#both sides are being fashy about this

[despazito]

There's only so much of getting called inhuman for my ethnicity by someone with a totenkopf pfp until I start yelling, yet according to twitter I'm the one in the wrong about it ok ok ok

[clonehub]

It's just like idk after a year of some of the most racist people screaming about how good tbb actually is and how we just don't get it or even the non racist ones still saying tbb was doing all this work and we just just couldn't see it, only for the main complaint on both sides of the aisle to be "they're one dimensional and uncompelling" (phrased in various different ways of course). But whether it's a thread by a fan detailing why tbb needs to develop or a snarky post by a hater saying "these bitches flat as hell", these reactions are reminding me that even besides the racism, there's fundamental writing issues with the series that were baked into season 2 because it was already in production when s1 was airing.

And the writers are SO hesitant to do anything worthwhile with the bad batch themselves. You have a group of experimental clones. That's an awesome premise. Yeah they can look different without looking white. That's an awesome pote trial conflict if a clone who doesn't look like a clone realizes that there's certain privileges in the civvie world he gets for not having that face. They have special skills. That's great because a clone who potentially sucks at something crucial (tech w physical combat) can actually be a disadvantage to his brothers.

But did they do that? Did they write outside the mold? No. These guys don't have real flaws, even, besides occasionally being jerks to one another or to someone else.

You know what would have been a really compelling plot? What if wrecker was the one to break from the group and take omega with him. What if he was underestimated by his own team (good source of conflict) and his kind heartedness and empathy makes him want to take off with omega. What if hunters weird conflict avoidance and general lack of concern with the Republic or empire makes him stay, and tech follows because of """logic""" like not knowing how to take care of himself without the government, and crosshair stays for the same reason. What if it's wrecker and omega trying to survive but forming a real bond and doing their best to hide from the rest of the batch that's hunting them down. What if one by one the rest of the bad batch joins them, hunter first and then tech. And then we can still have crosshair be the fascist shit he wants to be so so so bad.

Like the bad batch that i have in my head on a scrap of mental paper is ten times more compelling than the bad batch that we have in canon. No risks were taken. It's so middle of the road. So bland. It's like an extreme version of avoiding the children's rhyme "step on a crack break your mother's back" like i can't begin to describe how avoidant it all feels, even with efforts to spice things up like having tech actually get angry for once and take out his problems on wrecker....which still ended up being problematic anyways.

But my own version would require wrecker to be written outside of the racial stereotype that he was for 75% of season 1. "Hes empathetic 🥺" and he still lacks depth. They all lack depth. They're foul for having made the fashy one the most compelling of the whole team like--

[transmutationisms]

Would it have any particular meaning that they decided to get Roman the traditional Hitler youth haircut for this whole season? I mean, he's got the fascism literally all over his head. I know that he's not supposed to care about politics, that's what he tells Mencken in S3, but still.

honestly, this is a bit outside my wheelhouse because parsing these sorts of personal style signifiers is a whole skillset i haven't really cultivated. but i guess my response to the haircut may have been based on a slightly different aesthetic read.

first of all, at present, that haircut has a bit of a contested signification. it had a protracted moment in the 2010s with like, metrosexual hipsters, before being re-appropriated by fash partly because they were trying to get in on that Youth Hipster Coolness. and, in addition to its popularity with nazis, a version of the haircut had a prior association with english working class street gangs. nazis liked the haircut for several reasons but part of it is that it has this signification of masculinity and group identity, which i'd argue is why it can be both fashy and a bit metrosexual, sometimes even at the same time.

also, i guess i would say that like... it's not actually all that different than some of roman's old haircuts dfgdfgdfg like it definitely got shorter and more severe, but he's sort of always been in this aesthetic vicinity. which brings me to the point that some of the things nazis like about it—the sharp lines, the 'clean' short sides—are also the things that make it passably 'business-like.' in some ways it's just an alternate route toward the exact same thing he was going for when he would slick his hair back really tight, for example.

logan's fashy business ethos also demands conformity, masculinity, and obedience. so i guess i wouldn't disagree that roman 'has fascism on his head,' but i would say it's probably not him trying to take a political action—it's more an aesthetic meeting-point of capitalism and fascism. roman "doesn't care about politics" in the sense that he thinks it's all kinda bullshit performance—but he absolutely does have a worldview that is political (everyone does) and specifically, his is fascist in many ways because he buys into logan's ideas of hierarchy and masculinity.

sooo i think the haircut is ultimately just another aesthetic signifier of the presence of fascism in waystar and in logan's orbit, and how roman complies with it and tries to fit into the mould of that type of masculinity.

[thedreadvampy]

watching Sam play Screed: Viking Time and I have. Questions. about Asgard. to whit:

why must people always paint Loki as a generic villain? he's not a generic villain! he's a trickster! he's an Anansi kinda guy! he talks his way into trouble and then talks his way out! he's not even a villain he's just not always on the Asgardian side and he often Causes Problems On Purpose but he also...fixes them. for Asgard. idk it annoys me it's like always putting Hades as a villain in Greek stories it's like nah he's just a Different Kind of Guy

minor gripe but at one point Thor yells 'Jotunheim scum!' and can I just say that's like me running into battle against these guys yelling 'NORWAY SCUM! DENMARK BASTARDS!' like. I know you know the adjective is Jotun because you keep saying it.

Speaking of Greek stories I see we ran out of time on the design side and had to dip back to some Odyssey stuff because BOY HOWDY is this a Mediterranean looking Asgard. where exactly the fuck did all these fluted stone columns with Tuscan capitals come from? what's with the big courtyard with a geometric pool? why are there what appear to be sheets of lapis lazuli in the walls? why is there literally a Greek ruin in part of Asgard? there's these statues along the Bifrost and not only are they mounted on Doric columns and in classical contraposto they are literally wearing chitons and Corinthian helmets.

there's no longhouses! there's no wooden buildings! there is one (1) stave church style building and as Sam says it looks like it was made in the Sims, like someone had a sense of what they wanted it to look like but all the wrong building blocks. it's all stone columns with, at best, some knotwork patterning slapped on (over fluting, which is wild, even in architecture where Greek style columns are appropriate you usually pick BETWEEN fluting and pattern work, and I would be much more up for giving them a pass if they used a Tuscan pillar shape but put knotwork on. like really for a Norse style stone columns would be better squared off (or, mostly, not there) but if they needed stone columns and arches I could close my eyes and pretend if they used like. Romanesque pillars and rounded arches like 11th and 12th century cathedrals (even though the game is set in the 830s). but they're doing this very kind of High Classical thing with a very thin and half-assed Medieval Norse skin slapped over bits of it in a way that didn't really get popular in Northern Europe for like another 600 years and idk if it ever really took off in Norway (idk much about Norwegian architecture tbf). which makes me think they literally just retextured and rearranged a bunch of assets from Odyssey which is a shame because designing an Asgard setting is such a fun design project where you could really explore some unrealistic extremes with wooden-style structures. but no. it's Greek.

and the thing is, ok. with the Greek theming in Asgard. I know it's only happened because the game was rushed out, but like the conflation of Norse and Greek has some very 😬 unintended implications wrt how much a lot of the people who are Very Into The Surface Level Aesthetic of both cultures are. how to say. fashy white supremacists peddling the myth of some unified White Western Culture where both Ancient Greek and Medieval Norse cultures feature heavily. and if I was. making a game about Norse history and mythology. I would personally be being Very Wary of feeding the fash bc white supremacists looooooove their imagined version of Manly Viking Alphas.

[softgrungeprophet]

i write obviously, i took a lot of language and linguistics classes in college. it's a mix of art, science, it's deeply intertwined with anthropology and culture

anyway

it's rare (but possible; there are no universals in language) that a word is brought into the world bad. a word is a tool. it can be used to describe, to free, to find community and like minds (whether going on the adhd subreddit or being like, wow i'm gay too, let's chat) and of course it can also be used cruelly or twisted, to hurt people and confine them. words old and new can be used for all kinds of purposes of varying shittiness, varying goodness, varying neutralities...

but it's the people behind the words, not the words themselves making them tools/weapons/beauty etc.

on the one hand this means there are always new ways to use words and new words to exist, for better and for worse, and on the other hand this means that the problem is rarely the word itself (though obviously slurs are a bit more complicated in that regard) (and rarely straightforward among the people they are applied to) and rarely is a cultural or social problem addressed by something as black and white as "stop making words, stop using words, stop labeling experiences"--etc etc, take your pick of argument

the thing is, with words... is that stuff like that (restriction of any and all descriptions) is never going to happen (and if it did, that would be bad, imo), that's what words are and what language is

i think the most key thing i've ever kept in mind both during and beyond my language studies (and my general passion for linguistics, even as very much a low level non-professional--a hobbyist with a BA, if you will) is that words, grammar, intonation, all of it--language is context.

that might legitimately be the only universal in language now that i think about it lol. context. it's key--KEY--to meaning, to intention, to metaphor and color and poetry and all these other things. What language are you speaking? that's context. the fact that i'm writing this in english is context. it tells you how the letters and words i'm using should be interpreted.

context is the way language joins with culture (in all interpretations of the word: community, sexuality, ethnicity, class, etc.), with humanity and so on. they're linked so closely imo. this why any language class that's even halfway decent will generally have small mini-lessons, side paragraphs, tangents, about the culture in which they're spoken. Why IS this idiom? What DOES this word's use need? (though of course at a certain point you get into etymology there and ime most classes won't go too deep into that lol. it's essentially an entire field.)

now, listen, I don't buy into the sapir whorf stuff. for the most part, i think they were full of shit. at least when the hypothesis is taken to its most strict reaches. its highest concreteness. (not that there isn't sooome aspect of truth; i don't necessarily discount the hypothesis entirely and linguistic censorship and control 100% is a real, fashy thing, it's just... what i said. people make new words and find ways to talk about things they don't have words for. i don't think the nonexistence of a single or a few words necessarily prevents the entirety of a concept from existing, personally, though i won't argue that it can't mold perception or anything like that. what is propaganda after all...)

i'm rambling.

you know, last year around 8 months ago, a year or so after i first got diagnosed with adhd (was almost 28 at the time, am now 29 (and a half), took me... 5 years to find someone who would do anything) i was looking around, because i was physically allowed to begin stimulant medications after a couple of years of some serious health issues that prevented me from being prescribed anything other than non stimulants (probably reasonable at the time but still frustrating)--i went on reddit (i know 😂 but it's not that kind of story) to see what others' experiences were like.

the recurring thing people would say most often, of course, is that everyone on the board is different, that everyone's experiences will be (have been, are) different. not just medication but holistically. ADHD may have many commonalities but nonetheless, everyone's brain is different.

the other thing was me looking at threads of people saying, "am i the only one who does this?" and "no one i've ever met irl has this thing" and then seeing dozens of people say, yes i do this too, i also have not been able to meet other people doing this, i also thought i was alone,

and so on. little struggles and strangenesses that often felt like a pressure from everyone around them (us) irl asking why can't you just do X? (if you just cared more/tried harder) and you get a bunch of people saying, you're not actually alone, we're all here and not all of us do that but here are six or twelve or twenty or two hundred people who do.

it's funny because until my mid twenties (around senior year of college i think is when i began to look into it, thanks to posts i had seen online describing various aspects of adult adhd, adhd in girls, etc (not that i necessarily go with "girl" atm)) i had no word for describing what i was.

but the thing is i could tell there was something. so without the word to actually find other people like me or to learn about ADHD in a practical way, what i ended up with was not a lack of boxing myself in or of confining myself to a label. lol. lmao. prior, without "ADHD" as a reference point, what i had for myself was instead, "lazy" and "stupid" and "broken."

i don't trust any post that declares a cure to a cultural issue being to remove a word or words. rarely if ever will that solve anything. what it almost definitely will do, however, is deprive. when you do not have a word you can share with anyone else, it is very hard to find people who are like you (bisexual, ADHD, possibly a "drop of autism" as one of my therapists said) but people, including yourself, will still notice the things that make you yourself. that's the context, so where are the words?

(you know something funny? in either 6th or 8th grade (i only remember it was not 7th because we were in a different building in 7th grade) a friend of mine, in the gym, named Sadie, asked me "are you autistic?" Because she noted that i almost never make eye contact. i told her no. now, of course, with an unquestionably autistic younger brother (and me finally w an ADHD diagnosis like... 10 years later) all of us have begun to wonder about for example me and my sister but also about others in our family. we are a strange bunch. for some of us it's definitely ADHD, though some of my uncles are dyslexic, and for others... well you know how it is lol)

anyway what the fuck was i saying (how the fuck do i get my gboard to recognize context and stop suggesting "duck" no matter how many times i delete it?)

i just think it's always key to remember that the thing about words is that it's how you use them.

("born this way" is not innately a confinement; it was made that way out of a phrase intended to mean "this is who i am and there is nothing wrong with me"--not to restrict oneself to being only one immutable thing but to say I Was Born Me. Who "me" is doesn't have to be set in stone) (that's how i feel at least)

[svartalfhild]

I'm deeply frustrated by the way leftist terminology gets picked up by right wingers and twisted on its head and then slingshotted back to centrists who then start wringing their hands about how both sides are equally bad.

Like, god, every time my centrist father starts making derisive comments about getting canceled or the woke mob or some such thing, I want to punch a wall, because he's parroting fashie bullshit and serving their cause without even knowing it, and I don't know how to explain to him that he's been tricked into thinking leftists are just as much his enemy as the fashies because he doesn't actually engage with progressive political discourse at its source. He gets everything second or even thirdhand.

Here's how it happens. Leftist discussions give rise to a particular term or idea. Fashies pick up on this and start using it to claim victimhood, thus rendering said term or idea controversial. Mainstream media sees a controversy and reports on it, giving an equal but very shallow 5 minutes (at most) to both sides of the issue, thus removing the original context and nuance of the topic and giving the average person an incredibly shallow understanding of what's happening. Naturally, news outlets also love to interview the leftists who have taken the original idea too far, because the people who take it too far make more of a splash and give the most simplistic, timeslot-friendly explanations for what they're about. This of course gives further credence in the centrist mind to the notion of both sides being bad.

Basically, the average person ends up not actually knowing what certain leftist terms or ideas mean and dismissing them as bad because they know nothing about where they really came from. They've received the most bad faith interpretation of something two or three steps removed from its source.

My dad thinks progressive thought has moved into the ludicrous and simplistic, and he constantly satirizes leftist ideas, believing he's the one with the nuanced take, because he hasn't come even within a mile of nuance since the 80's. He's not a "true progressive"; he's a puppet with a conservative's hand up his ass.

These thoughts came to me today because my dad and I were having a conversation about TV censorship in the 60's, and he felt the need to say that "today, it's the left that wants to cancel things", and it made me so angry, because there's about four layers of headass to unpack there.

"Canceled" started in progressive spaces as a quick way to refer to refusing to give someone any further time, attention, and money because they had done something reprehensible. There is discussion within the space about what circumstances warrant cancellation and what requires further examination or goes too far.

Sometimes, people get canceled for stupid reasons. Conservatives latch on and use this to prop up their own claims of victimhood and "censorship" when they get righteously canceled. Overzealous leftists who've looped back into conservatism through "think of the children" and similar logic get lumped into the issue.

News media puts it all through their Nuance Killer 3000, and hey presto, you've been tricked into thinking leftists are all assholes and that the bad actors are representative of the whole, thus making you a victim of conservative bullshit from another, more convoluted angle. Getting cancelled, which once meant being held accountable for shitty behaviour, now gets used to mean unjust persecution and censorship, thus allowing assholes to escape consequences while they get busy doing all of the actual censorship.

Censorship today isn't getting cancelled. Censorship today is the same as it was 60 years ago. It's preventing people from having open discussions about sex, gender, race, class, etc. in a way that challenges the ruling class and its conservative ideology. If you can't see that, then you've fallen for the right's distraction.

[grandhotelabyss]

Up to like a year ago, I would have said that the secret constituency of nrx was the varyingly mobile part of the middle classes that works with its mind-software engineers, stem types, artists and philosophers of a kind. The pitch I think was that under the silicon god king/AI/supreme board of directors of the technocapitalist polis you’d be compensated for your loss of freedom by being freed from the coercive homogenization mandated by liberalism. In the last year, the Silicon Valley tycoons have revealed that they pretty much want to replace that body with artificial intelligences, which throws something of a wrench into that theory.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I was probably being too cryptic, but my point has long been that NRx isn't much different from "woke" in that both aim to accelerate the total replacement of nature with culture and technology, even if they slightly differ over what kinds of culture and technology. Thus they have basically the same protagonist—i.e., the trans woman—which is why Andrea Long Chu started sputtering about Nazis when the author of the gender accelerationist blackpaper tried to open up communication on Twitter, since the "ideological" distance between them is largely imaginary. But I started thinking about this before Chu hit the scene; I started thinking about it, in fact, when Justine Tunney did. People on "both sides" have gotten upset with me for saying this—some fashy kid on here pronounced my post from the weekend "cringe"—but I don't mean it as a gotcha against anyone. I'm not Mary Harrington—not a reactionary, not a feminist, not a reactionary feminist—though surely even her enemies can agree she's a pretty sharp analyst. Like I said a decade ago, this was all already anticipated in the high modernist literature I love, and if Harold Bloom were still with us he'd say it's just another day in the American Religion. I'm not complaining; I'm just observing. As someone who grew up reading Neil Gaiman, my concession to the woke is that "what is a woman?" (or indeed a man) is now and perhaps always was an imponderable; as someone who grew up reading Ray Bradbury, my concession to NRx is that humanity does belong among the stars.

[expfcultragreen]

My girlfriend refuses to be an organ donor because she doesnt want to accidentally save a fash

Im like, im sure they say the same thing

(but apparently we dont get donor organs anyway for ~reasons~?? like is this why the skin graft came off my own other leg? That whole patch looks 100 years old to this day)

Im sure some people wouldnt want their organs to go to us and we wouldnt want our organs to go to them, so if thats keeping a LOT of ppl from donating, shouldnt there be some sort of proviso element in place, even nominally? ("Nominal stuff" and corpse part harvestings go together like dish and spoon apparenty)

If you can opt in and out of being a donor at all, why are there no further options for people who want more things about their donorship specified. Eg "fine with donated organs going to gender affirming care for cis OR trans people", "just not the eyes, not to anybody", "no consent for donation of organs to ppl who said none of their organs could go to trans ppl" etc

We're not doctors, we're not under any oath to provide universal care (which, you guys suck at that, some hospitals are riddled with malpracticing eugenecists) which is why we get to decide to be donors or not. Make the system better and more people will take part. Its like you dont want organs unless we're philosophically on board with your secular views of the body as spiritually null meat on a platter. Its like the system makers want to punish us for being choosy about donating instead of soooo unnnnqualifiebly objective like they are when it comes to others lives 🙄😒

If i was more seflishly paranoid than religiously motivated, i wouldnt be registered for organ donation either; some cop or friend-of could just walk up and merc me for being on disability and being decadent and gay and satanic and all that. And then theyd claim my body was evidence and that the evidence got lost and theyd eat me, the pigs

Theyd all laugh that in bc you feed whores to the pigs, that we're best fit for pig food

Im not being dramatic, piglevel operators would easily have access to the information that ive "engaged in prostitution" just like anyone that whatever falsehood purveyor, whatever pied piper, said was so evil and unworthy of life. You must not believe youll be haunted, you must really think God's on your side; me too! "Then there's a pair of us"! so which of us is wronger? Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Theyd be scared of my organs taking people over, so theyd fail to save even those lives, theyre exceptionally stupid like that

Those falun gong people are very insistent that involuntary organ harvesting is a highway to motivated execution...im fascinated that the fash would accuse anyone else of it when they're the ones doing regular murders squarely along ~oooohhhhh soooo coincidental~ "social hygiene" lines...and nominally throwing the organs away!! Not fit to harvest they say! But that just makes them madder. They get so triggered thinking that while theyre toiling away, humbly making huge money and getting free stuff and wide acclaim, other people are getting .000000001 of a cent from them every year to not die in the street and the demonic busy-idiocy-pantomime-addicts keep dragging them back to deaths door anyway because WHY, daddy issues? Both shoulders just have angry nuns with rulers on them????

"You did butt stuff so your organs are too icky for me to benefit from and thats your fault for being misbehaved! I MAKE PERFECT SENSE!"

Like they really think they do, theyll give you the whole story if you give them half a chance. Have fun.

Citizens should be assessing degree of fashiness plus relative power of authority (licence-to-kill privilege), and making up their minds about the big either-or BBQ at which so many see us poised to arrive. Dont let the crowd around you get too thin, folks, survivor bias is a rotten thing in a psychopathic paradigm.

There shouldnt BE people so fully above the law that they can run people over and not think twice about consequences. "Internally review" my fucking ass, eh. We should drag that one out into the street and run HIM over, he's "not worth much" in MY universe.

Just my opinion 🤷

I guess we could be nice and re-educte him but he'd probably get hella depressed/suicidal so its like, thats just torture basically. In many cases i find myself doubtful of reform. If we're not killing them we have to devote considerable effort/resources to monitoring them; are they so merciful, would they be? Theyll winkle and wriggle and try to regain hegemonic sway, always working against progress. Where is mercy getting us: a more humane future? Or two steps back from getting there for every step forward. Anyone remember the great leap forward? Panache.

Sorry, thats my shoulder Mao

[archersgaymerblog]

(throwaway because i'm shy) it's so disheartening to see all the blogs that i used to trust a lot just... ignore the blatantly obvious crypt0f4sh in the fandom or just dismiss it as "random discourse", because it's not just random discourse, hell, even going by the notes of that one post you can see how blatantly obvious it is that they're mutuals with proud racists. i don't understand why people are suddenly are given sympathy like "think of the anons that could be sent to that person!" like, they want me dead! why would i care about them! there's no "both sides" to this argument, and i'm not "lacking in critical thinking" for being afraid to be myself in the fandom and seeing the obvious f4sh for what they are. it just... sucks man. it sucks so much. i'm sorry to vent in your inbox, but you're the only one out of a few of my followed blogs that was outward about this sorta stuff without being super dismissive and feeling like they were siding with the racists or staying quiet because they agreed. i think i'm just paranoid, but i don't know, at this point the silence is really alarming to me...

Hiya friend. I hope you don’t mind me posting this publicly, but it’s legit because I feel the exact same fuckin way hhh. Hell, I’m sorry I was the only fuckin one you were following saying shit about all this. I do get where maybe folks are uncomfortable about reblogging callout posts n shit but like you said, just leads to this paranoia. And frankly there should be a difference in response between “Hey this callout is literally just fictional content” vs “HEY THIS CALLOUT IS VERY REAL AND REFLECTIVE OF WHAT THEY BELIEVE” which I think that first is what turns folks off from callouts in general but. Still gotta take the real, legitimate ones seriously yea?????

Hell, ya wanna know something? When I first made my edited pinned and mentioned there was a fash trying to lay low in the fandom and to message me so I can let folks know? Know how many messages I got? Fuckin two. Only two whole people cared enough about a cryptofash to actually reach out. Bless those two folks, but genuinely the fact that I only got two fuckin messages was disheartening as all fuck. Hell I think that’s why I reblogged the callout in the end, usually they make me really uncomfortable, but if people weren’t willing to put in the work privately, might as well shove it in their fuckin faces.

I’ve been very angry and upset about all this. I’ve long since blocked the fash and their open supporters, but knowing they probably have people in the fandom just quietly supporting them and their defenders… hell I haven’t lost a lotta followers, but there hasn’t been a net gain on my end!! Which again just. God fucking damnit.

That to say, considering I’ve been pretty active in legion spaces… idk where people are with all of this. Maybe 2 or 3 people, but besides that, nothing. So, while I’ll probably be posting art still, think I won’t be as super active over here regarding legion content. Just cus, like you said, fuckin paranoia baby. So if the posts are slowing down, well now ya know. I literally do not know if yall care enough about me and other marginalized people to feel safe sharing yalls shit.

And again friend, I’m really sorry this has been so fucking disheartening. I completely get it, I wish it wasn’t. I’m not great at bein a comfort or talkin to folks, but I hope you know that it’s not just me n you, there are other people who give a shit, and none of us are “lacking in critical thinking.” God I could go on another tangent about that - BUT been kinda dragged on so. Fuck fashys and bigots forever, and if no one else bothers to say it, I love you as you are. And I hope one day we don’t gotta worry about this kinda shit in what should be spaces where we should feel safe.

[blackevermore]

Jojo Sona info dump

Name: Chiara Maka Le'Roy Namesake: Chiara - French for Light/Brightest // Le’Roy - French (Leroy) for ‘The King’ Nicknames: Chia Pet (Mista) Chi (naturally) Age: 21 Birthday: 05/07 Zodiac Sign: Taurus Chinese Zodiac: Rabbit

Personality:  INTP-T /  Logician - short patience - stubborn - a big on the loud side - turbulent -/+ blunt and straight forward -/+ Introverted -/+ very cautious and questions things -/+ sective empathy and sympathy  + Intuitive + Enthusiastic + Friendly

Stand: [Truth Hurts] - Mid range attacker

💥 Addictive | This stand is able to numb the motor system in the nervous system with binaural beats that makes them dance nonstop in a relax trance. When the victim is subdued the user can set off internal explosions in the Neurons causing crippling pains in targeted areas of the body when made contract with.

the learned ability would be enhancing the explosions and leading them to the heart for a very painful heart attack and up towards the brain for brain cramping migraines (this would take a lot of training due to the user suffering a blowback if not powerful enough)

Another addition of this attack for the nervous system explosions are when the user lands an attack in the same place three times can shock the nerves in that limb/area rendering it unless

💥 Teleport | The stand can move its user in a teleporting way by blocking the visual motors in the eyes for short periods of time. To the person being distracted they just see veils flying over their eyes.

💥 Playback | The user can change the tone of their voice to mind control someone as long as they stays within 30 feet of each other. The farther away the victim gets from the user the weaker the hold on them gets, once they step out of bound they can pull out of the hold but are left confused and dazed.

Background

[Before GW]

x Born in Cameroon near the western region in a small village north of Yaounde to a well off mother who married an upcoming drug dealer. When she was born she was the youngest sister to her twin brother, this was considered a bad omen in many different tribes in Africa. Although her mother wanted to keep both of the children her father took it into his hands and decided that one of the twins would be killed in order to rebalance their "luck". Chiara was picked to be the one to die since girls aren't really seen as that important within the tribe while boys can easily be taught trade and what not. But the night Chiara was meant to die the wrong baby was picked and the boy was killed instead. The following morning was when it was discovered the mistake was made. Her mother knew that due to the mix up they would try and kill Chiara so she planned to flee from the village. But when she spoke to a voudou priest he told her that Chiara was protected by a floating spirit that refused to leave her side. The priest told her that since the spirit would leave, capture it and have the baby wear the spirit as a protect against all evils.

x The father found out the mother's plans and wanted to aid her but didn't know how but then he was told what the priest said and thought it was best to follow through with capturing the spirit. Her father took the only thing that was valuable to him which was his mother's emerald necklace and broke it apart get the gem. When they captured the spirit it didn't put up much of a fight and went willingly. What Chiara's mother didn't know was how to get the baby to wear the necklace at all time without it being broken. They thought of many things but nothing seemed to be reasonable without breaking the gem down again to make earrings but that might release the spirit. So they spoke to the priest for suggestions and the priest took the gem and magically implaneted it in the back of Chiara's neck

x Throughout her years of growing up there were always signs of bad luck that seemed to follow Chiara. She would be bullied by other students who parents told them not to talk to her and she would be yelled at by elders to get away bc they didn't watch to catch what followed her. Chiara couldn't see her "protector" but the elders could and they thought it was death hanging over the girls head.  Eventually, when Chiara was 10 her father had made it up the latter of ranks in the underground world that he sent her and her mother away to the states to live new lives. In the states  Chiara did have a better childhood but she was still treated weird for the gem in her neck.

x When she was 15 she went back to Cameroon to visit her father and was nearly killed when she was spotted in the market. The attacker blamed her for their parents' death with was the result of a bad drug deal from her father. Chia quickly returned home and grew to hate her father for what he was doing. She even developed bad self esteem for how much of a bad omen she was due to being a twin. This made her somewhat bitter towards her life.

x When she was 18 she wanted to travel to Europe for graduating high school. Her father offered to pay for the trip as long as she had someone there to watch over her. Chia didn’t think anything of it and took the offer, when she arrived in Italy she was already being waited on by two strange men who were younger than her. Bruno and Leone. She hated the idea that two 17 year olds were watching her which made her cause trouble. Leone was the first to put his foot in her ass and tell her the only reason they had to look after her was because her father was signing a deal with their boss (no off the info was shared) and Chiara ended up having a break down while in Italy. For a few days of her trip she locked herself away in her room and didn't go anywhere.

x It was Bruno who popped Abba upside the head and managed to get inside Chiara's hotel room but that lead to Bruno having to face off with her now discovered stand Truth Hurts ( not Lizzo ) who was protecting Chiara from anyone who tried to get close. After coaxing Chiara to stand down and trust him Bruno managed to comfort her and coax her out of her room with a deep heart to heart yada yada

x The last two days of her trip was her apologizing to Bruno and Abba grumpily apologising to her for cussing her out. From then on out she found new friends in the two and would often chat with them when she could. Within the next year she was traveling to Italy for vacations and meeting the new members of Bruno's gang

x In the year before the canon lore of GW Chiara enrolled in university in communications major and English minor. Bruno helped her find her passion in not only in herself her in what was around her. Her major issue was always feeling like she actually was a bad omen and her desire were to one day find her meaning and be her true self not only for herself but those around her.

x During the events of GW Bruno tried to cut ties with Chiara to protect her from being connected with him and it worked for the most part and she was really depressed because she realized she loved him. While he was gone living his upmost dangerous life she was in Italy hanging on to false hope that he was still alive (he betrayed his boss and was now wanted dead or mostly dead along with his team)

[After GW and everyone lives >:G]

x Neither Bruno or Chiara confess their feelings in words but in actions and a long kiss outside Bruno's hangout spot it obvious they are a thing and she becomes the second mom to the group and "adopts" Narancia and Giorno. It was also the first time Mista got to met her in person.

x She also becomes an activist to stop the slaughter of twins throughout Africa and with the help of Don Gio she is able to accomplish a lot more than she could by herself. She also helps stops the drug smuggling from Africa to Italy with taking over the northern part of her father’s routes and shutting them down. 

[ Trivia!! ]

x Chiara tends to not voice it but when bad things do happen she thinks its because of her. If too many bad things happen at once she’ll distance herself from people.

x She knows her stand is hers but sometimes she talks to it like it’s her brother or a brother figure.

x She is a strong ride or die, she also feels strongly about people being abandon and having to make it on their own. She has a bad habit of babying Naracia that Bruno constantly tells her to stop doing.

x Kelpto, there was a phase in her life she was feeling rebelous and would steal things for temporary happiness. Old habits die hard and Brunp has to tell her to put things back a lot.

x She loves the fashy fashion life style and will not hesitate to spend someone else's money.

x Her pride is in her nails, which she gets done with fancy designs, if she breaks on you better fucking move.

x Has a strong attitude and when she starts counting “your red flags” and makes it to three you have crossed her patience line. 

x Should be wearing glasses but she wear contacts. On her down days she wears her glasses.

x Loves music and will play RnB on Bruno’s cleaning days

x She loves to dance, learning new dances, making dances, all of it. She was clown you in Just Dance in a heart beat. She can’t sit still and always has to move.

x She’s a kid at heart so sometimes Bruno is raising 6 kids and a grumpy teenager (Abba)

@gunkyengines​ @kapperson​

[acertaincritic]

Various Donghua Reviews

I watched or tried to watch a whole bunch of donghua in the past few weeks, and since I see little discourse on this type of animation, I decided to compile them into a list with my short opinions attached. If you are toying with the idea of watching this or that Chinese animation, check out below for both recommendations and a couple of no-no series ^.^”

First things first, some notes. “Wuxia” is a popular genre in Chinese media, based off martial arts, and most often it strays into fantasy territory (from what I’ve seen, at least). It comes with a set of already established tropes and world building details. Think about Western fantasy - when you see elves in it, you don’t have to be told what they are. There are variations, but generally elves = pointed ears + beautiful + magical, and everybody knows that. Wuxia has similar things that do not get explained in every story, so it might feel overwhelming at first, though many translators do try to explain them in the notes. Just for the sake of those who want to know before starting watching, here’s what might make your life easier:

Cultivators - people a little like mages, except they have flying swords and generally are well-versed in martial arts. Usually their purpose is to battle evil supernatural beings. In some stories they are ageless (as in, they don’t grow old) and very hard to kill, in others it’s toned down. Above a certain level, they often train by remote meditation.

Golden Core/Core Formation - sth like the source of their power?... Not exactly, but they have to form it through training if they want to use advanced techniques. It’s situated somewhere between chest and belly, I suck at anatomy, don’t kill me.

Paper talismans  - rectangular pieces of paper that are amazingly easy to toss at your enemies. Used for casting spells, easy to understand just by watching. Also if they seem to be glued to sth, then they usually serve as a seal of some kind.

Various demons/spirits/other magical beings - gosh, there’s a ton. TBH I don’t even know if some aren’t completely made-up by the authors for the sake of their stories. Generally be ready that a new demon/beast/something can jump out from every corner, and the characters are going to know what it is, while you don’t. Resentful energy seems to often be tied to them, as in, it’s what often fuels them.

All right, without further ado, here’s what I’ve tried already. The list is more or less in the order of recommendation, aka from those I liked best to those that I didn’t like at all.

Title: Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Grandmanster of Demonic Cultivation

Throughline: The supposed villain of the cultivators’ world gets reincarnated into an adult’s body 13 years after his death. Things escalate from there.

My take: 

+ my entry point into donghua.

+ I was hesitant to watch because of the BL tag, but there really is no need to get scared by it. There’s plot proper, well-developed characters, both main and side, and overall this clearly is a fantasy series with a romance rather than a romance with fantasy setting.

+ beautiful art and great animation with only sparse moments when CGI looks kinda clanky.

+ wonderful music, too.

+ honestly though, I’ve been on a low when I came across it and was brought back to life. It’s been a long, long time since I fangirled over a series so much.

+ if you follow my blog you must’ve already seen about it.

+ Just give it a try, OK?

- some things in the beginning are not clearly explained and many names get tossed in at once; especially if you don’t know any Chinese, they might all sound the same. The characters also all have long black hair and bishe faces. I recommend first checking them online and memorizing at least the main casts, it really makes watching it much easier - focus on the bangs and clothes, and try to remember their names. Or you can always rewatch the beginning after you get better at recognizing who is who.

- the cut to flashbacks is confusing, as it happens at the very end of episode 2. Then episodes 3 to 14.5 take place in the past - another thing that’s not super clear and worth keeping in mind.

Title: Di Wang Gong Lue / The Emperor’s Strategy

Throughline: The Emperor and his loyal noble ally take on many problems that befall the country.

My take:

+ This is the closest series to “Mo Dao Zu Shi” I found so far, though there aren’t that many specific similarities. Only the overall ‘feel’ is similar.

+ Also tagged BL, but TBH, if I didn’t know about it before watching, I still wouldn’t know it.

+ The relationship between the two main characters is like, funny and cute at the same time.

+ Politics and fantasy intertwined.

+ Also a lot of interesting side characters, though maybe they could’ve been given more screen time.

+ great character designs and music.

- animation. It looks like anime from around the year 2000, even though the series came out in 2018.

- some flashback stuff seems really cheesy. There’s not a lot of it, thankfully.

- the first three or four episodes aren’t very engaging. I got invested around episode 5, though as you see, the beginning isn’t so terrible that you can’t wade through it.

Title: Mi Yu Xing Zhe / Uncharted Walker

Throughline: A group of people are put on a tropical island, forced to play an escape game under extreme circumstances.

My take:

+ an interesting set of characters with various backgrounds, most of them likable or at least understandable.

+ despite the setup, it’s not as bloody as many similar series. Characters can die, but they don’t die that often, which really builds tension and keeps you on the edge of the seat, because when there’s a close-to-death moment, you never know if it’s one when the character will really die or when they get rescued last-minute.

+ there is a very strong “game” feeling to this, where characters generally have to figure out how to use their resources to overcome various obstacles.

+ some psychological stuff here and there.

+ very good animation and designs.

-/+ there are borderline supernatural elements, though generally playing pretend at scientific. I personally don’t mind it, but some people might be put off or disappointed.

- it turns much more creepy in the last 3 or so episodes, to the point that it becomes more of a horror than a survival and mystery story. Even worse, the horror stuff comes in a setup that’s pretty realistic, so I have flashback ‘till this day (I don’t like horrors, and being realistic makes it much worse). TBH if I knew, I’d probably resign from watching, because as much as I enjoyed everything up until that part, the creeps aren’t worth it... However, perhaps you like horrors better than I do.

- a HUGE cliffhanger at the end. But like, HUUUUUGE HUGE.

Title: Shuangsheng Lingtan /  Twin Spirit Detectives

Throughline: Twin brothers take on cases of supposed supernatural phenomena, bent on proving that they are not real - only that one of them appears to be a ghost himself...

My take:

+ interesting setup.

+ detective stuff - I have a soft spot for mysteries.

+ likable main characters and a few well-developed side characters, too.

+ animation is overall quite good.

+ has a solid arc, though with an open ending and kinda a cliffhanger about a side character at the end.

-/+ bordering on the supernatural territory again.

- horror elements, but thankfully, this time they aren’t that realistic.

- some things in the first few episodes feel rushed or not properly developed (apparently the issue is with the donghua adaptation, and the original manhua had a slower beginning).

Title: Quan Zhi Gao Shou /  The King’s Avatar

Throughline: The top player of “Glory” is forced to give up his account and retire for a year. What will he do now?

My take:

+ a decent setup, though it gets old quickly.

+ a large cast of interesting character with various strengths and weaknesses and strongly-defined personalities.

+ great art style and characters’ design.

+ great animation during fights.

- the main character. Just. I’ve rarely encountered such a Gary Stue, I really wish I could see him lose for real. Like, I’m OK with him beating noobs, that’s realistic, but he doesn’t stop even after other pros come into play.

- the plot seems generally directionless so far, and gets tiring easily.

- originally I was supposed to binge-watch it with friends as a series none of us knew beforehand, but we gave up after 6 episodes and I switched it to MDZS instead. I finished it alone later, and mostly for the sake of the side characters and animation.

- it is generally watchable, but like, far from best.

This point marks the end of series I watched whole. The following are series I dropped after 5-6 episodes (which I consider a fair amount).

Title: Ling Qi / Spritpact

Throughline: A guy dies and is given an ultimatum - to pass away or become a spirit companion of a demon-battling, Korean priest.

My take:

+ setup and world building. This seems just like the kind of fantasy that fits my taste.

+ ...character design is not terrible, I guess?

+ apparently the animation gets better in season 2.

+ the demon-battling priest seems like a character archetype I might like.

+/- TBH this series wasn’t tragic, I may still go back to it one day, if I really feel like it. The idea has potential and the plot probably gets better later, I just wasn’t able to prevail until then.

- animation in the first season is kinda meh. Could be worse, but it still doesn’t please. Don’t let the marvelous poster above deceive you!

- the main character. He’s so whiny, I was unable to stand him. He’s the main reason I dropped this, and I honestly have no idea if he gets any better later.

Title: Quanzhi Fashi / Full-Time Magister

Throughline: Three months after a guy gets transported into a magic-filled alternative reality, he struggles to get into magic school to become the best mage and get a lot of money for his family.

My take:

+ setup/world building again hit a soft spot in my fantasy-loving heart.

+ ...I’ve seen some fragments from season 2, apparently animation is good there.

- I hated the MC of QZGS, but he at least had half a reason to be so unrealistically OP. This guy here... he’s a new low... Basically “How to Write a Gary Stu?” example. Like. C’mon. You can have an OP cool protagonist without making them a GS.

- despite the potentially interesting premise, this is as simplistic as it could be. The MC is ridiculed, but he turns out to be super powerful with talent for not just one, but two most rare elemental magics. He gets bullied - then he shows off how much better he is than the bully during magic exams, stunning everybody. One of the Big Bad Rich Guys tries to recruit him - he flat-out refuses in a infuriatingly arrogant manner. Etc. etc.

- Characters are as deep as a puddle during drought.

- Look, there’s a set of tropes that are generally laughed at in this type of premise, like the MC having an OP secret power, getting put down by everybody to an unrealistic degree etc. Here they are played painfully straight, and there’s nothing more to the story. Absolutely nothing, not a single interesting character or plot thread. I kept watching for so long hoping that something would turn up, but it didn’t.

- animation in season 1 is pretty bad.

That would be all for my donghua experience so far. I had many ups, though I guess some salt pits were unavoidable +_+

[ashekirk]

So I’m a witch again...

Well, here I go again.

I used to be a pagan, back in my teens up until I was about 22. I was a true believer. I fully believed in gods and goddesses, and that I could summon magic to create change in the universe. Well, I say "fully," but there was always a seed of a doubt in my head that the supernatural was just fake. It had always been there, even when I was being indoctrinated as a Christian in childhood. Perhaps it helped that my sister never believed in any of it, and wasn't afraid to say so.

That seed sprouted and bloomed during my twenties. As I matured, and started working, thoughts of witchcraft and deities became just abstract concepts in my mind, and then I came upon the YouTube skeptic community. At the time, it wasn't the absolute cesspool it became in the last 5 years, and I found it very enlightening. I realised that there was no reason to believe in anything that I couldn't find convincing evidence of. I learned to think critically, and to see religion and new age woo as lies to control the masses and make money.

I was quite a big fan of Matt Dillahunty, who, on The Atheist Experience, would push back on any spiritual belief and ritual as harmful to both individuals and to society.

But the allure of the Atheist movement on YouTube fell away as they turned away from criticising Christianity to outright bashing on feminism, social justice, transgender, and of course Islam. To even tolerate the existence of Islam was unacceptable, and if you were a feminist, well, basically you were Hitler.

Of course, Matt Dillahunty didn't participate in this shitlordery, but the mystique around him did eventually break for me, when he said some pretty rubbish things about the issue of another atheist celebrity being accused of sexual harassment. Now, I view him as an okay atheist community leader, all things considered, but I'm not fawning over the guy.

And then the Trump presidency happened, and Nazis started multiplying all over the internet. Some of them were religious, some of them were not. Their white supremacy and fashy thought was the new enemy.

So, I was a moderate atheist, who was happy to coexist with leftists, regardless of their religion - right wingers being way more toxic to society than any sufficiently liberal religious person. I realised that while religion certainly plays a factor in oppression, it's conservatism and fascism that are the true problems in society, and religion is just the excuse a lot of people use to take away rights of people they don't like and keep society at a point where they're on top, looking down on everyone else.

Fighting for justice and activism kept me busy, but I was desperately empty inside.

Battling depression for years and seeing countries all over the world being pulled in by hard right nationalism left me in a terrible state.

At the same time, the new reboots of Charmed and Sabrina appeared on the small screen. I watched The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and after digesting the series, started feeling a great longing.

While the series leaves a bit to be desired in their representation of witchcraft, the aesthetics and the rituals depicted reminded me of how amazing I used to feel when working magic. Whether magic was real or not didn't matter to the effect it had on me. Feelings of connection to nature, having energy surging through me, the feeling of being able to do something about things I had no real way of changing.

Compare that with the hopelessness I felt, wishing every day that an asteroid would just smash into the earth and wipe out humanity like it did the dinosaurs. No karma to punish bad people, no ability to change the horrible things that were happening except desperate tweets and barely watched YouTube videos.

Finally, I started googling things like "atheist witchcraft" and "doing witchcraft even though you don't believe in it."

I came across Humanistic Paganism, a movement that seems to be exactly what I was looking for. And furthermore, it links up so well with the way my psychologist described my anxiety disorder, i.e. the primitive, irrational brain taking over in times of panic, and having many detrimental effects on the body.

Magic changes my mindset; my mindset changes my probabilities of successfully manifesting my will in my life. It works by reconciling the rational and the irrational parts of myself. Take a protection charm for instance. A braid of garlic, a bag of herbs or a piece of metal, in and of itself, doesn’t protect me from anything. But if I use it as a protection charm, it reminds my rational brain to be vigilant, which helps me avoid avoidable danger. But it also appeases my irrational side by acting as if the piece of metal or bag of herbs will protect me from unavoidable danger. My irrational side is an heirloom from some hairy caveman who screeched and ran when he heard the “angry” thunderstorm. That irrational side is where uncontrollable emotional breakdowns come from. With magic, I gave that irrational side a more productive job to do so that I don’t have to simply repress it. That way all of me can work towards the same goal. From <https://humanisticpaganism.com/2014/05/14/an-atheists-magical-practice-in-detail-by-atheistwitch/> 

As soon as I read it, I knew it was time to break out the pentacle again.

So, now I'm an atheist witch that doesn't believe in magic, but I do believe in the therapeutic power of witchcraft. And so, I'm going to practice witchcraft as if I believe it, all the while knowing that its primary purpose is satiating that part of my mind that hungers for meaning and miracles.

Already, I am feeling a renewed sense of purpose and control of my destiny. It doesn't matter if it comes from a fake place, as long as it keeps the depressive nihilism away.

Obviously, this is deeply personal, and certainly not everyone's cup of tea. But for me, it's just what I needed.

[recentanimenews]

A Couple of Cuckoos – 01 (First Impressions) – Family Knots

Umino Nagi is a straight-A student at a good school who spends most of his time studying and battling his academic rival. He was also accidentally switched at birth. Now that he’s sixteen, he’s going to meet his birth parents. While his sister Sachi, who has been his sister for those sixteen years, decries her brother as an egg-headed loner, her tough act quickly falls when faced with the possibility of losing her brother.

Nagi pats her head and assures Sachi he has no intention of changing his family this late in the game. On his way to the meeting, he encounters a beautiful young woman with twin tails in a frilly dress, seemingly about to jump to her death. Nagi leaps into action, but inadvertently gropes the girl while trying to keep her from jumping. And she wasn’t going to really jump, she was just recording something for her Insta.

While not the most auspicious (or original) manner of meeting, the two soon bond over a common problem: family issues. The girl, one Amano Erika, is trying to start drama in order to convince her mom that she’s not getting married, while Nagi is a mix-up baby. When he learns what school he attends, she decides that he will be her fake boyfriend so she can gt the wedding called off.

When Nagi bristles at this plan and tries to walk away, she holds up very crisp 8K video of him groping her. While I wish there had been one of those *ding-dong* sounds accompanied by a PSA saying “Let’s not blackmail people”, this puts Nagi in a bind, and surrenders. The speed with which Erika resorts to an underhanded tactic is later revealed to be a clue about who she really is and where she comes from.

Despite having the wherewithal to blackmail and mocking Nagi for having never dated anyone, Erika has to google what boyfriends and girlfriends do. Both agree “doin’ it” isn’t a viable option, so she settles for photos of her with her bae. She gets it in her head that if they wear matching badass outfits and he looks tough, her parents will be more inclined to back down. Thus in the middle of this fake boyfriend ploy, they have a dress-up date.

Despite Erika blowing over $3,800 (on her limitless credit card, confirming she’s a rich girl in net worth) none of the photos they take look genuine, but rather look exactly like what they are: staged. Erika ends up going with their first photo, which was taken on accident and thus totally candid and natural, giving you “a sense of the air of the moment,” as she rather poetically put it. Alas, it doesn’t work, and her parents urge her to stop messing around and head home before curfew.

Before she can, Nagi enters another very well-worn but in this case nicely-executed trope of accidental romance anime: revealing surprising toughness when the girl is threatened by three stalkers. This happens very suddenly after an episode that had a nice steady flow, and I feel like another comic disclaimer not to commit assault should have popped up, but I still like how it revealed a new side to Erika: that Nagi’s former delinquent parents brought him up to win any fight he found himself in.

Erika genuinely appreciates his chivalrous behavior, and when her car shows up to take her home, lets him know she’ll delete the blackmail video, something I appreciated being resolved here and now rather than continue to loom over Nagi. Erika reveals that because she’s “like this” she has no friends, but that she and Nagi felt like friends for a day and it was fun. She also says, claiming to be joking later, that if it were him she had to marry, she might not have as much of a problem with it.

Naturally, when Nagi arrives to meet his birth parents, he learns both they and his own parents have arranged for their two kids to marry, so that they can all be one happy family. They just assumed the photo meant they’d already met and were dating!

Tha means his birth parents’ kid, the one he was switched with, is Erika, which explains why she has more of a delinquent streak in her (and sense of street fashion!) than a hoity-toity rich princess. In keeping with the nature she inherited form her birth parents, she follows through on her promise to punch her fiancé the way Nagi punched those punks.

That is one hell of a premise, and once you suspend your disbelief such a ridiculous arrangement would ever be made between two very different pairs of parents without any input from their children, it looks to be an extremely fun one too. A Couple of Cuckoos arrives fashionably late but looks great and has a goofy but engaging concept, while the 24-episode run means we’ll have ample time to dig into who Nagi and Erika are and how they handle this arrangement.

The two cours also means there’ll be ample time to tell three parallel relationships: between Nagi and Erika, the kids switched at birth, between Nagi and Sachi, siblings not related by blood, and finally the surprise reveal of Nagi’s aforementioned academic rival, who is also his crush, Segawa Hiro (Touyama Nao), whom he’s vowed to confess to once he’s usurped her class ranking throne. Did I mention she can’t remember his name? It’s all a big, beautiful mess!

By: sesameacrylic

[dillydedalus]

november reading

so with lockdown #2, my master’s thesis done & handed in etc, i just had absolutely nothing going on so this month so... lots of books. featuring Houses full of statues and birds, an AU of weimar berlin, and... the plague?

someone who will love you in all your damaged glory, raphael bob-waksberg (audio) actually listened to this last month! anyway even tho i forgot about it, i actually really liked it! it’s a collection of short stories, all about love in some way, most with a strange twist - a couple wants a small wedding but the MIL insists they have to at least sacrifice 5 goats to the stone god and have a shrieking chorus, or it’s hardly a real wedding, right? that kind of thing. i really liked these stories; they were fun, hopeful without being cheesy (mostly), and the audio production, with lots of actors reading the different stories was fun. 4/5

the driver’s seat, muriel spark man this novella is nasty, but in a good way - sharp, vicious, mean but so well executed. it’s also pretty hard to discuss without spoiling it & i do think one should go into this unspoiled. but it’s certainly a classic of the unhinged women genre, showing lise seemingly making herself as noticeable, irritating and off-putting as she can on a trip to an unnamed (probably italian) city. 3.5/5

the empress of salt and fortune, nghi vo (singing hills cycle #1) a lovely novella set in an asian-inspired fantasy empire, which shows young cleric chih and their speaking hoopoe almost brilliant learn the story of a previous empress, a northerner who rose from exile as an cast-aside wife to power and of her servant, a peasant girl called rabbit. enjoyed the setting and the way this story unfolded through objects and rabbit’s retelling, and will definitely read the sequel novella which comes out in december. 3.5/5

pine, francine toon (audio) this is a crime/thriller type book with some horror elements about a young girl whose mother has disappeared mysteriously when she was very small. she lives with her dad in the scottish highlands close to a giant forest. the beginning is pretty cool & creepy, but then like 80% of it is just the girl being sad & wanting to know what happened to her mother & the dad being an alcoholic mess. and then most of the plot happens in the last 10% & isn’t great. disappointing. 2/5

where the wild ladies are, aoko matsuda (tr. from japanese by polly barton) a collection of short stories retelling japanese folklore stories about female ghosts/monsters with a feminist twist. on the whole, i liked these stories, but also found them a lot more light in tone than i expected; i guess i thought this would be more on the wild & raw side, so i ended up finding them a bit underwhelming. might also be a problem with lacking cultural context. will say tho that tilted axis press is great & i will seek out more of their books. 2.5/5

piranesi, susanna clarke (audio) god this was so good! so delightful! the House with its many rooms full of tides and clouds and birds and statues is a wonderful, magical yet melancholy setting, the narrator is kind & gentle & earnest, full of wonder and curiosity at the House and its mysteries (the contrast between the narrator’s and the Other’s attitude to the House... yes), the slow building up to the numerous reveals are just. very well done. the writing is lovely (did i almost cry about the albatross? yes) and chiwetel ejiofor is a great audio narrator. just all around lovely & the ending hits just right. 4.5/5

doomsday book, connie willis reading this book during lockdown #2.... a galaxy brain move i wouldn’t necessarily recommend. anyway this is set in a near future where time travel is used for historical research; oxford university is sending the young historian kivrin on the first mission to the middle ages (1320, which is perfectly safe, as far as medieval years go), but things go wrong and soon modern day oxford is under quarantine (ha. how wild. can you imagine.) and kivrin notices that some things are a bit off about where she is (spoiler it’s actually 1348 and y’all know what that means right... PLAGUE TIME). lots of people on goodreads found this slow and boring and while it is pretty damn slow (and for a world with time travel way too many plot points hinge on being unable to contact people by telephone), i found it riveting and uh dread-inducing throughout, but also really warm and immersive. adored this, was devastated at the end. even almost a month later i’m still in my feelings about it. 4.5/5

too loud a solitude, bohumil hrabal (tr. from czech by michael henry heim) a novella i intellectually appreciated but didn’t really love - the narrator works as a paper compactor in a nightmarish basement full of mice (that also get crushed by the hundreds) from where he imagines rat wars in the sewers but from where he also saves hundreds of books. it’s fascinating & well-written but as soon as it gets away from the nightmare paper-crushing basement, it just loses its appeal, especially when the narrator reminisces about his relationships to women (how to simultaneously put women on a pedestal and smear shit on them!!!). 3/5

i’m thinking of ending things, iain reid literary horror/thriller type book with a really intriguing first half, as a young woman is visiting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time while thinking of ending the relationship and things increasingly feel off (the parents are weird, there’s a picture on the wall that the boyfriend claims is him as a child, but is actually her, she gets weird voicemails from her own number). great sense of vague unease, very scary. then the second half kind of blows up the whole story in a way that i should theoretically find interesting but just found kind of underwhelming and not scary, especially since the ending then feels the need to spell it all out for you. 2/5

passing, nella larsen (reread) ugh this is brilliant and i almost don’t have anything to say about it so i’ll just summarise it i guess. it’s a novella about two black women in 1920s america, who knew each other as teenagers and who run into each other in a rooftop bar, where both of them are passing as white. irene finds out that clare is passing full-time, married to a white man who does not know that she is black, and although she strongly disapproves, she can’t help but be seduced (the queer subtext is strong here) into renewing their friendship, which begins to threaten her sense of stability and control. this book is pretty much pitch-perfect, has a lot of things to say about race, loyalty, what happens when categories we live by are threatened or destabilised, and is also just tight and elegantly written and. ugh. brilliant. 5/5

ring shout, p. djèlí clark an alternative history/fantasy book where the ku klux klan gets possessed by demons from another dimension and a group of black (and other marginalised) women (some men too) who are able to see these demons have to fight them from gaining more power through a showing of birth of a nation. note: the klan is still already evil without the demons, but their evil makes it easier for the demons to possess them. very cool concept, very cool setting, but i found the main character and some of the plot progression a little boring. 3/5

amberlough, lara elena donnelly (amberlough dossier #1) this is really just the nazi takeover of weimar berlin in an alternate world (literally... the denizens of the city of amberlough are amberlinians... the two epigraphs are from le carre and cabaret...), told thru an amberlinian spy (cyril) forced to work for the nazi-equivalent (the ospies), his secret cabaret mc/smuggling kingpin boyfriend (aristide), and rough-and-tumble sally bowles (cordelia). as such, it’s extremely my shit, although i will say that donnelly makes it a bit easy on herself by making the nazi parallel so very overt; the ospies’ ideology is not particularly detailed beyond ‘real fashy’ and wanting to unite four loosely federated states. it’s just.... a bit weaksauce, and while she does include an ethnic minority for the ospies to hate, this also doesn’t feel as fundamental to their ideology as it should. also cyril sucks. but these issues may be solved in the sequels & it was a lot of fun. also.... amazing cover. 3/5

the vanishing half, brit bennett very much in conversation with larsen’s passing, this is a 2020 historical novel about passing, colorism, and identity, in which desiree and stella, very light-skinned african american twins who grow up in a black town that values lightness very much, become separated when stella chooses to pass for white and marry a white man. the book is very immersive and engaging, and stella and desiree are interesting characters, but (i felt unfortunately) much of the book is focused on their daughters, whose chance meeting might expose stella/reunite the sisters/etc etc, but who weren’t as interesting. the plot also relies on coincidences a lot which is a bit annoying. still an interesting and entertaining read. 3/5

die stadt der anderen, anthology printed version of an art project where three pairs of authors were sent on trips through berlin, which each person writing about what the other person showed them and how they experienced the city through the other. there was nothing earth-shaking in this, but reading it during lockdown was lovely. in conclusion i love berlin... would love to experience it again some time. 3/5

the fire this time, edited by jesmyn ward collection of essays on anti-black racism in america, many in response to the beginning of the black lives matter movement. i don’t have much to say about it, but it is very good and i would recommend. as is often the case with essay anthologies about serious topics i don’t really think i can rate it.

intimations, zadie smith a very short collection of essays written during early lockdown. smith is always smart and fun but i wish these had been a little more focused on politics and less on personal experience, but like, you can’t really criticise a book for not being what you wanted it to be. ‘contempt as a virus’ was very good. 

superior: the return of race science, angela saini really solid, engaging and accessible discussion of race science and why... it’s bad & dangerous, both looking at race science in the past and the invention of race, and how it is returning and regaining influence (not to say that race science ever completely disappeared, but as saini explains, it moved into a more marginal space in the sciences after ww2). 3.5/5

the hive, camilo josé cela (tr. from spanish by j.m. cohen & arturo barea) spanish modern classic set in madrid during the last few years of ww2. told thru short fragmentary snippets with a huge rotating cast of characters, mostly lower and middle class, going about their days, with the theme tying them together being “the city, that tomb, that greased pole, that hive”, which is a very sexy line, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. the tone is v dispassionate and in combination with the huge cast it just made me profoundly unengaged. it also has the weird habit of changing scene in the middle of a paragraph, which i found rather confusing. 2.5/5 slave old man, patrick chamoiseau (tr. from french by linda coverdale) absolutely amazing short novel from the creolité movement aabout an old slave, seemingly resigned to his position, suddenly escaping and being pursued by the slavemaster’s terrifying monstrous mastiff through the forests of martinique, but really also about selfhood, relearning humanity, trauma and nature. the language is at turns sparse and lush and always gorgeous and the translation from french/creole uses endnotes (we love an endnote) and a strategy of doubling to retain some of the original language, which was really cool to read. so yeah this is brilliant. 4/5

mexican gothic, silvia moreno-garcia gothic horror novel about young mexican socialite noemí visiting her recently-married cousin in her new (english) family’s isolated, creepy and dilapidated mansion after said cousin sent a disturbing and strange letter calling for help. gothic horror shenanigans involving vivid dreams, family secrets and eugenics ensue. after a slow start, i absolutely devoured the second half in one afternoon bc once it gets going it REALLY gets going. not super-scary, but a nice creepy atmosphere & reveal. also loved how it combines the clear yellow wallpaper inspo (the cousin’s letter involves people in the wallpaper) and the focus on the english family’s eugenic ideology (not a fun fact but charlotte perkins gilman was a eugenicist), and the vain & flighty but also smart & stubborn protagonist. had a lot of fun with this. 3.5/5

i’m also still reading a tale of love and darkness by amos oz which is really good but which is taking me forfuckingever. 

[postgamecontent]

Sword of Vermilion: SEGA Genesis RPG Spotlight #4

Original Release Date: December 16, 1989

Original Hardware: SEGA Mega Drive

Developer/Publisher: SEGA-AM2/SEGA

There are a lot of interesting things to say about Sword of Vermilion. It was the first home game produced by the legendary Yu Suzuki and his team at SEGA-AM2. It was an RPG, which was decidedly outside of the developer's usual wheelhouse of thrilling arcade experiences. SEGA chose it as one of the handful of games to spotlight in its famous but ultimately unsuccessful "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" campaign. It uses four different viewpoints, which must have been an awful lot of work. In North America, it shipped with a 100+ page hintbook that basically walked you through the game. Some of the important names who worked on the game left SEGA after its release to found Genki, where they largely worked on racing games and only returned to the RPG genre once more with 1998's Jade Cocoon.

Yet for all the fascinating and unusual things happening around the game, Sword of Vermilion isn't anything particularly special. It's neither an amazing game nor a terrible one, the sort of experience that fills the belly but is forgotten by the next meal. It feels like even SEGA forgets about it now and then. The game was re-released on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, was part of the PlayStation 2 and PSP SEGA Genesis Collection, and is also available through the nearly-exhaustive Steam SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, but somehow was left out of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. As first-party Genesis games with no rights issues go, Sword of Vermilion is a relative rarity among SEGA's many re-packagings of their 16-bit output.

As near as I can tell, nobody who worked on Sword of Vermilion had made an RPG before. The team was clearly familiar with the genre, though. I'd venture to say that they obviously knew of such hits as Wizardry, Dragon Quest, Xanadu, and Ys. The trouble is that they apparently couldn't decide which one they wanted to ape, and ended up doing a little bit of all of them. I don't mean that in a chocolate-meets-peanut butter kind of way, either. This isn't like Dragon Quest's smooth fusion of Wizardry's first-person turn-based combat and Ultima's bird's-eye overworld exploration. Instead, it's four dramatically different gameplay styles haphazardly stitched together into a bizarre Frankenstein's monster with little apparent thought or care put into making them consistent with each other.

The game starts with a somewhat lengthy cut-scene that sets up the story. Basically, some bad guys overthrew the good king. Before they arrived, he sent his infant son away with his top knight so that he could grow up safely in secret. Years pass, and the knight is on his deathbed. He summons the boy he raised, now a man, to finally reveal the truth of his origins. This is where you get control for the first time, and the game for all the world looks like a standard JRPG at this point. You can explore the town from an overhead view, talking to people, visiting homes, and going to shops. Once you reach the side of the man you believed was your father, he tells you of your royal lineage and instructs you to gather an assortment of rings that will help you take back your birthright. The first was entrusted to him, and he hid it in a cave many years before. Having told you all of that, he hands you some starting cash and then promptly kicks the bucket.

You might be tempted to just buy some gear and leave the town at this point, but that's not a good idea. Someone in the town will give you a map if you speak to them, and you'll really want to have that in hand before you step out of the town boundaries. As soon as you do head out, you'll run into the next gameplay style: first-person exploration. Both the overworld and the dungeons use this viewpoint, and while it's not quite as smooth as it was in Phantasy Star, it's convincing enough. In this mode, the main viewing area only takes up a portion of the screen. The remaining parts of the screen are dedicated to status windows and a bird's-eye map of the area you're in. If you haven't gotten your hands on a map, you'll only be able to see the square your character is occupying. You can technically map this yourself on paper if you really want to, but the NPCs are pretty good about giving you what you need when you need it.

This isn't too strange so far, though. The first few games from Richard Garriot of Ultima fame basically used a similar combination of overhead and first-person exploration. Even SEGA had already done this, in the Master System classic Phantasy Star. You start heading towards the cave that holds the ring you're looking for and suddenly a slime appears in your view. Time to battle! And also time for our third gameplay style. Yes, the game switches to another screen where you have a sort of angled overhead view of your character and a number of enemies. You have to move your guy around and swing his tiny sword at the monsters to take them out. If they touch you or hit you with an attack, you take some damage. Should you run out of HP, you'll be kicked back to the last church you saved at with half your money gone. You'll often start fights in the middle of a crowd, and the enemies are surprisingly aggressive. Once you get the hang of things it's not so bad, though, and you can always beat a hasty retreat by walking off the edge of the screen.

It takes a little while before you'll encounter the fourth and final gameplay style. After recovering the ring from the cave, the townspeople will direct you to the next town and even give you a map. Upon arriving there, you'll enter into what turns out to be the pattern for the rest of the game. The townspeople have some kind of problem. Maybe it's a wicked king. Maybe they've been transformed by evil magic. Whatever the problem is, you'll be given a map to a nearby cave and directed to retrieve something from it. You'll probably have to spend some time grinding experience and money to power up your character first, and there are some chests scattered around the overworld that give you something to do for at least part of that work. Anyway, you'll go into the cave, do the thing you're supposed to do, and that usually leads to the final gameplay style: a boss battle against a huge creature of some kind.

For these battles, you're playing from a straight-on side view. You can duck, swing your sword, and move forwards and backwards. Carefully hack away at the giant monster in front of you and you'll soon emerge victorious. You'll get one of the rings, the townspeople will hand you another map, and you'll be directed to the next town where you'll repeat the process. Lather, rinse, and repeat for 14 towns and around 20 hours, and you're all done. The number of monsters is quite limited, the game makes heavy use of palette swaps to stretch them out, and just about every location looks the same as the last. There's very little strategy in either of the battle systems, making combat somewhat dull. You'll never have any reason or cause to go backwards, with the result being that this a very linear, repetitive marathon to the finish.  

Given when it was released, Sword of Vermilion looks the part of a next-generation RPG. Everything is quite detailed, and those side-view boss battles are pure spectacle. The music, composed by Yasuhiro "Yas" Takagi, is very good. Each town gets its own theme song, covering a wide range of moods. Yet beyond those surface elements, the game is decidedly 8-bit in its design. As an example, the simple act of emptying a chest sitting in front of you requires you to bring up the menu, choose 'open', read the text box telling you the contents, bring up the menu again, and choose 'take'. Dungeons are pitch-black unless you use a candle or a lantern, and candles only last for a short amount of time. Your inventory is limited to eight items, not including equipment, so you have to make very careful decisions about what healing and utility items you want to bring.

The maps for the dungeons are hidden in the dungeons themselves, so you might need to do some physical mapping until you come across them. You also need to check every direction of each square when you're exploring, as chests and other objects might show up when you face west but not when you face east, for example. You can only save at churches in towns, so if you're playing it as it was designed you need to make sure you have time to see your outings through before embarking. Oh, and don't expect to see the stats of gear found in shops or chests. You'll have to equip them to see their effect, and some of them are cursed. For a game from 1989, none of this is particularly shocking; few games of this era broke ranks when it came to interface decisions. But many soon would, and that made Vermilion feel like something from a by-gone era within a matter of a year or two.

The strange thing is, I kind of enjoy Sword of Vermilion. The game has a really nice rhythm to it, even if it is somewhat mindless. The initial parts of each dungeon where you're operating without a map are pretty fun, and I like the basic structure of having to solve a different problem in each town before moving on. I had fun exploring each of the maps to see if I could turn up any treasure chests or special encounters. The battle systems are easily the worst parts of the game, but they're not offensively bad. At the very least, the normal battle allow you to feel your character's growing strength. The boss battles are stupid but thankfully quite painless in most cases. I'll even give a tip of the hat to the localization. It's a bit clunky in places, but it's largely coherent and correct. That was a big ask in this period.

I've seen some positively savage reviews of this game, and I guess I can understand why a person wouldn't like Sword of Vermilion. It's repetitive, old-fashioned, clunky, and some of its bits really don't work well within the overall game. It also drags on a tad longer than it should. Even though I enjoy the game, I wouldn't have shed any tears if everything wrapped up five or so hours earlier than it did. At the same time, I've played far worse RPGs that weren't nearly as ambitious. Even among the Genesis's library, I don't think I'd put Sword of Vermilion on a top RPG list, but I'm not sure I'd discourage anyone from trying it, either. I will say that if you play through to the second town's boss and aren't really getting into it at all, you're safe to cut your losses and quit. It doesn't dramatically change from there.

Of course, the aftermath is quite clear by now. Vermilion is mostly forgotten, and the few who remember it don't usually speak well of it. Its creators only made one other RPG after it, and the studio that produced it would only dip their toes into the RPG waters (in a very tentative way) a couple more times in the future. Still, for early Genesis adopters who loved RPGs, Sword of Vermilion likely kept them busy between Phantasy Star installments. That's about the best someone could ask for at that time outside of Japan. I'm not sure this was the best choice for SEGA of America's big ad campaign, though.

If you want to try Sword of Vermilion yourself, it's currently available on Steam as part of the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, and on PSP and PlayStation Vita through the digital version of the SEGA Genesis Collection. You can also track down any of the physical versions; both the original Genesis cartridge and the PlayStation 2/PSP discs for the aforementioned Genesis Collection are relatively cheap even today.

Previous: Landstalker

If you enjoyed reading this article and can’t wait to get more, consider subscribing to the Post Game Content Patreon. Just $1/month gets you early access to articles like this one, exclusive extra posts, and my undying thanks.

[artificialqueens]

Bees and Butterflies (Katya-centric Katlaska) - Cactus

A/N – WARNING: Super-long author’s note. Can’t be bothered to read? Just get the bit in bold to see the warnings.

Hi guys! My name is Cactus – new writer, long-time reader. This is just a one-shot to get me started, for now.

In this universe, Katya and Alaska are both boys – Brian and Justin. Brian is a trans man (FTM), and Justin is cis – I’m a trans guy myself, and a lot of the feelings/experiences Brian has here are things I or people I’m close to have dealt with –disclaimer that this isn’t everyone’s experience of being trans; I don’t speak for everyone. The boys are both in college and for the context of this fic, Brian is younger than Justin, which I know isn’t reality but meh, that’s what ended up happening.

Pronouns: He/him for Justin throughout. Brian is he/him, but she/her is sometimes used in his own internal monologues. You’ll see what I mean – I hope it makes sense.

This one isn’t the most cheerful – a fair bit of angst / hurt/comfort, although there’s some fluff in the middle to keep everyone going. So in the spirit of that - CONTENT WARNINGS: Gender dysphoria / misgendering (this is the big one, that’s a theme throughout), mention of self-harm/suicidal ideation (very very brief), drug/alcohol use mention, mention of death (very brief), transphobia. I’ve tagged these, and I’m being conservative with them because I don’t want to trigger/upset anyone, so even the slightest mention earns itself a tag.

This one is super Katya-centric, but let me know what you think, especially RE: Characterisation because it’s my first time writing these characters. I’m keen to continue with this universe and write fluffier/happier things within it as well, and I’m keen to explore Justin’s perspective more if people would be interested.

 Enjoy! Cactus

Eyes up. Head forward. Breathe. 

Eyes up. Head forward. Breathe.

Eyes up. Head forward. Breathe.

You’ve got this.

So goes Brian’s daily shower mantra.

And if the shower edges to the wrong side of scalding, an attempt to burn all the wrong in him and on him away; and if he scrubs at his skin a little too long and a little too hard, some part of him hoping that the she, the her, would slip away down the drain with the swipe of a washcloth; and if a cocktail of shampoo and tears set his eyes on fire each time pruning hands brush over breasts, the lies his body persists in telling protruding from his aching chest –

If these things happen, then nobody is there to see it.

These are the minutes of Brian’s day which make bile burn in the back of his throat – the minutes in which he can’t bind and pack and dress his body into a story that’s his.

No matter what he tries, these minutes are always her’s, and her body echoes with the ripples of everything that he isn’t, and some nights he showers sitting down, tears and water merging through palms pressed to his eyes until he sees stars.

And some nights his eyes linger a moment too long on the razors that his roommate leaves on the bathroom counter, as if he could carve an escape map on his arms and his thighs and leave this lying skeleton behind – but he refuses to die in her body. He can’t stomach the concept of lying under a gravestone dedicated to a phantom that never truly existed.

And some nights he sings, loud and off-key and awful over the drone of the shower, a futile attempt to drown out the voice in his head which slips up and calls him she more often than he’ll own up to (because if he can’t get this pronoun thing down, how the fuck can he expect anyone else to?).

And some nights he thanks every deity he gave up on years ago, that the bathroom mirror fogs over before he steps out of the shower – grateful not a strong enough word when he isn’t confronted with his face on her traitorous body.

But some nights, a hand will reach to wipe away the fog (small, dainty, too much hers and not enough his) and Brian will force himself to take stock of his body – to take inventory of the house he’s grown up in, that he so often dreams of burning to the ground.

(This is invariably a mistake. These nights are the worst nights. These are the nights when sobs threaten to shake his body apart at the joints, to scatter him across the white tile floor).

Some nights, showering is hard, and other nights it’s worse, the skin he’s forced to share with her crawling as he exposes himself, but he clings to the hope of one day it won’t be like this like a life raft.

(And if this is a life raft then someone’s punched some holes in the fucking thing, because it never keeps him buoyant for long.)

On the first day of class, his freshman year of college, there are icebreakers which elicit a unanimous groan rippling around the room as they are asked to share their name, major, and one thing they hate.

 (‘That always provides more interesting answers than ‘something you love’ – I don’t give a damn about your dog, or your grandma, or your favourite TV show’ clips the teacher, face wrinkled and folded and faded like torn edges of a weathered road map).

‘Brian, performance art major, and I hate showering more than anything in the world. If I could, I’d find a way to remain clean indefinitely without ever having to shower’ draws laughter from his classmates for the conviction behind his answer, punctuated with staccato hand movements and an open palm slapped on his desk.

The best jokes bloom from seeds of pain.

******************

Brian gets dressed in the dark.

The irony of this, given his penchant for problem patterns and clashing colours which cause friends and (very fucking rude, thank-you-very-much) strangers alike to jibe that he looked like he was dressed by a colour-blind six-year-old with ADHD, thank you Trixie, is not lost on him.

It isn’t – contrary to popular opinion – that he doesn’t care what he looks like; he is, in fact, pathologically particular about his clothing and general appearance.

He spends eons agonising over what to wear, bony fingers grazing back and forth amongst shirts and pants in his closet which he pulls out in endless combinations, finding fault with each in turn with expert precision.

A teal tank top – No. Won’t hide his binder.

A red plaid shirt that he’d fallen in love with in the store – Won’t make his chest look flat enough. No way.

A green floral jacket, garish and ugly and bright and perfectly him; it had been the first piece of “men’s clothing” he’d ever bought (although last he’d checked, none of his clothes had a penis or a vagina, and therefore gendering of clothing was archaic fucking bullshit), and a smile had itched at the corners of his lips the whole walk home, persisting even through the traitorous I’m sorry, ma’am of the man who’d bumped into him on the pavement.

He aches to wear it – to slip it over too-narrow shoulders and walk out the door with every ounce of the Pride that he sees in others, but can’t seem to dredge out of the gutters of his own veins.

But garish and ugly and bright is certain to elicit stares of strangers – and staring strangers means people who will look through him to find the her he’s choking back, staring strangers means not even Justin’s hand dwarfing his own can quell the rolling of his stomach, staring strangers at best means yes ma’am, means young lady, means the ladies’ bathroom’s that way, aimed at him like needles in the soft skin behind his knees, and at worst –

The blazer joins the pile of discarded clothes on his bed.

One day.

Glancing at his phone and realising he has – motherfucker, he only has twenty minutes before he needs to leave to meet Justin, and absolutely positively in no way can he be late, Barbara – he settles on black skinny jeans and a graphic T shirt that’s both loose and high-necked enough to conceal his binder.

Not what he would choose, necessarily, but the clinging denim and nylon are enough to choke the rattling breath out of her for the evening.

He reaches out and flicks the switch; plunges the room into darkness by the time his towel hits the floor. The dark won’t – can’t – smother her. But at least he won’t have to see it.

Lights off – clothes on.

This will do – for now.

**************

Leaning against the wall of the movie theatre, casual in a way that’s calculated and intentional, Brian waits for Justin. He’d bit the inside of his cheeks to swallow a wry smile and feigned annoyance at the ‘I’m so sorry I’m going to be late – I’ll buy you popcorn to make up for it! 😊” that had popped up on his phone ten minutes previously, honestly expecting nothing less of his boyfriend (and holy shit it felt so good to be able to call Justin that).

Pulling his jacket tighter across his shoulders, bitten fingernails drum residual tension out into the bricks behind him.

Beneath the carefully constructed calm façade, his brain vibrates dully with the bees humming at the edges of his skull, wings beating out a dirge of keep your shoulders back it’ll make them look broader and don’t pop your hip it makes you look feminine, with stand up straighter it’ll make you look taller and that guy at the bus stop has looked over here five times now does this mean I don’t pass?

The bees are something which he can, if not ignore, relegate to the back of his mind on most days; a disquieting, discordant constant that underscore his existence. On some days, the days he doesn’t talk about, the wings beat themselves into a flurry, swarming and swooping and stinging him in places he tries to numb with pills and booze and blunts and Justin.

Justin.

And the sight reaches inside him and pulls laughter out from way down deep, and for once he doesn’t care that it’s too high too feminine too her, because Justin is fifteen minutes late and still walking the pavement like it’s a runway, slow and yet purposeful, all hip and leg and sass like a high-fashion giraffe, and the bees’ wings scratching at his temples slow a little as Brian pushes himself off the wall and crouches, miming taking pictures like a photographer at one of the fashion shows Justin makes them watch together.

And Justin is hamming it up, twirling and pouting and posing, and when he reaches Brian they both glance left right left and behind them for unkind prying eyes before you’re so fucking stupid is breathed from one set of lips against another between quiet chuckles and Justin tastes like vanilla and home.

And “sorry I’m late” and “you owe me popcorn, Brenda” is as good as I love you for both of them.

And a hand clasping his as they walk inside, homophobes be damned, and the casual ‘hey, boyfriend? You look handsome’ said like it’s nothing when it’s everything, turns the bees in Brian’s brain into butterflies for a while.

 *****************

When they’re buying tickets inside, and the young girl behind the desk (fumbling and awkward, smudged glasses slipping down her nose as she prints their tickets) smiles sweetly and asks Justin if he and his girlfriend will be paying for tickets together or separately, it feels like someone’s taken scissors and sliced across every muscle and tendon that holds him upright, he wants to origami himself invisible because she said girlfriend, so he looks like a girl, because who is he kidding he’ll always be a girl, and Justin deserves the type of real man that shots and scalpels and sheer fucking will won’t – can’t – make him, and –

And the pad of Justin’s thumb presses itself in an arch across the back of Brian’s shoulder, firm and there and as reassuring as if the other man had pulled him into an embrace, as he looks the woman in the eye and informs her that yes, he and his boyfriend will pay together.

And the reply is polite, and it’s courteous, and Justin’s smiling as it passes his lips in a Sahara-dry drawl, lips snagging and dragging on every vowel, but it’s laced with conviction and with don’t fucking question this, bitch and the girl’s owl-eyes, impossibly larger behind coke-bottle lenses, widen as she takes their cash, grins an  enjoy the movie, sirs, and watches them walk away.

And Brian exhales, her fingers unfurling as sweating palms wipe against his jeans.

And Justin’s lips are quirked lopsided as he walks beside him taking Snapchat selfies, trying every filter and guffawing unashamedly as they distort his face, showing Brian every one and saving the most wonderfully heinous to his Camera Roll.

(And it will take three kisses and a joint, later that evening, for Justin to convince Brian to take a selfie with him, and when he relents Justin glows enough to make Brian wish he’d agreed an hour ago, and they take about 50 in Brian’s bedroom before there’s one they’re both happy with, and Justin captions it “Effortlessly photogenic boyfriends” with a clown emoji and puts it on Instagram, and 112 people like it.)

There’s a bounce in Brian’s step as they ascend the stairs to the movie theatre, and he’s all wide mouth and crinkling eyes as he turns to Justin, mirth in his voice.

“Did you hear her? She called me sir!”

And the other man laughs, honest and joyful, locks his fingers through Brian’s where they’re clasping his arm in excitement.

“Damn right she did, sweetheart!”

Sometimes it’s the little things.

 ***************

The movie – some saccharine, vapid rom-com, because finals week is approaching like a freight train down a steep hill with broken brakes and neither of them have the mental capacity to cope with anything heavier at this point – is simultaneously fucking terrible and worth every penny.

There isn’t much in the way of plot, and what plot there is they struggle to follow, too busy furnishing elaborate and so-implausible-they-could-come-true backstories for every character on screen. They decide that the heroine is really a Latvian supermodel who teaches disabled cows gymnastics in her spare time, and the hero a retired circus clown now working for MI5, and Justin is laughing so hard he almost chokes on the popcorn that he’s eaten about 97% of despite the fact that he’d bought it for Brian as an apology for being late a-fucking-gain, asshole, and Brian, when he realises, grabs one of the strawberry laces that taste more like a chemical plant than anything resembling strawberries, and feigns choking Justin with it.

And Justin – the fucking drama queen – is so over-enthusiastic in faking his death that he slips off his chair onto the sugar-sticky linoleum floor, then, deciding it’s more comfortable, remains there for the rest of the movie, periodically throwing popcorn kernels at his boyfriend.

And Brian thinks three things simultaneously:

1)      How in the ever-loving hell is this overgrown, beautiful 21-year-old goddamn toddler about to graduate college?

2)      The three other people who’ve got little enough common sense to have actually paid to see this shit, must really hate us by now.

3)      Finals are clearly turning both of our brains into a vat of cold, lumpy mashed potato between our ears, that’s being stamped on by an elderly man with sweat problems comparable to Brian’s. And athlete’s foot.

Then the credits roll, Justin hoists himself back into his chair as the house lights come on, and neither of them could tell you the first thing about what the fuck they just watched because they’re both too far into a spiral of giggles to know why they’re laughing anymore beyond why the fuck not. Because their lips are loose and happy like rubber bands that have been stretched too far and Brian’s fishing popcorn kernels out of his hair as they walk out to dirty looks from other movie-goers, and Justin almost knocks an unsuspecting ten-year-old flying because he’s talking with his whole body about how he could give a tortoise on Benadryl an etch-a-sketch and it would probably be able to write a more captivating storyline than that and Brian’s wheezing because Justin has so many opinions on a movie he just fully didn’t watch.

Brian smokes outside while they wait for the bus, half-slumped against the taller man (and damn, he hates being short sometimes, but it feels so good to be enveloped in Justin), and Justin’s eyeing his cigarette pointedly like he wants a drag, but Brian smirks softly and doesn’t relent, laughing ‘You already took my fucking popcorn, jackass’, and blowing smoke-clouds in his face when the other man flips him off.

They find themselves sitting perched up on the same wall, the buses as consistent in their lateness as they tend to be, silent and soft and feet swinging, stealing glances back and forth and periodically tilting their phones towards one another to share gorgeous makeup on Instagram, or a funny meme on Facebook, breathy chuckles and throaty hums of appreciation the only noises to perforate this bubble in which Brian feels unequivocally himself.  

Then a man comes jogging through the double doors of the movie theatre – leaves them swinging behind him as he spots the pair of them and ambles over.

Excuse me, ma’am? You left your jacket inside.

And Justin’s hand is on Brian’s in a second, tightening imperceptibly as he drawls ‘Oh, Brian, you did forget your jacket’, eyes locked like a sniper on the stranger before them the whole time.

The man stiffens, and the jacket in question discarded quickly – strewn haphazardly over the wall next to them as the man turns sharply on his heel back towards the building.

It’s as he’s walking away that they hear it – thrown under his breath out into the early summer breeze, it turns the air at once stagnant and hot.

Fucking tranny.

And Justin at once makes to stand, to go after the stranger, to – to do what, exactly, Brian has no earthly idea, because Justin Honard is a twig, a high-fashion giraffe, built like Slenderman ready for a runway; he’d (quite possibly literally) be slaughtered.

And Brian may or may not have drunk his own blood in high school (because nobody can prove it and it’s therefore pure hearsay) but he prefers his boyfriend alive, thank-you-very-much, and so with quaking hands he grips Justin’s shirt, a murmured “please – just don’t” breaking past his lips, and he’s inclined to write a personal letter of thanks to whoever the fuck is in charge of public transport in this city when their bus arrives just at that moment.

The funny thing about bees? You don’t notice they’re gone, until they come back.

And when they come back, they come back louder.

 *******************

He feels intangible, like he’s not even really there, as Justin grasps his hand impossibly tight and leads him onto the bus, his long face a paradox of clenched jaw and soft eyes that never leave his boyfriend.

Brian’s aware of the small things – his saliva thick and viscous against his tongue, his pulse throbbing one two one two in the soles of his feet, and before he’s fully aware of anything beyond fucking tranny fucking tranny fucking tranny a soft kiss that says both too much and not enough is pressed to his temple and he’s pulled down into the itchy-scratchy stained seats of the bus.

His face buried in the pale nape of his boyfriend’s neck, Justin’s fingers tracing silent affirmations into his spine, Brian breathes – shudderingly steady.

He doesn’t cry. Wants to, sure. Arguably deserves to.

But doesn’t.

It’s as though whatever part of him can express emotion – can do anything other than breathe right now – has shut itself down, locked itself away, and Brian is stuck in a shell – her shell.

And so he breathes, Justin a buoy that he clings to in a vacuum – Justin’s fingers on his spine, Justin’s scent in every inhale, his soft voice a lighthouse as he speaks aimlessly of nothing much at all as they drive through the city, expecting no response. Asking nothing of Brian at all.

Brian breathes.

Justin lets him.

 ******************

This isn’t blunt-force trauma; no bullets ripping through him, no knife-wound in his chest.

His blood doesn’t stain the seats – doesn’t seep down into the once-red-now-browning-orange fabric.

This won’t kill him.

It’s not a speeding car, 70 miles per hour downhill late at night, blowing her body into the air as a careless breeze carries autumn-burnt leaves.

(And those cars have, and do, and will, come for so many others like him, so many beautiful people whose minds and bodies, like oil and water, couldn’t ever mix, and the thought of all those others, all those graves he uses as stepping stones across this world he doesn’t quite fit into, all the bones of those who come before him that he ties together to build himself bridges, makes his breath catch a little even now.)

This is the bruise that blooms like violet bouquets on dirty elementary-school knees, the child crying more from the shock than the pain of the fall.

This is a papercut across the thumb – the pain greater than the wound, the sort of injury that’s met with rolled eyes and you’ll live, but stinging sweet and sharp.

No sirens; no drama.

He’ll live.

He’ll pull back into place the Jenga-bricks of his soul that shake and scatter themselves loose far too often and far too quickly.

(And some will chip, and some will crack, and more than he’ll own up to are stained and misshapen by now, and he’ll duct-tape them together – until next time.)

He’ll dissolve himself back into his reality; pull himself back to the surface by the thready rope of Justin’s voice.

Justin won’t ask are you okay? – knows this isn’t the sort of thing that is ever okay – and he’ll notice, but won’t mention, the way Brian’s attempt at a smile pulls too tight at reddened lips to be genuine.

As they step back off the bus, into a world whose acceptance of the who and what and why of him – of them – is tempered at every turn with qualifications, Brian watches his ungainly boyfriend swing himself around on a lamppost, singing snippets of showtunes that the other man neither knows nor cares to learn as he wiggles caterpillar brows in time, refusing to stop until he makes his boyfriend laugh.   

It doesn’t take long. It’s not quite natural – not yet – as it bursts forth, scratching against his teeth. But it’s there – piercing the dark.

Refusing laughter only snowballs stigma, so they’ll rub humour on the bee stings till they hurt a little less.

With Justin by his side, this will never kill him.

 **********************

The intent had been for both men to return to their respective dorms for the evening; with finals approaching, and it being Justin’s senior year, both had to study, as well as navigate relationships with roommates whose begrudging acceptance of their impromptu sleepovers could only be stretched so far.

But Justin sends a text, and then he’s firing excuses one then the next at Brian, citing I need you to read over my French paper and You left your sweater at mine last week and It’s getting late, anyway one after another as reasons that Brian should come back to his dorm, barely pausing for breath between them.

Brian doesn’t take much convincing; neither man wants to end this evening with the slur of a stranger and a sombre bus ride, and Justin knows and trusts that Brian is okay, within the relative confines of the term (knows, from what Brian has said, and what he hasn’t, that he has heard, and does hear, so much worse than that), but, just for tonight, would rather his love was okay with him and not without him.

Nobody should have to make themselves okay alone.

A note pinned to the door, as they arrive, written hurriedly in a lazy scrawl, makes Brian crane his neck to pull Justin into a kiss.

JH -

You owe me one, dude – I’ll take beer or pizza as my payment (jk).

Staying with Tuck – back @ 7am to grab my shit.

Hope ur boy is okay.

Lucas

“You exiled your roommate for me? For the third time this week?! No wonder the guy hates me, Justin!”

“He’ll get over it, he’s a big boy. And he does not hate you, I’ve told you this!”

“Lies, mother, it’s all lies…”

 **********************

They share a joint sitting propped up by pillows in Justin’s bed – drag from it what they both need. Brian pulls calm, dispels the low hum of latent anxiety that still nestles itself under the surface of his skin; Justin, peace, to relax the muscles that still pull themselves taut with protective anger at the thought of someone making Bri feel anything less than wonderful perfect amazing beautiful man.

Between episodes of Golden Girls that Brian knows almost as well as Justin by now, ugly selfies, and languid conversation about innocuous topics that somehow feel sacred because it’s them, they build themselves a fortress away from the rest of the world.

Here, nobody can touch them – even she is banished with one word from his lips.

Eventually, with hearts much lighter but eyelids now-too-heavy, lights are turned out and both wait to let sleep claim them.

Between bedsheets too thick for the season (because what self-respecting college student owns more than one set of bedsheets?) Brian clings to Justin.

Clings to him like the other man is the only thing tethering him to earth; pulls him close as though he wants to sink into his bones, crawl inside his skin and feel what it feels like to be born into a body that’s your own.

And Justin presses kisses, smooth like pebbles beaten by waves, into his lover’s shoulders, you are all the man I need you to be caught in a phantom breath between pursed lips.

And in the dark, they dress each other in armour, with closed-mouth kisses and cold feet pressed against another’s legs.

****************

Hope people enjoyed - let me know :)