#and hes very scrupolous

[digisurvive]

Keep thinking how immature Aoi gets in Wrathful, I'm so delighted lol Think about it this way: one of the important lessons Iori Hida 02 has to learn in order to grow up is to be able to contextualize his actions within the possibilities the circumstances offer so he can choose what causes less harm or is more fair beyond strict adherence to clear cut rules. His extremely black and white morality signals how childish he is (and this is fine because he's 9, I find very endearing how righteous he wants to be). Yet, in Wrathful, Aoi basically regresses to that kind of inflexible mentality. Every body must obey strictly (which she reads as well behaved), everyone must know their place and not act out of it, there must be no fighting nor conflict. She holds no nuance nor compassion for anyone that doesn't follow her rules to a tee.

Aoi even struggles with paralysis caused by her moralitiy crisis, too. While Iori's about lying and thust tailored to the fact he's 9, at the core of it is struggling to reconcile how acting in a way that is fair clashes with his view of what is correct behavior, which trips Aoi up, too. She gets a similar blockage where she feels incredibly torn if what she wants to do goes against social order. Thinking about how she also felt Shuuji was being unfair, so she likely wanted to do something more than just keeping her juniors in line... And in the end, couldn't even commit to preserving harmony that way because of her self-doubt about her own capacities as leader and troubled convictions. It feels very pointed that in part 6, Aoi is promising to actually get involved in mediating the group fights, coming at the tails of what happened with Shuuji.

Anyway, I love how we get that peek to her internal struggles in Wrathful. Like she correctly identifies as part of the issue that she can't step out of what she considers correct (and makes a lot of sense how much she likes the flippant Saki lol), yet Wrathful has her doubling down. I love the irony.

I also really enjoy how different her spin on a scrupolous work ethic is to Iori's because their different social positions (Iori being the youngest vs Aoi always being responsible for others), their age and gender. Endlessly fascinating to me.

[luvingsolace]

Will constantly kisses Nicos hand and Nico constantly kisses Wills forehead, next....

[work-for-mattia]

9/1/2021

Dear Mattia,

I hope you are well.

Following my previous email, I would like to clarify that I am very interested in the position you are currently offering, and by no means I was intending to draw an open critique of your previous praxis. I acknowledge that as an international corporation with decades of experience in hiring practices, I consent to the idea that indeed your company needed someone for the position of Mattia that would fit into your company culture, and would contribute to its growth through already established channels. What struck me about your latest post was the openess of the call as such: from musts, it turned to desirable; from required, to preferred; from essential, to optional.

I obviously cannot be sure whether that is a direct result of a series of edifying situations with previously hired individuals, a lack of suitable candidates, or the persevering vacancy due to no candidates whatoever; what I may say is that the message that you are communicating to potential applicants is more encouraging, and may atrract people with hitherto unimaginable lack of certain qualities on the one hand, but also with alternative views that may herein enrich your company and move it into an new direction on the other.

One of these new, eager candidates would be me - the previous absolutes of the job postings often discouraged me from applying to a job that otherwise I would have been very eager to claim, since I could see a lot of myself in it. As a result, I came to doubt my skills and their hiearchies of importance. Even trying to claim the job that I was so convinced that belonged to me seemed unimaginable; and when I applied, it felt more as if I was trying to fathom a doppelgänger in my place that, unlike me, could fulfil the required criteria for the position of Mattia.

Thus, my current gut feeling is one of optimism: instead of building on an upward-looking feeling of not being enough for my desired position, I feel invited to, perhaps over time, grow into the role, were I to be selected. I will thus try to lead by example, and attempt, tonight, to expose what a previously constructed, grown and ventriloqual identity tried to hide away from you:

I really like the job, because it seems to require methodical and creative input on a regular basis: both qualities that I believe to posses. Despite that, I have been experiencing mental health issues that closely relate to my self-doubt, physical tirendess and demoralisation over my own state of affairs. Just when I think that I am getting things right, something inside me breaks and I have to start anew, wherever that setback has swayed me to. Looking back, in better moments like tonight, I believe that could be partially due to the desire to claim visions of imagined perfection, such as the one I always saw in the role of Mattia.

I often believe that my PhD, which I started last October at King’s College London concerning the relationship between gesture and concrete poetry, is an absolute tragedy, because I am struggling to dedicate enough time to it and I feel demoralised by my lack of progress. I dance in my living room without glasses on before going to sleep: with just the dimmest of the lights turned on, I free myself through erratic gestures and smile broadly into the mirror in front of me. The smile seems fuzzy and it seems to conceal more than it does; my body seems fuzzy, and I lead myself to believe that it is more compact that it is. I am scared of reopening the draft of my novel, because I am scared that it would suddently read terribly and I will not find the energy and determination to put it back together, and turn it back into something that I am proud of. I had to mentally give up on getting my debut poetry collection published by my preferred publishers over two years ago, although that still eats me alive when I am chopping up vegetables for my lunch.

I eat salads every day, because I am scared that I would not find the energy to eat vegetables otherwise. I really miss my partner, who has been away for 6 weeks, and, due to current circumstances, will be away for at least another 6. I am also slowly descending into folly over the mouse invasion that I have been facing by myself in the past months, and when it seems like I have indeed done everything possible to prevent them from entering my flat, they invariably reappear in this or that corner. I struggle to sleep because of the stress they are causing me, and I ended up calling the city council so they could place poison around.

In many ways, everything mentioned above is a failure of sorts. And in fact, they reflect the current state of affairs: crying in shopping aisles, watching ticktocs for hours on end and sleeping till late are all tactics my mind has devised to make me forget that there are jobs that are mine and that I should go and grab for my peace of mind. On the bright side though, I am aware of these tricks, and I sometimes take all the determination I posses to spend it on tearing that veiled beligerance away.

I am surrounded by incredibly supporting friends, and my partner, who sees in me what I wish I saw in myself at all times. He is very special, and I love him very dearly. I have been working, in the confinement of me as well as with others, on ways of improving my self confidence. For instance, my current focus is on unlearning to see other people’s disappointment in me as an inspiration for my own self-deception.

I have been always wanting to learn Portuguese to a fully proficient level, and perhaps eventually move to Lisbon. To motivate myself, I bought myself flight tickets for a 5-week trip in September.

For years, I really struggled to relax when facing the task of painting; letting myself go meant to abbandon the control that my self-doubt so scrupolously installed into my system, and not only that it produced mixed results, but it also felt terrible. I have worked on that; nowadays, painting has become the main medium I use to express myself, and it helps me to work on my creativity and painterly skills. I find it deeply relaxing, and I feel the smooth brushstrokes and the smell of turpentine slowly luring me out of my confinements.

I hope this exposé of sorts has been helpful. If you wish to discuss your last job posting further, please do get in touch. In the meantime, I will be jumping around in my living room, listening to music and dance: performances on canvas or for the beauty of the mirrored vision will hopefully leave a lasting impression that I hope may find its use in your company in the near future.

With kind regards,

Mattia