#and really like the themes problems and questions we were presented with like the whole individual sacrifice for the greater good thing

[maplefield]

honestly, that fact that they essentially found a pendrive and just plucked it into a supercomputer.......

[sim0nril3y]

12 Days of Kinkmas | Day Four: Voyeurism

Note: It's day threeeee of our Kinkmas and I'm not super happy about this one, but I hope you guys enjoy it! Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Civilian!Reader Warnings: No mask Simon (It's my personal headcanon in his regular life he probably wouldn't wear it), established relationship, oral (m recieving), voyerurism, canon-typical swearing.

If there was one thing that Simon hated it was parties. They were excruciating. It didn’t matter what they were for because Simon hated all of them. This one that you had was up there as one of the worst ones yet. It was in an enormous house, decorated in tacky Christmas decorations that probably cost a fortune, there was festive music flowing through the walls and a spread of food that even was on theme.

It was the party of one of your friends, you had told him that they were well off but he hadn’t imagined anything like this. Simon had grimaced as you tugged him from one friend to another, greeting them happily, introducing him briefly, you knew that Simon didn’t want to make small talk. No, all he wanted to do was drink beer and get through the night. This whole thing was hell for him, but at least he had your angelic form to gaze on.

After hours of dithering, you had decided on a sparkly festive dress that was very on theme of the party. You looked fucking delicious. Honestly, it was a miracle you’d made it out the door with the way that Simon had been pawing at your body before leaving the house, he’d wanted to get in your knickers before even getting there, but you’d reminded him that you’d be late-late, not just fashionably late and that was something that Simon’s wouldn’t abide.

So, instead he was forced to simply stand back, observing and ogling your body and nod whenever a question was directed at him. With a hearty swig he finished the dregs of his beer and held the empty bottle usefully by his side. “There are more beers in the kitchen. I need another one too.” You announced, slotting your hand into his own and pulling him along. “How’re you holding up, babe?” You quizzed, entering he kitchen and thankful it was empty and quieter than the rest of the house.

Nabbing him a beer, you handed it to him and after taking a swig Simon asked. “How much longer do we need to be here?” Slipping an arm around your waist to tug you forward into his chest. “Wanna get home so I can get this fuckin’ outfit off you…” He commented, rubbing his hands against the sparkly material.

A smirk played on your lips for a moment, as if devising a plan. “Well… we’ve only been here a few hours, so we’ll need to stay a little longer, but…” Glancing around, the room was empty and the door was closed. “Maybe this will help…” You commented, shimmying down the straps of your dress and allowing your tits to spill free, exposing them so that Simon groaned lowly. “Trust me, that really doesn’t help the problem, babe.”

“Mmm… sorry…” You muttered, although there was very little remorse to your voice as your hand slipped between your bodies and cupped him through his jeans, through the material you could feel him rock hard against your hand. “Babe, you’re so hard~” You whisper up at him before over your shoulder again to check for any prying eyes.

A moment later, you took Simon’s hand and tugged it across to the pantry, opening the door and pushing him inside into the confined dark space. “What are you doing?” Simon asked, feeling the way you knelt to the ground, plucking at his jeans as you answered. “I’m giving you an early Christmas present~” Then opening his jeans and pulling them down enough to allow his cock to spring free. “Maybe this will be enough to get you through the party…”

You wasted no time, spitting lewdly into your hand and using it to jerk his cock languidly, gazing up through the dimly lit room at him. Like normal, Simon was stoic and quiet, but you could just about hear his breathing getting hard, little groans in the back of his throat and then finally his voice bit into the darkness. “Be a good girl for me…” His hand braced on the back of your head. “Put it in your mouth. Yeah?”

Following his command, you simply sunk him into your mouth, humming sweetly as you suckled on the head of his cock, hand stroking the rest of him. “Don’t be a tease.” He commented. “You and I both know you can take more of my fat cock than that.” He grumbled and you smirked as you sank more of his cock into your throat.

You were humming and bobbing your head on his cock, eyes fluttered closed as you concentrated on your job for giving Simon pleasure. “Good girl.” He whispered, fingers knotting into your hair. “Good girl.” He panted, beginning to guide your head by winding your tresses, forcing you up and down on his cock, finding his own rhythm and causing you to gag a few times as you adjusted. “My good fuckin’ girl letting my fuck her pretty throat…”

Simon groaned and grunted as he used you for his pleasure, gazing down at your pretty face as he fucked it. He hummed lowly, fucking himself a little faster and smiling to himself at the small gagging and grunting sounds that spilled from your mouth as his actions grew more frantic, Simon was just about to open his mouth to speak when he heard. “… do you know where they are?” His eyes widened looking towards the closed pantry door, people were on the other side, Simon was reminded in that moment that a joyful Christmas party was going on behind those walls.

“The beers? They are over here…” A voice responded to the first one and footsteps move around then. Simon hissed, looking down as you continued to bob your head even as he had stopped all movement, squeezing his eyes closed and leaning his head back. “More people here than I was expecting…” The voice uttered as a few beers popped open. “Yeah, it’s a good turn out.” Simon let out a soft grunt as he suddenly emptied down your throat, bracing his hand against the shelves. “Did you hear something?” “Hear what? All I hear is my favourite Christmas song, come on!” Simon’s fussy mind took note that the voices disappeared in a quick movement to return to the party happily.

Once the coast was clear you and Simon stepped back outside, leading you from the kitchen and grabbing another beer. He brushed down the wrinkles on his outfit and turned back to you then. His eyes widened at his state of you. Your dress was ruffled, your make-up smeared, mouth swollen, you were flushed and clammy looking. “Love, I think we may need to go home…” Simon stepped towards you helping straighten your closed. “What? Why?” You asked.

“Because if any of your friends see you they are gonna know you’re a filthy girl who just gave head to her boyfriend at a Christmas party.” He commented, pulling off his coat and putting it around your shoulders before carefully trying to clean your face of smudged make-up. “Plus, the sooner I get you home, the sooner I get to fuck you into our mattress.”

12 Days of Kinkmas | Regular Masterlist | Ask | 17-12-2023

[stillness-in-green]

What do you think of shouto's arc? As a person who uh. used to be pretty similar to his "earlyroki" incarnation for lots of similar reasons I find it really reassuring that he gets to be a happy person who is generally content(somewhat negated by the treatment of Endeavor in the story admittedly lol)

Hey, anon; I'm touched that you'd come to me, a dedicated endgame hater with a question like this. I appreciate the interest and/or faith! This reply is going to talk a lot about the family in general and the broader themes of the story, as well as Endeavor and Dabi and their own arcs, but I've tried to keep tethering it back to Shouto throughout and at the end.

Shouto isn’t a character I devote a ton of thought to—I’m so-so on most of the Heroes at the best of times, and Dabi is an easy pick for my least favorite of the core League.  For a long while, Endeavor actually was my favorite of the Todorokis because I found him the most interesting—that went out the window in the last war, alas, as it became clear that the narrative had no intention of meaningfully grappling with his repeated failures to work with and prioritize his family despite his repeated promises to do so.

As to Shouto, though, I suppose I have three major thoughts: that he does okay for himself, that he got a bit shafted all the same by the decision not to kill Endeavor, and that I wish I felt more confident that his arc had any impact at all on his opinions about the Hero System.

(Hit the jump.)

Taking the last of those first, as it’s the point that involves Shouto himself the least, the systemic problems of the setting were always my primary interest with regard to the conflict between Heroes and Villains.  Because I was invested in relatively few of the Heroes, and also because the story was pretty assiduous about not letting the League kill off any characters the reader could reasonably be expected to give a shit about anyway, I never bought into stuff like Deku getting righteously fired up about the people Shigaraki had hurt.  For the most part, I cared about the Hero/Villain interpersonal dynamics only insomuch as they served as a path for the Heroes to recognize the scope of the real issues they needed to be addressing, and the Villains as—while dangerous—ultimately victims of those issues.

Unfortunately for me, the Todoroki plotline is ultimately treated by the overarching narrative as being, by and large, self-contained, unconnected and unreflective of the broader society in which it plays out.  Thus, while Uraraka connects Toga’s tragedy to the lack of acceptance of her quirk and devotes herself to finding some way to correct for that problem going forward, Shouto and Enji don’t make that same connection between Dabi’s tragedy and the problems in Hero Society that led to it.  Touya is, to be sure, primarily a victim of Enji’s choices, with Dabi being the ultimate result, but while no one forced Enji to make the choices he made, they were not made in a vacuum.

By my count, there are three ways in which the structure of Hero Society failed Todoroki Touya and his siblings, only one of which impacted them directly.  Firstly, Hero Society demonstrates a studied lack of concern for the mental health of orphaned children, which meant that young Enji was never going to get appropriate amounts of grief counselling, meaning there was nothing to inhibit his spiraling obsession with strength.[1]  Secondly, that obsession was given a perfect frame to build on in the form of the Hero ranking system.  And thirdly, we have no evidence that the Todoroki family was so much as mildly probed by law enforcement or regulatory bureaus about the string of accidents and tragedies facing it.[2]

1: From the Shimura Kotarou of forty goddamn years ago to the Izumi Kouta of the present, there is zero reason to believe that Enji would ever have gotten professional psychological help following his father’s death.

2: One might also add a fourth consideration, that being the whole-ass Himura situation that led to Rei feeling her abusive marriage was as inescapable as it was.  Perhaps if she felt less trapped by her family’s need—itself entirely a result of quirk-based bigotry, remember, so that’s a fifth societal consideration!—then maybe she would have been more willing to try taking the kids and leaving, or seeking help from authorities.  My focus here, however, is more on things that could have directly circumvented Endeavor's abuse, so I’ll leave the other factors here.

But BNHA doesn’t probe any of this, either, nor does Shouto.  The only people other than Endeavor who are remitted any scraps of responsibility about Dabi’s entire existence are All For One (for saving Touya’s life!) and Rei, Fuyumi and Natsuo, collectively given a few moments in which they regret not doing more. Otherwise, Endeavor is allowed whole and unadulterated blame for the situation.  It’s not something Shouto blames on any outside parties or circumstances, and so, once it’s resolved, he makes no efforts to try to address any of the very obvious contributing factors.

While it’s very much to Shouto's credit that he put so much proactive effort and thought into stopping “his” Villain without causing further harm—by far the most forethought of any of the students with Villain foils!—I’m not as positive about how he just lets everyone but his rotten father off the hook.  It’s a problem I think is less about Shouto as a person and more about the meta-narrative’s sudden third-act unwillingness to engage in systemic critique, but a problem it remains, given that it’s the systemic critique that I really wanted.

Moving on, I also think Shouto’s arc is severely hindered by Horikoshi changing his mind about not killing off Endeavor.  I’m not one of those people who thought Endeavor had to die to make up for his crimes, or who desperately wanted him dead because he’s an abuser and All Abusers Should Die, Actually.  Solely looking at it from the perspective of Endeavor’s arc, I think he should have lived!  It’s much more interesting for him to live and have to grapple with the consequences of his actions!

…But that would require that he actually have to grapple with said consequences.  Which he doesn’t.  And if he was not going to, and the story was not going to address him not going to, then yeah, absolutely, he should have died.  What’s the point of him surviving if he’s going to face no story-impacting consequences?  Feeling sad and bad about it, and getting yelled at once or twice by nameless bit characters, do not count as story-impacting consequences, I’m afraid.

More to the point, though, that’s Endeavor’s arc.  Endeavor’s arc, however, badly needed to take a backseat to Shouto’s arc, and probably Dabi’s, too!  While I think Endeavor could have survived without his arc torpedoing the arcs of his sons, that’s definitely not the story we got.  And I think this is in large part because Horikoshi didn’t change the story enough to account for Endeavor’s survival.

The echoes of that original story are all over the third act.  Consider:

Endeavor does nothing of consequence in the Edgy Deku arc.  His press conference doesn’t prevent societal breakdown; he limply defers to Deku in ways that let him remain active while ensuring those actions have no impact on the plot; he makes no major contributions to Hawks and Jeanist’s talks about the Villains; he’s not involved with the plans for the second war; and finally, we learn nothing from the hospital flashbacks that we couldn’t have gotten from any of the other family members, instead.      

We get early hints about too many quirks causing mental breakdowns, and this foreshadowing is fulfilled in Spinner’s corroded perceptions at the hospital—but miraculously, Lady Nagant has no problem at all with having an extra quirk.  Sure, she’s only got the one extra, and maybe it doesn’t happen every time, but…  Isn’t it a little odd that she comes out of nowhere, with very minimal foreshadowing, an elaborate HPSC backstory that Hawks shares, and the combination of quirks she’s packing is one that precisely replicates Hawks’s “long-distance flying attacker” shtick?  It’s pitifully easy to imagine a scenario in which Endeavor’s death in the first war leads to Hawks going rogue.  Also, while I don’t know exactly what circumstances would lead to him and Deku fighting, I do think Deku’s platitudinous speech about light and dark and reaching out to people feels far more tailored to a Hawks who only just went rogue than it does a woman betrayed by her own bosses who hates shallow platitudes, especially coming right on the heels of Deku rescuing Overhaul in a way that strongly echoes Hawks’s reflexive rescue of Twice but carries no inherent meaning for Lady Nagant.[3]       3: See here for the whole rant about this, but the short version is that it’s goddamn absurd that Lady Nagant hates platitudes and shoots at Overhaul on the assumption that Deku will have to save him, only for her heart to be changed by Deku’s platitudes and saving of Overhaul.      

Speaking of Hawks, the whole matter of Twice’s death goes less than nowhere, which makes one wonder what was the point of including it as an ethical dilemma at all? The public didn’t care, Hawks faced no consequences for it, and he was never forced to change his stance or grapple with his decision in any way, to the point that when he’s faced with the same situation later, he makes the exact same judgement, and this is something the narrative doesn’t even seem to notice, much less address.  Toga’s very personal feelings of hatred for Hawks get relegated to a single shallow knife slash from a clone that doesn’t even manage to leave a goddamn scar.  And all this lack of consequence leaves Hawks free to be reduced to nothing but an Endeavor Supporter in the final arc, possibly because whatever his arc could have been was incompatible with Endeavor’s survival, leaving Hawks with no final arc of his own but also no established place in anyone else’s.      

Endeavor’s dream about the family eating dinner around the table but him not being there, on top of Shouto’s stated intention to eat soba with his brother—seems like foreshadowing for an ending in which the family eats dinner around a table, doesn’t it!  But because Endeavor lives, Natsuo cuts contact in a way he’d have had no reason to do if Endeavor had died, and so there can be no family dinner, and Shouto’s soba thing has to be relegated to a frankly pretty thin line of dialogue about mutual favorite foods rather than an actual shared meal.      

The whole thing about buying/building a new house for Rei and the kids to live in so they can be away from the bad memories in Endeavor’s house.  Does that happen?  It kinda seems like that doesn’t happen, given that Rei seems perfectly happy to be pushing Enji around in a wheelchair at the end!      

The strange replay tape finale version of Shoto beating Dabi, where he does the exact same move twice, just once alone and once in the presence of family.  Almost like Horikoshi only came up with the one idea?      

The fact that the family promises to deal with Touya together but then Endeavor not only spends a chunk of time running from Dabi when he does arrive, but even when he does finally try to talk, he can’t because Dabi’s brain is so overboiled that he’s incapable of rational conversation—even though he was having rational conversation with Shouto some five minutes prior!  And then it’s Shouto and the family’s ice that actually save Dabi from those consuming flames, with Endeavor contributing nothing to that finale—huh, almost like the family saving Touya wasn’t written to include Enji to begin with!      

The Geten as a Himura reveal feels super vestigial.  I like it, mind you!  I like it a lot!  And I don’t know exactly how it would have factored into a version of the endgame in which Endeavor died, save that the Dabi-Geten combo really feels like The Final Boss Scenario That Wasn’t for Shouto—one guy with fire hotter than his who hates their father and Shouto personally, and one guy who can take control of any ice around him and stop it from melting and who hates the other side of Shouto’s family![4]  But instead Geten just winds up in prison and the Himura reveal does nothing but handwave Dabi having latent ice powers, which didn’t need a Himura reveal to justify it since we already knew Dabi had a physical compatibility with ice!  And even, via Shouto himself, that the mixing of ice and fire could produce a quirk with elements of both!  Geten being a Himura simply feels like a relic of a story in which Geten had more of a role to play, and while that may be my bias because I feel like the entire MLA was set up for a bigger role than they wound up having, it’s still easy to wonder if part of the whole, “We’ll deal with Touya as a family,” promise would have involved facing the other side of the family’s damage as well. 4: While also espousing a writ large version of Endeavor’s own Strength Is All That Matters mentality and still being a victim of eugenicist machinations masterminded by Shouto’s relatives!  Truly it is a mystery to me how Geten could just get defeated by Cementoss when he’s such a perfect distillation of so many of the issues swirling in and behind Shouto’s family situation. He even connects to a potential systemic critique in his ties to the MLA, who are practically nothing but systemic critiques of Hero Society.

And so on and so forth.

Shouto is a major character: by far one of the most prominent student characters, Deku’s first real victory in terms of changing someone’s heart, a foil for one of the central Villains, and with a profound insight into the kinds of damage the current system encourages and then willfully ignores.  He desperately needed an arc that centered him and his perspective.  But that arc also has to contend with Dabi, and Dabi as-written simply cannot convincingly prioritize Shouto when Endeavor is still alive.

There are certainly signs that Dabi did care for his other family members at one point in time, most prominently that he thinks remorsefully about how he acted towards them when he wakes up after Sekoto Peak, and emphasizes that he has to apologize to them.  But when the story so prioritizes Dabi’s obsession with Endeavor, to the point that he’s gleefully endangering the rest of the family’s lives and peace by sending dangerous Villains to their door, airing videos outing Endeavor as a domestic abuser, and talking about Shouto like he wants to leave him disemboweled on the Endeavor Agency’s front stoop, then that obsession has to be dealt with in some way before I’m remotely capable of believing that anyone other than Endeavor can get through to him.

So, Endeavor could have died, which would have neatly deprived Dabi of that driving focus that kept him going—what does he do without it?  That’s a question Shouto could have given him an answer for.

Endeavor could have fallen into a coma, leaving genre savvy readers confident he’d eventually pull through but the characters themselves in a state of muddled emotions about when or if he’d ever regain consciousness—that’s a half-measure, but I like it better than the half-measure we got.[5]

5: And heck, maybe we could have gotten Dabi trying to invade Central Hospital alongside Spinner and the heteromorph army, since that plot included a number of small nods to the Todoroki plot anyway via Spinner reflecting on Dabi’s unstoppable will and Shouji on Shouto’s strength of character.  Also, you know, more chances to poke at Dabi and Shouto’s tendency towards calling heteromorphs derisive animal names.  Probably not a scenario that does the heteromorph mob scene any favors, I’ll grant, but it would be hard to make it worse.

Heck, I could even see a version of the story where the narrative was simply more cynical about Endeavor’s ability to prioritize his professed atonement.  All his actions in the story as we have it show him continuing to prioritize his Hero duties despite his repeated claims that he intends to prioritize his family.  If the story actually recognized that contradiction, it could build Dabi up to a point of screaming frustration that I could, hypothetically, see Shouto breaking through.  Endeavor could still be trying, still be sincere, but if his ego or a rational decision to prioritize the lives of strangers over those of his family mean he cannot ever be counted upon to truly put his family first, then maybe that would be something the rest of the family could tackle.  Alternatively, the whole story could have had a mindset more like Natsuo’s, with the goal being to cut Endeavor off because his desire to atone, regardless of its sincerity, does not entitle him to a presence in the lives of those he hurt.  But none of is an option when the story itself is cheering for Endeavor the way BNHA does.

For Shouto’s arc to be at its best, something needed to give.  Dabi needed to be more open to the rest of the family from the start, or Endeavor’s desire for atonement needed to be complicated or stymied in some way that made it not feasibly attainable, be it his narcissism, his health, or the whole story’s outlook on abusers trying to atone and whose perspective to center in a story involving such abuse.  But with the Dabi we have and the Endeavor the story insists on, Shouto’s arc itself is what wound up giving.  It certainly has its moments, but I can’t imagine a world in which it wouldn’t have been far, far better served by Endeavor kicking the bucket as originally planned, allowing the brothers to confront each other, properly and fully, with Shouto the primary driver in saving Touya rather than having to constantly fight for screentime in his own finale.

That all said, I can definitely see the perspective that Shouto is just one kid from a shitty family situation and he does not deserve being called upon to solve the problems of the whole world and wrangle his family damage for the rest of time.  It’s not what I would have prioritized, in that I have pretty steep meta-narrative demands for a class of kids that we’re being told collectively became the greatest heroes, but from a more grounded, realistic, in-story, individual frame of mind, I think it’s wonderful that Shouto is exploring who he is as a person separate from his family issues and the career he semi-chose when he was in pre-K.

No sarcasm here; I do actually quite like his last scene.  I have some quibbles with the framing—I don't like that the rankings still exist, and I think he should just be allowed to go on sabbatical rather than trying to fit time for self-improvement/self-exploration classes in between Hero work, if we’re really meant to believe that the Villain incident rate is declining.  But just in concept, taking pottery classes and cooking classes and figuring himself out? Good for him!  That’s wonderful!  He did his best and he deserves every inch of it.

That is all to say, what I want from a fictional character in a relatively moralistic narrative is not what I would want from a real person in a situation anything like Shouto's, and while I don't love what we got in the former regard, I’m glad that people who empathize/identify with him can take comfort in the ending he did get. You, anon, and any others to whom that applies, deserve all that and more.

Thanks for the ask!

[creatingblackcharacters]

So I have a question about writing slave characters (stay with here i know ok)

So I'm black, and in the process of writing a novel. The main character is a black woman rescuing her girlfriend from a whole immortal cult thing. One of the supporting characters is a victim of the cult who was a free slave who is now immortal and living in the modern world. I wrote her originally because some of the themes I'm writing are healing from physical, emotional, and generational trauma (I'm thinking of making the main character her descendant and incorporating that into the plot but I'm unsure) and the effects of colonized religion on people of color + the past not being truly dead, but something that shapes our present and future.

Now obviously I'm working with a horror/tragedy, but I started wondering if I was going to be able to write this character in a respectful, realistic manner. I live in a super isolated/white community irl and due to circumstances, don't have black family members anymore, so i guess I'm just needing to bounce the idea off someone who would see what my struggle with writing this is? Or see if you have an resources for writing this in an effective way. So I guess I'm just asking, what do you think? Could this be done well, or should I scrap this part of the story?

Well, if I'm being honest- and I'm saying this kindly- your struggle might be coming from not knowing yourself, and where you stand. It might help to find some Black community where you can, even if that's the internet, to grow back connected with your roots and identity. Part of why it might be hard to write the process of generational trauma, and how that all passes down within Black families, is well... It sounds like you don't have that connection. I'm sorry to hear that. But this can be done, and it can be done well!

If this is something you want to do, and be confident in, it means it's time to do your reading! There are resources on the history and effects of colonized religion, and the purpose it served to force colonized peoples into submission ("you're a savage who can't take care of this land/natural resource like I can, let me force introduce you to Christianity and save your soul").

There is also plenty of literature on how the past has never really gone away- shit, the reason we still discuss slavery (outside of it being important to!) is because the outcomes were damn near not addressed and then practically and legally replaced right after. Most of the same problems with white supremacy from then still stand, however they have morphed into modern language. I can read WEB DuBois, who was cited by Kwame Ture, cited by Ta-Nehisi Coates. While your character would see how much better it's gotten, she would also see the signs still festering.

Lastly, I'd read and watch some Black classics, especially Black Gothic. Maybe some indigenous ones as well, since the forced religion is quite common. This story you're telling is not a narrative that hasn't been done- study how it's been done!

[minyard-05]

damocles

me again coming back to type up another word vomit 'essay' about a song i've had on loop for the past ~8 hours.

SO. damocles.

the main thing that stands out to me lyrically is the tense change. like a lot of sleep token's songs have a tendency to be set in the past, as if vessel is recounting feelings and events that can't be undone. from this perspective he picks apart his own emotions and analyses himself, questioning his own existence through the lens of trying to put himself in context for the audience (in some cases this presents itself as almost trying to justify his actions but thats a different post). damocles does have a bit of this, in the bridge with the 'nobody told me' lines, but primarily, it's about what's happening now, how he feels now, and the entire chorus is focused on the future. that uncertainty in the lyricism, and the honesty of lines like 'no one else knows that i've got a problem' is i think what gives the entire song its whole Vibe, and why i think it's probably one of their hardest hitting tracks so far. before, the stories might have been sad, but they were certain. like, we may be doomed but at least we know we're doomed. but in damocles, vessel doesn't know what's happening or where he goes from here, and that's what makes it scary.

another thing it does really well is capture the whole feeling of catastrophising and overthinking, as shown in the chorus:

"When the river runs dry and the curtain is called / How will I know if I can't see the bottom? / Come up for air and choke on it all / No one else knows that I've got a problem / What if I can't get up and stand tall? / What if the diamond days are all gone, and who will I be when the empire falls? Wake up alone and I'll be forgotten"

a big part of what backs up the uncertainty theme I mentioned earlier is actually the way this part of the song is done technically. the piano is the only instrument alongside vessel's voice as of yet, and it begins softly, mirroring the vocal line in a ballad style, but when the chorus starts, the tempo increases. the entire first chorus happens in the span of about 25 seconds, whereas the first verse lasts twice longer, about 50 seconds. this increase means that the song doesn't feel rushed, but tense, before it slows back down to bring in the drums on verse 2. i don't know about you guys but the first time i listened to it i actually kind of felt a little on edge, because the way it's composed means that it musically raises a question that isn't really answered. in a sense, the chorus never really gets closure, all the questions vessel asks himself don't get any response from sleep, if that's who he's talking to. damocles is telling us a story that doesn't have an ending, not yet.

lyrically though, and this may be somewhat of a self contradiction, but it feels to me like damocles is something of a sequel to caramel. side by side, the songs actually feed fairly well into each other, following similar thematic ideas, but the main split is that caramel is about the pressure of being known and damocles is about the fear of being forgotten. i talked about this already a little in my caramel post but i feel like there's really no way where this song isn't an incredibly personal message from the singer himself, not the character of Vessel.

like let's look at the line from the chorus again: "Who will I be when the empire falls?" and lets take this 'empire' to mean Sleep Token as a project. they've been immensely successful, especially in the past two years, and success for musicians comes as a blessing and a curse. more fans = more people to share your art with and more money gained from concert tickets and merch sales to then fund creating and recording more music, which is all good! however, success also means interest, and interest means critics picking every second of every single apart, it means there will be people who only like you when you're doing one specific thing, and if you deviate from that binary, it will never be as good as your old stuff. sleep token are not just a metal band, and damocles isn't a metal song, and the more you experiment with new styles and techniques in your art, the higher the chances you will alienate people who don't like your new stuff. unfortunately, a lot of people LOVE to voice this dislike online, and with the internet being the behemoth that it is, it's easier for artists to see those critiques. and yeah, fuck the haters, create what makes you happy, i'm all for that, but from an artist's perspective that's way easier said than done. all this to say that the speed at which sleep token gained mainstream popularity, and all the bullshit that comes with it, is undeniably going to take a toll on the musicians themselves.

they've been anonymous throughout their whole career thus far, and have been explicit in saying that choice was made to protect their personal privacy AS IS THEIR RIGHT. but i'm wondering if damocles is in part about the fact that while they stay anonymous to stop Sleep Token from taking over their lives, it kind of feels like it did anyway. because while you can disconnect from the internet and not look at the comments or the critics, there is always this nagging question at the back of your mind that says is it good enough? do they like it? do they like me? did i get it right? am i good enough?. fame is fickle, and if you're not constantly keeping yourself afloat, the tide will drop you. so to me, "Who will I be when the empire falls? / Wake up alone, and I'll be forgotten" sounds like vessel wondering if he's already written himself over in the context of the band, and when 'the empire falls', i.e, when the band ends, does he go back to his normal life? does he start over again? did any of it ever matter?

and the uncertainty comes back, because maybe he doesn't know when the empire will fall, maybe he doesn't want it to. but he is Damocles now, on his throne he looks over the empire, and he waits for the sword to drop.

[sidebar: in the original story of Damocles, he was a courtier of Dionysius (not the god), and flattered his king, essentially saying he was fortunate and blessed to have so much power. Dionysius offered Damocles the chance to sit on his throne for a day, but he had a sword suspended over it by a single horsehair. the moral of the story is that it's a lot more work than it looks to be a leader, and great ones will always have enemies, dangers that are just out of sight but ever-present. Sleep & Vessel parallels anyone????]

MAYBE that's a stretch. but i'm not done because now i want to talk about the bridge.

"And nobody told me I'd be begging for relief / When what is silent to you feels like it's screaming to me / Well, nobody told me I'd get tired of myself / When it all looks like Heaven, but it feels like hell"

THIS is where i am getting the strongest caramel parallel (ha). this is explicitly about chasing this golden promise of fame and love, only to catch it and realise it's burning you. the vocals here are melodic but to me it almost sounds quietly angry as well, like vessel can't openly scream 'nobody warned me', so he sings it instead ("too blessed to be caught ungrateful"). and he's angry because all he wanted to do was make music and share it with people, but Sleep Token isn't just a band anymore, it's also this huge collective of fans that it's built, and when something like that spirals out of control, you can't easily get it back. vessel's anger comes from the fact that he never started this wanting to write songs about how much it hurts to keep doing this. it was supposed to be an outlet and a way to make something beautiful out of pre-existing pain, but now it's come full circle and is the new cause, rather than the cure.

anyway. those are my damocles thoughts somewhat articulated but i may come back to them. i need a whole new post just talking about that drum mix fr

[workingonasongbird]

The only way I would accept a book on Finnick's Games is if Tigris was his stylist and it was told from her point of view.

The obvious themes in a book about Finnick would be the exploitation and sexualising of minors & celebrities in the entertainment industry, as well as propaganda (which was heavily discussed in SOTR, but it would be interesting to see it from a Career perspective).

But aside from Finnick's story being very difficult to tell without contributing to the problems it's trying to discuss...

(writing a book about it then leads to a movie, which then leads to people missing the message yet again, and then we get a repeat of the whole 'hot coriolanus' edit situation, only this would be much worse because Finnick's character is a child)

...the problems in question would be very difficult to properly convey and critique from the perspective of the 14 year old boy they were affecting. Partly because once Finnick is in the arena, we'd lose access to the outside world and how other people perceived him because he obviously doesn't know what's happening elsewhere. But also because it's unlikely Finnick understood how the Capitol viewed him until after he won and Snow started selling him.

Of course, he might have some idea. But based of Katniss' revelation when she watched Finnick's propo during Mockingjay, the idea that the victors were being sold in this way simply wouldn't occur to most people in the districts; especially a Career district like 4.

(yes there's the whole argument that 4 is potentially less of a Capitol suck-up than 1 & 2 based on all the rebel stuff, but that's for another day.)

It would be really easy for a young kid like Finnick to put the Capitol's behaviour towards him down to them being Capitol and him just not being used to them, or some other similar reason. So Finnick's lack of awareness or lack of understanding of the situation would make it very difficult to effectively highlight an issue because he might not recognise there was an issue in the first place.

Which begs the question of who would be best to tell Finnick's story. Obviously there's Mags, but while she's a hugely important person in Finnick's life, I don't think her character has ever been set up to discuss Finnick's themes with the audience. But I think that Tigris has.

We know from TBOSAS that she had to sell herself. We know from Mockingjay that she was a stylist around Finnick's Games. We know that she was likely forced to quit being a stylist by Snow (my personal headcanon is that this was because she was Finnick's stylist, and that she challenged Snow directly about forcing Finnick into prositution. There's no way she would ever stand for letting that happen to Finnick (or anyone) let alone any way that she would dress him up for it).

Not only would Tigris have an empathetic, informed, and outraged view on Finnick's treatment that would make it impossible for the audience to miss the points Suzanne was trying to put across in the book, Tigris being Finnick's stylist would give an appropriate and non-sexual reason to discuss Finnick's appearance in order to make the commentary on his exploitation. It would be really weird for a character that isn't on Finnick's prep team/styling team to be narrating a book about sexualising people in media because there's no way to do that without a lot of reference to appearances, clothes, presentation, and whatnot.

Also I just want more Tigris content.

(But also it makes more sense to find out what Tigris was doing between TBOSAS and the trilogy in more detail because she was mentioned in both. There was nothing about Finnick's character in the trilogy that felt like we were being set up for an origin story if that makes sense.)

[sapphiresaphics]

Okay, so a common complaint is that Arcane needed more time to cook. I don’t think that’s controversial to say. I’ve said as much before as well, though for me the issue is less that we needed more content and more about re-arranging some of the plot lines to be a bit less confusing, but that’s for another time…

There were reports that Arcane was going to have 5 seasons originally, though the validity of that claim is questionable at best. We were also told Riot themselves were getting scared at how much Arcane was costing them. And we’ve heard that Netflix got scared and pulled back from multiple seasons to just 2. We also know that between seasons there was a shake up and a lot of writers were let go. And we also know from Riot’s own documentary that the initial pass of Arcane was SO BAD that Amanda Overton and her team were called in to fix it.

So if you have problems with season 2… who do you blame?

Because if you wanna blame the writers for everything that only goes so far, doesn’t it?

If Riot Executives or Netflix got cold feet and suddenly cut back on how many seasons Arcane was going to be, then is it really the writer’s fault for having to scramble and cram as much of their story into the remaining season to try and have a SEMBLANCE of a satisfying ending?

Whenever I see people bring up that the creators wanted more seasons but didn’t get them it reminds me of what happened to The Owl House.

SPOILERS FOR OWL HOUSE START HERE

For those who don’t know, The Owl House was a popular Disney animated show that included a lot of LGBT+ themes and characters. But Disney Executives who never watched the show decided it didn’t “fit their brand” so they cancelled it.

The news of the cancellation happened while Season 1 was still airing and Season 2 was in mid-production. Half of season 2 was already in production, so they couldn’t change those episodes, but the second half of season 2 hadn’t yet started being animated. The creator Dana Terrace threw everything up in the air and scrambled her team together and basically over the course of a couple weeks re-wrote the ENTIRETY of the second half of season 2 and BEGGED Disney to give them time to wrap up the story. Disney agreed to give them 3 “specials” that were the equivalent length of 3 episodes each. So season 3 which was intended to be a standard 24 episode season was essentially cut down to 9.

You can actually watch the split happen as you watch season 2. The beginning of the season is more serious and sets up some new mysteries, but it’s standard pace for this type of show. Then suddenly right around episode 10 the show kicks into high gear and from that point on it is nothing but PLOT PLOT PLOT PLOT PLOT! It just BARRELS through things quickly, even including a couple jokes about how they wish they had time to slow down and have fun.

TONS of original storylines and setups to future payoffs has to be completely scrapped. Who was the Bat Queen’s original owner? What did the whistle do? What’s the point of introducing the Galder Stones?

And other plot lines had to be steamrolled too. Hunter’s revelation that he’s a clone and what happened to Belos’s brother is basically presented to us through BACKGROUND details. The witch children in the human world having adventures, which could’ve been a whole season of its own, basically had to be trimmed down to a 2 minute montage. Some of the fan favorite characters didn’t get time to develop or have more satisfying narrative arcs.

SPOILERS FOR OWL HOUSE END HERE

You see what I’m getting at with comparison to Arcane? So many of the complaints for season 2 are “this character didn’t get enough development,” or “they have too many montages,” or “they completely ignored plot and story from season 1.”

So like, yeah… those are valid concerns… but you ALSO complain that Netflix/Riot cut them short. So is it really the writer’s fault? If YOU had planned to have 5 books and instead told you could only have 1, wouldn’t you also try to keep as much info as you could while having to sacrifice a lot of the fun stuff you wanted to do?

I guess I don’t get where this hatred for the writers comes from. Having seen multiple shows get cut short and knowing what the creators did to try and get a satisfying ending… Arcane is a fucking MASTERPIECE in this regard. And also, why aren’t you guys blaming Netflix or Riot for cutting them short? Why blame the people at the bottom for shit the people at the top did?

[sl-vega]

✧Sticking to the Script✧-10

⋆｡°✩ 10-action!

"Take five everyone!" you heard Furina yell as you saw her walk by with an ice pack covering her head. Chiori quickly followed her escorting her out of the room.

"What happened?" you asked Lyney, who was helping you run lines. "Some freshman accidentally dropped a sword prop on her head. Thankfully it was one of the lighter ones." he replied.

You watched Furina hold back tears as she left the room, she didn't want to let a minor injury get in the way of the play. "The show must go on!" as per usual.

"So now that we have a break, do you wanna talk about that?" he asked, gesturing to your ring. He grabbed your wrist and inspected the piece of jewelry. "Archons, that's one hell of a ring." he was still admiring the intricate design, observing the way the gems shone in the light.

You giggled, "Yeah, I know." you caught yourself admiring the ring more times than you'd like to admit. "Must've cost your boyfriend a fortune." Lyney joked. "Trust me, it did." you responded.

"How much?"

"$30,000." you winced, not wanting to be too loud, you weren't risking getting robbed.

"30K?!" Lyney shouted, shocked. The two of you got some questioning looks from the other students, before quickly resuming their personal converstions.

"30K?!" Lyney repeated, whisper-shouting. You nodded. "Well it was more like 20k-25k, Xingqiu wasn't sure of the price." you explained fiddling with the piece of jewelry. Lyney's mouth was wide open. "It was more of a present from his dad than from him though." you added.

"Wait-how long have you two known each other?"

"Two and a half weeks..."

Lyney looked at you, his mouth agape.

"Where did you find this guy? He's smart, rich, AND he treats you really well? And he's managed to make sure you know all that in less than a month?" Lyney asked, bombarding you with questions that seemed more like statements.

You chuckled, blushing. "Yeah, he's pretty great." you were grinning like a fool. You forgot that Xingqiu wasn't actually your boyfriend for a moment.

Even if we aren't together-together, I can still like him as a friend. Can't I? You thought to yourself

"Attention everyone!" the whole crew turned to Chiori who returned to the auditorium. "Furina just needs to rest for a bit, so she put me in charge of you all. We're going to do a brief run through of the prologue, then skip over to Act 1, Scene 5." she explained. Everyone quickly moved to their places on stage.

You and Lyney sat in the front row together watching the chorus recite the prologue together. You glanced at your script a couple times, skimming over your lines.

"So how does Xingqiu feel about this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Us playing a couple on stage. He does know we have to get pretty touchy with each other right?" Lyney asked. You told him that Xingqiu was a great guy, but he wanted to make sure if there were any boundaries he shouldn't cross.

"He hasn't brought it up with me, plus he isn't the jealous type, so we should be fine." you explained. Another thing that reminded you about your actual relationship with Xingqiu. He wasn't your actual boyfriend so he didn't have a reason to be jealous of Lyney.

The prologue finished, Chiori called you and Lyney up to the stage.

This was just another part you needed to play

additional notes:

-yes that furina joke was intentional

-not gonna spoil anything for the canon game

-but if yk yk

-ALSO DOUBLE UPDATE LET'S GO

-not much else that i wanna say abt this chapter

-i'm proud of it

-y'all are gonna get some possessive xingqiu next chapter >:3

-be prepared

masterlist

<prev ll next>

✧Sticking to the Script✧

Pairing: Xingqiu x FEM! Reader

Genre: fake dating, strangers to lovers, slow burn, fluff, angst (?), high school smau, modern smau

⋆｡°✩-Synopsis: Xingqiu just got entered into a special writing contest, the type that's invite only, the theme this year is love, the only problem is that he has zero romantic experience. but he really wants to prove himself as a writer. meanwhile, you just found out that your boyfriend cheated on you, and you need to show him that you're 100% over him, the only problem is that there's no way you can get an actual boyfriend that quickly. clearly, the solution to both of your issues is to fake date each other. it shouldn't be hard for an actor such as yourself, all you need to do is stick to the script.

(OPEN) Taglist: @freyao7, @thatoneswordgirl, @sn1perz, @latay7, @willowcandletree, @nmriki0, @help-whatdoimakemyusername, @httpsrenren, @cupid-spams, @aixaingela, @kaitfae, @luvkvni, @danhenglovebot

[biblioflyer]

On This Floor We Believe Innies are People

This is part two of my rambling about Severance. Expect spoilers for seasons one and two. It can be read on its own or in sequence. Part one addresses how Lumon fits as a "high control group" (ie "cults"). Part three is about control and Severance's techgnostic themes.

I want to put my cards on the table as far as a core premise of the show. I am someone who believes that the Innies and Outies are distinct individuals who both have a right to live, at least as a basic deontological principle. As a practical matter, the challenges of sustaining Innie existence definitely bring up valid consequentialist or relativist considerations, but as far as I'm concerned the Innies are people and human lives, whether created through natural reproduction or through the severance procedure, have a minimum baseline value that is very high.

The Innies present a problem of original sin. They were created through morally dubious processes and their lives are empirically fragile, dependent upon technology to maintain, geographically limited, and its been speculated, although (as of Season Two) not definitively proven, that the much smaller footprint of their accumulated experiences could very trivially be swept away by the inertia of an Outie persona which has orders of magnitude more memories. I do want to emphasize that this of course untested on screen, just theory, and assumes that cumulative memory is more important than the potency of memory in shaping a personality.

Like a wrathful creator god or demiurge, Lumon created these fragile lives under the belief that it had a right to do whatever it wanted to those lives up to and including snuffing them out when no longer needed.

Based on Lumon's intent, the creation of the Innies - under these circumstances - is something I think is deeply, profoundly morally wrong.

However!

Severance does not include time travel. The past cannot be erased, we only control the present.

Lumon's casual cruelty and disregard for the lives it creates and destroys is not something that can be undone and the climax of Season Two leaves us with a moral challenge: regardless of how and why these lives came into existence, these lives now exist and as thinking, feeling, reasoning beings the Innies are owed compassion, dignity, and the means to continue existing if these are things that can be provided. That they should not have been created is not relevant to whether they should continue to exist, you can't undo that now without ending the lives of beings that think, feel, and dream as we on the outside do.

There is a very real power imbalance here between Innie and Outie and yet again, the peculiar circumstances of the lives of the Innies create a lot of practical problems. Those practical problems do raise the question of what about the Outies and their rights? What can be expected of them to maintain the lives of their Innies? Can the Outies truly, really have given informed consent when agreeing to become severed?

Could the Outies ever truly understand what it meant to partition their lives and that they would functionally be creating a whole new person? No doubt Lumon obfuscated this and de-emphasized the moral implications. They were in essence, tricked into this new existence without being properly educated on the larger questions. Although the degree of ignorance ought not to be overstated either: while relatively few people have experienced severance and seemingly no Innie outside the control of a handler had shared testimony, severance as a concept is hardly a secret and everyone from Outie Burt's spouse to the people at Devon and Ricken's dinner parties have opinions they are very eager to share.

I think we can argue that some of the more morally imaginative Outie characters can set aside all of the incentives to center themselves: convenience, cognitive dissonance, moral outrage at having demands made of them etc. in order to understand their Innies as real human beings with agency and rights. Other characters like Mark Scout and Helena Eagon are caught in thickets of incentives and obligations that make swerving around inconvenient moral revelations the safer path.

And of course when it comes to thinking about how each Outie arrives at their relationship with their Innie, it also helps that not all of them were tricked: Irving may have had some brushes with the broader existential questions that prompted him to become severed in the hopes that something might leak across the barrier that would benefit his search for answers. Burt is implied to at least be adjacent to the Kier cult at the heart of Lumon and indeed, his partner was very much invested in the idea that a pure new soul, free of Outie Burt's sins would be created by severance.

Its unclear what Helena Eagon truly believes about severance in existentialist terms. If we take the recording she made for her Innie after Helly's suicide attempt at face value, Helena doesn't believe the Innies are real people or that there is any particular moral significance to their creation and elimination as people, they are tools to be taken up and discarded in service to the mysterious and important work.

Yet if Helly is just an instrument in service of Lumon's will in Helena's eyes, then Helena's behavior in Season 2 feels off. It sure seems like she took a particular kind of joy in harming Helly's relationships and, after she was found out, contrition did not seem to be among the rare emotions Helena displayed. Its possible everything is just an elaborate game of dolls for Helena or that she overstepped in trying to sell Helly R's rebellious spirit as part of her undercover mission, but the spitefulness seems noteworthy and of a kind that feels very much fueled by anger and a desire for vengeance.

Helena is the product of a cult though. It would be easy to wave away her moral judgments as a consequence of her upbringing and indoctrination. Still I would hesitate to absolve her fully because she is close enough to the heart of the inner mysteries that the pieces are there for her to assemble a moral framework that favors the Innies and their reality and opposes Lumon doctrine.

This is obviously an incredibly sensitive issue and I would not want to trivialize the challenges involved in breaking out of a high control ideological or religious system that one was born into. Helena, like so many people in contexts like this, is both perpetrator and victim. I suspect that the Innies, at the moment of creation, are close approximations of the "default" personality of their Outies would be if not for assorted cares and traumas. Helly R is rebellious and spirited and it is this "fire of Kier" that Helena showed as a youth that the Eagon ideology forced her to deny in order to conform.

Ultimately I do return to this core moral conviction: regardless of the circumstances of their creation and whether that creation was ethical, the Innies exist and that existence is worthy of protection. It does not follow that "switching off" the Innies rights the wrong of their creation. I'm not opposed to creating artificial life, I'm opposed to creating artificial life that can experience suffering and then degrading and abusing that life. The conditionality of Innie life is quite problematic, but the deed is done and there isn't an ethical way to undo it.

What We Owe to Each Other

Innie existence is no less valid than that of their Outies and if that existence infringes upon that of their Outies, that infringement is not unreasonable. Members of a society are expected to make reasonable sacrifices to respect the rights and existence of other people in that society. Even in the most individualistic societies it is understood that people's rights and needs might come into conflict and therefore at some point, someone is going to have their scope of freedom limited so that another can enjoy equality. As unfair as it may be to ask the Outies to give up some measure of their lives, ending the lives of the Innies for the explicit purpose of not encumbering the Outies is unacceptable.

I am already running high on word count but as a person who in real life has professional obligations to think about the accessibility of physical spaces and intellectual materials, I would be remiss if didn't at least gesture towards the conditional existence of the Innies as a possible metaphor for disability. The world is full of people who need accommodations from the rest to live the fullest lives possible. Sometimes those accommodations are hard because they require extensive modification of the material world or a radical reevaluation of the habits and assumptions of people who normally don't have to spend much time thinking critically about how they experience the world.

I work in a library that was built without consideration of recent evolutions in disability accommodations. Our shelves were spaced such that a traditional wheelchair ought to be able to fit through them, but a modern power chair would not likely fit. A person using crutches for mobility also would have serious difficulty accessing the bottom shelves and perhaps even navigating the aisles, which again are rather narrow.

Now as reasonable people who want everyone to be able to make use of our resources, we are happy to provide assistance grabbing books for people who can't do it for themselves.

And yet.

This places patrons with disabilities in a position of dependence on our good will. As much as we try to be welcoming and eager to demonstrate how we are not even a little resentful or put upon by helping, sometimes its just not about being considerate, its about other people being able to enjoy full agency. Especially in libraries, people can be sensitive about what they select to read and may be more reticent to tackle topics that make them feel self conscious if they have to ask someone for help.

Plus not being able to do your own browsing takes away the serendipity that comes with finding your own books. As I often tell my patrons, if you use the catalog to find one book relevant to your interests, once you arrive at the book's physical location you'll likely also find other materials that the fickle gods of key word searches chose not to show you. There are so many other ways that autonomy is power for people who are outside the median for physical capacity, but this is close to my heart because my professional ethics are centered around maximizing access to information for the most people.

If we come into a big pot of money for a remodel, hard choices will need to be made. We could have our aisles widened for greater access and respect for the autonomy of patrons with different mobility profiles. There would be a cost and not just money, but also in how we utilize our space. On net it would probably mean fewer books overall but probably not so many fewer that even a very serious culling couldn't still protect quality when paired with resource sharing agreements with other libraries. And the books that are deselected that are in decent condition can always be donated to charity.

Then there's people with chronic illness who require life assisting equipment. We don't hold the air tank against the person with chronic respiratory illness against them. Even ardent degrowthers would probably be appalled at the idea that a patient in a barometric chamber would be unplugged to satisfy their desire to wind down civilization's carbon footprint.

Oh sure there's a mix of edgy sadists, eugenicists, and penny pinchers who think that preserving someone else's life shouldn't infringe on someone else who doesn't opt in and apparently anti-natalist terrorism is maybe a thing now, but when push comes to shove most people seem to make the accommodations they can. A lot comes down to imagining ways to make accommodations as unobtrusive and minimally burdensome as possible.

Surely some kind of accommodation that respects the dignity and right to exist of both Innie and Outie could be conceived of in a world that made a choice to value the dignity and existence of Innies?

Additional Severance Discussion:

Lumon, the Eagons, and High Demand Groups

Techgnosticism and Control of Imagination

[talenlee]

Pride Month 2024!

It’s the introduction of another theme month, and this time around it’s the month of Corporations Conspicuously Caring About Queer People, and people showing their ass about how good or bad they are about publically presenting information about types of queerness. I’m sure I’ve said something aphobic on a June, but also, my hand has been stabbed, you know I’m from inside the city and I’m not doing these things out of a desire to support the structure and you know, watching, listening, learning and growing, apology video on my Patreon. Joking aside, point is, you know what kind of person I am and why I might say ‘faggotry.’

Anyway, time to talk about what to expect in Pride Month and what it means. And I need to do it without just pointing directly to the article I wrote on this from last year that I honestly think is kind of perfect for summarising my feelings about why we need Pride Month and why I do Pride Month content in Pride Month.

I think I’ve softened a lot on ‘queer media’ in the month. Not as that implies – I’m not about to act like Fire Emblem or Persona series games are games to talk about in this period in the way to promote them. I know that ‘Queer Media’ was an umbrella opened up over things that were in many cases actively awful about and to queer readings, and that used to drive me nuts. I’d put out the call like ‘hey, does anyone know media with this [trait]’ and despite media of that trait existing I’d get someone popping up to talk to me about something horrendously not an answer to the problem and then someone else well-meaning would take this as a conversation about that thing and not about my initial question and suddenly I was dealing with people babbling about something that was actively irritating me.

Originally I had some pretty stringent views on queer media. It was something in the vein that the work needed to explicitly have at least one queer character who was specifically and correctly defined by the narrative, rather than it being impressions and vibes. The idea I think I had was something to the effect of trying to forward media created for queer purposes rather than just relying on fan media to build up the queerness around it.

This particular position softened, of all things, because of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. And make no mistake: I don’t actually think that highly of the bulk of a series about a religious motivated dad leading a specialist religious movement where the whole story farts out at the end. It’s the 90s, it’s a Star Trek, they’re all a bit rough and ropy, whatever. But for a time there I kinda had a negative view of the Garak/Bashir relationship that was treated as a element of the show’s queer representation. And like, that was interesting but it was also very much not text – we get to see Garak even establish a relationship with… a really creepy young lady, but whatever whatever that’s not important.

The point is that I thought that that was basically something like fanon. It seemed a kind of compromise, and I think I didn’t need that kind of compromise was acceptable. I wanted to platform queer media and that meant indulging in smaller and more indie work in an attempt to platform people.

Low key, this was a way in which I acted as if the creator of a work is a person who even exists, and that’s just not true.

And then we got to see interviews, now, decades later, with the actors – both of them – who played those characters, who made it very, very clear: Garak is trying to get Bashir into bed. This relationship is not straight. It has that tension, it’s not a thing we’re imagining, it’s a thing they tried to put into the story. And sure, they are, at this point, the same as fans, but they’re fans who had the choice to actually influence the making of the work. By discarding Deep Space 9 from ‘Queer Media’ because it’s not Queer enough I’m creating the impression that queer creators don’t get to be included because they might have been filtering their work through other lenses. It reminds me of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, where again, they said in response to the request for lesbian content, ‘I was on stage the whole time.’

Plus, I mean, most of the media I make, the books and the games and the TTRPG stuff, that’s all queer content but you’ll find surprisingly few directions of who sucks or fucks what or does not ever suck or fuck. One Stone doesn’t have a seriously straight character in the entire dialogue and I’ve written about how Cobrin’Seil is a world where ‘queer identities’ don’t even come up because the idea of queerness you exist with is a modern construct and if nobody wrote a book about how it was messed up in the modernist era, then there might be a wholly different set of values about that. The main way stuff I make ‘is queer’ is as a byproduct of me being the one who made it, which is to say I’ve gotten my queer cooties all over things, and if that’s the case then I kinda gotta be a little more giving to the work that is even aggressively heterosexual because it’s still art by queer artists working within constraints that were ultimately, not ideal.

Anyway, point is that that means that I was willing to approach the Pride Month media with a slightly wider arm, to grab in stuff that may have more of these transient properties, more work that’s made to highlight someone who is or has that queer element, someone bringing something to the forefront that isn’t necessarily as nakedly, tangibly obvious as like, the gag at the end of Paranorman. I got to watch a bunch of youths watch The Matrix for the first time last month and it was a trip watching as people who grew up in the world it shaped who had no idea how freaking queer it was.

The bricks the flower breaks to bloom are part of why and how it blossoms.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[grasslandgirl]

and fic writing questions! a) are there any motifs you're proud of/happy about/excited about in noble pining atm (like, could be mirrors or swords or vines or objects like that, or something more nebulous, like repeated dialogue or scene descriptors, etc.) and b) what's a challenge or problem you've had a fun time solving while drafting it, or that you're really proud of finding ways to handle? <3

a) so like. I realized far too late into the process of writing noble pining, after I'd realized how horrifyingly Long it was going to be, that I hadn't really anticipated or intentionally put any themes or motifs into it at that point? so as an insane person. I decided on a few themes I wanted to be intentional about that I thought were already present in the text, and like copy pasted relevant quotes I'd already written into a Google doc so I could keep track of them skfjbnskfjbn they kind of intersect, unsurprisingly, and its one of the points on my docket for editing to like. workshop integration and progress of the themes over the course of the story!!!

as for motifs uhhh. I don't really think so ?? not intentionally, anyway, like we could ask my betas uwu and bev if they've noticed any recurring themes or imagery or etc in their readings thus far but uhhh. no. this started as a silly goofy quick idea and then by the time I realized it was going to be the size and scope it was turning into, I had bigger problems ahead of me (like plot) to worry about, so stuff like motifs kind of got shoved by the wayside <//3 (maybe there are unintentional sav-isms?? probably. I'm sure I have common dialogue/scene/setting descriptors and tells that I'm unaware of that are all over this thing sfkjbnsfb)

b) ummm. so disclaimer I finished the first draft of np back in Feb (!! 25 chap 150k!!) and sent it off for beta'ing by the end of that month/beginning of march and um. haven't touched it since? not that I haven't gotten what I'm sure is lovely valuable feedback from my beloved treasured betas I just. haven't had the inclination or the spoons to start editing or working on the second draft of it. YET! I will. eventually. at some point I'll buck up and start on it, which will be the hardest part skfjbnskfjbnsf. so like. there isn't really anything Ive done Yet to be proud of, given that I haven't started editing actually, but I am proud of myself for like. figuring out the plot of it all?? I feel pretty damn good about the beats of the whole thing, which as someone who has NEVER even attempted writing anything this long or involved before was like. a huge impressive step for me! the other longest thing I've written was my d20 big bang fic from back in '21 and like. that was little more than 20k iirc?? and I got so stuck on trying to figure out the plot I wanted or how to make it work that I like. ended the fic BEFORE the plot climax so I didn't have to figure it out. so like. coming up with what I think is a pretty good plot arc and character arcs and individual and group beats and some politics in there and etc etc etc for this au. I'm proud of that <3 I hope when I read my feedback my betas will tell me that it works and that it isn't awful and bad. skfjbnskfjbnskfnj <333

[alexwatchesshows]

Black Sails VI (S1E6)

Spoilers for up to and including E6.

Today on: why everyone should really listen to Gates.

Billy had questions. They were the right questions to ask, and he had every right to ask them, but he was asking them at the wrong time. Gates kept saying this and he wasn't wrong. It was too late to change their course of action, and Billy would only make things more complicated. As far as the audience are concerned, we know that Flint doesn't know anything about the letter, so there's no immediate concern, but Billy's concern doesn't seem irrational, but Gates has been the voice of reason throughout the show so far, and when he speaks, we listen. It's good to see Billy gaining the confidence to stand up to Flint and start to come into his own as a leader, but, as I keep saying, he's not the captain, he's the quartermaster, and in their situation, the best thing not just for him and Flint, but for the survival of the crew, is to keep them all on one side so they can win the battle. Gates clearly knows this, which is why he takes over when Logan is arguing.

I don't have much to say about the battle itself, but the slaves bring a whole new perspective to piracy and Nassau. So far, Nassau has been presented as a place of freedom and personal liberty, free from the oppression of the various empires, but, given what we know of Mr Scott, we can't really argue with him when he says "(slaves) are cargo, in Nassau or otherwise". The pirates are not morally pure just because they resist empire, and I'm glad we're adding this level of complexity to the discussions around empire in this show. Also it breaks my heart to see Mr Scott doing everything he can to protect Eleanor while she thinks he betrayed her.

Meanwhile, all is not well on Nassau. Eleanor needs to lift the ban on Vane, which she does do (because she doesn't really have a choice), while the captains resent her for not doing it sooner because nobody seems to have a problem with what's happening to Max. I've said it before, but it's absolutely worth noting that the only characters who actually care about Max's wellbeing are the women. Anne's still watching over her, but can't do much by herself. Whether E's reluctance to lift the ban on Vane is out of pride or empathy for Max (I'd guess a combination of the two), the fact that she has to do it to hold Nassau intact doesn't make it easier for her as, even when she does do it, she doesn't say anything, just nods. Honestly, as I've said before, I really don't like this plotline and one of the reasons for this is how much screentime we get of people arguing that Max should be kept in the horrible situation that she's in. I understand the complexity of the situation and how the complications around it do fit into the general vibes and themes of the show, I just personally really struggle with it I guess.

The conflict between Jack and Anne over Max continues. Jack is just oblivious to why this is bothering Anne and probably how and why this is affecting her so much. He, like most of the men, is struggling to see Max as anything other than "the whore", where Anne sees her as a woman in a rough situation who's suffering. Anne and Jack should probably communicate more, but going to Eleanor was actually a pretty smart move. It's also nice to see someone hating Eleanor for a reason that isn't her being a woman (I mean, I know the other pirates have other reasons, but a lot of the time it does come back to that). Anne basically accused Eleanor of being a pirate nepo baby and was actually kinda right, but they're still each other's best options and, between the two of them, they provide a refreshing view of the whole situation. Anne basically toasts Max for telling Eleanor to fuck off, and is honestly right when she says that the male pirates would have done so too and that "if she had a cock we probably would have", because, again, a lot of people just seem to hate Max purely because she's a woman who tried to bring herself even close to their level and, in Nassau, just like everywhere else, there's a level of pervasive violent misogyny that goes beyond whatever laws there are, just like how Mr Scott tells the slaves that they won't be better off there either. Even though neither of them likes each other, Eleanor and Anne come up with a very effective plan and talk Silver into joining them.

Jack's redeeming quality in all this is that, however outraged he is, he still goes along with Anne. Sure, he complains, but Anne's right when she tells him he's had his say, and his decision to keep things as they are isn't working very well, nor is it the right decision morally. Also Anne seems to know more about what's going on with Vane than Jack does. I'm not sure why, but that sheds an interesting light on the dynamic between the three of them.

Speaking of Vane, he's clearly about to go through some shit. Not sure what yet, but the scary man from his hallucinations is sitting by a fire in the middle of nowhere, which is never a good sign really.

The last of the Jack/Anne/Max situation that we see is Anne dropping Max off back at the brothel. Max thanks Anne, as you would, and Anne responds with "I didn't do it for you" which is... confusing. As always, I've got a number of possible interpretations of this: a) Anne genuinely did it for some bigger reason (to stop conflict between E and the pirates? something like that) b) Anne did it because she couldn't stand feeling guilty c) she absolutely did do it for Max and doesn't want her to know that because,,, reasons d) a secret fourth option. Unfortunately, Anne isn't the most emotionally communicative character so we'll probably never fully know.

We also get more Miranda/Flint backstory/insight. Pastor Lambrick just kind of turns up at Miranda's house in the middle of the night which is... strange, and she calls him out on it. Whether he's genuinely completely clueless or just not good at lying on the spot, Lambrick really does spout some absolute bullshit about Flint killing Miranda. We've seen Flint do a lot of fucked up shit so far, but it's already clear that that's probably the one thing he'd never do. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but Lambrick has a very black and white view of the world, and honestly I don't think anyone can convince him that the pirates aren't all absolutely evil. In exchange for Lambrick's weird excuses, Miranda actually gives us some really interesting insight into her old life with Thomas. We've heard Richard Guthrie's gossipy, third-hand version of it, but this is possibly the first time we've heard much from Miranda herself. She talks of how her and Thomas' house used to be a place of discussion and intellectual insight, which only makes her exile to Nassau more tragic (and also explains why she's been seeking these verbal spars with Lambrick and R Guthrie). She describes Thomas as "a man of ideas" who wanted to "see the yoke of shame lifted from (people's) shoulders" which is honestly a beautiful description that creates such a clear image of who this man we've never met was. It also suggests that maybe RG's version of events wasn't exactly what happened, as Miranda very clearly loved Thomas. Then after that very emotional moment we get more awful heterosexual sex. Yay.

To end the show we get some lovely pain. Flint does actually leave (some of) the guns so they can escape, so he's not necessarily fully down the path of obsession. We never actually see the moment Billy falls into the ocean, in typical Black Sails style, which means we can never know what happened. Again, there are a number of possibilities in terms of what happened: a) Flint pushed Billy in (i.e. Flint is fully responsible for Billy's death) b) Billy was already falling and Flint could have stopped him but didn't or c) Flint genuinely did all he could to stop Billy from dying but couldn't stop him. At this point, I'm not sure whether I can fully believe that Flint would go so far as to just push Billy in, but he's clearly becoming obsessed, even if he isn't that far yet. Flint going to tell Gates himself that Billy has died killed me, but I'm mad that he didn't let Gates drop the sword himself in the sea burial. Honestly, I'm just sad for Gates. Pain. Pain everywhere.

[cookinguptales]

Hello, i hope you are having nice day/night! I have a question, i have tarot card as well but I can’t read them well or make connections, how can i do that better ? I hope it is not a silly question. I just want to know how to get better at reading cards <3

Oh wow, y'all are fast. lmao

I guess it depends on what your goals are. For me, I'm coming at this from an academic/historical POV so I spent a while learning about the history of the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot, some of the occult ideas being referenced by the cards, etc. (I also learned about other major tarot decks, but I don't usually use that while doing readings.)

You really do not have to do that, though. If you just want to know about the generally accepted meanings for tarot cards, there are tons of books and web sites that will help you learn. It's good to keep in mind that cards don't generally have just one meaning. Sometimes their meanings are complex, and sometimes different people ascribe different meanings to the same card.

One other thing here is that, while the same card can have many meanings, often the creator of the deck has a specific meaning in mind, when it comes to modern decks. Many modern decks come with a small booklet that explains the choices they made. You don't have to use this book, but knowing what the creator intended can help you know what each card is supposed to mean when there are a lot of options to choose from.

So... once you know what each card means (or at least what your options are) then you do actual spreads. Again, there's no one right way to do this. There are a lot of very common spreads, like a Celtic Cross or a Horseshoe, but this doesn't need to be complicated. You can do simple three-card readings like I do, or you can even do a reading with just one card. I think the secret here is just to have what you want out of this spread in mind before you start. If you're doing a three-card spread, does each station (place where the card is put) mean something? Is it a past, present, future situation? A problem, cause, solution situation? Or do you just want to bring the cards you draw into a cohesive whole?

When I do readings on tumblr, I usually just do a basic three-card draw to make things simpler. Then... well, again, this can be done however you want to do it. For me personally, I think about the three cards and how they could be assembled, then I almost kind of write a story about those three (or more) elements coming together. I guess you could say I kind of write tarot fanfiction for each person I give a reading to, lmao. In other words, if all three of these sets of themes/events are to be fit together, how would I fit them together if I were writing a story, if that makes sense...?

I think about human nature, or at least my understanding of it, then I try to think about a reading that makes sense. Sometimes I think about the literal meaning. Sometimes I think about the historical allusions. Sometimes I think about vibes. It's not an exact science or anything. I just kinda write down whatever makes sense to me.

We have fun here. :')

But again, it doesn't have to be like that! You can go as literal or as metaphorical as you want, as simple or as complicated. And... honestly, a not inconsequential amount of this is just vibes. How do you feel looking at these cards? Does this feel positive or negative? Going with your gut never hurts in a situation with no wrong answers.

As far as psychic readings... Well, I'm not psychic, though I have done ethnographic research with people who... I guess I'd say at least genuinely believe they are. I can't say that I have strong feelings either way on whether they're right. (That wasn't really my concern lmao.) So I guess I'd say... if you want to try and exercise your ESP, really lean into those gut feelings. Know the basic meanings of the cards and then listen to your own intuition. What do you think this card is trying to tell you? How does that interact with the other cards on the table? Is this a message from something larger than you, or you assembling your own subconscious psychic intuition into something consciously comprehensible? Are the cards guiding you, or is your power guiding the cards? Things to consider, I suppose.

Altogether, though, I would just say that tarot is a living tradition, and there are no hard and fast rules. Buy the decks you like, use them how you like. The "meanings" of these cards change drastically depending on the historical period, where you are, and who's interpreting them, and your ideas do not matter less than anyone else's. Some people don't even bother learning the "right" meanings! They just go off vibes.

Honestly, I'd say to just start researching commonly accepted meanings of cards, read the booklet that came with your deck, and start doing it. Do all kinds of things. You'll eventually find the method that feels right for you.

[ineffably-human]

I loved season 2 as a WHOLE but also I had some problems with the structure of it. like as much as I loved the flashbacks and think they enhanced the themes really well (the zombie one didn't really do anything for me, but that was probably the secondhand embarrassment), they started and stopped the action while there was very little plot going on. I wonder how different the pacing of the season will be if I watch a little every day (or even once a week) instead of all at once frantically hoping I can get some sleep at the end. there's got to be stuff I missed, because my first viewing of season 1 was very different from my third or fifth or whatever it was.

as soon as Aziraphale found out Gabriel was with someone at the pub, I had an idea of what was going on because of how new!Beez's actress was implying there were emotional things going on with her character. and how upset Beelzebub was in general, the few times we saw them. also the fly, though I figured that was Beelzebub spying, and I kept wondering why they didn't seem to know where Gabriel was if they were there even before the miracle.

so I felt like I had a lock on at least some element of what was going on, and no real new information presented itself. and that's fine if it's actually more of a character piece than an actual mystery - I figured that's what we were getting anyway. I just wanted more of the characters that weren't Crowley and Aziraphale. because Crowley and Aziraphale are wonderful, but I wanted everyone around the Ineffables to enhance them that much more.

I wanted more of Gabriel suddenly seeming vulnerable and scared while Crowley tried to wrap his head around that. I wanted more of Muriel coming to enjoy Earth and either ask her own questions, or at least start to find her own place. I definitely wanted more Maggie and Nina. The first episode of them was perfect, then suddenly Maggie's infatuated (we never really find out why) and Nina's grumpy and that's sort of how it stays.

I see how they're a mirror to the Ineffables, but I didn't get a sense of what they could bring to each other. I felt like we learned more about Nina's abusive partner than about who either of them were outside of that. and of course the abusive partner is important too, as a metaphor, but we had the gist of it.

I can only hope they're something to be resolved just like our absolutely heartbreaking cliffhanger. Not necessarily to get a 'happily ever after' but to get more of a sense of Maggie, and how they fare knowing about the supernatural now, and what the future holds for them. (Can they adopt Muriel? I'd read that fic.)

And I think giving all those things time to breathe while shortening the 'mini-sodes' a bit would have enhanced the season as a whole that much more. But as long as this is getting, there's so much more that I liked and loved and am unpacking (because like the first one, this story is layered) and I haven't even started a rewatch yet.

[umichenginabroad]

Week 2 - Survived the Plague (Doctor)

Dobrý den! (See, I’m learning a thing or two)

Don’t you fear, Pato is here! Welcome back to yet another blog where we’ll take a deep dive into everything that happened over the past week. From my trip to Vienna, to all the activities provided by the program, to just how exactly I’ve survived Prague so far – if you’re ready, I’m ready. Let’s get started!

P.S. Don’t forget that I created a YouTube channel to document my study abroad experience. Make sure to subscribe – videos are on their way!

https://www.youtube.com/@Pato_Ponders

Vienna

For the second weekend of the program, some friends and I took our first trip outside of Prague – to Vienna! I’ve always wanted to visit, and getting to go with my friends was one of the most fun experiences ever. The architecture is incredible, the nightlife was always lively, and there was even a full-on theme park we visited!

Some spots I recommend checking out:

Hofburg Palace

St. Stephen’s Cathedral and its catacombs

Mozart’s Apartment

Schönbrunn Palace

Prater theme park

There was never a dull moment in Vienna. Even though everything was slightly more expensive (RIP my bank account), the memories we made were priceless. Prague is still my number one city, but Vienna is a very close second – I now understand why Billy Joel wrote a whole song about it.

Academics

Now that it’s the second week of the program, classes are really starting to pick up the pace. The hardest one for me so far? Definitely Calculus 3. The topics we cover in class from Monday through Wednesday are packed into weekly problem sets that we present in class. You can imagine the fear I feel when the professor looks at my work and just says “hmm”. Since an entire semester’s worth of content is squished into 8 short weeks, each class covers a… substantial amount. The speed and amount of material getting taught can be overwhelming at times. That said, the professor is super clear and clearly passionate about calculus, so whenever someone (usually me) has a question, he’s more than happy to help.

By the way, if you’re curious what my everyday commute to school looks like, here’s a timelapse from when I leave my apartment to when I reach campus — it's about 15 minutes!

Program Events

Studying abroad is not ONLY about studying — the program offers plenty of opportunities to explore the city in unique ways! On Tuesday, we got a tour of Prague… from a plague doctor! The first sight of the doctor definitely made me uneasy, seeing a figure associated with death isn’t my usual cup of tea. However, the tour was incredibly interesting with all the history shared about Prague in the 14th and 17th century.

Fun fact: Doctors back then didn’t wash their hands until the end of the day… and they performed countless procedures in between (yuck)

Then on Thursday, we went on another tour – this time on a boat! The views were stunning, and history was honestly fascinating. I didn’t expect to fall in love with Prague all over again. Bonus: we even got complementary Czech ice cream!

Fun fact: Prague’s main river, Vltava, used to be swimmable in the summer AND skateable in the winter. But after dams were installed, the water now stays at around 8°C year-round

This is the end of this week’s blog! Get excited for next week’s post, where we might be visiting the brewery of the famous Pilsner Urquell beer… but I guess you’ll have to come back and find out. Thank you for your time, and I’ll see you next week!

Patricio Sandoval-Sanchez

Mechanical Engineering

IPE: Engineering in Prague, Czech Republic

[huishuotong]

Compulsory Question 1:

Discuss CTS B manifesto

The picture above is the manifesto of our group. As future designers, we chose "Always Innovative" as the theme, which was inspired by studying the whole course of CTS B. We tried to use different signs and keywords of art styles as decorations of the manifesto, so that an atmosphere of being innovative and artistic could be created and communicated from the picture to the readers. However, we did not achieve the desired innovative effect by superimposing different styles on the picture. We discussed and combined what we had learned in class, and a good design requires both innovation and depth of detail. Then the details to define 'innovating' and the steps to take to achieve it were provided in the right part of the work.

Although I had a very meaningful and enjoyable time creating this manifesto with my group members in class, there are a few things that need to be changed. Firstly, there is definitely the issue of theme. Each group is supposed to create a manifesto that summarises the knowledge and skills covered in CTS B. As we were all so excited and due to time constraints, we deviated a bit from the requirements of the event and it was only at the end of the presentation when the tutor gave guidance and advice that the three of us really realised what the problem was. As a result, I would like to change the theme from "Always Innovate" to "Always Critically Innovate" so that it can be better linked to what we have learnt in CTS B and can lead to substantial improvements for a particular purpose or area. Secondly, the details seem too general, they should be less summative and more specific instead.

During the study of CTS B, the field of Connecting Theory and Pratice was quite significant to me. I believe both are equally important when designing artworks, they are not in conflict, rather they are complementary and integrated. For example, I can incorporate what I have reflected on at CTS B into the STUDIO, and those painted signs and keywords of art style can be combined with representative artworks. Through constant reflection and practice, it is important to ensure uniqueness and innovation in the design of the festival posters, and to keep thinking critically about the style. At the same time, if critical thinking is introduced into the development of takeaway software for DIGITAL SKILLS, I can critically assess user needs and improve the functionality and user experience of the software to create a unique and engaging takeaway software. Theory is the inspiration of practice, and practice is the result of theory. This cyclical process drives continuous learning and progress, fuelling innovation. (450 words)