anyone that threatens to dismantle her narcissistic echo chamber. this reflects onto astrid as a general disinterest in men. (although she does find herself in new york with paul in the end. which is an excellent example of her mother letting her go)

it is quite the feminine thing to have inner turmoil only a mother can instil in you. we'll see it time and time again, misogyny breeds the worst relationships between mothers and their daughters- they're raised to not get along. daughters will often mock and betray mothers for a fathers approval or just for their own independence. but this does not save them from a mothers fate. astrids only protagonist is her mother, whether or not ingrid is a representation of janet fitch's own mother or the conflicts within herself that her relationship with her mother bred, she represents a mothers role in their daughter's life with all the nunaces that sidelong it. she is confusing, she is stark and she is manipulative, but only in a way that a mother who has lived a life before childbirth would be. astrid is free from her mother in the end of the film; both literally, because her mother is sentenced to no parole and with her new found freedoms in new york- this weight being lifted of astrid allowed her to truly live the lives she lived while she was still hidden under her mothers wing. the concluding monologue reveals that astrid has spent time reflecting on her foster families which is something i imagine was hard to do with her mother looming over her. ingrid was a very protective energy throughout astrids life- but emotional protection from a prison yard while being alone in the real world is an obviously detrimental thing for astrid to go through and she wasn't able to fully digest what was happened to her, nor her own emotions regarding the situations.

all in all, this movie is an amazing cathartic watch as long as you're willing to put in the self reflection work it takes to enjoy. there's a lot i wanted to talk about, like the presence of sexual assault and child sexual abuse that takes place throughout the movie aswell as claire, her motherly presence and her guided suicide. perhaps ill have more to say the next time i rewatch this film.

#white oleander #whiteoleander #film #movies #filmcommunity #movie review #film review #janet fitch #peter kosminsky #alison lohman #michelle pteiffer #patrick fugit

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vanessakirbyfans · 4 years

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Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby play 19th-century farmers' wives who develop a passionate connection in Mona Fastvold's drama co-starring Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott.

A friendship that blossoms into romance offers two mid-19th century farmers' wives refuge from their joyless marriages and routines of menial drudgery in Mona Fastvold's The World to Come.

Adapted from Jim Shepard's moving 2017 short story of the same title, this Venice competition entry is set in a rugged upstate New York where the winters are harsh and the patriarchy hangs heavy. Resignation seems to be the default mode for Abigail and Tallie (Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, respectively), the women at the story's center, whose lives revolve around keeping their husbands' stomachs full and their ambitions afloat. The initially halting, increasingly urgent intimacy that grows between them comes as a relief, but also a frustration — an agonizing taste of what life could be like if they weren't locked into roles dictated by their time, place and culture.

The World to Come has much to recommend it, including the polish and precision of Fastvold's directorial touch and a terrific quartet of leads (Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott play the heroines' spouses) who, among other things, deliver mouthfuls of unwieldy period dialogue with dexterity and conviction. Kirby, especially, is a marvel, radiant and haunting as the more outgoing of the central pair.

That the movie succeeds to the extent it does is somewhat of a miracle given how often it gets in its own way. Indeed, The World to Come is nearly undone by a single glaring flaw: The drastic over-reliance on voiceover composed largely of lines lifted from the short story. On a sentence to sentence basis, what we hear — mainly Abigail's diary entries, read by Waterston — is vivid, at times strikingly lovely. But it's also so jarringly literary, and so extremely frequent, that it yanks us out of the delicate spell cast by the film's painterly, austerely beautiful images and nuanced performances. Meant to draw us into the outwardly placid protagonist's churning inner world, the voiceover has the opposite effect: one of distancing and interruption. Rarely have I so wanted to tell a first-person narrator to — for lack of more delicate phrasing — put a sock in it.

Shepard, the story's author, is credited as co-screenwriter (along with novelist Ron Hansen), so it's tempting to diagnose the problem as excessive fidelity to source material. Admittedly, the narration makes dramatic sense. Abigail is a stifled intellectual, and writing is her talent and escape; the passages from her journal give us access to feelings that her air of sleeves-rolled-up stoicism doesn't immediately suggest and her everyday duties — baking bread, plucking chickens, milking cows — don't provide an outlet for. The World to Come uses voiceover as its primary tool in building a portrait of female interiority.

But that choice underestimates the other tools at the film's disposal — namely, the director's own visual gifts and her first-rate cast. Waterston is a skilled enough performer and Fastvold an evocative enough stylist to conjure the depths of Abigail's desires and disappointments without having her give an emotional play-by-play. Much as I admired and was at times stirred by The World to Come, I'm convinced it would be a significantly stronger movie with 75 percent of the narration stripped away.

Early scenes pull us into the daily grind of Abigail and her taciturn husband Dyer (Affleck) as they struggle to keep their farm functioning while mourning the loss of their young daughter. There is distance between them — which Dyer openly deplores — though remnants of tenderness, too. Mostly, for Abigail, there is a numbing sameness to the days that pass.

A ripple in that sameness comes in the form of a new couple in the area: Tallie and her hog farmer husband, Finney (Abbott). From the moment Abigail lays eyes on Tallie — with her luxuriant tangle of red hair, splash of freckles and alert blue eyes — she's fascinated. Tallie returns Abigail's curious gaze.

Before long, the women are paying each other regular visits, candid Tallie coaxing reserved Abigail out of her shell. The two share gossip, grievances and, eventually, personal confidences as they create a space away from the men — the lives — they have settled for. Fastvold and her leading ladies establish the characters' dynamic and trace their dawning attraction persuasively, as Abigail finds herself dazzled by Tallie's boldness and independent spirit while Tallie is moved by Abigail's kindness and sharp intelligence. Their closeness is built from a gently crescendoing accumulation of gestures — stolen smiles and glances, the graze of a finger, a bundle of birthday gifts, a foot massage, a hungry kiss — and rendered more intense by their shared sense of looming danger; Abigail and Tallie know that if they're caught, the consequences will be dire.

The omnipresence of Abigail's narration during the movie's middle stretch may call to mind the recent work of Terrence Malick, a great filmmaker whose use and abuse of voiceover has become a devastating weakness. The heroine's musings here may be less drifty and dreamily existential than their Malickian counterparts, but there are eye-rollers of various types — from flowery ("my heart is like a leaf borne over a rock by rapidly moving water"); to obvious ("Astonishment and joy," she sighs following her first embrace with Tallie. Then, in case we didn't get the memo: "Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy."); to TMI (when Dyer falls ill: "I've restored him somewhat with an enema of molasses, warm water and lard").

Those lines would be a heavy lift for any performer, and there's something a bit mannered in the hushed pitch and lilting cadences of Waterston's voiceover. She's much more affecting in her scenes with Kirby, the Modigliani-esque graveness of her face melting into a warm, giddy smile.

And how could it not? Kirby gives Tallie a mischievous gleam in her eye and a low, slightly naughty voice that makes her every utterance sound like a confession. The actress conveys more with a slightly cocked eyebrow and clench of the jaw than most do with an entire face-full of emoting, and her magnetism here feels effortless; Tallie isn't as flamboyant as Kirby's flouncy, fancily frocked Princess Margaret from The Crown, but she's somehow just as full of spark and drama.

Affleck and Abbott, meanwhile, lend their characters dimension and specificity, making them more than cardboard impediments to their wives' fulfillment. Speaking in a hoarse, wounded whisper, Affleck locates something deeply human in the hapless, love-starved Dyer, a limited man who nevertheless is capable of seeing beyond his own needs — of having "sympathy," as he notes at one point. Dyer becomes a partner to Abigail at a crucial moment, something that differentiates him starkly from Kinney, a rigid prig who can't conceive of Tallie as anything but an extension of himself. Abbott plays him with a flicker of madness, a streak of sadism that gives the story's turn toward darkness a kind of queasy inevitability.

Even with its flaws, this represents a step up from Fastvold's last movie, the creepy but slight mood piece The Sleepwalker (2014). There's a sense of confidence and control here, starting with DP André Chemetoff's evocative compositions and scrupulously judged camerawork, which favors stillness over movement and balances close-ups with longer shots situating the actors within rustic, sparsely decorated interiors or more majestic outdoor spaces. The setting is stunning (the film was shot on 16mm in Romania), but The World to Come never succumbs to period-drama prettifying. Nature is a seen as a wild, threatening force — Tallie's trek through a blizzard is captured with cacophonous nightmarishness — wielding as much power over the characters' lives as their own choices.

Daniel Blumberg's supple score, by turns mournful, playfully jazzy and full of roiling menace, is one of several other contributions that collectively create an impression of sensitive craftsmanship. Luckily for The World to Come, that impression lingers longer than the film's aggravations.

#Vanessa Kirby #The World to Come #Review #Articles

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gh0st-patr0l · 5 years

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Selfishness v. Selflessness: An Analysis of Deceit

So.

Since the latest episode came out, I’ve been thinking about a LOT, but especially about Deceit. He’s an amazingly complex character, and it’s a lot to wrap your head around. However, I felt that the thing I wanted to talk about most was his overall intention with this whole scenario- note, when I say that, I’m not talking about the call-back v. wedding debacle. Because, when you really look at it, Deceit’s true intent had little to do with those events themselves. It was just a convenient scenario that could be used to illustrate a point. And I’ve already gone on a rant about that part- how in the end it wasn’t even an issue of right or wrong, but staying true to your moral compass- so I won’t get into it here. What I really want to do is take a closer look at Deceit’s closing arguments, in context of the rest of the episode and his previous statements.

I’ll be honest, the first time I watched the episode I was so invested in the drama that I actually didn’t even PROCESS what he meant with this scene, but now that I’m looking back it’s absolutely critical to understanding Deceit’s true intentions. Written out, it’s actually a pretty short exchange, but there’s a lot to pick apart here. Let’s start from where the actual argument begins.

Thomas: I don’t understand... you got what you wanted. You proved that I’m not as honest as I’d like to believe. Deceit: But you’re still missing the point! Didn’t it seem kind of ridiculous to take this matter SO seriously, to the point of settling it in a legal setting?! Everyone else: [mumbled disagreements] Roman: We do that kind of stuff all the time...

Alright, so this is where Deceit has obviously become frustrated that the others haven’t picked up on his intentions with this whole scheme. (Tbf Thomas’s Single braincell had been omitted from most of the situation so it’s really not totally their fault,)

Here, we see a BLATANT distinction between him and the rest of the sides. The sides all consider these elaborate scenes and lengthy discussions and journeys over their dilemmas to be a completely sensible way of dealing with their problems. It’s just how they do things, it’s how they work best.

But Deceit, despite being a part of Thomas, doesn’t get it.

Unlike the other sides, he doesn’t give equal weight to all issues Thomas has. He sees the choice between a social obligation and a career opportunity as obvious and pointless to agonize over.

It’s important to think about this in combination with what he says in the courtroom- his ultimate goal is to fulfill Thomas’s wants and look out for him. At first, that simply sounds like the same benevolent thought process that all the other sides have, and to a point it is. But when you think about that along with the fact that he considers his friends and family as inconsequential- not just a little lower on his list of priorities, but not even worth considering- it becomes clear that Deceit’s protection and concern of Thomas takes on a whole nother form in light of his outlook and actions. But we’ll come back to that in a bit, let’s get back to the argument.

Deceit: WHOO, okay, let me put it this way- life... is like a pinata. Patton: Colorful, and full of stuff that makes you happy??? Deceit: ...SURE. And you WANT that stuff that makes you happy, right?! Patton: Do I?! Roman: Do I... Deceit: Then in order to get that stuff, you must ATTACK the pinata!

THIS is where Deceit’s language comes into play. Thomas and the rest of the Sanders Sides team are fantastic at writing, especially dialogue, and I think the specificities of the metaphor Deceit’s chosen to use here are critical.

When Deceit describes the human experience and life in society, he describes it as an object that must be looked at through a gauge of offense. He doesn’t use language like take, obtain, earn- he says attack. He views life as a struggle, as something violent that must be beaten and won. And this is reflected in the court scenes. Specifically, when he’s talking about his motivation for wanting Thomas to lie, he uses the word disadvantage. Again, referring to life as a competition, or a game. (This actually made me wonder why Thomas didn’t choose to bring up Conflict Theory at any point, but now that I think about it more I suppose an anarchistic viewpoint would fit Deceit better than one rooted in socialism.)

And Deceit wants the others, and most importantly, Thomas, to look at life that way as well. He sees life as a competition against others, and because of that, sees no value in putting other’s wants and needs above his own. In my mind, this is where his rhetoric crosses the line from sensible into overly cynical. He was right in the point that sometimes selfishness can be good- but that’s not what he’s saying anymore, and I think it may have never even been in the first place, and that he was simply being less radical in the case to appear more favorable. Deceit doesn’t just think that selfishness isn’t inherently evil, he thinks that selflessness is damaging.

And, from a character standpoint, that makes sense. Because inherently, Deceit is a selfish concept. It’s lying at someone else’s expense to achieve your own goal. And, as Deceit pointed out, that isn’t always bad! Your goal can obviously be benevolent. But as a character, he is quite literally a personification of deceit, with the goal of getting Thomas what he wants and/or needs. In a concept like that, there’s little to no room for morals or empathy.

Which brings us to our last bit of relevant dialogue from that scene;

Deceit: But you’re wearing a blindfold right now. You can keep playing with the blindfold on, if you like the game better that way. But if you take it off, it’s easier to get that stuff that you want!

Admittedly, this bit is a little harder to understand, but I think it’s clear that by blindfold, Deceit is symbolizing what he sees as disadvantage or hindrance; morals and empathy.

Throughout the entire episode, and his other appearances, Deceit has never responded with concern towards the feelings or circumstances of anyone other than Thomas himself- it may look like that on the surface from his first appearance and his acknowledgment of Thomas wanting to be a good friend, but in reality, he only reacts to those things when they’re directly related to what Thomas wants. In the lying episode, he doesn’t actually want to spare Joan’s feelings; Thomas feels bad, Thomas wants Joan to think he’s a good person, and Deceit sees a way to fulfill Thomas’s want in that scenario. In that sense, he’s actually very similar to Logan- function over feeling. He doesn’t care what he’s doing or why, as long as Thomas gets what he wants.

And this is when Deceit’s argument finally becomes clear and concrete. Deceit wanted this trial to prove that being selfish is better. This is when his intentions are no longer agreeable, at least to me, because what he’s trying to say is his core philosophy is that Thomas should ignore his morals towards the people around him, because it will be easier to then achieve his own goals. The argument goes from what was seemingly encouragement towards self-care, to a complete disregard of others. He sees caring for the people in his life to be an optional difficulty and a burden that only makes it harder for Thomas to get what he wants. He places no value in Thomas’s relationships, and only serves, or attempts to serve, in their benefit when it is Thomas’s immediate goal to do so.

And that is interesting- Deceit has no control over what Thomas wants, but an obligation to help him achieve them, and apparently, opinions on what his priorities within those wants should be. And this is when we need to remember that the sides are not full personalities, but facets of Thomas himself.

Of course, the main four are such broad concepts that it’s easier to fit more of a “person” into each one. Morality is a vast understanding of right and wrong, but has a lot of room to move around in as far as demeanor and actions, and is combined with an interesting representation. The same with logic, and the same with passion- their representations combined with the flexibility of their definitions and interpretations offer a lot of room for filling out characters. Anxiety is a little different since at its core, anxiety and fear are really only an instinctual reflex. However, by extending that out into vaguer definitions and related traits like insecurity and morbidity, and once again tying it all up with a wonderfully engaging persona, Thomas still makes him feel like a character.

But the sides are not real people. They are built to represent a certain trait, and because of that, their behavior and motivations are more extreme and less well-rounded than normal people’s would be. They are written to be, for the most part, single-faceted characters. Their personality is only a specific section of someone else’s, and because of that they don’t act or think with the complexity of a real human person. And that is SO important to understanding Deceit.

To a point, Thomas managed to fully characterize Deceit as well- however, he’s a bit different. Because unlike the others, Deceit is a much more limited concept. He is a personification of lying and dishonesty. He doesn’t represent any emotions, any other traits, he’s just Deceit. Because of that, he can only be so emotionally complex (which is why I’m very impressed that Thomas and the team managed to give him so much life and feeling!). And that is partially why... I don’t really see him as sympathetic as many do, personally.

(This is where I’m gonna move away from Just Facts to more opinion based reasoning, so just skip to the end if you’re not interested in that.)

I’m not sure if I’m maybe missing something, but from what I saw, I don’t actually think Deceit was ever sad or hurt in that exchange- only frustrated because he couldn’t understand why the others didn’t see things the way he did. In the end, I don’t feel like him blowing up was from a place of emotional hurt. On the contrary, I think the source of conflict for him was in his reasoning. It was the fact that his logic couldn’t make sense of the choices around him, because he’s physically incapable of understanding the situation from a place of empathy like the others do. What he saw was Thomas making a decision that goes against what he directly wants, and Deceit literally just can’t understand that. He can’t understand the concept of Thomas choosing to uphold his morals over his personal desires, because he just doesn’t have the personal capacity to do so. So he loses his temper, gets bitter, and leaves.

I hope that this doesn’t give you the impression that I dislike Deceit as a character. I actually LOVE Deceit, from the standpoint of a writer and a fan. He’s a wonderful addition to the cast and adds a lot to the series.

However, I don’t fully sympathize with him, and I don’t feel comfortable idolizing him as he is in the show, because I honestly don’t see him as benevolent. I appreciate his motives, but I disagree too strongly with his outlook and logic to relate to or support him. I think that’s what I was trying to communicate with this analysis- it felt to me like a lot of people completely overlooked the intention of Deceit’s actions in this episode, which in my opinion does a HUGE disservice to the complexity of his character. He’s not a helpless, misunderstood victim. He’s a character who pairs good intentions with manipulation, carelessness, and immoral methods, which is a lovely thing to appreciate as an element of a show. But when you ignore those parts of his character to either idolize OR demonize him, it does a huge disservice to both him and the writers. I think I’d just like to see more people appreciate the intricacies of his character, especially in terms of his moral implications.

But, I think I’ve rambled enough as it is, so Imma end it here. This was a LOT of fun to write, and I might do more if yall like it, cause I have a LOT of thoughts about this series in general. Let me know if you’d want to see that! Bye for now!!!!

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #deceit sanders #ts deceit #logan sanders #ts logan #patton sanders #ts patton #virgil sanders #ts virgil #ts

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pride-vns-blog · 6 years

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LGBTQ VN Week: Day One! (6/18)

Welcome to the first day of my LGBTQ visual novel recommendation week, in honor of Pride Month 2018! Every day from today (June 18th) to Sunday (June 24th), I’ll be talking about four visual novels with LGBTQ themes, characters, and/or creators that have stood out to me and explaining a little bit about why I like them! I also reached out to a handful of those VNs’ developers and talked with them about their work, so you’ll be seeing a casual interview tagged onto the end of every post, too. ✨

To kick things off today, I’m highlighting four visual novels that are practically bursting at the seams with personality, all in their own ways — Saturn’s WORST DATING SIM, Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top, Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, and Madeleine’s Inverness Nights!

Hit the jump to read about watching Animal Planet with punks, beta-testing hookup apps, Mario fire alarms, and why it is that so many visual novels seem to use character archetypes.

One note before we get started! This list isn't meant to be reflective of "the objectively best LGBTQ visual novels" or anything like that, which I want to be ultra-clear about upfront. It's not a list of all the ones I've ever played, either. There are plenty of visual novels with LGBTQ characters/themes that have been recommended to me frequently — while I was working on this list and over the past couple years — that didn't make it onto this list because I couldn't afford to buy them, or because they just weren't for me when I did buy them, or because of a million other reasons.

To give an example of this in action: I barely have any originally-Japanese language visual novels on here, because the number of M/M ones that get translated is already so low and already nearly 100% commercial, and I'm way more inclined to pay for M/M than anything else. (Reason: I'm gay and I like looking at hot guys.) For the purposes of this list specifically, I've also cut out a fair few BL-marketed VNs — from both Western and Eastern developers — that skirt around the issue of whether or not the protagonist is gay/bi/etc awkwardly.

I also tried to limit myself to one VN per team, picking the ones I thought were best representative of their output and leaving space to mention other works of theirs that I'd liked, with the aim of keeping this list from being totally dominated by studios who'd put out a lot over a long period of time. And then personal taste for other genre and content details comes into play, so it cuts out even more from what's left! In the originally-Japanese BL category alone, that left me with a single nominee, which was... Well, you'll see!

Basically, I went over a lot of different options to settle onto a list that's ultimately only supposed to be things that I, personally, would recommend! And I don't want to recommend things I didn't enjoy, one way or another. Nobody wants to sit through multiple paragraphs of a slog where I'm trying to talk about a game I didn't actually like (or, in plenty of cases, a game I couldn't afford) without acknowledging that I didn't like it. To be totally honest, that sounds like it would suck to try and write.

So if your favorite LGBTQ visual novels aren't on here, but you want to give people an excuse to play them, I'd love to read anyone else's personal recommendation lists! I'm not a journalist or a reviewer and this isn't anything close to a formalized games review blog that I'm planning to update ever again; I'm just a VN dev who felt like sitting down and making a list of other LGBTQ VNs I liked one day, so I went and I did it. And I felt like giving those other devs a platform if I was going to talk about their work, so I took my own Patreon earnings to pay for as many as I could, then I went and did some interviews, too.

Thanks for sitting through (or skimming, as the case may be) that wall of text! Without further ado, let's talk WORST DATING SIM!

WORST DATING SIM (SATURN)

Itchio Tagline: “MRGRGR.” Genre(s): Slice of life, shitpost. Release Date: January 22nd, 2018. Content Warnings: Brief depiction of blood; violence.

Out of all the visual novels I’ll be covering over the next week, WORST DATING SIM is the only one I haven’t seen nearly all the content for, and not for a lack of trying! Saturn’s debut visual novel, a challenging conversational simulator where a punk named Etsuji decides to follow you home and hang out with you purely because he can, features a grand total of 69 ways you can get a GAME OVER. By and large, these endings come at the hands of your newfound friend (?), who’s got a temper and a sensitive streak a mile wide. If Etsuji doesn’t like what you’re saying, he’ll knock your lights out, and you’ll get booted back to the title screen.

The way WORST DATING SIM doubles down on this challenge is by intentionally removing Ren’Py’s default save feature — if you piss Etsuji off, you’re back at square one, period. You have to either somehow retain the information yourself or turn to someone else’s successful run for help, because it’s deliberately designed to be done in a single playthrough without reloading. Even a fair few jokes in the script, like “I’m sure in several alternate universes he’s punched my lights out, but so far I’m safe,” are dropped in to acknowledge the fact that beating WORST DATING SIM is more akin to powering through a run of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. (But don’t worry, the Skip Text function is still there to help you out!)

As someone who does turn to guides frequently to find out what I’m missing on my third or fourth playthroughs of visual novels, I assumed from the start that at some point that I’d want to find a walkthrough in order to see any real endings. But the sheer charm of Etsuji’s responses and, to be completely frank, how much fun I was having just trying to scale Etsuji’s emotional mountain meant that I never really hit that point while playing. WORST DATING SIM’s distinct personality struck exactly the right chord in my brain that made me want to keep playing by myself, tunneling away at it persistently, and it made the ending(s!) feel all that much more rewarding.

WORST DATING SIM is available now for free on Itchio, and you can follow Saturn on his Itch.io or Twitter (NSFW) for updates on more potential WDS content or his other upcoming visual novels.

COMING OUT ON TOP (OBSCURASOFT)

Itchio Tagline: “The erotic comedy gay dating game that'll make [you] laugh, cry, and get a little boned up! Hot dudes included.” Genre(s): Comedy, romance. Release Date: December 10th, 2014. Content Warnings: Nudity; mentions of homophobia; sexual content; seriously there’s a lot of sex in this.

If you’ve played M/M dating sims in the English language sphere any time in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top — drawing more from the Western tradition of porn by and for gay men than anything else, it tells the story of newly-out college senior Mark Matthews and his run-ins with hot guy after hot guy (after hot guy, after... you get the picture). With the help of his roommate Penny, he also takes on the hookup app scene and delves into a sea of bonus dates funded by Kickstarter backers, which were released steadily from January 2015 to December 2016.

Coming Out On Top’s steady stream of humor never goes so far as to be totally derailing from its focus on sexuality and Mark’s genuinely sincere approach to relationships, casual or otherwise; Obscurasoft manages to infuse the numerous sex scenes with enough awkwardness, humor, and personality that actually playing through them back-to-back feels less like a string of pinups and more like scenes Mark is actively involved in or growing from. As a character, especially one whose archetype has gotten a lot of mileage in gay porn since the dawn of mankind, it’d be narratively easy to let Mark remain a generally undefined slate for players to project themselves onto.

And while there is a degree of personalization, especially when it comes to how blatantly horned-up some of the dialogue is compared to other options the player can choose, Coming Out On Top is still very distinctly Mark’s story. His specific insecurities from years of being closeted don’t vanish as soon as he comes out, and hookups don’t always work out for him the way they might in ten minute long “first time” AVs. His grades still matter, and his friends still exist, and he’s still got his own sense of priorities the player can disregard (at their own fish-related peril) or see through on the slow climb to the end of his senior year.

Coming Out On Top is available now for $14.99 on Itch.io, and Obscurasoft’s website; to get early updates about what they’re working on next, you can follow their News & Updates blog or their Twitter.

BUTTERFLY SOUP (BRIANNA LEI)

Itchio Tagline: “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life. Release Date: September 16th, 2017. Content Warnings: Parental abuse; violence; racist language; homophobic language; ableist abuse and slurs.

The strength of Butterfly Soup’s personality, from beginning to end, is founded in its four point-of-view characters — kindhearted Diya, reckless Min, sharp Noelle, and carefree (?) Akarsha. As a group of ninth grade friends with different priorities and different reasons for joining their shared baseball team, which are as obvious as the hugely-varied color schemes of each girl’s clothes, they play off of one another easily. Lei uses her fair share of actual memes, but never ones that feel like the speaking character — usually Akarsha — wouldn’t say them, which holds true to the rest of Lei’s dialogue writing. It feels distinctly ninth grade without ever being mocking or trivializing the way everything is so extremely important all the time when you’re a ninth grader.

Part of that strength definitely comes from Lei’s willingness to lean on each character’s archetype and unpack it at the same time; Diya’s physical strength and sheer skill, combined with her reluctance to talk to strangers, could have easily seen her shoehorned into a much more detached character than she’s written as. Instead, she’s thoughtful, expressive, and deeply concerned with the people she cares about, even if she can’t always necessarily communicate that to them very well through her ever-present anxiety. Exactly how their own differences manifest and each of the three other girls’ reasons for being that way are slightly trending into spoiler territory, but I think Diya’s fellow main characters also each have their own similarly-smart tweaks on familiar archetypes that make their joke-filled banter all that much more personalized and memorable.

Although there’s a lot to love about the positive, hilarious moments in the protagonists’ everyday lives, one of the things that I think worked just as well narratively were the scenes that required all those content warnings up there. They're very much going to be a YMMV situation for different players, especially with my own caveat that my relationship to dysfunctional families is coming from white Irish ex-Catholicism rather than those two specific Asian cultures’ values — trying not to give any spoilers about which characters I’m referring to, here! — but in-text, they’re never situations without any future, because we can see that future where the group has each other, and they always have room in the moment to be angry, or upset, or hurt without the narrative itself punishing them for failing to be perfect. Instead, they get to play baseball and fall in love and set off fire alarms, and they do pretty okay.

Butterfly Soup is available now for free, and you can follow Brianna Lei on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to learn more about her upcoming work.

INVERNESS NIGHTS (MADELEINE)

Itchio Tagline: “Every relationship ends.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy, drama. Release Date: June 30th, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

There are a lot of things about Inverness Nights that worked for me in a way I don’t know that they would have in another visual novel — in particular, Tristram’s character is difficult in ways that pretty directly pertain to some of the content warnings linked above, and I was personally interested in seeing the text unpack that bit by bit. The eventual turn the story takes further on in your playtime, to try and phrase that in a way that isn’t super spoilery, was something I personally didn’t mind taking a little longer to get to.

Curious to hear what its developer Madeleine had to say about the story, their thoughts on character design, and what they’re up to next, I reached out to them for an interview!

IVAN: Thanks for having me, Madeleine! To get this conversation started, how would you sum up Inverness Nights to everyone reading this?

MADELEINE: Inverness Nights is a game about queer isolation and the importance of queer community outside of romantic relationships. Set in 18th c Scotland you play as Tristram Rose, an immortal gay man who has just broken up with his mortal boyfriend, and decide how he’ll cope with the loss as someone unable to tell the world around him that he’s magical and queer.

Sounds spot-on! And definitely a great summary of all the things that made it super appealing — to me, at least, haha. Before anything else, I want to note that it's been just about a year since you released Inverness Nights! Congratulations! How's the experience been, and what particular highlights or lowlights over the past year stand out to you?

It was good actually releasing a game, I enjoyed that part a lot! Aside from that, I really appreciated a couple of thoughtful reviews it got where people connected with it as a game where being queer is difficult, but not bleak. I think that because AAA games love tragic gay stories indie games can sometimes feel they need to be ultra-positive to balance that in the other direction, which is cool, but as someone who likes stories that’re more in-the-middle it was a gap I wanted to fill. There was a good reaction to that, albeit a quiet reaction. It’s a very ‘first game, niche game’ complaint but the lowlight would probably be that not many people played it — however, there are a lot of understandable reasons why it worked out that way so I’m not too hurt overall.

Haha, getting something finished and released is definitely a great feeling; I'm personally really glad you stepped in to fill that niche, as someone who likes things that are honest about their characters' pain without feeling exploitative or endlessly hopeless! In the fantastic (but spoiler-filled) Medium postmortem you wrote on your process, you say that "an important part of marketing visual novels is selling your characters"; the postmortem goes into that in fairly great detail, especially as it pertains to ensemble casts, but would you care to expand upon that observation in the scope of the visual novel genre (and how you're keeping it in mind for future projects) a little bit here?

People make fun of visual novels sometimes for their reliance on archetypes — you know, look up the average dating sim and you can probably tell in an instant who the bad boy is, who the smart girl is, so on — but when you’re selling a character driven game to people, you can’t give away the cast’s backstories and quirks up front or there’s nothing to play for, so you’ve got to find some sort of shorthand to suggest what an audience wants will be there, and that usually comes back to telling them which archetypes you’ve got. When I started Inverness Nights I kind of laughed at that reliance on archetypes and tried to do something different but I learnt the hard way why it’s important. At the moment I’m finishing a game called Catacomb Prince with my didn’t-quite-finish-it-for-a-jam group Skeleteam, and when our character artist Roxy was doing the designs I gave her very broad notes on who the cast were so they’d be more archetypical. Consequently we have a very recognisable cool girl/frat boy/petite NB slate of romance options that people’ve connected with waaay more easily and way faster than anyone did with the IN cast, which I think speaks to why it’s a sound approach.

I definitely agree in the importance of finding a good balance with archetypes; I've had people who've instantly bonded when I invoked "shy genius" or "lovestruck best friend", which ironically has given me a bit more of that freedom in telling their stories more uniquely! Could you shed a little light on what Catacomb Prince is, without too many spoilers, and what your storytelling influences for a visual novel like that have been?

Catacomb Prince is a Gothic comedy; you are Prince Vitali, trashy heir to a fantasy Renaissance kingdom, and you have woken up dead five years after a raging party. Your parents still expect you to inherit the throne despite your new skeletal appearance, but your kingdom’s laws require the King to be married. Find love, find your killer — or die again trying.

It’s mostly inspired by Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, which is an old kitschy BL VN about a guy named Georik taking up alchemy to make a new body for his decapitated (still living) sister while hiding his hobby from his friends. Animamundi has some very gloomy stuff happening but it’s so over-the-top about it that it loops around to being a very funny game, and I wanted more experiences like that in the world, so here we are. There’re also some aspects of other goofy Gothic stories in there, like Hammer Horror movies and EC Comics, though the romance aspect of it means it’s not all rib-ticklers all the time. We took care to make the love interests more than just fodder for jokes and/or horror. They’re complete, kissable people, with flesh and everything.

I am not doing a good job of easing up on the skeleton jokes but please believe me on that last point.

Glad to hear the love interests have skin! Not super fussed about that, personally, but I'm sure some players would have logistical concerns about things like skeleton-on-skeleton kissing. (I'd like to go on the record and say I'm pro-skeleton and extremely pro-skeleton puns, so I'm waiting with bated breath to get to play as your not-breathing protagonist.) Other than what we'll be seeing in Catacomb Prince, what kind of genres and themes are you interested in exploring more of in the future?

After Catacomb Prince I’m going to work on finishing an IF game I started last year called Captain Dracula, about being the last survivor on a submarine after your Captain reveals he’s Dracula. That’s also a comedy. I spent three years making Inverness Nights so taking a breather to make funny games for a while seemed like a good plan, and I’m really into classic horror, so I’ve gravitated in that direction with it. I’ve also got a regular no-pictures no-choices fantasy novel I’m several drafts through at the moment which I’ll hopefully be releasing later this year. Once those’re off my plate, I’m keen to try making either an 80 Days-style narrative travel game or a Clock Tower-style point-and-click horror for a change of pace. I want to do something that’s more about exploring a place; I do academic stuff as well as indie development and all my academic work has been on how we explore places in games, so it feels weird that I haven’t made anything that utilises my research.

It sounds like you've got a lot coming up! I'm looking forward to seeing how you can combine your academic studies with your fiction work, which already have such strong settings of place from the get-go. And last but not least, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers would you like to recommend?

It's IF rather than a VN but I love Heart of the House by Nissa Campbell, which is a Gothic game about an exorcist trying to remove an evil presence from a Victorian manor house, and maybe also wooing some of its residents. It’s very atmospheric and you can be NB, two things I like a lot. With caveats I’m also really keen on Animamundi (like I mentioned earlier — fun, funny MLM but warning for violent horror elements and sexual abuse), and The House in Fata Morgana (a dark romance about a trans man trying to rescue his girlfriend from a cursed manor, there’s an extensive content warning list on its website). Lastly, on the lighter side, Butterfly Soup and The Duenkhy are both good VNs about queer people making friends :) probably play them when you need to smile after all the grimmer suggestions I’ve made.

Awesome — and thanks again for your time, Madeleine! It was a pleasure.

Inverness Nights is available now for $12 USD, and you can follow Madeleine on Twitter or Itch.io to keep up with all the skeleton romances and Dracula adventures they're setting their sights on next!

Thanks to everyone who read this far! Keep an eye on the Twitter thread or this blog for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll be talking about four more visual novels that I think do some crafty things with their creative design!

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spiralatlas · 7 years

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GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific) 2017 Day 1

I’m in Melbourne for GCAP and PAX Australia, and GCAP started today.

Sadly things were cut short by me BREAKING MY WHEELCHAIR in a DOOMED QUEST FOR A SMOOTHIE. I got a replacement, but it was a hassle and I needed to go rest afterwards. But what I saw of GCAP was good!

Below: descriptions of talks by Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya (creators of Gone Home and Tacoma) and by David Gaider (narrative designer on Dragon Age), plus misc other conference things.

There were three introductions, all about How Great The Melbourne Games Scene Is and how Everyone Is Friends And Awesome.

Keynote: Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya from Fullbright Games: The names didn't mean much to me but then I realised THEY'RE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE GONE HOME AND TACOMA :D

The theme of GCAP this year is The Ripple Effect, and the theme of this talk was how people connect and affect each other.

Steve and Karla met as part of the team for Bioshock 2. Karla was a researcher, and Steve a level designer, and when they were in those roles they didn't interact. But they both finished their assigned tasks and asked around for other things that needed doing, which led them both to the massive task of writing all the little bits of extra dialogue around things like what enemies say when they attack, flavour text on objects, optional little stories told through random audio diaries etc. They made a great team (Steve as writer and Karla as editor) and got really into it. I think you can totally see how this grew into their later approach to games.

The company 2KMoran being willing to let them develop like this was part of them being a good company, with many ex-employees who have gone on to make interesting games.

Steve then got to design his own DLC, and went I MUST BRING IN KARLA. And after they did that, and Bioshock 2 was done, they created Fullbright and started working on Gone Home.

At some point Steve encountered some cool Bioshock fanart and became mutuals with the artist on twitter. Since she was a lesbian, he asked her if she'd be up for discussing things to help with the game. She brought along her wife for an extra point of view. The wife turned out to be a 3D artist, and both of them ended up hired to work on the game.

David Gaider: Creating a World and Making it Stick

So this was like 50% general advice and 50% morality tale about the Hubris Of The Writer Who Thinks His Worldbuilding Stands Alone.

Basically he created all the basic Thedas worldbuilding by himself, then told the rest of the team, and worked with his writers, and never checked in to make sure the game worked as a whole until it was Far Too Late.

He was trying to create a relatively grounded, dark, realistic story...and the art team was making orcs and bikini armour. He had lore about the mages being too oppressed to learn offensive spells or do anything flashy in public, while the gameplay team was implementing fireballs, and specialisations like Reaver which were not connected to the worldbuilding at all. And by the time these incompatibilities became apparent everyone was committed and refused to budge. So the final game is a hodge podge of inconsistent parts that all make sense individually but don't fit together.

Now my general notes:

He scrawled out the original Thedas map on paper the same way he would for a D&D game (his original draft looked very Middle Earth-ish in style), expecting someone who knew geography would go through and fix the rivers at some point. They did not.

One lesson he learned is that you can't just throw pages of worldbuilding at people and expect them to both read and be engaged with it. You have to have a "razor", a short description of the core of the game, and make sure everyone understands what it is. Anything that doesn't fit the razor gets cut. For example, DA2 had themes of The Price of Freedom, Family, and All Things Change. And you have to sell them on why your worldbuilding elements are interesting, and what makes them cool. Once the art team understood what darkspawn were they got invested and redesigned them to not just be orcs.

Remember to feel: Don't just come up with the history of your city: what is it like to visit, is it loud and friendly and sunny or oppressively silent?

Pick your battles: choose the parts of your worldbuilding you really value and emphasise those, be willing to let the others go, especially if it’s to follow changes that make the game more fun. The game being fun is the final aim, your worldbuilding is just a tool to get there.

He got confused by his cursor a lot :)

One good thing about the DAO worldbuilding is that he didn't know where it would be set at first, so worked out all the history for everywhere, and that added lots of depth.

Names are the devil, totally subjective so everyone argues about them and hates any new suggestion. Many names for DAO were bandied about, like "Chronicle". He has a rule to never put Shadow, Dark or Blood in a list of possible names or the publishers will go THAT ONE.

His two rules: 1) People aren't allowed to complain about a name unless they have a better suggestion. 2) Wait six months. Chances are people will be used to it and not mind any more.

When the Grey Wardens were first suggested they were supposed to be pretty minor, based off the rangers in Tolkein. So they got named the White Rangers, but that was too similar, so White Wardens, but that wasn't morally grey enough, so: Grey Wardens! Which was fine until they turned out to be important, people suggested "cooler" names like Blood Knight Brotherhood/Lords of War/Disciples of Pain (not sure if he was joking) but he waited six months and took a vote and lo, the old name stuck.

Track your changes.

Have an elevator pitch (not the same as the razor) If you can't come up with one your concept needs work.

Question your biases. He was originally inspired by Middle Earth and D&D, and his own ideas of Medieval Europe...all of which are way too white. Some of this could be fixed in later games, but the world he created closed off a lot of possibilities (he didn't say any examples but I guess he meant, like, Africa and Asia equivalents)

When he took inspiration from Jews and Romani for the elves he thought he was being very clever, and only later realised that this created all sorts of unfortunate implications, since now anything that happens to elves seems like a statement about those cultures.

He was happily surprised to be able to include bi characters in DAO.

The writers were all pretty happy with how they'd handled gender in DAI, then the Voice Over person was like "why are the vast majority of our lines for men?" and they realised they'd all made most of their background characters men for no reason.

At the start it's hard to walk the line between a long, boring, exposition heavy intro, and players getting confused by lack of explanation. (It felt like he wished players would just be smarter lol) He said "If DAO had started at Ostagar then the PC's backstory would have felt irrelevant" which made me think "So like DAI?".

Players have to know why to care about an event before it happens, or the emotional reaction will fall flat.

When you introduce the first member of a group, they should be fairly typical so the player gets a feel for the default. For example, Sten is a pretty typical Qunari. Only after that can you introduce outliers like The Iron Bull.

Every main character the player interacts with (for a RPG, the party members) should represent a different interesting facet of the worldbuilding.

They didn't think DAO would get sequels, and thus had those wildly differing epilogues. He isn't sure he'd change letting the player died, since it was a cool moment. But it was certainly inconvenient to deal with later.

They had a rough idea of how the history of Thedas would continue after DAO "but no plan survives contact with the enemy, in this case I guess that's EA" loll

Having player decisions affect so much has been a bit of a nightmare.

Card tricks in the dark: if you do something clever and the player doesn't notice, it doesn't matter.

If the enemies drink potions and it's not obvious they're doing it, it just looks like the AI is cheating. If a choice affects the plot but this fact isn't made clear, players will just think that's how the plot always goes. Need to heavily lampshade that this is the consequence of that choice. And keeping track of all the possibilities gets ridiculous with characters like Alistair, who can be any one of dead/king/a drunk etc.

The players who DO pay attention to these changes tend to want way more reactivity than is practical. So nobody is impressed. And most new players found the save game editors confusing and off putting. He thinks perhaps it would be better to have a smaller number of major choices.

He's not going to judge other writers but the HUGE changes at the end of the Mass Effect trilogy mean they can now no longer set anything in that galaxy again.

Question time!

Something about the process leading to Krem being written. He talked about the bad stuff previously, and them realising they'd screwed up. A trans fan on the forums said "Could we have a trans character who isn't a sex worker or the butt of a joke?". They got jumped on, but the team read it and went "Oh."

Gaider wrote Maevaris in the comics, talked to a trans woman friend about it. One of the other writers was working on Kress...*audience shouts KREM* and he seemed a bit boring so he got made trans, since it added some interest and fitted in well with the worldbuilding about the Qun etc.It would have been better with a trans voice actor but they couldn’t find one.

What program is best for explaining stuff to the art team etc early on: Biowre had a sort of Grey Box level for playing through choices, but something like twine is good, just to test pacing. (not sure this actually answers the question asked)

Are there any genres you would like to work on but haven't: Yes :D :D But he can't tell us about it yet :D :D

He got sick of high fantasy after ten years. Would look longingly at Mass Effect sometimes just for a change but then they would implode and he'd think"Actually I'm fine".

Off the top of his head: Victorian London, finding husbands for your girlfriends while fighting zombies and also it's a Western?

Misc other things: I didn't make it to any more talks because Wheelchair, but met some cool people, and played some of the student games on display. My favourite was a time travel murder mystery called Lacuna where you have to connect clues. Apparently I was way better at it than most people :D I also actually enjoyed one of the puzzle platformers (I forget the name but it's about a little grumpy blue hexagon), which is a pretty big achievement.

GCAP has a "food intolerances station" with special food options and knowledgeable staff which was pretty great. Morning tea was just various gluten free biscuits, but for lunch there was poached chicken and salmon and various plain chopped vegetables, as well as dressed salads and gluten free bread and dessert. I could eat about 1/3 of it which is pretty good odds, I ended up happier than my partner who doesn’t have as many intolerances but just didn't like any of the food options.

#gcap 2017 #gcap #migw 2017 #game dev #david gaider #indie game dev #conferences #dragon age #fullbright #gone home

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silasmadams · 4 years

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💔💝❤️A Mild Defense of Love Triangles 🚶‍♂️👫

INTRO

As the title indicates I want to offer my defense of the love triangle. In my opinion, shitting on the love triangle is the equivalent of beating a dead horse and if you want to continue beating said dead horse, go right ahead. Who am I to stop you? But that being said, I think love triangles get a bad rap. I will say that a lot of the criticism of love triangles, especially in more recent works, is fair. A lot of the criticisms bring up important points and shine lights on the overuse of this trope, to the point that when it’s used well people still decide to shit on it or call it out. Now, the YA genre especially can do this poorly. I love YA, for the uninitiated that just means Young Adult. I think YA is a fantastic genre and there are hundreds of gems within it but again there’s a lot of overuse of the love triangle and when it’s used well, even within the YA genre, it’s still seen as bad because people have decided that using the love triangle is automatically only for cheap romance or unneeded drama or what have you. And this is true in certain cases but not all.

As such it’s unfair to dismiss this trope so easily. I mean I get it, we’ve all got tropes we hate, I absolutely despise the constant setting of fantasy within a medieval England type sphere or the trope of when there’s one female character in a group whose sole purpose is to be the love interest OR the dark brooding bad boy who’s an absolute asshole but we’re expected to like him and be into his bastardry because of his tragic backstory, and so on. Suffice to say I’ve got my fair share of issues about tropes in the literature world but as a whole, love triangles aren’t my top priority among them, hence the title.

I’m going to discuss three books/series that I feel do the love triangle justice. Regardless of the book’s own merit, I feel this aspect of them was done well. I believe there are two main ways that the love triangle can be done right. The first is pure emotions where the characters bounce off each other perfectly and make you invested in all the involved parties. That is to say, not a love vector, not a love segment with an additional point on the periphery, but an actual triangle where all three characters have some relationship with one another be it romantic, platonic, or hate-filled. The second is by having the love interests double as different ideologies/beliefs that the main person must choose. These two types can and often do overlap which only further adds to the strength of the love triangle that’s depicted.

Fair warning, there will be spoilers (mild or otherwise) for the following: The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (the first book only).

EXAMPLE 1: THE INFERNAL DEVICES BY CASSANDRA CLARE

The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare. I have long since fallen out of love with her books, but I feel as though this series is a good example of the love triangle based on pure emotions done right. Whatever opinions you may have of this author it’s important to give credit where credit is due.

Within the Infernal Devices, there is the main love triangle between Will, Tessa, and Jem. Will is your typical bad boy with a heart of gold except in Victorian England, Jem is a kind-hearted musician with a drug addiction. Tessa is the newcomer to the magical world that the boys know and she is an avid reader who constantly talks about the books she's read or would like to read. Now the reason this love triangle works as well as it does is because each party, in their own way, is in love with the other person. Will loves Tessa and the reader sees that through their escapades, their secret romances, their longing gazes and what not. Jem also loves Tessa and the reader similarly sees that through their shared conversations and affectionate moments. Tessa loves both of these boys which is evident through her internal dialogue that we as the reader are able to peer into, and if Clare had stopped there then this would be a poor love triangle, however, she doesn’t. She instead chooses to establish a strong and clear relationship between Will and Jem that showcases their own love for each other. They have a connection that is incredibly strong and goes beyond the terms of simple ‘bromance’ if you will. Jem, as someone who was forced to take a life altering drug and then became addicted to it, is an individual that is constantly in poor health and Will constantly cares for and protects him. He’s worried for him and tries to keep him safe and happy as best he can. They are the link in the love triangle that allows it to be as engaging as it is. They are not merely two boys fighting over a prize, they are two people that love each other and also happen to love the same girl. When Jem and Tessa become engaged, Will is heartbroken but it comes off as a heartbreak from both sides, he’s hurt by both Jem and Tessa choosing each other and leaving him. Tessa herself is unsure of the match because she continues to harbor feelings for Will while also being in love with Jem.

Within the series, it’s not just one side you care about. Sure, there were people who were rooting for Will over Jem or Jem over Will but the vast majority didn’t want anyone hurt, they were invested and they wanted a solution that would end with neither one of them upset. I, as a reader, cared for these characters and not just in the sense of who Tessa would choose but in the sense of the boy’s relationship with each other. Was this something they could move past, were they strong enough to get through these emotions and come out stronger on the other side? When reading it myself I clearly remember that tension and that desire for these characters to be happy.

In this sense, the emotions drive the series and even as I was starting to lose interest in Clare’s writing style and her books, I stuck around to see the conclusion of this romance. I’ll admit I was upset and am still somewhat bitter about the ending. You had all the chances to make it an excellent Polyamory ship, Clare but you didn’t! Regardless of the lackluster ending of this love triangle, I’d still put this as a great example of the emotional aspect in a love triangle done right, due in part to the lasting impact it has. Because, even years after finishing the series I still think about it and I still hope to write a relationship like that in my own stories, one that sticks with the reader long after they’ve finished the series or even have fallen out of love with the authors books.

EXAMPLE 2: THE HUNGER GAMES BY SUZANNE COLLINS

When I talk about this series I am specifically talking about the books, not the movies. The movies are well done, don’t get me wrong and they stick close to the series but the marketing of the movies and the desire to push the whole “Team Peeta” or “Team Gale” is something that muddies the movies for me. I know this is something that was present in the books as well but I wasn’t too active online when I first read them so I never had that aspect of the books in my head. I also want to note that the romance isn’t the main focus of this series but the love triangle in it serves a good example of a well done love triangle based on equating the individual to an identity/belief system.

What I mean by the boys representing a belief system/different life/identity is this; I mean that someone like Gale is the old world belief, the more stringent, masculine, and typical. He is attractive and he is familiar, he is something that Katniss has known her whole life and as such he’s the obvious choice. It’s something expected, they’re not only from the same class but they share a similar backstory. Gale is the type of person Katniss would be expected to go with. They are the perfect pair because they are not a change from the status quo they are acceptable. Peeta, on the other hand, is from a different class than Katniss, a higher class. He is not the traditionally masculine option, he’s not a miner or a hunter but a baker. He doesn’t have the same views as Gale and is seen as the gentler of the two boys. Where Gale is strength, Peeta is kindness, where Gale is anger, Peeta is forgiveness, and so on. These two are diametric opposites even in terms of their physical appearances. Gale looks like Katniss, that is brown skin, dark hair, dark eyes because that is what the lower classes look like, that is how the reader is meant to initially discern from poor and rich with the exception of Prim and Katniss’s mother. Her mother having married lower than her class and her sister having the resemblance of their mother, subtly insinuating that Prim is the sister meant for greater things. Typically the higher classes, like the one Peeta is a part of, are light-skinned with light hair, light eyes, they are the merchants and local politicians, etc. Therefore they, the boys, not only represent different beliefs but different life-styles all together. When the third book in the trilogy comes around and Katniss is given a choice of mercy or revenge, Gale stands on the side of revenge, on the side that says they should take the children of the capitol and have them fight each other, Hunger Games style. Peeta on the other hand stands on the side of mercy where he argues that it is inhumane and cruel and by going forward with the plan for revenge they are no better than the people they took down, they are not saviors but rather they are the people here to replace Snow. When Katniss shoots Coin instead of Snow, she chooses mercy and thus she chooses Peeta, she chooses a quiet and gentle life rather than an extravagant one under cameras. By having the boys be polar opposites in ideological beliefs it makes Katniss’s choice of the two boys not about romance, which seems fitting for her considering she isn’t exactly a romantic and more interested in doing what she believes to be right, but about choosing and sticking with a certain belief/ideology/etc. It explains her waffling between the two boys as well, she is trying to understand her own viewpoints and the flip flopping from one boy to the other allow her to explore said points.

EXAMPLE 3: MY BRILLIANT FRIEND BY ELENA FERRANTE

In all honesty, this book alone deserves its own review and I have been meaning to talk about in detail but I don’t want to start talking about it until I’ve finished the entire series. For now, I’ll be talking about the first book and its use of love triangles, squares, so on. Love shapes if you will. This series follows the friendship of two girls in post-war Italy from childhood to early adulthood. Unlike the other examples, this isn’t a YA book but a Historical Fiction, adult book.

I’ve already discussed the use of emotions and angst as well as belief systems. This book is an example of both being used. The boys in this book are a way to depict how the women are meant to navigate the world they live in while the women themselves, Lila and Elena are a depiction of pure emotion. Each character that shows interest in Lila and to an extent Elena serves as a way to depict different forms of ideologies/government/etc. There is not one love triangle, but multiple love triangles happening at once. As such I can’t touch on every aspect here so I’m going to only give a quick run-down.

The men or boys in question that are after Lila are Stefano (Capitalism), Marcello (Fascism), Pasquale (Communism), while the boys after Elena are Nino (Academia/Education) and Antonio (The Plebs/Common Folk/Poverty). Within this group there are love triangles galore and since I can’t focus on all of them, I’m going to briefly talk about the love triangle of Lila, Pasquale, and Elena. This love triangle is one that’s more towards the beginning of the novel and its set when the girls are beginning to grow out of childhood and into adulthood. Pasquale is the first boy to show interest not in Elena but in Lila. This brings out jealousy in Elena because even though Lila has always been smarter than her, she has always been the more beautiful of the two friends. Once Pasquale starts to show interest in Lila, it becomes a gateway for the other boys to look on and also begin to fawn over Lila. Hence why it goes Pasquale, Marcello, and Stefano, much like the history of Italy itself (though I’ll admit I’m no expert on that). However, whenever the boys do fawn over Lila, Elena is always present. Lila and Elena themselves have deep rivalry and love that goes back years. They are constantly at each other's throats but they are also best friends. Their bond is something that goes unbroken, even when they fight, they obsess over each other and refuse to let the other out of their mind. In all of the love triangles that show up there is always a version that involves the girls in some way. For Example, the love triangle is Lila, Pasquale, and Marcello. There is ofcourse a version of it where Elena is involved, being Lila, Elena, and Marcello. Unlike the other two series examples, this one is more intricate and complex, that by no means takes away from the other two but it shows how the love triangle can be more than what most people give it credit for. It can be a series of interlocking relationships each as convoluted and twisted as our relationships in real life tend to be. When reading all these relationships and love triangles I was never struck with a feeling of boredom and I never felt the urge to roll my eyes. I was invested in the stories and the links, I wanted to know what would happen, I wanted to know where the relationship of Lila and Elena went, I wanted to know who or if they would choose a suitor. I was entrenched in their lives, I cared what happened along with seeing the parallels of ideologies that were offered their way. This is probably one of the best examples of modern love triangles I can think off.

CONCLUSION

I don’t really have a deep thing to say here at the end. I don’t even know if you’re convinced by ramblings or not. I just think people should allow themselves to be more creative with the love triangle trope. A trope is after all, only bad when it's blatantly predictable and doesn’t make the reader feel anything. I think it’s high time we gave the love triangle another go instead of constantly shoving it back in a corner or looking down on it because ‘romance bad’ especially since its purpose isn’t just romance but relationships of various natures. The love triangle deserves far more credit than being relegated to what a lot of people deem a ‘lesser’ genre. So, have I changed your mind? Do you remain steadfast in hating the love triangle? Tell me if you want or go about your day as usual if you’d rather not.

A VIDEO THAT TALKS ABOUT LOVE TRIANGLES THAT YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT:

https://youtu.be/QojOfp8V7rA

I came across this video after having written this but I thought it was also an interesting take on the defense of/falling back in love with the love triangle.

BOOKS MENTIONED:

The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare

The Infernal Devices Book Series

The Infernal Devices, the Complete Collection: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games Book Series

The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxed Set (1) (8601400319468): Suzanne Collins: Books

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

https://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781609450786?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=NMPi_Smart_Shopping&utm_term=NMPi_Smart_Shopping&ds_rl=1264488&ds_rl=1264488&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnL7yBRD3ARIsAJp_oLanfQZ7YxglG4iP0K1_LaJhsVUDMCH6HJVo_BSrS9IBFCvGe2-r4KkaAtTrEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One: Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein: 8601400235683

OR get them all at your library, it’s free after all. If your library is closed due to the pandemic, a lot of libraries have ebooks you can borrow. They typically have a large collection online so go ahead and try your luck there, and of course, stay safe and stay inside if you can.

CHECK OUT MY BLOG:

https://silasmadams.home.blog/2020/04/09/%f0%9f%92%94%f0%9f%92%9d%e2%9d%a4%ef%b8%8fa-mild-defense-of-love-triangles-%f0%9f%9a%b6%e2%80%8d%e2%99%82%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%ab/

#love triangle #books #elena ferrante #suzanne collins #cassandra clare #trilog #the infernal devices #the hunger games #my brilliant friend #defense #blog #book blog post

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bluewatsons · 7 years

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Gordon Gates, Politics of Autism: Social Intuition, Stigma, and Diversity, 1 Autonomy (2017)

Abstract

While controversy lingers over the assimilation of Aspergers into autism spectrum disorder, this paper looks at diagnosis from the perspective of ASHFA (individuals previously diagnosed with Aspergers ASand identifying with high functioning autism HFS). Based on a qualitative insider study exploring diagnosis and autistic stigma, this paper explores the phenomenology of autistic stigma, how it relates to diversity of human social intuition, and addresses a paradox between the powerful validating discourse provided by diagnosis and the inherently disempowering effects of medicalization. Sociophenomenal diversity resulting from fundamental differences in social intuition fills the resulting gap as a validating discourse that provides an alternate framework for autistic identity construction consistent with the integrity of ASHFA as described by participants. This framework avoids the pathologization of diagnosis as a validating discourse and addresses the fundamental human difference that leads to much of the stigma experienced by this marginalized population

The negatively perceived differences of social intuition associated with autism are seldom studied. This is largely because the very idea of intuition is often seen as vague, flawed, and unscientific in our objectivistic evidence-based culture (Lieberman, 2000). Various attempts have been made to name and describe the ability of humans to experience each other as unique beings. For example, Peter Fonagy defines mentalization as the capacity to conceive of conscious and unconscious mental states in oneself and others (1991, p. 639). Metacognition is sometimes used synonymously with mentalization, but as thinking about thinking (Middlebrooks, Abzub, & Sommer, 2014, p.225) this concept, like mentalization, tends to focus on the cognitive aspect of social behaviour and does not capture the living process of relationality. Although the ability to encounter and relate to others has been said to lie at the very core of our humanity (Bateman & Fonagy, 2011, p.xv), most of the terms used to operationalize this idea tend to over-emphasize the role of cognition. Although Gumley (2011) expands the definition of mentalization to include understanding emotional states, the characteristic priority given to cognition in the study of autism and sociality is problematic. Perhaps a reflection of this cultures typically despiritualized materialistic sensibilities, a narrow focus on cognition in relationship prioritizes the politicized manipulative aspect of interaction that is often deliberately concocted to present the self in a desired manner or achieve certain ends. Social justice is undermined because intellectually challenged individuals may have their moral status questioned or be seen as somehow less human in their ability to experience others (Carlson & Kittay, 2010). The way peoples ability to connect with each other is regarded also has important implications for our evolving understanding of autism, which is often seen to involve cognitive mechanisms of impairment that fundamentally undermine social connection.

The visceral experience of encounter goes far beyond having an intellectual theory of mind, if by this is meant the ability to represent mental states (Frith, Happe, & Siddons, 1994, p. 110) and the ability to predict other peoples behaviour on the basis of mental states (Frith and Frith, 2012, p. 334). Dant (2015) argues that theory of mind (and similar terms used in autism research) reduce human sociality to a cognitive function in an impoverished framework of persistent biological determinism (p.57). He suggests we build our understanding of human relationship on the philosophical concept of intersubjectivity, which in the tradition of phenomenological research seeks to explore the lived flow of felt encounter in the shared context of everyday life. Even the term intersubjectivity, however, seems like a dry academic term to describe such a dynamic, poignantly human process.

Krugman proposes the concept of mentalization be broadened to mean the minds innate capacity to make sense of social experiences and implicitly know how to respond to them (2013, para 1). In this paper, we will refer to social intuition as the pre-cognitive experience at the core of interaction between people and the irreducible experience of bodily felt encounter underlying interpersonal relationship. This experience, when we attend to it, always solicits a reaction even if it is only felt and not spontaneously enacted. The call and response of social intuition is a characteristically human flow of events that are just as intrinsically part of personhood for those of us with autism who struggle to function in a culture dominated by differently oriented others who have come to expect a certain range of social responses. The current paper is intended to contribute to dialogue about social intuition partly based on some of the results from a phenomenological study on autism and stigma conducted by the author (Gates, 2014). This qualitative research involved in-depth interviews with 5 autistic individuals and included the online thoughts of autistic people as well as my own experiences both as a clinician and an individual with autism.

As early as 1929 Wolfgang Khler noted how people seem to respond in an immediate way to each others feelings, thoughts, and intentions (Hacking, 2009a; 2009b). Building an early case for what this paper refers to as social intuition, Khler described the sense in which peoples inner states are directly obvious to each other (1947, p.137). It is interesting that Khler published a book on the behaviour of apes early in his career, especially in light of autistic author Dawn EddingsPrinces powerful description of how she began her journey from being homeless and profoundly marginalized to being a professor of anthropology and critical autism writer by quietly observing apes and experiencing belonging in their presence (Prince, 2013). The organic agency of social responsiveness may be better described in terms of Gendlins felt sense (1981, p.11) or subliminal knowing (p.xv) than any necessarily inferential process (Dimaggio & Lysaker, 2010, p.22). Philosophical exploration about how people apprehend each others intentionality through the flesh of encounter can be found in various philosophers including Merleau-Ponty (1945/2006) and Wittgenstein (1980). Smith (2010) provides a good overview of this issue and articulates the sense in which he feels he can know my baby daughter is miserable simply by looking (p.748).

As the telegraphic sense behind human social plasticity, social intuition cannot be sufficiently operationalized with proverbial checkboxes that screen for quantified approximations of dominantly shared social understanding. As is the case with most things human, social intuition can be seen to manifest itself through a range of intentionality and expression depending on social context, linguistic ability, perceptual acuity, insight, stress, trauma, and genotype as well as mental and physical health. Addressing structural failures in which mentalization and the effort to appreciate other points of view can be acutely compromised by emotional dysregulation and other psychological factors (Brent, Holt, Keshavan, Seidman, & Fonagy, 2014, p.21) has been found to provide a mechanism of therapeutic change in borderline personality disorder (Bateman & Fonagy, 2004), psychosis (Brent, et.al., 2014), and disordered attachment (Morken, Karterud, & Arefjord, 2014; Sacco, Pike, & Bourke, 2014). Such breakdowns happen in autism as well, for example due to anxiety, flustering, melt-downs, mismatched orientations of language use, and social confusion. Fundamental issues of diversity in the area of social intuition, however, and the resulting stigma that may occur in relation to the mainstream, have not been explored. The research on which this paper is partly based addresses this gap in knowledge by looking at the experience of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The project specifically targets the range of autism in which individuals were previously labeled with Aspergers (AS) or the never officially adopted term high functioning autism (HFA). This was before the DSM 5 collapsed the condition into a single diagnostic entity called autism spectrum disorder. In an attempt to retain what one participant called the flavor of the condition, such persons will be referred to in this paper as ASHFA. Autistic rights activist Amelia Baggs refers to us as autistic individuals who are stable in language or concepts (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, 2012, p.327).

This range of autistic presence is targeted not to devalue or dismiss those individuals located elsewhere on the autism spectrum, but because I was diagnosed with Aspergers as an adult and want to take advantage of the life experience and insider perspective this puts at my disposal. In agreement with the research participants, I do not consider my condition a disability but, as I have articulated elsewhere (Gates, 2016), largely an expression of sociophenomenal diversity that reflects a different quality of social intuition and relational style. Of course, there is more to it. I am easily flustered, have difficulty with emotional regulation, am ultra-sensitive to sensory experiences I find aversive, experience difficulty with organization and impulse control, am frequently self-absorbed, cling to routine, and have trouble with change. These have become manageable facts of life, more than routine challenges but characteristics I have insight into and can find ways to compensate for when I make the effort. People with autism, like everyone else, have different levels of insight, motivation to change, ambition, tolerance for others, and self-esteem. As human beings, however, were all in the same boat. We find our way in life the best we can with what weve got and the burdens were given. The capacity to work with our limitations can be seen to unify us more than our different challenges and abilities separate us.

Stigma, Shame, and the Politics of Interaction

In the study on which this discussion is partially based, participants gave poignant descriptions of bodily felt shame and rejection resulting from the stigma associated with their autism. One participant said he had heard himself being called retard on a number of occasions. Another graduated from college on the deans list but never got a call back from a job interview. Another reported that he had responded to more than 200 profiles on a dating website yet only went on 3 dates. Participants reported extreme difficulty making friends, not being heard, and not being included. Most people just dont bother talking to me, said one participant. Another complained he got the cold shoulder from people regularly and voiced a common theme when he said I just dont seem to fit in. Another said people dont want to include me; they make false and misleading assumptions about me. Another said people show utter contempt towards me for no reason. One participant said he was worried about his long-term health because of all the rejection he had experienced. The overwhelming source of pain and stigma was reported by participants to be associated with social interaction and the deployment of social intuition.

An interesting example of this came up just the other morning while I was waiting for my car to get fixed. To pass the time I picked up a Toronto newspaper that was lying on the courtesy counter. Flipping randomly through the pages, I found myself reading an etiquette column about the interpersonal complexities of gift giving. A woman had written in wondering if it was appropriate to give an expensive, thoughtful gift to a man she had just started dating. The columnist told her it was a risky gesture that could lead to awkwardness if her effort wasnt reciprocated, advising her to drop hints about her gift giving intentions. That way if he did not reciprocate the woman would supposedly know the guy was either a cheapskate, an emotional trifler, or a clueless clod who cant take a hint (Vanstone, 2005, p.11). The implication is that such a boyfriend is to be avoided. The columnist acknowledged this strategy might make the woman seem manipulative, but still advised her in this direction perhaps because such behaviour is considered routine and normal in sociodominant circles as a way of negotiating social interaction. However, the idea that a person is a clueless clod if they dont recognize hint dropping (and other sometimes unspoken political strategies in relationship) reveals unintentional prejudice towards those who do not operate this way, particularly those with autism. It is not so much that it stigmatizes a medical condition related to impairment, but radiates negative stigma on those who do not play along with the assumptions behind the persons social strategy. People who dont pick up on such politicized communication are painted at best as spoilsports to be avoided, at worst as less sophisticated, less worthy, slow, or kind of dumb. There are less judgmental explanations for their different social radar, however. For example, the person may not be in a financial position for such gift giving. More fundamentally, the person may not value the giving of gifts. As a group, people with autism do not typically engage in or appreciate this politicized kind of social behaviour and prefer direct, explicit communication. The kind of negative judgments demonstrated in the article, especially when they stigmatize the sociophenomenal difference of autism, can sting deeply.

Oh come, you may say, its only a silly newspaper article! Still, this seemingly harmless piece of trivial journalism activated a kind of post-traumatic stigma response in me. I have had so many experiences in which I have felt stupid, judged, and unworthy because I did not understand peoples social agenda that the little article awakened dormant feelings of pain, rejection, and defensiveness. Like the participants in my study, I have had people act arrogantly towards me, dismiss me, not take my participation seriously, and look down on me because my social awareness did not match their dominantly accepted one. There are times when stigma is evoked deliberately in terms of bullying, but more often such emotional suffering is not activated intentionally. The author of the gift-giving advice surely did not set out to harm anyone. Still, there is an element of conscious collusion with stigma when people make such judgments, when the patience, curiosity, and respect to appreciate how a differently oriented person may perceive things is reduced to stigmatizing assumptions. I know all too well what its like to be considered a clueless clod because of sociophenomenal difference.

Invisibility, Stigma, and Social Construction

There are continuously variable levels of what Goffman calls the visibility of a stigmatizing condition (1963, p.48). For ASHFA, their stigmatizing condition is often invisible and may be felt rather than explicitly seen. Not as apparent, for example, as seizures or the use of a wheelchair, there may be perceptible signs of difference such as lack of eye contact, inappropriate eye contact, overly pedantic and other unfamiliar speech patterns that range from inventive to concrete, or cognitive rigidity and self-absorption.[1] These characteristics exist along a continuum and can blend indistinguishably with mainstream expectations, but when they become clear markers of difference some dominant others may seize on these visible signs of diversity and take them as an excuse for enacted stigma such as bullying and discrimination. There are more subtle qualities possessed by ASHFA, especially those related to social intuition, that can mark them as different. The participants in my study reported that it is these subtle differences and the social behaviour associated with them that result in the most painful stigma. This has been my experience as the organizing participant of the study. It is also consistent with previous research that shows the stigma of Aspergers to be related to behaviour rather than the visibility of the condition or the medical label (Butler & Gillis, 2011; Shtayermman, 2009). It is such differences of sociophenomenal orientation, for example, that can make ASHFA seem like perfect victims (Klin,Volmar, and Sparrow, 2000, p.56). Despite the conventional belief that people with autism prefer social isolation, this vulnerability can be exacerbated by an overwhelming and frustrated desire to fit in that can lead to indiscriminate people pleasing and sometimes nave helping. Not immediately discerning the underlying social intentionality beneath dissembling others is a related issue. One participant spoke of the nave trust for others he experienced when he was younger. Others revealed difficulty sharing the same social wavelength as mainstream others at the best of times, not knowing what an appropriate social response is supposed to be. Another factor moderating the flow of autistic social intuition is obsessive interests that are sometimes difficult to put aside when interacting with others. One participant said he tries to find common ground in conversation, but admitted its difficult to do unless its about topics that interest me. Depending on the person and the situation, some people may see these qualities as positive traits or signs of eccentric independence. Others may feel they call for compassion (or rescuing). Some may dismiss the person exhibiting these qualities as lesser than themselves, walk away in frustration, or perhaps take advantage. Between the participants and me, the individuals in the study experienced all these reactions.

All participants in the study spoke about how they often find themselves at a loss in social situations. One participant said she often felt stupid and found herself in tears a lot of the time trying to understand what I was supposed to do in social situations. Another participant talked about the challenge of trying to logically construct how he was supposed to act in social situations. I just find myself telling myself in my head things like OK, now listen for a bit, add something now, dont rebuttal here, he said. Interestingly, Frith, Happ, & Siddons (1994) distinguished appropriate social responses rooted in in true theory of mind from behaviour the authors refer to as hacking, or constructing responses using rational deduction geared towards desired outcomes (p.110). The authors felt such hacking distorted their research results and theorized that such compensatorybehaviour would not generalize from controlled research contexts to complex life situations. In reality, ASHFA often resort to deductive processes in order to engage with others when spontaneous social intuition fails. The fallback strategy of constituting social behaviour became most apparent in the complex area of dating. One participant described how there are a lot of non-verbal cues and expectations going into dating. Do we kiss? Do we hold hands? I never quite know what do. ASHFA often stumble along socially making things up as they go in order to fit in as seamlessly as possible. The fact they make such efforts at all and know when they dont fit in can be taken as evidence of theory of mind, but the problem may be more of a failure to cross-connect differing social aptitudes than one-sided impairments in the ability to ascribe mental states.

Phenomenologically, ASHFA seem to experience a kind of social blindness regarding social conventions and expectations others take for granted. This may be due to differences in social intuition that keep them from responding in normal ways. Participants reported experiences consistent with difficulties in the spontaneous processing of social information (Channon, et al., 2014, p.161) and an inability to grasp the silent expectations others with typical social intuition take for granted. Again, dating provides a poignant example. One participant described being in an intimate situation with a member of the opposite sex. He says he was just starting to like her, but got confused at one point because she was standing before him with her eyes closed as if expecting a surprise. He had no idea what was happening, but closed his eyes in order to play along. The moment passed and he could not figure out why she never acted the same towards him again. It wasnt until years later he realized he had rejected a woman expecting to be kissed.Another participant told about an experience in high school in which he bought tickets to a special event long in advance hoping to get a date. Strategically, he asked one of the plainest girls he could think of hoping that she, at least, would go out with him. He did not interact with girls and had not engaged with this girl at all in the past. Understandably, she declined. The participant said he was sad when he went to his next class, where one of the most popular girls in the school sat next to him. He asked her if she would like to go to the upcoming dance and remembers how she said yes enthusiastically. Did he smile happily? Did he feel lucky? No, he handed her his tickets and told her to have fun. The participant said he thought about this incident for years and could never understand why the girl seemed to want nothing to do with him after that. He said he did not realize until years later that he had unwittingly asked her on a date only to reject her. After getting it, he said he mourned the lost opportunity and felt colossally stupid, although he never mentioned being sorry for hurting her.

Social failures based on misunderstanding and misalignments of social expectation are rampant for ASHFA and consistent with research demonstrating that individuals diagnosed with autism score consistently lower on tests eliciting explanations for what makes social situations awkward, identifying inappropriate social conduct, and working out the significance of human behaviour(Channon, et al., 2014). The authors believe this is evidence that ASHFA have key impairments of mentalization (p.149). They go on to speculate that such findings may be associated with inappropriate responses in everyday social situations, though they note that little experimental work has explored this directly (p.152). My study, acquaintance with others with the condition, and lived experience all confirm the pragmatic connection between differences of social intuition and challenges in daily life. Difficulty processing commonly used linguistic constructions such as double entendres, irony, and sarcasm are characteristic, although the challenge is often appreciating the silent message being conveyed in the lived social context rather than the basic ability to understand these literary devices. Still, the difficulty extends far beyond the use of language. ASFHA are frequently blindsided in social situations because of their inability to read others, although whether this difficulty interfacing with sociophenomenally dominant others should be attributed to the local impairment of some inner mechanism or is more of an issue of systemic diversity remains to be worked out. Douglas Biklen (2005) theorized that such proposed mechanisms of impairment are not mechanisms at all, but metaphors that describe various challenges typical of autism.

Pragmatic challenges with lived interaction may show up as low scores analyzing social vignettes not because of specific impairments but because the experience on which to base the required analysis has not been accumulated. Such difficulties may not be best thought of as the impairment of an underlying mechanism but lack of acquired social experience due to exclusion and isolation. As developmental neuropsychologist Ulf Liszkowski (2013) maintains, low scores on social vignette tests may be because the interactive use of action predictions leads to a gradually abstracted inventory of action-context relations that is impoverished in ASHFA as a marginalized population with patterns of social cognition not shared by dominant others. In the same way there is nothing biologically wrong with the fusiform gyrus in autistic individuals who experience difficulties with facial recognition (Schultz, 2005; Tanaka, 2014), social intuition in ASHFA may be biologically unimpaired but differently activated. Chown (2013), based largely on the work of Klin, Jones, Shultz, and Volmar (2003), points out that the social is simply not as salient for autistic people (p.6), leading to diverse socio-active priorities and different patterns in the call and response of social intuition.

Organic Sense Emerging from Active Encounter

Klin et al. (2000) has noted that long-term relationships with peers can be a source of stigma resilience. Although the authors acknowledge they are only drawing on anecdotal evidence, they suggest that peers do not make explicit demands, but they also make few allowances (p.397). I interviewed the two roommates in my study that not only made allowances for each other but actively encouraged each others uniqueness out of familiarity and mutual understanding. Terms like theory of mind and metacognition do not do justice to the phenomenon of caring, bodily felt social intuition and need anticipation demonstrated by these individuals in regard to each other. Beyond the academic calculation of each others inner mental states, they appeared to engage in the same kind of organic, pre-analytical living responsiveness through which human beings naturally interact with each other. It is the kind of encounter between people that involves a familiarity presupposing appreciation of each other as thinking and feeling beings with unique inner realities. The kind of bodily felt encounter so touchingly demonstrated by these roommates underlies the complex social behaviour that allows a performer to feel the room and sense how long to hold a silence or allow a laugh; how a counselor senses when to introduce an appropriately challenging new perspective in line with the clients tolerance for change and worldview; how acquaintances, friends, and lovers seem to know when to release a hug; how a job applicant senses how long to hold a handshake with potential new employers to make a good impression; how individuals sharing guilty knowledge sense how long to hold a knowing look without drawing attention to themselves. Conventional knowledge has it that people with autism are devoid of or insusceptible to social intuition (McGeer, 2010). Yet the individuals in my study all described experiencing such situations, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes gracefully. That is how ASHFA are able to become actors, counsellors, and police officers who must sense the intentionality of others in complex specialized ways. The participants also described how the organic sense emerging from active encounter is often supplemented with various degrees of explicit cognitive calculation, although this diminishes spontaneity and makes social interaction more dependent on executive functioning. It is possible to exert deliberate cognitive control to override social intuition, for example when lying, manipulating, or practicing diplomacy, although conventional knowledge has it that having autism decreases the likelihood of this happening (Attwood, 2007). Did you ever hear the one about autistic individuals not being capable of deception? Autism does involve challenges with impulse control (which, along with working memory, organization, and time

management are part of executive functioning) that could make it harder to engage in subterfuge. However, the efforts people with autism sometimes make to avoid stigma, appear normal, and fit in despite feeling socially lost clearly indicate a degree of cognitive control as well as an ability to politicize and manipulate. Future research may better separate these factors out, but in terms of unfettered social intuition it is not theoretically determined mental states we respond to in others (Frith & Frith, 2012; Frith, Happe, & Siddons, 1994). We respond, rather, to bodily felt social encounter itself. This, at least, is when we experience the kind of interpersonal flow and belongingthese ASHFA roommates demonstrated, as opposed to the strain of constituted performance. This may be part of the reason people with autism, even more than mainstream others, flourish when they live in supportive, non-judgmental communities that offer an embracing web of relationships (Donvan & Zucker, 2016).

When asked the advantages of having an ASHFA roommate, both participants immediately agreed that finding a roommate that wont lie, cheat, or steal from you is worth more than their weight in gold. They each described instances of being taken advantage of and outright robbed by sociophenomenally mainstream roommates. Perhaps their more politically mediated processes of social intuition lead sociodominant individuals to become manipulative and opportunistic with differently equipped marginalized others. I suspect an ethnographic study of roommates on the spectrum would be an insightful source of knowledge, possibly helping us better understand how exclusion, marginalization and victimization can be associated with differences of social intuition at the heart of autistic personhood.

Endnote

Self-absorption has also been referred to as an overwhelming sense of local cohesion (OConnell, 2010, p.20) that can lead ASHFA individuals to be overly focused on the linear details of insulated personal experience. This can result in an apparently misanthropic disregard for the engaged holism of lived situations. Such behaviour can be framed at least partly as a defensive strategy to manage stigma and anxiety, although it is more often articulated in terms of a cognitive impairment known as weak central coherence. This impairment has been theorized to be characteristic of autism (Happe & Frith, 2006) and has also been noted in brain injury and schizophrenia (Martin & McDonald, 2003) as well as personality and eating disorders (Lopez, Tchanturia, Stahl, & Treasure, 2009). These conditions all involve stigma, the role of which needs to be further researched.

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#autism #identity #autism spectrum disorder #developmental disability #psychology #invisibility #politics #socialization #stigma #discrimination #nonconformity #behavior #diversity

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nickcutler · 7 years

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this is a post about autistic traits, autistic coding, and L from death note.

when i say autistic coding or autistic coded, i’m referring to a character having autistic traits such that it is reasonable to interpret them as autistic. this can mean a lot of things, and the coding doesn’t have to be intentional to be present. so when i say that L is an autistic coded character, i’m not saying he’s autistic in canon or he was written to be autistic, but that he comes across that way regardless of intention.

also i have only finished the anime, not the manga, so i’m talking primarily about the anime here bc that’s what i have experience with.

SO. firstable L is an autistic coded character. there’s a lot about him that supports this interpretation; he often responds in atypical ways to social cues, he focuses deeply and intently on what he does, he thinks in unique ways that allow him to solve cases when other people can’t, and i would argue that a lot of his physical mannerisms (biting his thumb, not wearing shoes, the way he sits) could be read as autistic coding as well.

the super smart detective being autistic isn’t really a new phenomenon, so i’m sure this probably isn’t hard for a lot of people to accept as a reasonable interpretation. the stereotypical autistic detective is a character who is 1) very smart 2) "quirky” in some way and 3) often very robotic. what is interesting to me about these characters is how fandom tends to interact with them and which autistic traits fandom is okay with and which ones they aren’t (obviously no fandom is a monolith but i’m saying fandom for ease in discussing this). near is also very autistic coded, and in the like. what few weeks? that i have been engaging with death note i have seen some very. imo questionable interpretations of L’s character that i think are particularly interesting when you consider autistic coding and when you contrast him with near.

i tend to really love autistic characters bc i relate to them, so a lot of my faves are autistic coded. bc of this i have seen the same things repeated over and over again in different fandoms, and most recently when i got into death note. death note, however, is one of the places where i have seen it the worst. basically, fandom is comfortable with/likes L’s quirky autistic traits. his mannerisms, his fixations, his tendency to say maybe inappropriate or blunt things. people like those aspects of him. he’s amusing.

but when it comes to dealing with emotions i find people don’t like L or say things about him that seem untrue to me based on my understanding of him as autistic.

an example: i saw a thread about how L didn’t really mean it when he said that light was his first friend (in general i see a lot of posts saying L never means anything or L lies all the time). i was kind of shocked when i saw it because to me, it seemed obvious that he meant it. L has never had peers that he could relate to; light was the first. even though he suspected he was kira, he still liked having that relationship where he could engage with someone on his level. and it would never have occurred to me to consider him insincere when he said it, because the way he expresses himself is very akin to the way i express myself. it’s difficult and i often don’t have the words for it and when i do talk about my emotions it usually comes in a burst when i can get something out that’s not just “hm i don’t know it’s like i don’t know you know?”

and that’s how i read L in that scene. he’s not just saying that to throw light off or to cause a stir, he means it, and he’s conflicted about what it might mean because he thinks light is kira. he’s struggling with that, just like he says he is.

i saw another post that said the reason L was shaking when aizawa yelled at him after ukita died wasn’t because he was upset about it but because he was scared of himself dying, but again, i didn’t interpret it that way at all. obviously in watching the anime with english subtitles and reading the manga in english i’m getting translations so i can’t say for sure that the true intent of the original dialogue is always captured, but in both L specifically says “if YOU go over there too”. he isn’t worried about himself, he’s worried about the rest of the task force and he is upset that ukita is dead. his seemingly calm level-headed approach isn’t him being callous, it’s how he deals with his emotions; for the sake of the case, yes, but also because he doesn’t know how to confront them and certainly not how to express them outwardly.

and this sort of gets at the heart of what i see happening with him. he has emotions and he expresses them in a way that is consistent with his autistic coding. he’s not just a quirky weird guy who can solve crimes, he’s a human whose feelings get involved. and from what i’ve seen fandom doesn’t like that? i’ve seen so many more harsh posts about L than i have about any other character. L is a liar, L is manipulative, L never means anything he says, L is a bad person. and while he has done bad things, a Lot of the criticism i see falls into the category of being unnecessarily harsh, particularly when you consider i’ve almost never seen posts like that about other characters, and i’ve seen a lot of posts on a lot of blogs since i got into death note.

for contrast, look at how fandom interprets near. near is also heavily autistic coded, with the key difference from L being that he doesn’t really have much of an emotional arc. he’s smart, he’s funny, he twirls his hair and plays with his toys. even when the SPK is killed, he doesn’t react emotionally at all in the anime, and there isn’t much more to his reaction in the manga. he says it hurts, but that’s the extent of it. his emotions aren’t dealt with concretely, just represented by his dice tower falling apart. for the most part near is pretty much the autistic robotic genius detective in canon. and fandom does not have the same issues with him as they do with L. he fits the mold.

so i guess the long and short of it, to be blunt about it, is fandom doesn’t like autistic characters to be autistic when it comes to their emotions. the funny geniuses with their weird mannerisms are okay, but as soon as messy emotions get involved fandom turns on autistic characters. i’ve seen all kinds of posts about things L did that emotionally impacted other people, but very few about how anything emotionally impacted him. and that’s. a problem. it’s all well and good to like those other things about L, because i like them too, but when there’s so much negativity towards him when he deviates from the stereotype, that’s alarming to me.

and ofc i don’t think anyone is sitting there going “oh i hate this character because he’s autistic and has emotions”, because i know thats not the case. but i think it’s important to maybe realize the implications of some of these claims. L isn’t wrong for dealing with his emotions in his own way, and he deserves as much leeway as any of the other characters get because, as people often say, there are a lot of gray areas in this show. and like i said, i don’t just see this in death note. every autistic coded character i’ve ever loved gets similar reactions, just not necessarily to such extremes. but it’s worth considering if you value autistic characters as people with feelings rather than amusing robotic figures who do funny things because real autistic people are out here and we can get the message.

#also this is long as hell sorry i tried to be as concise as i could thanks if u read it #this isnt as like. clearly expressed as i wanted it to be but i stand by it.#dn #death note

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twdmusicboxmystery · 8 years

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7x13: Details

Okay, just wanted to go over some details in the episode.

1. The number 5. We saw 5 Kingdom-ers at the beginning with the cantaloupe: Richard, Ezekiel, Jerry, and two others. Then when Carol kills walkers in the tree, she kills four with the sign and one more with a knife: 5 total. Probably pointing us back toward S5 for, you know, some odd reason. ;D

2. Candlelight Theme. We saw it with Carol at the beginning when she woke from her nightmare. After Benjamin dies, we see it with Morgan as well. Both are in psychological distress when we see this. Of course, there are Norman’s famous lines about Beth being the light in the dark tunnel for Daryl. Daryl was in serious psychological distress after the prison went down, and Beth helped him heal from that. This kind of lighting almost always signals serious emotional angst.

3. 63 on the wall again. @bluesandbeth told me that in issue 63 of the comic books, Michonne is thought to be dead…but then turns up alive. Hmmm.

4. I wondered if Nabila meant anything specific. It means “Noble or Excellent.” Another thing I didn’t mention on Monday was what she said about burning the garden down. She said the beautiful thing was that, “If you want, it can all grow back. ” They “get to come back,” but it’s always a choice. Carol was making a choice by staying alone in that cabin. She was in a self-imposed Purgatory and wasn’t progressing at all. Now she’s made the choice to move forward and become part of the world (the Kingdom) again. Same with Ezekiel choosing not to fight the Saviors.

5. Benjamin’s girlfriend. Benjamin talked about some girl who helped him with the picture, but wouldn’t tell Morgan anything else about her. A Nonny suggested maybe this was a way of paralleling Benjamin with Zack. He definitely does have a similar, boyish look to Zack. For me, it depends on whether we ever meet this girl or not. If we do, we’ll have to see what role she plays in the show. If not, she’s only symbolic. The thing is, this was more than just a minor detail. Morgan asked Benjamin about her at least twice. They really drew attention to this, so I’ll be interested to see where, if anywhere, it goes.

6. Jerry’s cobbler. Okay, small totally silly note here. I think the cobbler has come to symbolize something good. Maybe happiness, normalcy. We saw it with Carol in 7x02. Only a place like the Kingdom that’s well settled and has a decent food supply could reasonably expect to have or make cobbler. Anyway, Ezekiel told Jerry to leave the cobbler. Yeah, it was a funny–gotta love Jerry’s smile–but also kind of random. I wondered if it was a foreshadow that bad things were afoot. (Yes, that was an extremely lame pun. Someone else also pointed out to me that a “cobbler” is someone who makes shoes. So the cobbler could also be tied to the shoe/foot theory. Just throwing that out there. ;D)

7. The Kingdomers gave the Saviors their guns. We’ve seen this before, as Negan took all the guns from Alexandria. But this made me think of Noah giving up his gun and giving into Dawn at Grady. Not only did that result in disaster where Beth was concerned, but I do think it showed his weakness as a character and led to his death later on. (X) Here, Ezekiel and co give up their guns. Not long after, Benjamin is dead.

8. The Saviors said they were going to “teach them” just like the Claimers. Small detail, but Gavin said, “You have to learn the stakes, so we’re going to teach you.” This not only points us back toward S4 but shows that the “bad guys” in this season are being set up as parallels to earlier things we’ve seen.

9. We again saw the theme of the Saviors killing someone for what someone else did. I thought it was interesting because in this case, it wasn’t supposed to happen. Gavin was surprised when he turned around and Jarod had shot Benjamin. He was supposed to kill Richard, as Gavin originally said. This has become more than just something intentional on Negan’s part.

10. “It’s As or Fs, no Is.” “One, not more not less.” I was a little confused by this part. Assuming these are letter grades with A being the highest and F being “fail,” and I’m assuming I = Incomplete, then it makes sense in the dialogue. They’re saying the drops have to be all or nothing. But I was reminded of shirt Daryl wore at the Sanctuary. It had a red A with what looked like an I super-imposed over it, which doubled as a handle of sorts. Not sure if this is what they’re going for, or even what it all means, but it’s what I thought of.

11. Carol planted tomatoes. We’ve seen tomatoes a lot, especially around Morgan, and most recently at the Kingdom. The thing I noticed was that on this package, it says, “Boston pickling.” I thought it was a pickle reference. @bluesandbeth told me that this company most often does cucumbers, not tomatoes. This may even be an incorrect pairing–something they put together for the show. A double pickle reference and paired with the tomato reference. ***Update: I need to fix the above reference. I misunderstood the information sent to me. Boston Pickling isn't a company. It's a type of cucumber. Im looking into it further but just know for now that we can't find any evidence that there is any such thing as a Boston pickling tomato. That type of plant, from what we've seen, doesn't exist. Just wanted to clarify. Thanx for the correction @bluesandbeth! 💖***

12. Family Doctor sign in background. Lots of people have sent me doctor or ER signs that have been in the background. I guess I’m finally starting to pick them up on my own. This one was behind Morgan, specifically when he found the missing melon. You know, the one that was separated from the others and hidden? As though a doctor or medical institution may have had something to do with that?

13. “Benjamin, get your gun up.” Okay I’m gonna be a total TD geek about this. They called attention to this twice. Richard says it when they first stop at the road block, and then Morgan thinks about it again after Benjamin’s death. It’s what makes him realize that Richard was the culprit. Richard says it just as he secretly separates the hidden melon from the others. I couldn’t help but think of the fact that Dawn’s gun simply wasn’t “up” far enough to have shot Beth. So right when the melon was separated from the others, “Benjamin, get your gun up.” I’m probably really reaching. Meh. Whatevs. It’s what it made me think of.

14. Babies Crying - Richard mentions this several times when telling Morgan about the camp he used to be in. It made me think of episode 5x09 where we not only saw an emphasis on Judith crying from 7x01, but we also heard echoes of it all throughout the episode. Now we had an emphasis on it here.

15. Finally, @sparklepoodles pointed this out to me. It originates in 7x10, when Daryl keeps Richard putting his plan into action that would have gotten Carol killed. Not only did they foreshadow Richard’s death through dialogue. (Richard: I would die for the Kingdom. Daryl: Then why don’t you?) but look at this picture:

Tell me that’s not a foreshadow of Richard’s death and, more specifically, to Morgan strangling him.

16. The bull rider picture. I wanted to do this one last because it’s the most intriguing to me. I don’t have a specific theory, but I just wanted to share some observations. This is important, not only because it’s exactly the kind of detail they like to hide symbolism but it was also emphasized in the quiz on TTD.

I had to research bull fighting and found that I knew very little about it. Basically, it’s all about a fighter (commonly called a matador) showing off his skill by killing a massive, angry bull. It’s a brutal sport and they do kill the bull by the end. Usually. In the first stage, the bull fighter observes the bull, looking for strengths and weaknesses, and takes steps to weaken it physically, often by stabbing it to cause injury and blood loss. In the second stage, more steps are taken to weaken the bull, including stabbing it with barbed sticks that will remain in order to weaken its strong neck and shoulder muscles. The killing, in which the matador must several the bull’s spinal cord, happens in stage 3. It’s very dangerous for the matador, of course, but almost always fatal for the bull. (There are some special cases where they might let the bull live, but that’s rare.)

I don’t see a whole lot of TD things in this symbol. I’m side-eyeing a few things, but overall, I think this is a very strong Morgan symbol. In fact, it’s probably a very negative sign for Morgan. Morgan is the matador. Benjamin, however, is not the bull. Richard is. How do I know that? Well, for one thing, Morgan didn’t kill Benjamin, but he had to use his strength and skill to kill Richard. Another thing I read? After the bull is finally killed, it’s body is dragged through the arena by a team of mules. Kinda like this:

And then there’s the fact that there is a blue prohibition sign (the circle with the line through it) over the entire picture, as if to warn that this would be a very bad thing for Morgan to do. To me, that just points to his downward spiral even more.

It did occur to me that the three stages of the bull fighting could represent Morgan’s bouts with sanity, but since he’s the matador, I’m not entirely sure that works.

And the things I’m side-eyeing? @bluesandbeth pointed out that how the bulls are killed isn’t so far off how walkers are killed in the show, which I think is a good point. You could, of course, relate this to Beth specifically because they didn’t stab her in the brain. (I had a Nonny point out that Morgan stabbed Richard in the brain despite an obvious head injury, which is a super-interesting observation - X).

The only other thing that caught my attention here is the red cape. It’s the traditional symbol of the matador, which is how you can tell (other than the bull) that this is a picture of a bull fighter. But I immediately went back to the red cape/poncho/whatever-it-was in Beth’s cell.

I’m not sure how that would tie into this, unless it’s as anti-parallel. Morgan killed Richard, but he might have saved Beth.

And then there’s the fact that the prohibition sign on Morgan’s painting is GREEN. Just saying.

So anyway, like I said, no specific theory. Just observations.

That’s everything I had in my notes. Anyone pick up any other tidbits?

#td #beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance

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deanirae · 8 years

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@frozen-delight I saw you were interested in the whole Dean as Other & Dean as Feminine parts of my thesis? :)

I’m making this as a separate post because I wasn’t sure if hijacking someone’s (excellent) meta wouldn’t be rude.

I can’t exactly copy paste from the thesis because unfortunately it was written in my native language. Also, the hypothetical reader of the thesis was supposed to be a person who is not familiar with the show so I had to bring up a lot of stuff that is very well known to us, fans, so that would be too much talking about the obvious, I guess.

Dean as the Other (and the outcast)

The starting point to writing about Dean in terms of being the Other, was a comparison of similarities with Dean from Kerouac’s „On the Road”. It kinda went from there.

I focused on the society-related aspect of it within the diegesis, and because of that, I brought the most attention to the early seasons. I felt like later on the Dean – society dichotomy kind of went away within the narrative as progressively the Winchesters were mostly interacting with other people and beings that were related to the supernatural world.

Dean was both marked as the Other by society and by himself – from the outsider’s point of view, he stands against everything that constitutes the ideal american life style. He detests the middle class and the „values” it represents, which osciliate between consumptionism and superficial morality. The main and first reason why he’s marked as such, is of course, being a hunter of the supernatural, which, in his case, is related to socio-economical degradation: there was a peaceful, middle class-ish life in Kansas (a conservative state which only stronger resonates with the traditional american ideal) and suddenly there was no home, financial issues, constant danger and a dysfunctional family with the extra bonus of alcohol problems and violence. And it’s important to note that while Sam doesn’t remember the past and the change, Dean does. It only adds to his trauma and vision of self that completely differs from what is considered „normal.” Dean learns everything from John and excels at it – a history of violence, lack of a stable job and firm emotional connections, living on the Road, acquiring money through gambling, using fake credit cards and presumably even prostitution (not confirmed canon, just Jensen’s words) – all of that places Dean even below the „blue collar”. To add to that, most of the time he can’t even explain his action to people because that would mean having to explain the supernatural. All of it makes the society percieve him as unpredictable and dangerous, as something that disrupts he suburban life harmony, as a threat. Makes him feel like he doesn’t fit (as shown in “Bugs” and “What is and what should never be”, “Exile on main street”). People distance themselves from him (even Sam, who craved normalcy and upward mobility, and in no way wanted to become like his brother), Dean distances himself from them. In a way, he isn’t even a part of the family unit – Sam always was the son, Dean was the „tool.” In practice, until Sam left for Stanford, it wasn’t „John, Sam and Dean.” It was „John, Sam and that.” Inside the hunting community, he didn’t exactly fit either – didn’t fit the hunter ideal – too sensitive, too pretty, too different.

I also find it interesting how it’s only Dean who gets repeatedly pictured as an animal. Dog!Dean is the most blatant example but not the most interesting in the context of his otherness and attempts to evoke some kind of beast-related asociations in the audience. It’s one thing that Sonny’s called him Dee-dawg and that dog imagery is strongly related to Dean.What really gets to me is that in „Dream a Little Dream of Me” Dean circles dream!Dean (or should I say, the other Dean) like an animal that prepares for an attack (also, the exchange between the two suggests Dean doesn’t exactly see himself as human). And of course, there’s „On the Head of a Pin”, where Dean is not only referred to as „Grasshopper”, but is told that he’s been carved into a whole new animal. Also, I would argue that the fact only Dean was made to become a torturer on the show, amplifies his otherness, in a way. No other character can relate to this sort of damaging experience. That particular burden makes him different than any other human on SPN.

The narrative also presents him as the Other through making other characters the subjects that don’t get their basic agency get meddled with on every available occasion, while Dean has it denied all the time. His choices, emotions and reactions aren’t supposed to be independent, but always are meant to be relative to the rest of his family (mostly). In this aspect, he doesn’t get to be an autonomous being. His loved ones are the Absolute, he is the Opposite.

As for Dean seeing himself as something else – all of it is highlighted in „Skin”, both in dialogue between the brothers and by the shapeshifter!Dean revealing Dean’s secrets, which, literally presents Dean as the Other, seeing how it’s Dean’s skin the monster chooses and how it thinks Dean and it are very much alike.

Dean & Femininity

The most important and narrative-affecting part of coding Dean as feminine, is him being a victim of parentification (the mechanism affected Sam and John as well, but differently). Dean became Sam’s mother in all the possibile ways. In regards to John, Dean in many aspects stepped into the stereotypically female spouse’s place. In both cases it was instrumental and emotional: Dean was the emotional caregiver, the one who created the „homely warmth”, the one who passed on the tradition, the one who was supposed to keep Sam and John healthy, he was the one who prepared food and made sure there would be food in the first place. He was the mediator between Sam and his father. During conflicts between the two, Dean always shielded Sam with his own body. Symbolically, because of the deal Dean made, he not only gave his life away for Sam, he became his mother even in the aspect of literally giving Sam life.

Even Dean’s personal heaven is a part of the coding. The things that Dean’s soul craves for the most and what he remembers most fondly are things that are associated with women – his heaven consisted of having a happy family, of love, of giving and recieving care. It’s a stark contrast with Sam’s heaven which represented things associated with masculinity – aiming for independence and both social and economical success that would put him in position above other people, wanting to be respected, in general.

Dean i also almost always mirrored not by men, but by women (and also obligatory by mothers, like Linda Tran). Working kind of like Jung’s animas, the female characters are an expression of the emotions and behaviors that Dean doesn’t accept in himself, those he doesn’t want to talk about, those that are supposed to show not tell about his state and those that might also be seen as foreshadowing. Since I was looking into the pat tern with a very specific context in mind, I chose Betsy, Charlie and Suzie Lee as my examples. Since the first two have been analysed to death both in fandom and in my thesis, I’ll Just briefly bring up Suzie Lee since I’ve never seen her mentioned. I read her, in short, as a mirror to Dean deciding to return to his old behaviors and mechanisms, deciding to abandon his personal needs to again become an effective tool (part commentary, part foreshadowing; all of it due to guilt, as always. Because the day the spn narrative decides to not blame Dean for something and make him feel bad, is the day you have to yell ‘christo’ at it. But that’s a rant for another time). Suzie’s shame about a successful career in the porn industry can be seen as a mirror to Dean exceling in hunting, in using violence, in using his body as a work tool, in general. Both are also a taboo. That would be the cliff notes version, I suppose.

I’m sure there were more instances in all the seasons, in all the possibile contexts, though.

#dean winchester #supernatural meta #supernatural musings #frozen delight #frozendelight #dean - the Other #dean - femininity #that was longer than i anticipated where did my day go

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[HR] The Canvas

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO TOPICS FEATURING BLOOD, KNIVES, DESCRIPTIVE VIOLENCE, DESCRIPTIVE GORE, SADISM, SOCIOPATHIC THOUGHTS, AND OTHER THINGS THAT MAY TRIGGER ONE THAT HAS FACED TRAUMA INCLUDING THESE TYPES OF FEATURES IN THE PAST. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION!

The scars are fresh and the blood was still splattered upon my face. Oh, how I miss the sight of myself in such a way. My hair, which was to my shoulders, twisted and locked and matted, is now neatly cropped close to my skull. I don’t look nearly like my image in this file, however I must play them. If they... if they manage to add up the quantities, I’m dead.

Deep in thought, Jake glares at the file, his head cocked slightly so the blaring sun in the window misses its trajectory and lands slightly left of his eyes.

“Jake? Have you got an idea of how you are going to task this? This man... he’s cold blooded. Notorious for not only assassinating, but enjoying his deeds.”

“Huh!?”

Startled, James slams the paper on the mahogany desk facedown and swivels his neck to look at the person who had addressed him.

“Deputy, I urge you to give me a warning next time you approach me like that. Take a seat.”

Jake turns to look at the man in front of him, a small framed man in his early thirties. His eyes have a discernible sparkle, and, despite the wiry look to his body, he seems somewhat athletic.

Meticulously plotting his endeavor to hide within his mind, Jake blankly stares at the deputy before cautiously commencing speech.

They don’t know me. They don’t know how intimately I held in my heart each murder. They don’t know the intricate steps taken to plan each deed, each foolproof shield to ensure that the slaughters took place without being incarcerated.

“Deputy, I believe a criminal such as this would reside next to a state highway. Perhaps I-70 would be a good option for him. If he wanted to kill without being caught, the highway is the best place for him to stage accidents.”

Jake merely chuckles to himself. Despite the heavy hints that he dropped as to he himself being a former assassin, the dense deputy before him just nods ignorantly.

“I plan to begin the search tomorrow,” Jake states, his eyes wandering to the window and sharply averting back as the sun stings his eyes.

“Yes sir,” the deputy sighs.

“And, sir, would you need any aid in this search?”

“Deputy, please leave your sheer ignorance at your house next time,” Jake states with a cold glare.

“I do not need any help. I can manage this myself, as I only have the search warrant. If the government spots us both searching in closed off and territorial areas, we may both be apprehended.”

What a fool. Clearly my notations are obvious lies, yet the dense fellow doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of the line between fact and fiction. This is why I have entrusted him as my deputy. I can get away with anything with this dense fool sauntering next to me like an unknowing donkey. Hell, I could walk out on the street and murder someone in cold blood right before his weary little eyes and nonetheless, he would simply eject his hilarious giggle and ask me if the man was a criminal. Then I’d gruffly reply yes, and the man would skip away, leaving me to my own amusement over the dead body.

The deputy saunters to the other side of the office and tugs on the doorknob momentarily before realizing that it was one build to respond to a push rather than a pull. At peace with solitude once again, Jake smooths a lined paper on his desk and grasps a ballpoint pen, the tip quivering in synchronization with his unnerved arm.

As the clock announces the termination of the workday, Jake gathers his items and forcefully stuffs them in an oversized bookbag, subsequently slinging it over his shoulder and carelessly lumbering out of the building. A crisp chill hits him, yet in spite of the crowd pulling their jackets close to their chests and shivering, he smiles and allows the wind to whip his bare skin. He runs his fingers over top of a recently sharpened butter knife, folded neatly as a contraption within his pocket. The blade makes a simple, clean cut through his finger and he raises the extremity, analyzes it, and smiles with approval.

“Sheriff? Perhaps you should head home for the night instead of… idling there with no notion as to what you’re doing,” chuckles a man as he strolls past a nearby park. Jake raises his fist and narrows his eyes in the man’s direction, but reproaches his actions and comes to a standstill.

“Dear citizen, maybe you ought to show some respect for your local Sheriff. You don’t know what they are capable of,” Jake mutters the second half of the statement under his breath, mentally chortling at the reference to his questionable past.

Jake hastily shuffles over to his flat, a small one bedroom, one bathroom combination of a house, with a barely functional kitchen. One ought to ponder whether said Sheriff shall be anxious over the newfound high-profile case, enlisting him to find, arrest, and execute himself. However, Jake eases himself onto the recliner situated midway through his living room, relaxed as one could be. He laughs nearly maniacally when a television ad mentions the dangers of hiring a hitman for detective work.

They don’t know what I am capable of. A rap on the door shall be turned cold, a spitfire of dialogue silenced. They have nothing against me. After all, I am their protector. Any charges against the Sheriff tend to be overlooked. As a matter of fact, the old Sheriff himself was a hearty gambler, his crimes overlooked twice before his impeachment.

Jake groans in effort as he sits up to power off the television. He saunters past the miniature refrigerator and helps himself to a serving of rich, deep chocolate pudding before descending the frigid cement stairs into his basement.

“D-don’t hurt m-me! P-please I beg you!” A man groans with a labored exhale tailing it. Jake grabs the man by the collar and smiles nefariously.

“It won’t hurt a bit, my friend.”

Jake smiles. He hadn’t considered the sheer pleasure he would feel from returning to his questionable ways as an illegal assassin. Perhaps he shall abandon his imprisonment as Sheriff and continue his prior exhausted career. Jake pulls the hilt of his knife off and lets it clatter to the ground. Muffled screams eject from the man’s smothered mouth, his eyes watering profusely. Jake internally chides himself for executing such a careless and, frankly, lazy slaughtering. He dissaproves of having the victim pass before he or she has witnessed peak torture, however in this case, no anger drives his decision.

Nearly at the verge of feeling empathy, an emotion Jake deeply disapproves of and believes is a wretched and unwanted surge of human weakness, he presses the blade of the knife to the most important vascular connection in the man’s neck. Once the connection is cut, the man would die a rapid death, with so much as a miniscule flash of agony before the passing. Jake exhales with an elaborate chuckle, and intently watches as the blade cuts through the flesh. Blood spurts out and stains his shirt, laden with colorful splotches meant to represent paint - and to mask the proficient staining of blood.

With a brief smile, and confirmation that his plot has been put into action, Jake speaks into the air.

“You shall now be my canvas. My infamous savior. My replica and my clone. Look at this paper.”

Waving the paper before the corpse, Jake rambles on about the direct resemblance between the look of his younger self and the middle aged man splayed out on the ground before him.

“I will transfer you to the side of I-70, preferably near a recent accident site. Some quick makeup shall fix the few differentiations from my old appearance that you have,” Jake chuckles.

“Then, you will lay there, a lifeless corpse, rotting away as if the perpetrator himself had died in a crash- during a careless attempt at assasination. Subsequent to finding you, I will enlist my deputies and lieutenants to deem the body dead and lift the case. The town will be relieved by the death of the notorious assassin. Little do they know… Essentially, you will be my paint canvas. I will sculpt you so you appear to be me… the older me, similar to the one on the wanted paper, but simply with longer facial hair to signify and affirm the truth that the picture was captured nearly five years ago. Once you are discovered, I am home free.”

Jake laughs maniacally and looks to the ceiling in triumph.

“Frankly, this was the easiest plot I have ever carried out. Thank you for making it hilariously simple for me. Now I will be liberated to live free of fear. Free of discovery. Free of apprehension. My past shall be behind me and, at the same time manifest within me more than it ever has.”

He paces around the room slowly, going through the processes of erasing the evidence from the room. He lays the corpse on a trash bag strewn across the ground, and comes to a brief thought.

“You are not only my canvas, but a canvas that shall be transformed into a metaphorical masterpiece.”

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#Blogger #Story

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opioid0 · 4 years

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via Opioid,

This letter was sent to all Eleanor Health employees on May 31, 2020.

Dear Eleanor Health Team Members,

As your Co-Founding and Executive Leadership Team, responsible for embodying the culture, compassion and whole-person values of #TheEleanorWay, we are writing this letter to recognize and validate the pain that our Black community is experiencing acutely as a result of the false 911 call against Christian Cooper and the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd; and chronically as a result of pervasive systemic racism. While we know the pain of police brutality and racism is shared among all people, we also know that a Black man is three times more likely to be killed during a police encounter, than a white man – just one statistic that represents the disproportionate impact to Black communities. We know that traditional corporate cultures do not create space for meaningful dialog about racism and systemic inequity, often instead, continuing work as usual as if many of us are not bleeding from the wounds of current and historical events. At Eleanor Health, we commit to be different. We commit to support you, to raise our voices, to create an anti-racism culture, to let you know you don’t have to hide your pain at work and to truly care for you as a whole person.

From Corbin: Over the weekend, the founding and executive team spent a lot of time discussing racism, what we could do, and checking in on one another. Specifically, I wrote Nzinga to see how she was doing and ask, as a white woman, what I could do, knowing she must be feeling incredible pain, hurt, and fear. As leaders, it’s important that we make sure our teams feel safe – both physically and to be open and honest about what they are feeling – and to create a space for open dialogue. As an organization, we must focus on being anti-racism both for our teams and for our communities. We will be opening up our All Hands meeting on Tuesday to let people share what they are feeling, and offer ideas on what we can do to act. We hope this will be the start of an ongoing discussion focused on healing and understanding.

From Nzinga: As a Black woman, daughter of a Black man, wife of a Black husband, mother of two Black sons who at 13 and 14 years old, are no longer seen by whites and police as cute little boys, but rather as scary Black men, this is personal. I know firsthand what it means to be terrified for my husband and sons’ lives and outraged in my personal life, but asked to conduct business as usual in my professional life. We care too deeply about you, to ask the same at Eleanor Health. A core part of our identity is advocacy, equity and justice. We must apply those core values not only on behalf of the members we serve, but for you, our Eleanor Health team members.

From Michael: I can’t pretend to know what members of the Black community are feeling right now. I won’t ever experience the confusion, fear or anger of having to navigate a world that has so much institutional bias to fight, let alone have to deal with the individual cases of prejudice and hate. What I can do, however, is fully commit to appreciating the challenges you face and to offer my support by fully embracing anti-racism. The challenge is that racism isn’t always obvious or intentional, especially for those who haven’t experienced its effects on a personal level. So, we’re going to have to tackle this together. It won’t always be easy – I know that I like many still have much to learn and there will likely be plenty of mistakes and forgiveness required along the way. Also, there is no real endpoint to this effort so long a racism persists in our society. That said, rather than be discouraged, I see this as another opportunity for us to distinguish ourselves as company. If there is one thing that sets us apart at Eleanor, it is our shared commitment at all levels to take on what makes others uncomfortable and an unwillingness to settle for the status quo when change is needed.

From Srishti: Compassion is at our core at Eleanor, and we see the pain of our team members, of our community members, of our society, and yet it persists. Breonna Taylor was killed in her Louisville home, and Christian Cooper was subjected to a dangerous accusation and 911 call in his favorite Manhattan park. These are both places I call home. These are both communities meant to be progressive and thoughtful, and yet the most unjust reflection of human judgement and institutions has reared its ugly head: racism. We must counteract, we must speak up, and we must continue growing our capacity to do so.

In the coming weeks, we hope to provide opportunities to have real conversations and to share your concerns and feelings.

A very common question is What Can We Do? In the words of Ijeoma Oluo, the beauty of anti-racism is that it does not require us to be free of racism, but rather to fight it wherever we see it, even in ourselves. The first step is to recognize we have a problem and to overcome the barrier and stigma of talking about it, so that we can be of support to each other.

Process your feelings: Our check in rituals must be real. When you check in this week, tell us truly how you are doing and know that you can be honest about what you need from your colleagues. Know that you do not have to hide your pain, your fear, your anger. Eleanor Health also has resources that you can access.

Create and embody inclusivity: We aim to create an environment where different perspectives and points of view are not just tolerated, but encouraged. Practice inclusivity by actively reaching out and celebrate it wherever you see it being practiced by others.

Speak up: if you experience or witness actions that go against our culture of inclusivity, say something. Ask questions and raise awareness to bias – silence condones discrimination. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Be part of the ongoing conversation: overcoming systemic barriers like racism requires us to continuously strive for deeper understanding of ourselves, our teammates and our community members and the conditions impacting their lives. To provide a platform for achieving that understanding, we are initiating an open discussion series to tackle complex questions through honest dialogue in a safe forum. These voluntary facilitated sessions will be held quarterly and will provide the opportunity to explore emotions and perspectives related to some of the difficult topics that impact our lives but that people don’t typically like to address in public.

Educate and grow ourselves: Srishti highlighted the work of Ibram X. Kendi as being particularly informative to her, and invited us all to join in using his recent An Antiracist Reading List as a helpful tool on this continued growth. Eleanor Health is committed to this growth and is offering to reimburse for the cost of one of these or other educational books for anyone on our team who wants to read one.

We commit to be different at Eleanor Health. We commit to condemn racism wherever we see it – even when it is in ourselves. We commit to raise our voices in advocacy for others to do the same. We commit to be anti-racist. We commit to care for the whole person including racism-based wounds, and that starts with us raising our voices for you.

Please reach out to us for any support you need and with any ideas you have for how we at Eleanor Health, can be part of the solution on this painful journey to healing.

Yours in solidarity,

Corbin, Nzinga, Srishti and Michael

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detox0000 · 4 years

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Statement from Eleanor Health’s Co-Founders and Executive Team

This letter was sent to all Eleanor Health employees on May 31, 2020.

Dear Eleanor Health Team Members,

In the coming weeks, we hope to provide opportunities to have real conversations and to share your concerns and feelings.

Please reach out to us for any support you need and with any ideas you have for how we at Eleanor Health, can be part of the solution on this painful journey to healing.

Yours in solidarity,

Corbin, Nzinga, Srishti and Michael

from https://www.eleanorhealth.com/blog/standinguptoracism

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#Detox

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