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malicious-compliance-esq · 2 years

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Meta: "In His Own Image"

Without further ado, welcome to Malicious.

Read “In His Own Image” now on Drive or inline directly below per your pleasure!

This meta offers exposition on Black Jack’s character and motivations through the lens of a fic concept I'm working on drawing parallels between Outlander and The Phantom of the Opera.

The inline version below is just the body text of the meta. Hop over to Drive for enhanced content that reads more like an AO3 fic file—and of course, a soundtrack song!

After the inline meta, there's also some bonus exposition on publication formats in a more general sense. Consider it a bit of early installment weirdness from before I got active on the Archive. ***

Ye Randallites by name, here be some deep thoughts on dissociative identity and the physical body that originated with narrative flow development for the “Precious Little Ingénue” diptych. While ruminating on this I switched from listening to The Phantom of the Opera original cast recording to Everything but the Girl’s Walking Wounded album and especially “The Heart Remains a Child” because the themes I was reflecting on reminded me so much of that song and really the whole album. “Good Cop, Bad Cop”? Try #ACAB, quite literally—All Characters Are Bisexual. What did you think I meant?

(Seriously though, that too. In this house we vanquish our invaders. Ugh, phrasing!)

I noted in my working document for “Precious Little Ingénue” that the “I am the mask you wear / It’s me they hear” lines from the “Phantom of the Opera” song lyrics—included as the soundtrack for the first installment of the two-part arc—should be referenced explicitly in-story with the “how’s my handiwork looking” concept about the extreme scarring on Jamie’s back. This got me thinking extensively on the finer points of why Black Jack cares so much about seeing the lasting impacts of his violent behavior written in flesh.

BJR is established implicitly in show canon and even more so in book canon as having dissociative issues, which I incorporate as baseline characterization in my own takes on canon—though how integrated he is depends on the specific story/timeline/background. So it makes perfect sense that he can only have an integrated self-concept by seeing his work on others. It likewise makes sense that this matters most of all to him when he finds himself unable to elicit emotional responses from people whose attention and affection he craves.

This shows up in different ways—some more angsty/destructive and some more peaceful/constructive in various continuities of mine, and the scars on Jamie’s back themselves receive different treatment based on the specific characterization nuances for him in those different continuities. Here, the scarring on Jamie-evoking-Christine parallels the scarring on the Phantom from the original story behind the musical. So the music the Phantom writes for Christine parallels the scars Black Jack puts on Jamie for the world to see.

In both cases, public performance is involved—are you watching? And in both cases the “artist” wants their craft to be seen as an expy of themselves—a representation in which they are not broken and damaged, but rather cohesive and whole, and can be accepted as such. BJR is noted explicitly as dissociative, including a fair degree of depersonalization as commonly occurs from childhood trauma, in “Blood Is Thicker".

Although that arc does not share continuity with the one for "Precious Little Ingénue" necessarily, it deals with a lot of similar themes—establishes BJR as not being able to draw his own face without getting lost and having the image fall apart. He basically tries to put the pieces of himself together in physical media and cannot make them cohere. RIP BJR, you would’ve loved cubism.

All of this makes me think I should totally reference “Girl Before a Mirror” implicitly in some of the fics about him and Mary where he draws her while she is pregnant. This would be difficult to do explicitly within 18th century canon because Picasso didn’t exist yet, but I can still play with the concept and evoke some of the imagery and technique from the painting.

Hell, the official Picasso museum (also the bast damn visual art museum ever IMHO) is even in France just outside of Paris! And you can experience the museum different ways—you curate your own experience based on how you walk through the museum and a variety of other factors. Rather like what we in the Republic of Randall do with exploring the oft-referenced redemption potential—as well as the oft-referenced self-destruction potential ultimately realized in both the show and book canons—of an incredibly complex character who can fit so much trauma in him.

This parallels how BJR has different possibilities and futures because he is established in canon and by TM/RBM/DG as being incredibly complex and multifaceted but always having at least some possibility of redemption. Whether or not these possibilities ever bear fruit depends on the specific choices Black Jack makes within the circumstances surrounding him and the options others give him. That last bit shows up very explicitly in “As Long as You Follow” and does so in a way that relates strongly to the scars and dynamics surrounding them.

BJR “writing” on Jamie with a whip also parallels the way he eagerly embraces both Mary’s explicit invitation in “Mother Nature’s Writing” to write on her skin with henna ink as a means of celebrating how he is always present within her both on the surface and deeper within. In that series specifically and its general master continuity we get a lot of exploration (especially in the second part of that diptych itself given the immediate context of the story) about Black Jack’s overwhelmingly positive and affirming feelings towards stretch marks and other changes in Mary’s body that come from carrying his children.

It’s absolutely a more positive and explicitly consensual-from-the-start analogue of how Jamie’s scars come to take on more overtly similar meanings over time in that continuity and others as BJR makes different choices and establishes meaningful trust with Jamie. In each case the idea that scars are “dead flesh” gets refuted. Rather, they are flesh with new and different life that tells a more honest truth—something BJR innately appreciates given his own unusual but clearly established moral code in canon and his obsession with getting the truth out of others.

And again, in canon Dougal MacKenzie explicitly notes that the whipping incident at Fort William tells people everything they need to know not only about Black Jack but also about Jamie. Black Jack is bringing a truth out of Jaimie that Jamie isn’t ready to except about himself yet in the show timeline, which is part of why many of us find the dynamic between them so fascinating, and why over time Jamie becomes just as obsessed with BJR as BJR is with Jamie.

To that end, in “As Long as You Follow” BJR also writes in very temporary form on Jamie using the lead pencil he always carries in his waistcoat pocket. As this story forks off from the main show canon at the exact moment in S1E15 where BJR goes down to Jamie’s prison cell, it basically creates a foil to the branding sequence from the original episode. Instead of harming Jamie by convincing him to brand himself with Randall’s crest after the latter heated it in the brazier, BJR writes his initials on Jamie’s skin after drawing him.

Notably, rather than initiating the gesture himself, he instead writes on Jamie’s skin in response to Jamie’s own curiosity about whether the pencil works on other surfaces—and only after leaning closer and asking “may I?” before actually making contact. This exchange occurs in the broader context of a discussion about how Black Jack felt a need to stake a claim on Jamie even though only one of them was fully aware of their attraction to one another. Doesn’t imply BJR was the better-adjusted one between the two of them, mind—each of them is verra fucked up in their own ways throughout S1.

In fact, BJR’s musing to Jamie in the original S1E15 sequences spotlights this. “How does it feel to be alive and wear so much dead flesh?” is a question that pretty much everyone living with dissociative issues knows the answer to: all the pain in the world, and yet simultaneously nothing at all. Or to call up yet more Walking Wounded lyrics, this time from the title track: “There's resilience inside my face, but sometimes nothing.”

That also offers insight into why so many people with dissociation practice S&M and D/s. Again, personal experience proves very relevant—both about these general dynamics and about what happens when a person tries to ignore/repress those sides of themself.

An interesting aside here is that Black Jack‘s nickname also references the weapon of the same name. I don’t think this is accidental. Especially not when you consider the specific qualities that make a cosh weapon a blackjack. To put a verra fine point on it, a blackjack is defined as a hard steel rod encased inside soft leather. The inner core of the weapon is literally encased in dead flesh.

So in altering Jamie’s body with his violent actions, BJR is quite explicitly and viscerally molding Jamie in his own image—and thus actually being able to grasp that image in some meaningful way that he cannot do on his own, no matter how much he tries to through his art. He can only understand himself through his impact on other people. How positive or negative a direction that goes in for the various continuity time working within varies depending on a few different factors, and really offers a fascinating look into the many possibilities for the character.

And as many others have pointed out, Jamie also comes from an abusive home. The comment that based on his background he should have “gone for BJR with heart eyes” seems right on the money. But that’s only possible in any kind of sustained sense if BJR chooses to actually let Jamie in to see what lies beneath the dead mask he wears. The more I think about this, the more I think it explains why Tobias Menzies so explicitly played BJR’s physical presence with a smile that never reaches his eyes except in very certain circumstances.

Those dynamics in Menzies’s portrayal of Black Jack also explain why I noticed immediately that there was more than just familial support between him and Mary Hawkins in S2E12. If you freeze frame some of the moments where he’s looking at her directly, they prove verra telling. Literally the only other times we see light come into BJR’s eyes happen when he gets a chance to hurt Jamie or—and again, are you watching?—he appears in Jamie’s dreams looking blissfully happy and moaning “don’t stop” while Jamie makes love to him.

Alex Randall lampshades all this by talking about the “dark wall” Black Jack builds around himself to hide his better nature from the world. Likewise, Frank Randall’s subsequent story arc—no accident that we get an in-depth retrospective on his journey directly after BJR’s own plotline and life end—shows him getting progressively more split apart socially and emotionally over time. In the process, we watch the light that made him look so completely different from BJR despite being played by the same actor dimming within his eyes.

For all you fellow The Terror fans, this is also what makes all those visual memes contrasting Black Jack Randall with James Fitzjames so thoroughly effective—even for screen reader users given sufficiently insightful ALT text. Two period roles playing high-ranking British military officers—with long hair, traumatic pasts, identity issues aplenty about 100 years apart temporally—but completely different people. It creates a dramatic irony of sorts when considering the fact that many of us got into Outlander/BJR fandom through The Terror/JFJ fandom or vice versa.

For me it was the former—as much as I relate to much of what BJR experiences, having survived different but analogous forms of domestic abuse and ethnocentrist violence, I relate even more strongly to Fitzjames. Right up to the origin story revealed in S1E8 where he pours his heart out to Francis Crozier at the cairn of stones on King William Island. Having a secret other biological father and feeling like you have to work twice as hard to prove half as much about how you “fit” in familial and social spaces? Being much less white genealogically than you look physically? Wouldn’t know a thing about any of that.

Of course, I also wouldn’t know a good goddamned thing about any of the analogous “all vanity” dynamics with BJR’s deliberate obfuscation of his better nature—the tender underbelly of the toughness he tries to project.

Remember that according to Menzies, Black Jack quite earnestly means everything he says, even and perhaps especially when he seems to contradict himself from one minute to the next. When he tells Claire Beauchamp in S1E6 “I dwell in darkness madam, and darkness is where I belong” he is also telling himself this. More specifically, he’s reminding himself that any attempt to pursue the redemption he let himself contemplate in detail—with a dreamy look creeping up toward his dead eyes—just moments beforewould only bring failure and ruin.

Gentle readers, I have known these men. I have frittered away years of my patience and compassion on these men—and one particular one above all others who quite aptly was not the one who abused me for years—only to have them surrender to that same insidious fear that drives Black Jack to ride willingly to his own death at Culloden knowing full well what awaits him thanks to the very same person he sucker-punches for daring to make him imagine a better future.

One in which he starts the arduous uphill climb of making meaningful amends with Jamie before going back home to Mary and actually sticking around to face “the consequence of actually feeling”. (Name that Counting Crows song that will become verra important in a future Malicious fic in the “Blood Is Thicker” continuity, folks!) BJR goes to meet his maker feeling thoroughly convinced that the complete undoing of all his defenses awaiting him back at home would surely be worse.

This comes after watching the only person he has allowed himself to be truly vulnerable in loving and thus not harmed in the process—and to that point, note the brilliance of the sequence ad-libbed by Menzies in S2E12 of show canon—finally expire after significant suffering. BJR only engages in physical violence against Alex after he dies—because with the spirit that inhabited his brother’s body extinguished from the mortal world, the cadaver left behind becomes just another mocking reminder of BJR’s inadequacy.

Black Jack steps up to protect Mary and her unborn child because material generosity is the only way he has consistently felt able to express caring without doing terrible damage in the process. But he ultimately flees in terror (ahem) to die by the hands of the man who simultaneously represents his darkest desires and his deepest fears. So for all you who watched S3E3 and wondered if Frank’s death might have been a suicide of sorts, ask yourselves the same of BJR’s own exit to the battlefield at Culloden Moore.

And oh, does that particular point ever send my stereotypically hyper-perceptive neurodivergent brain spinning with pattern recognition. We won’t talk at length in this particular meta about all the parallels I immediately spotted between Black Jack and James Bond—especially the original literary version created by switchy bisexual ex-British-military king Ian Lancaster Fleming, whom Menzies just so happened to play in Any Human Heart. “Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment?” God ILF, stop reading BJR’s diary!

But if you’re picking up what I’m putting down with all that, come peep and consider contributing to the #headcanons-aus-fic-discussions content on the BJR Discord server. I may have gone HAM—Hanoverian As a Motherfucker, that is—yarn-mapping all those parallels for the good of the Republic of Randall. Perhaps I should even copy out that content for an additional #MaliciousMeta in the future.

And rest assured I’ve got a fic arc going already—with an initial trilogy plus a companion diptych all in various stages of progress along with about two dozen other fics, because I’m Malicious and I make words as copiously as BJR makes trouble for Jamie Fraser and anyone who dares command his attention away from obsessing over Black Jack himself—exploring the parallels between Bond and Black Jack. Trust it includes ample amounts of actual master spy Frank as well!

I’ll wrap up the present effort by noting I often set up and explore BJR’s relationships with Jamie and Mary as simultaneous parallels and foils for one another, where the same basic dynamics of growth and trust building and mutual healing are happening, but with different nuances according to the specific people and their circumstances and histories with each other.

It also seems very fitting that in many of my continuities BJR himself is more whole and integrated for having meaningful relationships with both of them that intertwine in different ways without the three of them being a triad. From what I’ve seen, including robustly in my own experience, this is a very common dynamic for polyamorous people living with a history of dissociative issues—especially those of us who are also bisexual—and working to stay integrated in a general sense. ***

Not sure if I'll release my BJR-and-adjacent writings only on here and Discord or also become an active author on AO3. Still mulling over that because, in a revelation that will surprise absolutely no one, my unilaterally Dominant ass enjoys maintaining high control over content curation.

But there will be writings, ye Randallites by name. All told I have some 30 fics presently in various stages of progress, plus 2 finished ones I already linked for those in the know on the Discord @jurian-is-cinnamon-roll magnanimously maintains for those of us shamelessly using Black Jack as our best weapon against perpetually unresolved trauma.

Will likewise release those completed stories here as the weekend unfolds. In the meantime, if you don't know WTF is going on with the various specific fic continuities of mine mentioned here, anticipate treats forthwith!

Finally, I should put a verra fine point on the fact that there will be absolutely no handwaving or minimization of violence--whether sexual, physical, emotional, social, or otherwise--in any of my writings. In case you missed the implicit here, let me make it explicit:

I have survived unspeakable things on all of the above fronts, and supporting other survivors in their own unique journeys of healing past trauma and taking back power has kept me going during times where nothing else much endeared me to this mortal coil. And I live with a deadly progressive disease that makes me constantly conscious of how very little tomorrows are promised, so that speaks volumes.

If you want to know more, read the meta. And if you want nothing to do with any of this, cool. Your life, your journey, your choice. Kindly EXEUNT STAGE LEFT without pissing all over the floor of the only thing that has finally helped me reclaim my own joy and liberation in earnest.

As my wife and fellow traveler on the lifelong road of survivorship has often noted, we never stop running until long after the demons stop chasing us. But for any who would come at me for daring to process trauma through highly introspective art, I offer both caveat and caution in kind:

I've been to Hell, my boy. You've only read about it.

—Marquis de Sade, Quills

#niche outlander musings #black jack randall #trauma #writing is healing #fandom #lgbt fiction #processing #malicious meta #extended studies #character analysis #villain discourse

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icicleteeth · 4 years

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Aljsdfljds so Tamriel bread post got really popular, and I realized I never actually wrote a detailed breakdown of how/why each province’s bread was designed the way they were (Mostly because I hand wrote each description in the art so I had to keep them brief alsdfj), so I thought I’d write a more thorough post about it! More under the cut--though as with everything TES related I make, these are just my headcanons!

High Rock: Given High Rock’s prosperous kingdoms, most cities and the province in general flourishes with the comfort of being wealthy and powerful (Headcanoned this way since High Rock is one of the three main powers in the alliance war during ESO’s timeline, as well as being home to two large kingdoms, being Daggerfall and Wayrest, in TES2) This richness in the economy and resources allowed for the most experimentation and decadence with the province’s food, including its bread. A lot of these individual breads were based off french breads (baguette, buttery croissant, bread rolls, etc) Cinnamon swirl breads and sugary donuts (I call dough knots here/in my fic) exist, as High Rock’s geographic location in the Iliac Bay allows for a robust importing market where spices like cinnamon and sugar are brought in regularly from other provinces.

Hammerfell: Bread in Hammerfell isn’t nearly as decadent as High Rock, as food is treated with more utility and nutrition in mind, rather than flavor. Oats and seed breads are unassuming yet filling. Oats and rye are grown in the less arid eastern lands of the province, as very little is able grow in the western Alik’r deserts. That being said, livestock raised in the west are vital to providing milk, butter, and eggs, which are used in/eaten with the breads frequently. Smaller portions such as the bagels are compact and easy to pack for long journeys across the desert.

Wrothgar: Wrothgar’s climate (specifically the greener western parts of it) allow for them to grow their own grain (typically rye). Orcs’ tastes in bread also drastically differ the bretons in that they don’t go all out with making sickeningly sweet pastries (in fact, the only time they’ll sweeten their bread is with some snowberry jam). They do, however, love huge portion sizes, as many orcs live together in large tribes with just as large tribesmen and warriors, so they bake their breads in huge loaves.

Skyrim: Skyrim’s bread was the easiest to figure out design-wise as they’re directly based off the bread you find in-game, though some parts of it (namely the decision to have a Jazbay crostata here rather than the other fruits) were chosen to fit a general theme of sweetness. Sweetrolls are famous all across Tamriel for a good reason: nordic breads, given Skyrim’s significant honey industry, are generally very sweet (as honey is used generously, in more than just the mead markets) Jazbay is referenced to be very sweet, thus the Jazbay crostata. Braided bread is very buttery and large, like most foods from Skyrim. Like orcs, the nords love their generous portions!

Morrowind (this part’s really long, apologies in advance aljsdf): The bread of Morrowind was broken up into three categories based on very differing cultures within the province: Common (Found in the mainland and settled regions of Vvardenfell) Ashlander (found within Ashlander tribes) and Northern (found in northern villages and Solstheim, with nordic influence). The Common baguette is based on banh mi, which is just “bread” in Vietnam. Vietnam (yes I’m gonna kind of derail into history I’m sorry aljsf) used to be owned by the French, so a lot of our foods share some roots in french culture, which is why Vietnamese bread is similar to french baguettes (though are different, not just in look, but texture and taste, though it’s hard to explain in words) In TES3, the encroachment of Imperial/western conquest and control plays a big part in Vvardenfell’s politics and in (especially in it’s more southwestern region) architecture and culture. I found this mixing of the west with the east to mirror Vietnam’s history somewhat, thus Morrowind’s Common bread being directly based off banh mi.

Ashlander bread was designed in mind not only for nomadic people (thus they would be quite small and compact) but also with keeping in mind that Ashlanders would likely lack access to large ovens/utensils/space to bake anything substantial, so these were based on small pan-baked buns. The bowl they’re in is a hollowed-out green shalk shell!

Northern bread is directly inspired by nordic braided bread, though it’s baked much smaller than the nords’ usual preference for large portion sizes. The influence comes mostly from Solstheim, though it’s also found in north-western cities like Khuul.

Black Marsh: This one was a bit tough to figure out for a while, as one would expect you can’t grown much of anything in swamplands. I was however able to find a reference to the existence of marsh rice in one of the A Culinary Adventure volumes (they’re lorebooks from ESO I believe, in which an Imperial writes about authentic Argonian cuisine; it’s really wild and I highly recommend them!) Therefore these are loosely based on small slices of rice bread, wrapped in large banana leaves (yes this was also taken from Vietnamese cuisine. A girl likes to include bits of her own culture in her art sometimes, even if it’s really vague aljsdfjd)

Valenwood: Probably the most controversial choice that I should’ve explained better, as the existence of the Green Pact would have one assume bread is outlawed in the province due to the use of grains (plants) needed to make it. I still wanted to incorporate mostly meat into these breads, though the fact that bread is still used is based off a headcanon that the Green Pact only applies to plants grown within the forests, but doesn’t apply to grains grown in other provinces. One could infer that, especially at the time of the alliance war, travel and trade within the Aldmeri Dominion’s other provinces was very normal, thus bread could theoretically have made its way into bosmeri cuisine, first by bosmer living in other provinces, who brought the customs over to Valenwood.

Summerset: Altmeri bread prioritizes beauty, flavor, and presentation. Very unlike the nords, they aren’t inclined to large portion sizes (the smaller the better, as one should not indulge in gluttony) but what their bread lacks in proportion is exceeded in richness and taste--essentially the bread version of $200 tiny cuts of filet mignon with a bit of $300 truffle on the side (and maybe with a glass of $1000 wine for good measure) The food ought to look and taste as beautiful as Summerset’s city, right?

Elsweyr: Breads in Elsweyr are, like Morrowind, broken up into multiple sections due to Elsweyr’s drastically different northern and southern regions. Flatbreads like naan are found primarily in the north, and heartier breads that incorporate fruits are found in the south (as fruits are more easily able to grow in these tropical climates). Though it’s important to note that trade between the north and south is common, so these breads aren’t entirely restricted by region.

Moon sugar butter cookies are popular treats found all throughout Tamriel, though not entirely in the same innocent reasons that sweetrolls are popular. Since moon sugar is a narcotic that non-Khajiiti races react poorly to, potent moon sugar cookies are sometimes smuggled via the pretense of being less potent and non-harmful cookies (which use only a tiny bit of moon sugar along with regular sugar, which is the benevolent much loved treat anyone can enjoy). Think really, really strong weed brownies that some people have probably eaten by accident, which certainly would ruin the day of both the person who ate it and the smuggler it belonged to! Though of course, just like skooma, these more potent cookies are just as often willingly sought after.

Cyrodiil: Cyrodiilic bread is based on ancient breads (I tried to pinpoint it specifically from Rome, but “ancient” can mean a lot of different things to Google, haha.) The dry, basic, and unappealing nature of these breads aren’t actually meant as a dig at Cyrodiil (at least, not from my own personal standpoint). They were designed this way based on a line in The Red Kitchen Reader, which is a story about an Imperial speaking of his passion for food. The important bit is this excerpt:

As a child growing up in Cheydinhal, I did not care for food at all. I recognized the value of nutrition, for I was not a complete dullard, but I cannot say that mealtime brought me any pleasure at all. Partly, of course, this was the fault of my family's cook, who believed that spices were an invention of the Daedra, and that good Imperials should like their food boiled, textureless and flavorless. Though I think she was alone in assigning a religious significance to this, my sampling of traditional Cyrodilic cuisine suggests that the philosophy is regrettably common in my homeland.

Thus the design of Cyrodiilic bread is underwhelming and unappetizing.

#the elder scrolls #tes #morrowind #skyrim #food #bread #foodposting

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neopuff · 4 years

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hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!

hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol

ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:

(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)

1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:

(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)

2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there!

2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:

3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)

I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up

when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested

4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.

Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.

5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine

(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)

6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects

6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.

So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.

7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.

8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:

This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):

Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary

These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol

9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol

And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.

Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!

#anon asks #carro answers #sony vegas #magix vegas #editing #long post

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years

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Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 4: Bakemonogatari [Nadeko Snake]

I’m doing it, I’m finally getting around to this, aah. Here we go.

Who else is ready for two episodes of ‘if only you could understand how much drama and pain your superficial understanding of Nadeko’s emotional problems is gonna cause you down the line, Araragi’, cause I sure am.

Thoughts under the cut.

[This got way longer than expected. Can you tell that I really love Nadeko as a character, and love talking about her?]

PART ONE:

-I haven’t talked a whole lot about any art-related things in a while [since I never know how to phrase my praise for this sorta thing without being kinda repetitive and aimless], but I really love the plain colour/gradient effect used for stuff like the bamboo forest. It’s definitely a cost-cutting measure, but for some reason I really like it. I guess, in a weird way, I really like the simple backgrounds that draw more focus to the characters, and make the show feel like even more of a stage play where everything other than the characters themselves are just props.

-It still gives me the warm fuzzies, that Araragi and Kanbaru immediately got back to being friends after the last arc. Their friendship is a wonderful part of the series.

-And here she is! Snake girl! Hoo boy, this is where we get into the start of some of the extended story elements. Though from what I remember, you tend to leave this arc for the first time not thinking that there’s anything deeper to her character and that she won’t show up again. LOLNOPE.

-Just to get it said right off the bat, Nadeko is honestly one of my favourite characters in the entire show, at least from my vague memories of my first time watching the series. I found myself relating to her and understanding her issues way more than I thought I would. I think it wasn’t until Otori that I paid much attention to her, but I feel like that goes for everyone. I totally get why she’s such a divisive character, though. I respect that.

-And here we have one of the single most iconic and memorable anime OPs of all time. Holy shit this song used to be EVERYWHERE. So many parodies and mash-ups and remixes. It’s weird to look back at the original. Especially since there’s so many little elements to it, mostly in the lyrics, that really bluntly hint at her various issues, and the direction her story takes. One of the very first lines in the OP is, more or less, ‘if words will destroy our relationship, then silence is fine’. Though it’s hard not to see this entire OP as being really meaningful when it’s so connected in my head to the Nadeko Medusa OP. I still adore how Renai Circulation is basically Nadeko’s idealized view of herself and her unrequited crush on Araragi, while Mousou Express is a more objective look at how obsessive her feelings actually are. I love it so much. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

-Also, as a side note, I think this OP was my first exposure to the series before I actually sat down and watched it about three or so years ago, and for the longest damn time I seriously thought that Nadeko had green hair. It took me a while to get used to her normal hair colour.

-Oh yeah, this is the first time we see the shrine, as well as the talisman thingy. Huh. I at least thought that the talisman didn’t appear until as far as Nise or SS. Weird. It makes me remember how sorta surprising it was to see the shrine become such a recurring setting, and such a big element of the overall story. But it really does just keep popping up. It’s probably one of the things I have the least of a grasp of, though, especially with how the various goings-on with it fit into the timeline. But I at least remember that the whole deal with the shrine is that it’s like the spiritual hotspot of the town, and that everyone wants to use it for their own purposes, mostly in terms of using it to maintain ‘balance’ in the town.

-Senjougahara continues to be utterly savage even when she’s not part of the scene. NICE.

-Huh, I genuinely forgot that apparently Kanbaru’s arm is gonna heal over the next five years or so. Huh. That’s a pretty major thing to forget. I feel like they never bring it up after this point, though. So that’s probably why. I guess it slightly lessens the whole tragedy of what happened to her, but I guess it was probably a bit too fucked up of a concept for her to be stuck with a monkey arm for the rest of her life.

-For some reason I thought that the shrine was intact by this point in time and just got destroyed in a later arc. Guess not. [[If it’s not clear already I have a surprisingly shit memory of a lot of specific story details with this show. Especially in the early arcs like this. Since I haven’t watched them in several years. Also I’ve only read the LN versions of the first three Bake arcs, and have been procrastinating about the rest, so this is the start of where I truly haven’t really experienced the story in years]]

-Obviously this is a bigger aspect of later arcs, and I’ll discuss it more then, but holy shit does Araragi have the WORST memory possible. It’s almost hilarious how many issues in his life are caused by it. I can’t exactly blame him for not remembering one of his little sisters’ school friends who he hasn’t seen in six years but still. This is just a hint of what’s to come, I guess. And really his issue with Nadeko is less him forgetting her, and more him just not paying that much attention to her or trying to investigate her issues. Which, again, I can’t blame him for. Most of the things Araragi does like this are completely realistic and understandable even if we as the audience can see the dramatic irony involved.

-[Oh man, now that I’m remembering more of Nadeko’s story, it’s just now dawning on me for the first time how similar a lot of her story is to that one character from Umineko who I won’t name because of spoilers. They’re very different characters in general, but wow there’s at least some pretty overt superficial comparisons to be made. Huh. I need to remember to make a post about that character once I’m properly done with Umineko]

-Oh yeah, by this point in the story Nadeko was already going off into the mountains to ritualistically murder small animals. Yep. This sure is a thing that’s already happening. I forget the exact context of this, but yeah in hindsight this is a pretty clear indicator that she has some serious issues. Even if I can at least remember enough to know that she was trying to take the snake curse off herself. Still, stabbing hordes of snakes to a tree is messed up.

-I love all of Hanekawa’s shifty/squinty expressions during the whole scene here at the bookstore. She really does have a way of coming across as really composed, even though you can always tell, especially in hindsight, that she’s not as composed as she might let on.

-It’s still interesting to me how Nadeko’s hat makes her look a bit like a snake. Even her loose jacket kinda reminds me of shed snake skin. I know that basically all of the main girls have elements of their oddities incorporated into their designs, but I feel like Nadeko is probably the most subtle about it. Other than maybe Hanekawa. Either way, I really love this outfit of hers. I sometimes feel like wearing a jacket like that, but it always feels a little silly and pointless, and I’d probably worry about it not sitting still properly.

-I just got reminded by this one particular shot where he looks really nice, but, I really do think that Araragi is pretty dang attractive. I only really notice it with certain scenes, though. But when it’s there, it’s there. Obviously I’m sorta alone in feeling this way, lol.

-I appreciate Hanekawa taking the time to try and explain to Araragi that he’s way too wishy washy with his feelings, and way too nice and open with girls in a way that can come across as a lack of faithfulness to his actual girlfriend. It’s a lesson that he really needs to learn, as do many such protagonists. You can really get why Senjougahara is so clingy and distrustful in her own way. [Although I also do feel like Kanbaru is a weird character to use to set up this topic considering that she’s, you know, a lesbian. Oh well. Hanekawa’s point still stands]

-Huh, they’re already bringing up her intentions to travel the world once she graduates. Huh. I thought that only got bought up around Neko:Shiro. It’s also making me even more antsy about waiting for the eventual adaptation of Off Season because I REALLY wanna see that one arc that’s apparently about her travels.

-Oh boy, all these not so subtle hints about Hanekawa’s home life. My heart is not ready for when we actually focus on that.

-I seriously love every scene in this show that has red/orange lighting like this. It looks so fantastic. It really sets the mood.

-Of course the first thing Kanbaru does upon entering Araragi’s room for the first time is to loudly search for his porn while taunting him about how much she’s aware of his kinks and fetishes. Isn’t she the best?

-Yeah this whole scene is just as creepy as ever. Christ. Although I still cannot fucking believe that they reference that one goddamn meme during this scene as well. It’s surreal. Though not quite as surreal as Attack on Titan referencing it for a recent magazine cover spread. I’m still reeling from that one.

-I’m pretty sure that Nadeko is still only like two or three years younger than him, but this whole thing is still . . . iffy. But obviously it’s meant to be iffy and weird.

-Especially in hindsight, it’s really sad seeing Nadeko talk about hating her body, and wanting to be saved by the person she has a crush on. Damn. Though the whole idea of her actively asking to be saved really sets up the big issue with this arc [so to say] and how it sets up Otori. I just feel bad for everyone involved.

PART TWO:

-I’m loving the shadow puppet hands going on that look like snakes. It really adds to the creepy atmosphere. Same with the really stark contrast between the dark shadows and the bright bluish-white lighting. Also, I dunno if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I love how Oshino is just the master of setting up school desks and chairs in increasingly elaborate ways, and sitting on them in increasingly implausible ways. In general I just love the use of props, staging, framing, and body language to construct a scene, in addition to the dialogue that makes up the meat of it. Obviously this is where Shaft’s influence shines through the most, since this is exactly the sort of stuff that’s fundamentally not part of the LNs. It’s really interesting to me how they took something like the basic descriptions of Oshino sleeping on a makeshift bed made of desks and blankets and whatnot, and went completely wild with the imagery of it.

-This is just a matter of the version of the subs I’m reading, but man is it throwing me off how the dialogue subtitles translate certain terms differently than the on-screen text subtitles do. Especially since I can also obviously hear the Japanese term being used and I have a vague idea of it’s inherent meaning, so I wind up with like three separate terms for the same thing being thrown at me at once and it’s sorta disorienting.

-[On the note of subs, I probably should have mentioned this before but it’s so weird to me seeing Hanekawa’s catchphrase translated any way other than ‘I don’t know everything. I just know what I know’. Anything else feels kinda blasphemous, even though it’s by far the most petty issue I could have translation-wise. I at least feel like any translation of that line should be consistent, to get across the fact that it’s the same line being repeated. I feel like the subs I’m using have translated it inconsistently once or twice, and it bugs me.]

-OK I guess this is another sub note, but I must have glazed over the line of ‘Living without words, no, dying, huh?’ in the OP the first time round. Huh. It comes across slightly mangled in English even though it’s a kinda neat pun in Japanese [it’s basically using ‘shi nuki’ vs ‘shinu ki’. I’d use the actual kanji they use if I knew what they were, but yeah that gets it across well enough]. Either way, it’s one of the various lines in this OP that really bluntly hint at how much of an issue it is for Nadeko to hide her true feelings behind a mask of cuteness and silence. I like how, via puns, it manages to effectively equate silence with death, which is pretty accurate and foreboding, considering that her repressed issues turn into murderous violence.

-It’s one of those things that makes me seriously wonder how much of Nadeko’s character arc Nisioisin had planned from the start. I know that he kinda plays it off as ‘haha, her voice actress wants to play an evil character, let’s make Nadeko into the final boss lol’, but I’d be surprised if it was anything so spontaneous and unplanned. So much of this arc really blatantly hints at how disturbed and unhealthy Nadeko is, and her issues are left so blatantly unresolved in this arc in a way that feels almost counter to the entire theme of the story [which is exactly why it comes back to bite everyone later]. I at least like to think that he was planning it all from the start, and was kinda messing around with stereotypes to try and make both Araragi and the reader glaze over all of Nadeko’s problems, and the logical consequences of this arc, while just seeing her as a cute girl. I dunno. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit. I know that it sometimes bothers me how much the series really, unironically plays up the ‘look what a [superficially] cute and innocent and naive little girl she is! So moe!’ angle at times, even though pretty much the entire idea of her character is how damaging it is to ignore and glaze over a person’s depth and their problems by valuing them solely for their cuteness or youth or purity or whatever, so . . . eh.

-It’s definitely interesting how it looks like Oshino never even sees Nadeko for himself in this arc, and just hears about her problem from Araragi. Given how good he tends to be at noticing when a person isn’t a pure, innocent victim in their whole story. I wonder how things might have gone if he’d seen her up close. I could at least see him noticing the thing she does where she hides behind her hair.

-I just thought after seeing the scene describing the invisible snake that’s constricting her body and about to kill her, but there’s a lot of parts of the story that are interesting to examine if you want to interpret the oddities as mostly just being reflective metaphors for emotional problems. Obviously in the context of the story they’re literally real, but still, I think it’s valid to interpret things this way if only as a way to understand what role each oddity plays, and what they show about each character. [And it seems relevant to bring up with Nadeko in particular, since the entire twist of Otori is that the oddity in that was literally just a reflection of her emotional issues and not even a ‘real supernatural thing’]. It’s interesting to look at how, at least thus far [I forget what else we learn about the snake curse incident later in this episode since I have it paused partway at the moment so I’m probably gonna feel real dumb in a few minutes lol], we’re dealing with a case of Nadeko being bitterly hated by one of her classmates for simply turning down a guy that the other girl liked, and now she’s off in the mountains killing small animals to try and lessen this horrible, constricting pain that makes her feel like she’s about to die, which is making her hate her body, and just want somebody to save her. I mean, I know I’m just literally describing what’s going on at this point, but it’s definitely easy to not quite consider the extent of what’s going on here if you get caught up in the snake curse concept. It’s a bit too easy to get the order of events wrong and assume that this magical curse is the sole cause of her problems and her negative feelings, and that it’ll be totally fine to just exorcise it. And it’s kinda sad how even Nadeko, understandably, sees it that way too. It’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to examine her feelings and their root causes and how they affect her life and how she thinks, and as a young, sheltered girl she might not even have any real idea HOW to do that sort of introspection. It’s pretty depressing, really.

-They even point out that ‘the curse’ was mostly caused by Nadeko’s whole ‘killing small animals’ thing, but Araragi of course thinks it’d be totally fine if Nadeko just did the animal-killing in a different place. In terms of the in-universe logic at hand, yes it might have prevented the supernatural curse placed upon her by it, but even with that in mind, we’re still dealing with someone who’s ritualistically killing animals to try and alleviate their psychological pain and the self-loathing tied in with that. The story even implicitly spells out the fact that Nadeko’s actions weren’t caused by the supernatural cause, but by her own emotional pain, when it talks about how the animal-killing caused her curse. So the blindingly obvious issue at hand here really has barely anything to do with the curse itself. The curse isn’t really the cause of anything, it’s the RESULT of everything else. It’s almost physically painful to see Araragi saying all this and obviously not even considering that there’s issues at hand that will persist even after this exorcism. But again, it’s the sort of thing where it’s just dramatically ironic that he isn’t noticing something that we can more easily see as outside readers. Still doesn’t make it any less painful to watch, though.

-I seriously cannot even state enough that the story is really openly talking about how Nadeko was *ritualistically killing small animals* before any sort of a life-threatening snake curse was involved. Again, it’s super hard not to think that the author was totally aware of all this, and was planning her arc out from the start. I mean, the big thing with each arc, especially in Bake, tends to be about Araragi being mistaken about the order of events involved in a case, and/or not letting himself notice something about the girl in question that should be obvious to anyone else. But in each arc he’s usually told about the things he’s about about, and he figures out the truth in the end. So it’s super obvious how in this arc that point just . . . never quite connects. Araragi gets his moment of pointing out that the curse came after the snake-killing, but nobody steps in to push him to consider what that actually MEANS. And honestly I know that I give him a lot of slack for not really trying to get deeper into her problems, but at the same time it feels like you should really look into getting someone actual, non-supernatural help when they start killing animals to cope with their emotions. JUST SAYING.

-And yeah here’s a big reason why I find Araragi’s role in this to be kinda tragically realistic and understandable. He DOES, in his own way, start to consider Nadeko’s own emotional pain and her unhealthy way of repressing her emotions, and he DOES tell her that she doesn’t need to do that, and that she can open up to him if she wants. I think he handles the situation much better than a lot of people might. So I can’t really blame him much. Really, the major issue is just that even after hearing all this, Nadeko still doesn’t really follow his advice. Which is realistic and understandable and tragic in it’s own way. She clearly appreciates his kindness and dependability, but it doesn’t change the fact that she probably barely even knows how to comprehend and vocalize her feelings, and it doesn’t change the fact that she presumably doesn’t want to do anything more to violate her cute-girl image. She probably doesn’t want Araragi hating her, or being grossed out by her, or anything. Which just reminds me how much it also hurt me when she literally started crying when Araragi admitted that he felt kinda dirty seeing her mostly naked body. Like damn. I didn’t really talk about it at the time, but it’s honestly kinda just sad to watch how even when she was at her most exposed and vulnerable, even when she was literally begging Araragi to save her from her pain and self-loathing and how much her body feels constricted and stifling, his and Kanbaru’s reaction was mostly just to talk about Nadeko’s bloomer shorts and whatnot. Again, not really casting any blame here, but . . . damn. I don’t really know if I would have reacted any differently if I was in her shoes.

-On a different topic, I love the shot of the winding path and the river looking like two intersecting black and white snakes when seem from above. It’s a really neat image.

-’I don’t really remember that much from my childhood. My memory’s not that great’. I’m just gonna sit here and keep laughing at this whenever it gets bought up in the story. This is seriously the root of like 50% of his problems in life. It’s hilarious.

-But on a more serious note, we get yet another moment where he makes a vague yet sincere attempt at learning more about her and understanding her situation more accurately, but she doesn’t really tell him the whole truth [since he doesn’t really remember her and it’d just make things awkward if she discussed it openly] and so he obviously doesn’t really have a chance to understand the true overall situation. He clearly just ends up seeing it as something he can forget about and not dig too deeply into because ‘it doesn’t concern him’, but HOO BOY is that so not the case. It’s seriously painful how accurate and relatable it is for Nadeko to be hiding the exact truth from him, though, even if it’s unhealthy. It’s obviously worth pointing out that, just like Araragi, she also isn’t exactly aware how bad things will get for her and how much her own lack of action and communication will mess with her. And so she just continues to be evasive and quiet, while letting herself be happy that Araragi is at least being nice to her, and talking to her, and trying to understand her.

-I can just imagine Nadeko as a little girl, being pretty much alone, and envying the idea of having an older brother. Aww :C Especially when, as we learn way later in Koi, she’s pretty emotionally distant with her parents as well, and they also just mostly see her as being their cute daughter [I’m getting WAY ahead of myself and will discuss this more when we get to Koi itself, but I still vividly remember the moment of Kaiki trying to ask Nadeko’s parents to actually describe her as a person and they just . . . can’t.]

-Along the lines of what I said about the scene at the end of part one, it’s seriously uncomfortable and awkward how Nadeko gets put in a school swimsuit for this whole scene. Seeing her severe self-esteem issues and whatnot be framed through a lens of sexualization is . . . kinda disturbing. Even the fact that, even though she’s clearly not entirely comfortable with the entire situation, she still wants Araragi to look at her is kinda sad.

-Why you gotta twist the knife in my heart with all these flashbacks, anime? :C My heart just hurts so much for Nadeko on so many levels. I can perfectly understand how she so quickly and obsessively developed these feelings of romantic love and a broader desire to be seen and understood and cared for. [[Also this is a really nice instrumental remix of Renai Circulation]]

-Part of me wonders what’s going on in Nadeko’s head while she’s sitting there, praying to have her pain taken away. Part of me thinks it might just make me feel even worse if I knew.

-Oh yeah, right, this ends with them just . . . throwing the snake away and being like ‘eeeeh it’s not our issue anymore’, doesn’t it? And then lo and behold, the snake goes back to it’s sender who then gets manipulated by Ougi into attacking Kaiki. WELP. Like seriously so much of this arc is just ‘well this surely won’t come back to bite us, right???’ it’s hilarious. In a sad way. Also, I forget, but wasn’t the person who attacked Kaiki a boy, implying that the sender of the curse was the guy who confessed to Nadeko and not her friend? I can’t remember, and I forget if it’s ever even discussed. I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

-And then literally thirty seconds after I resume watching the episode, Araragi literally spells out that the guy did indeed send at least one of the snakes. Welp. I sure feel awkward now, lol. I guess I was kinda right, though, even though I forgot that BOTH of the other people sent her curses.

-Yeah this entire scene is just so goddamn uncomfortable to watch. Urgh. Seeing her writhing in pain like that is just disturbing.

-It’s still kinda surprising to me how this series manages to be more graphically violent and bloody than a good amount of anime out there. You really wouldn’t expect it. I always feel so bad for Araragi in these moments where he just gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him.

-Oh yeah I forgot that Araragi is totally aware that it’s a really bad idea to let the snake go but he has to do it or else it’ll kill him. Huh. I guess it’s yet another thing where Araragi isn’t necessarily stupid about everything going on and the consequences of certain things, but they still turn out in such a dramatically ironic and tragic way. Welp. Though I do also like how it furthers the recurring deal with how the answer is pretty much never for Araragi to just physically beat down or tear away an oddity and solve the problem that way.

-Also, mad props for my girl Kanbaru for stepping in to stop him from getting murdered. He seriously needs people like her around or else his hero complex would have gotten him killed a thousand times over.

-It really is pretty messed up that they’re forced to perpetuate this cycle of curses and pain in order to save themselves and Nadeko. But it’s perfectly fitting for the pretty damn tragic nature of this arc and how the consequences of it play out for all involved.

-So I guess we’re meant to think that the snake sent by the other girl got successfully exorcised, and it was just the snake from the guy that was still around?

-Oh boy, and here we get into Araragi’s own issues with self-loathing. It really is sad seeing him feel undeserving of Nadeko’s gratitude because of how he had basically tried to protect the dude that placed a curse on her, and had almost died in the process. And of course it gets into his issues with being not fully human and how that messes with his self-image/worth. But at the same time I also get why Nadeko is sincerely grateful to him for saving her.

-Of course, this also leads to a really awkward yet understandable scenario where the story just . . . ends here, with Araragi clearly too defeated and depressed to even think about whether or not this actually fixed Nadeko’s root problems. Again, he’s pretty much always entirely understandable and realistic with how he never quite figures out her issues in time or succeeds in getting her to completely open up to him. He doesn’t really have the time or energy to think that he might have stopped short of the truth, so to say. And Nadeko is obviously unwilling to talk about her deeper issues, and wants to just express her genuine gratitude to him for having ‘saved her’, even if it’s pretty much only a temporary measure, as we get oh so brutally shown down the track.

-So that’s it for this arc. Now onto Tsubasa Cat. No idea how long it’ll take me to get around to it at this rate. I’m probably going to split it into two posts, focusing on parts one and two, and then three, four, and five. I’m not about to try and attempt five entire episodes at once, with this sort of set-up.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Inaction and miscommunication are pretty horrible, toxic things, but they’re still fundamental parts of human nature that will probably never go away. People will always have things about themselves that they don’t want to share. They’ll always have a constricting pain that’s too much to put into words. A person’s body can become something that they hate, even if it’s only so they can have something to direct their inexpressible, vague frustration and agitation and pain at. Especially when communicating and connecting with others on a deep level can be so painful. When it can lead you to just hurting them and burdening them with your feelings. When it can lead to them not properly understanding you [even if it’s partially because you don’t let yourself be properly understood]. It can be so much easier to wrap yourself in comfortable, romanticized, unchanging silence, even though a life without words is the same as dying. I’ll get more into the topic of Nadeko’s self-image and the concept of ‘being a cute girl’ later on when it becomes a bit more relevant.

This arc is an interesting one, especially in hindsight. But even the first time around, it’s still surprisingly dark and disturbing and uncomfortable to watch in a way that you’d never quite expect from how incredibly fluffy and upbeat of an OP it has [at least on the surface]. I’ve been on the outskirts of the fandom for a few years now, and it’s pretty obvious that this is among people’s most commonly disliked arcs, along with ones like Neko:Kuro and Tsuki. Though I’ve also seen people have issues with some of the pacing/exposition elements of Oni and the second half of Owari S1. But back onto this arc, I totally get why a lot of people dislike this arc. Especially when viewed on it’s own. Considering that it’s mostly interesting to examine as the first section of the overall Nadeko story arc. And obviously it’s not exactly clear to the viewer that there even IS an actual wider story arc for her until we get to about a third of the way into SS. It also doesn’t help that the TV version of this arc was apparently godawful, but I can’t really talk about that since I’ve only ever watched the BD version.

Personally I find this arc to be a fascinating start for Nadeko’s character, even if I probably didn’t like it much the first time around. But in a sense, I like it in hindsight for the same reasons I disliked it at first. Like how it seems to subtly but noticeably go against the structure of the show by having Nadeko’s issues not get truly solved. Especially if we look at it in terms of Nadeko’s perspective of events and where she’s at by the time things end. I imagine I probably also felt that the whole idea of Nadeko killing snakes felt sorta pointless, and that nobody in the story really cared about it. But that’s what makes it so tragic, I guess. It’s another way in which it goes against the grain of how the past arcs worked in a way that feels really subtly dissonant. Even when the characters acknowledge that Nadeko was doing these fucked up, violent things BEFORE she even had a curse placed on her, they don’t really stop to think ‘what exactly would lead to someone doing that?’ or ‘will those sorts of feelings and thoughts truly go away if we just get rid of this curse?’. You can’t really blame Araragi or Kanbaru for not properly understanding, for not realizing how much is going on in Nadeko’s head, and how much is festering in there and waiting to burst out in the most unhealthy way possible. She only lets people see a certain, relatively superficial side of her. And so this arc ends with the true issue not even being solved, and with only a temporary bandage put over it. And even then, the curse plaguing Nadeko just ends up stuck on it’s sender, so even that’s barely solved or gotten rid of. And obviously we end specifically on the note of Araragi being depressed and unable to accept any praise for what genuine good he did, and Nadeko being genuinely grateful for what he did, while not even fully understanding for herself what’s in store.

So basically this arc doesn’t resolve anything, it simply introduces Nadeko and her problems, and sets the stage for how these issues become so much more serious and lethal later on. And in that sense it’s pretty fascinating, even if it’s divisive.

Nadeko is one of my favourite characters in the show and I’m really happy to have a chance to talk about her. Even if I worry that I might end up repeating myself a lot when the story gets back to her, since I covered so much here already.

#murasaki rambles #monogatari series #bakemonogatari #this was only two episodes long but it feels like this post is even longer than the last one #I think this took about four hours to do in full #maybe a bit more than that #I'm basically giving up hope on catching up in time for Owari S2 #when each post takes this much time and effort #oh well #I'm genuinely happy to have a chance to ramble about how good this series is

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spirit-science-blog · 4 years

Video

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With this video, our Hidden Spirituality series comes full circle to its origin point. While the original conception of the series happened many years ago while watching Airbender, it was in December of 2019 that I went to 3 movies and came out with scripts for each one that ultimately became the foundation of this very series! The first was Frozen 2, which was our first episode, and the second was Star Wars 9, which came out on May the 4th to very varied perspectives. Yeah, I don’t blame ya’ll on that, and the 3rd movie was the 2019 remake of Little Women, showing that Hidden Spirituality can be found everywhere - and this one may very well have been the most mystical story out of the 3!

Don’t believe me? Check this out. In the original book, chapter 28, we find this line… “Jo rescued his babies, and marched up and down, with one on each arm, as if already initiated into the mysteries of baby tending, while Laurie laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.”

Let’s have a slow-motion replay in case you missed that. “As if already initiated into the mysteries into baby tending.” I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what century you’re in - if you’re using the language “Initiated into the Mysteries” of ANYTHING - you know more than you’re letting on about. And it was around this realization that the truth began to be revealed around this story, demonstrating that it’s just that much more in-depth than almost anyone truly knows.

And for those of you who are still in the dark, allow me to illuminate you for a moment - the language Initiated into the Mysteries stems from the ancient Greek and Egyptian Mystery Schools - where Initiates would be initiated into the sacred mysteries of life, often through purification rituals, holy ceremonies, plant medicine, the revelation of divine knowledge - and it was considered a most pious and religious activity - as Initiates of the Mysteries would go on to become beacons of truth, love, and light in the world, helping others to attain to higher levels of consciousness just as they did. Of course, as it’s used in this particular passage, it’s speaking to the sacred wisdom and knowledge that comes with raising a child, which in-and-of themselves are mysteries to be initiated into, most definitely. The secrets of life, right?

Now, the original story of Little Women was first written in 1868, so this is saying something - and it has served as a powerful beacon of truth for women everywhere in realizing that there are so many paths we can take. We are not isolated from fulfilling the stereotypical roles that often accompany our genders. and as a man myself… a Patchman that is… I found the story to teach quite a lot about the nature of the divine feminine, and it helped me connect more in-depth with the gender divide that often is found within society.

Plus, being how I was raised, a patchguy filled with stuffing and all, there’s not a lot of watery elements inside here, but every time I see this scene of Beth getting her piano at Christmas in the 1994 adaption, I can’t help but tear up… Oh god, it’s happening again… It’s so precious… I think for that scene alone - this is my favorite adaption, but we’ll probably go back and forth in this video referencing the different versions.

So straight up, the first thing that stood out upon the revelation of this movie's mystical nature is that four girls are a reflection of the Four Elements. Each sister represents two of the four elements, each starting in one aspect and then transitioning to another through personal growth. The four factors, of course, speaking to Fire - the spiritual will and passion. Water is the emotional body, Air is the Mind and thoughts, and Earth is the Physical dimension. Subtly, because it will be relevant later - the Aether - the fifth element, relates with spirit and the incorporeal. In Little Women, the story takes place mainly over two eras, a period of childhood and a young-adulthood period, which are essentially divided between two events. The death of Beth, and the Marriage of Meg.

So we have Amy, Beth, Meg, and Jo. Starting with Amy, she begins as a representation of the fire element, the youngest of the four, who especially in the book is described as being very selfish, familiar to the Princess of Wands in the Tarot, focused on her own needs and ideas. She burns Jo’s book at one point, demonstrating more of her fiery energy.

Next, we have Meg, who begins as Earth. She is very focused on the material future she wants to create, having money and wealth. The story goes that they used to have wealth, but their father went off to fight in the civil war, and the family sank into poverty as a result. Meg yearns for the wealth to return and believes it is through marriage that this can happen. Of course - wedding rings usually holding a stone further adds weight to her representation of the earth.

After this, we have Beth - the soft-spoken, loving, and nurturing one. Definitely water. She is always calm and centered, one who humbles the rest of the group whenever they’re having an argument, wishing the best for everyone and hoping that the group can find harmony and happiness all the time… once again, that piano scene… You can’t help but cry.

Finally, there is Jo, the often seen “star” of the show. Jo is the different one; she is unique; she thinks very differently than her sisters and most young girls her age. She connects more with her creative energy; she likes to write and tell stories and doesn’t care much for the idea of getting married or having a family. She’s an expression of the divine feminine who actively chooses her reality, rather than just going along with the imposed story that women exist to get married and have babies for the men, and this is one of the essential pieces that contributed to the success of this book, to begin with. It empowered women to think differently about their roles in society and support them no matter what path they chose.

These relationships match for the first half, but once they transition into adulthood, we see a much different picture.

Once again, starting with Amy, she transitions from Fire into Air. She becomes more intelligent, more mindful, and travels to Europe to learn the art. Now you might think that she may transition to the element of water because she's doing art - but there is a line in the movie, specifically, that suggests her paintings lack emotion and needed some work. Further, much of her story in the second half revolves around her marriage to Laurie's young man and the choice of whom she should marry. Ultimately, she puts a lot of thought and consideration into this decision, something only a very mindful person would do.

Now Meg, on the other hand, transitions from Earth into Water. She marries for love, rather than for riches, a potent example of the shift in consciousness from a more worldly state of being. This results in her remaining poor for the rest of her life, and she’s okay with that because she’s happily married, the thing she wanted. At one point, she buys fabric for a costly dress. Still, she does so because of her friend's emotional pressure, and upon seeing the effect that it had on her relationship with her husband, due to how much money they had, she sells the fabric to support her family.

Next, we have Beth… Now, Beth is an interesting example because she passes away in our transition to adulthood. Beth transitions from the Water element into two different aspects: Earth, because her body returns to the earth. However, before she passes, she says she is going to God soon, and herein we see that indeed, she also shifts into the 5th element, the Aether, one with Spirit. Through her, all of the features are covered.

Finally, we have Jo, who steps out of her comfort zone of just thinking about her dreams, but genuinely stepping out and living them. With her Air transition, she moves into Fire, embodying the matured fiery energy as she moves away from home and becomes a published author. Again, it gives a strong and empowering message about how anyone can live their dreams if they’re willing to go after them through its storytelling.

Not only do each of the girls demonstrate these elements in their transition, but we also see them embodying and educating us subtly about the wisdom we find in the Royal Arcana of Tarot - the youthful and mature energy of each element, from childhood to adult stages, or the princesses into the queen archetypes.

From here, we can also see some exciting correlations of fundamental differences between the various film adaptions. Greta Gerwig's 2019 edition is much more intelligent than its predecessor, keeping a fast-paced dialogue and consistently jumping in the timeline between past and future. In contrast, the 1994 edition was entirely linear and far more emotional. This version is a bit simpler and more comfortable to follow but conveys a more significant emotional weight. In contrast, the new version is a bit more expansive, covering a greater awareness of the times and gender roles. These differences alone might identify the 1994 edition as relating more with Water and Earth's elements and the new 2019 edition as Fire and Air.

While the 1994 edition was more concerned with simply telling the story in a meaningful way, the 2019 version carries some other messages that are very important for our collective spiritual awakening. In particular, one line has Amy describing that marriage is an economic proposition, wherein upon marriage, the wife is owned by the man, and when children are born, they too are owned by the man. Of course, while times and collective mindsets have changed a great deal since this period, we need to realize this truth as society continues to evolve. Just consider that in another hundred years from now, what ingrained belief systems we may recognize are ridiculous, but yet today, we deeply cling to. To create a more harmonious future, we have to learn from our past, and this story does a beautiful job of presenting our history for us to digest today. Breaking free from her old reality, Jo says “

“Women have minds and souls as well as hearts, ambition, and talent as well as just beauty, and I’m sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for,” but then also expresses that she too is lonely, and this is something that we all must face, both men and women alike, balancing the masculine and the feminine within.

Honestly, even I’m relatively new to this story, yet I recently learned that my mom said she read it nearly 20 times growing up, as there wasn’t very much content available for young girls liberating in this same way. It would have been even worse 150 years ago when it was first published; how many female protagonists were there in storytelling? Women were always the love interest or the wife, but never the hero or the main character. This book shifted the landscape for women’s literature by being something that half of our human population, at least in our western world, could connect in a significant way.

“It’s just about our little life,” says Jo, of the new writing she is producing. “Who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance.”

“Maybe,” says her sister Amy, “We don’t see these things as necessary because people don’t write about them.

And so - with this, we find perhaps the deepest and most profound lesson we can all learn from this story… it doesn’t matter who you are, male or female if you find important in some aspect of life, something that others seem to glaze over even if it is meaningful… talk about it, tell the story, and who knows, you might start a revolution.

Happy holidays everyone! See you next time on Hidden Spirituality!

Written by Jordan River Edited by Zach Bouker Created by Team Spirit Connect with the team at https://spiritsciencecentral.com/about

#spirituality #science #ascension #mystery school #spirit science

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acaihealthcraze · 5 years

Text

Essay

Arjun Ganesh

AMST Final Project

Kelvin Parnell

9 December, 2019

Health Craze: Smoothie Bowls

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the exponential rise of the fruit acai has taken over the health world by storm. How is it that a fruit smashed up by a blender and then poured into a bowl could flood Instagram timelines and major food magazines and cause over 7.6 million searches on their recipe? The fruit is found near the Amazon, and it has always been popular in Brazil, where the family that founded Brazillian jiu-jitsu incorporated into their disciples diet. Known as the “Gracie diet”, they liked the fruit because it was low in sugar, full of vitamins and antioxidants, and was thought to boost energy. A smoothie bowl would turn into an alternative for athletes to consume for rehydration and revitalization, while slowly passing on the trend to regular people. With all this marketing, I thought I should take it upon myself and search for legitimate scientific studies about acai bowls. To my disbelief, there was very little information available. I thought to myself, how is that everyone knows about its benefits then? The Woman’s Health Research Institute wrote a blog about the same issue and asserted that “Most of the information available is from the popular press and on websites and blogs promoting and selling acai products (and, of course, raving about its health properties).”

There’s one term for it and it is called a health fad. Dr. Beddoe, who was a dentist and now specializes biological ionization soil principles, writes a blog on how we can be better humans. One of his first blogs was attacking health fads. After reading, I started to reflect where was it that I truly heard about acai bowls and the “immense” impact it has on my body and health. It turns out I simply was susceptible to the ever known health fad. It is similar to how people think apple cider vinegar cures foot cramps, bloating, and high blood pressure. For the rest of this essay, I am asserting that, contrary to belief, acai bowls and its other siblings (cold press juices, and plant based snacks) are a fad that will NOT disappear in the next 10 years and continue to change the lives of American people. Some of the concepts from class that are reflected in this project are consumerism and modernity. In many of the primary resources that we have read this semester, the rise of the skyscraper and new food trends are very similar. From the idea of crowded space in a city, the only solution was to build up! This was such a spark in creating the very new and modern versions of cities we are used to visiting these days. Discovering one diet to another or new fruits to propel a new business idea for millions of people in the United States, it starts a modernity within the food culture.

In this foodways project, I am going to analyze two cafes, one in northern VA and another here on the Corner, and understand why they chose this type of food to sell as well as to see if they are believers of their product. There have been a couple of articles on the CavDaily and UVA news website about Corner Juice’s recent success, and Julie responded to my questions with some similar answers to these articles. Regardless, I think there is good faith in her and the direction she wants to lead Corner Juice.

Transitioning from the interview, I was still determined to find some sort of scientific study, maybe not regarding acai bowls, but just the fruit in general. Three Californian medicine researchers conducted a study to evaluate the effect of açai fruit pulp on risk factors for metabolic disorders in overweight subjects. There were 10 overweight adults that consumed about 100 grams of acai fruit pulp twice a day for 1 whole month. Summarizing the analysis and conclusion, their main areas of concern were spikes in exhaled (breath) nitric oxide metabolites, cholesterol, and glucose. Following the end of the treatment, there were reductions in fasting glucose, insulin levels, and total cholesterol. A person that reads this study and has no scientific background would immediately assume that acai fruit is in fact healthy and he/she should try it themselves. But, upon closer evaluation there are many flaws on the replicability of this experiment. First of all, this is targeting obese people. In my opinion, acai bowls are catered to people in the age range of 16-25 years old. Again this is my opinion, and I have friends that disagree with me. They believe since it is a health trend it applies to all ages. In some later analysis with the two shops I chose to interview, I will point out some marketing sketches these places use to target the age range I stated. Not to say this is a strict interval because I have seen middle and elderly people try these new foods but it does not have the same effect as it does with my age group. The National Institute of Health has a whole page dedicated to food consumption, safety, and effects. To summarize that page, it basically states that there is still not enough studies or research to support the use of acai for any health-related purpose. It only quotes the study I discussed about acai fruit pulp and this is the most important thing… there is no correlation between acai and weight loss!

The second place I researched was a juice company in northern Virginia called Roots to Rise. It is a family run company, and I have tasted the food and juices from here before and I must say it is my favorite place. I was unable to get an interview the owner because she was busy during Thanksgiving break, so I contacted on their ambassadors. Before delving into the ambassador interview, I went online to their website. Then I noticed something… it was very similar to Corner Juice’s website but the only difference was that Roots to Rise places an emphasis that all their ingredients are locally sourced. Also, they are a very small company still and they only go to farmer’s markets to sell their products and also available to purchase online. However, the “about” sections for each website were about living a healthy lifestyle. There were no further claims after that. For example, Corner Juice’s mission is “To increase the accessibility of healthy and delicious food in a memorable and sustainable way” and Roots to Rise is very long and to summarize I am using the last part of their motto, “we provide you with what we call enlightened eating.” These seem to be fancy words without having any evidence of whether these products are actually backed up by science. Roots to Rise biggest product is definitely their juices. The interview I had with the ambassador was very interesting because she is a childhood friend of mine. On this blog, you can find a snippet of the interview I had with her on the company, her health lifestyle, and if she thinks these types of products are a part of a “fad”. She gave answers that I somewhat expected because if she is an ambassador then she clearly displays living a healthy lifestyle before being associated with Roots to Rise. One question I forgot to ask was about price points. I wish I asked her whether she thought the price points, not just R.T.R., but other healthy cafes have reasonable prices for their foods and smoothie bowls.

From my blog, there are many pictures of the products and I know we discussed the similarities but the impact that technology has on a business propels the products they are selling. Here on grounds, I know so many students that are into following restaurants on the Corner to keep up with holiday drink deals at bars to the fourth year Trinity Irish Pub “black card”. It allows fourth year students to get special discounts on certain meals. There is a specific deal that Corner Juice does with the Greek life here. The fraternities or sororities deposit a certain amount of money in their fund to use as payment for their food. For example, I was standing behind a person a couple of weeks ago and when the cashier asked for a card he said, “I am in DKE.” The status that these fraternities and sororities have with the amount of money they have allow Corner Juice to continue and gain popularity. Everyone thinks Corner Juice is good and it incentives first year students as well to join fraternities and sororities of this “status” so they can get, in their words, “free food”.

An interesting idea to think about from Corner Juice’s tactic using funds is investigating not a relationship between price and healthy foods, but the belief of unhealthier food tasting better is actually true. The Washington Post researched this effect by cross referencing 5 case studies where, “we showed that even in food categories where there is no relation between price and health, the healthy = expensive intuition affects how consumers make decisions about food.”Through these discoverings, they concluded that people had a very permeating tendency to casually associate healthier foods with expensive prices. Even when healthier options were price pointed at cheaper prices than competitors some volunteers in the study took longer to read the other reviews of other brands. It is interesting that there is such judgment behind healthy foods and this is where you can see that some restaurants, wherever located, can possibly have their products too expensive for the average U.S. citizen and marketing to the upper middle/upper class. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any legitimate research to back this up but I am using my observation skills and general knowledge to try and understand this health craze. There have been many times when I tell my friends that I am going to Corner Juice and they roll their eyes at me. From this judgment, the think that I can go and stop by Corner Juice because I have a lot of money to spend “$10 on a sandwich that I could just make at home”. That quote comes directly from my roommate Justin. The point I am trying to make here is that the expensive prices that healthier foods come with distract consumers from whether or not the food is actually “healthy” to eat in the first place. I am not saying that eating smoothie bowls and going on juice cleanses could potentially harm you, but throughout this essay I have shown many studies that do not prove they are beneficial either.

On the Mayo Clinic website, they dedicated a page about the juicing diet. They said, “Juicing is no healthier than eating whole fruits and vegetables.” Scrolling on my blog, there will be pictures of the juices and the bottle size specifically compared to Corner Juice’s bottles. They are both generic glass bottles and very colorful. That speaks to how well they are marketing with their products. In the 2018 Food & Health survey, administered by the The International Food Information Council (IFIC), they concluded that despite the importance of familiarity, 7 in 10 consumers would be willing to give up a familiar favorite product for one that did not contain artificial ingredients. Of those who would, 4 in 10 would be willing to pay 50% more and 1 in 5 would pay 100% more. Those are the quick facts and even though I mentioned that there were some negatives mentioned about these juice places and the products they sell, the trends speak differently. Looking at some of these graphs, I made my decision of why this specific “fad” will turn into a very normalized diet and be associated with other big diets like the Keto or Atkins diet.

The media being used for this project is Tumblr. Over the course of the semester, I would like to think Kelvin was able to observe my personality as well as my mannerisms. I am very laid back and loved having open discussions with my group. I realized that I could not convey this in a 8-10 page paper because how professional it would have to sound. As a math major, my writing skills are not the best, but using Tumblr has helped me balance the personal and professional aspect of delivering this information to you Kelvin as well as Professor Higginbotham and Von Eschen. As Professor Higginbotham said on the first day that has stuck with me, “I study pictures.” From receiving the project guidelines I wanted to do the same thing. With Tumblr, I can insert photos, videos, recordings, to support my writing. I wanted to give the same effect that this class was which was pictures during lecture and reading the primary and secondary documents to go over in discussion. With this project, it allows to properly organize my thoughts and really show off my creativity as well. In this Tumblr blog, I have laid out my essay using primary sources and other website articles to research health fads and dig deep to see if there is a bigger reason why people are transitioning to healthy food. Then there are photos of the two healthy cafes I have found to include in this project. I plan on posting this link on my social media to see if I can get some responses from people and who knows it could blow up and become trending. Not to say I am the first person writing about this topic, but one will never know why certain things became more trending than others (as we have seen in lectures about celebrities and fame). The creation of blogs have been sources of many trends in pop culture and so why not further contribute to that with using Tumblr. The technology that was used to create this before Instagram and Twitter is sometimes better because nowadays most of these social media applications are being flooded with advertisements and fake users with fake photos or posts. On Tumblr, in my experience, everyone is just posting their opinions and whether or not you want to explore it is up to you. That is why I chose this media form.

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