#but definitely one of those things is 'the particular lens we personally choose to view our own experiences through'

[aeide-thea]

the thing abt this website (and probably other websites as well) is that like. posters will complain that readers get mad at posts for not encompassing Everyone's Experiences, when they were just talking about their own experiences

and it's like. okay but did you phrase your post in the universalizing second person or.

cue janet-with-cactus gifset.

[thepersonperson]

Thoughts on the tragedy of Gojo Satoru and narrative cruelty towards him as of JJK 261.

Some notes before we start.

1) This originally was going to be an analysis about how Gojo is Megumi's dad. Then JJK 261 came out and shattered my heart into millions of pieces.

2) This analysis will briefly deal with suicide.

3) The light novels are canon and provide critical insight to characters and their motivations. I would go as far to say they're the equivalent of Bleach's CFYOW for JJK. I will be citing the official translation from my own copies. There is a fan translation (Book 1 & Book 2), but the syntax is a bit clunky to read. Either version is fine, I just highly encourage reading them.

4) I will be mainly using the TCB scans for the manga because of their accessibility. 

5) Read the light novels.

(Click pictures for captions/citations.)

Preface

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When the Seagulls Cry) is a visual novel about a person who is fundamentally misunderstood by those around them. They desperately want to be loved without being perceived, believing themself to be unworthy due to trauma and immutable characteristics given to them at birth. Instead of telling anyone these feelings directly, they play games akin to torture. They torment the ones they love over and over in hopes they'll see through their actions and understand them.

"Without love it cannot be seen."

If you've ever heard of Umineko, you've probably seen this quote. It's the lens in which you are supposed to view the contents of the novel in order to understand the heart behind the actions.

Keep this all in mind as I attempt to answer the following question:

What's wrong with Gojo Satoru?

Short Answer: Being the Strongest. He never got over the trauma inflicted by Toji that was worsened by Geto. And because he's the Strongest, he never sought help for these problems. I’m not going to explain why this is the case here—we’re just accepting this as canon for this analysis. How this trauma manifests and affects his interpersonal relationships is the focus here.

Regardless of trauma, Gojo Satoru is a fascinating character in that he is simultaneously a egotistical arrogant dickhead and a deeply caring individual. He's not one or the other, he is both at the same time at all times. Allow me to explain how he pulls this off.

2 Birds 1 Stone

Gojo Satoru is a 2 birds and 1 stone kind of guy. What I mean by this is that Gojo will do 1 thing and have 2 reasons behind it. The reasons often seem contradictory which leads fans and characters to have a polarized view of Gojo based on how they feel about him. If you hate Gojo, you will only see the bad/selfish reason. If you adore Gojo uncritically, you will only see the good/selfless reason.

This is why without love, it (Gojo's heart) cannot be seen.

I will now provide examples of this 2 birds 1 stone action.

Ijichi Kiyotaka

Ijichi and Gojo’s relationship is the best to start with because it teaches you how to read Gojo’s words vs his actions/results. We all know Gojo is very blunt in an rude way. This is at its extreme when he’s with Ijichi as seen in the following panels.

Gojo straight up tells Ijichi he’s useless as a sorcerer in a way that makes him cry. It’s definitely bullying, but it’s not to torment Ijichi even though it seems that way. Ijichi comes to understand Gojo was just trying to make sure he wouldn’t die. This particular scene took place right after Haibara died, Nanami quit, and Geto defected. The harshness is how Gojo is choosing to say “Hey I care about your life, but don’t get too close to me, I can’t handle that.”

Gojo was even kind enough to offer a productive alternative that let him participate in Jujutsu society without risking his life—driving a car and putting up veils.

Still, Gojo’s bullying of him is a lot. It makes Ijichi doubt that Gojo even likes him. Gojo has to spell it out that he trusts Ijichi the most. Ijichi being weak means he cannot betray Gojo like Geto did, therefore Gojo can fully trust him. Still, Gojo is aware his weakness is other people, so as The Strongest, he can’t let him in all the way. This leads to him showing affection/care in the most insane ways possible. (It’s not really a surprise people don’t understand him when he uses this plausible deniability model.)

ENTER: JJK Thorny Road at Dawn, Chapter 3 Asakusabashi Elegy

As stated in CFYOW, Gojo is aware of Ijichi’s stress and went out of his way to help him deal with it.

Not only does he recognize the stress and notice he hasn't taken time off for it, but he also pinpoints the reason so well that it moves Ijichi to tears. (Summary of Pages 75-77: He feels guilty for failing Yuji twice. Gojo assures him it’s not his fault and flicks him on the forehead.)

But! Gojo can’t be too affectionate. The very next day he piles a good deal of work on Ijichi’s desk he is aware will be stressing him the fudge out. (See Pages 78-79 for full context.)

It should go without saying that treating Ijichi like this is not ok. My point here is to demonstrate that despite being a massive asshole, Gojo does care.

So what did we learn here?

1) Gojo is aware of people’s emotional problems to some extent.

(IDing Ijichi’s stress source accurately.)

2) Gojo is aware he is unable to deal with emotional problems on his own so he enlists outside help.

(Having Shoko and alcohol help cheer Ijichi up while he talks to him.)

3) Gojo’s bluntness and flippant behavior is both rude and serves a purpose for the recipient.

(Gojo bullying Ijichi to keep him out of harm’s way.)

4) Gojo packages his affections with cruelty to keep people at a distance.

(Gojo flicking Ijichi on the head while telling him to take it easy. Taking Ijichi for a night out and then burdening him with extra work the next day.)

5) Other people do not understand Gojo and misread his intent all the time.

(It took Ijichi about 10 years to realize Gojo cares deeply about him.)

Nanami Kento

ENTER: JJK Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust, Chapter 2: Resurrection Doll

This chapter is so good at fully fleshing out the Gojo Nanami dynamic that I will not be using manga citations for most of this part. Please read it. Or listen to the official audio drama which has been fan translated.

Gojo spends the first half of this chapter messing with Nanami, forcing him to try unique foods and drinks and generally enjoy himself. You know the typical purposeful Gojo bullying. (See Pages 33-38)

Then it gets rather serious when they arrive at their mission’s destination. They have to deal with a grieving mother. Gojo is blunt. Nanami is comforting. (See Pages 47-50)

What’s interesting about this interaction is how Gojo reflects on it. He acknowledges how bad he is at dealing with attachment issues that come from grief.

Gojo and Nanami find the culprit and the both of them are quite pissed at how he’s exploiting grief to make a profit. They kind of let him be tortured by the curses that eat his body for a bit before killing him. Gojo makes Nanami do it because he can make him die a human death. (See Pages 50-57)

Even after he has expressed hatred of his man for preying on grieving parents, Gojo still ultimately wants this person to have a proper death. This captures the duality of his inhumanity (torture) and humanity (merciful death) quite well.

The following bar scene ties this all together nicely. (See Pages 58-60 for full context.)

I want to note that it is constantly drawing attention to the sentimentality the both of them feel as they converse about how this particular mission messed with them.

As stated in CFYOW, Gojo believes adults treat their stress with alcohol and conversation. And yet, he denies himself the alcohol.

Gojo denying himself this stress relief seems to be a combination of him being too wary to let down Limitless and not believing he needs it. He's the Strongest and he has to be the Strongest at all times, otherwise someone like Toji will get him.

As stated in CFYOW, Gojo recognizes his students will face trauma similar to himself and Nanami and that as adults they must look out for them.

What's so heartbreaking about this interaction is how Nanami is painfully aware Gojo isn't following his own advice of stress relief and says nothing. In a way it almost reads like Gojo, who knows people see him as a giant child, is asking Nanami to help him too in the most roundabout way possible.

As stated in CFYOW, Gojo deliberately paired Yuji with Nanami because he recognizes he is unfit to keep him emotionally stable. (Also note he refuses to have Yuji’s humanity denied as Sukuna’s Vessel. His concerns are explicitly about Yuji as a kid and nothing else.)

Not only is this for Yuji’s benefit, but for Nanami’s as well.

As we know, Nanami and Gojo have one thing common: they lost their best friends because they couldn’t be there for them. This guilt motivates both their actions as adults. Using that connection through shared grief, Gojo is trying to help Nanami heal from that wound with Yuji.

Why Yuji? Nanami’s best friend, Haibara, was a cheerful, friendly boy with a big heart—just like Yuji. He may not be able to replace Haibara, but that familiarity helps Nanami move on. We know this worked because Nanami dies without regrets thanks to Yuji. (All while seeing Haibara too.)

This is called the Nanago Bible for good reason. We have Gojo being an absolute annoying dick to him and then doting on him so targetedly it kind of makes your head spin. Just like Ijichi, Gojo cares but he’s got to bully you first before he shows it. (Totally sane and healthy behavior. /s)

That's why this hurts so much.

This is so cruel. Gojo does all this for Nanami only to be misunderstood by him in the end, and learn that everyone else is the same way.

However, Nanami still cares for him. Like Gojo, Nanami doesn't show affection unless he's being kind of mean. The best example of this is Yuji calling him Nanamin. And to be honest, his whole stern father dynamic with Yuji.

Nanami puts on a show here. He pretends this is pissing him off but he ultimately accepts it.

We've already established that Gojo is unable to fully understand other people. Nanami calling him a pervert/weirdo/self-satisfier was affection and Gojo too misunderstands him. So we're left with that panel of Gojo looking very hurt.

Iori Utahime

Similar to Ijichi, Gojo trusts Utahime because she is weak. And just like Ijichi, Gojo doesn’t say “I trust you won’t betray me like Geto”, he says this:

Not ignoring the misogynistic stint to his bullying of Utahime, Gojo has been doing this for so long that Utahime flat out hates him. It’s in her official character description. And Gojo is unaware of this because he can't read people well. But you want to know what else is? Her love of sports. (Baseball is one she's really into.)

After the disaster that was the first half of the Goodwill Event, Gojo makes the second half enjoyable for the students and Utahime specifically. 2 birds and 1 stone. Baseball means kids get to enjoy their youth and Utahime gets to have fun with something she genuinely enjoys. And Gojo gets to piss off Principal Yaga and Gakuganji as a treat.

Hopefully you can see the pattern now. Gojo cares for people while also being an absolute menace to keep them at a distance for what he believes to be their own good. And still he craves a direct connection with them. All of it is him failing to cope with Toji and Geto in a healthy way and being The Strongest.

Gojo's Heart

Now that we've established how to read Gojo's actions and words, let's take a look at his heart. What kind of person is Gojo Satoru really under all the posturing?

Other People

Though Gojo likes to act like he's above it all, other people are his weakness. This is not limited to other sorcerers, but the non-sorcerers as well. His attachment to people is so strong that it has been used by each major villain as an exploit. Toji used Gojo's fondness towards Riko to catch him by surprise, both Geto and Kenjaku used his sense of duty towards complete strangers to trap him, and Sukuna used Megumi to throw him off guard.

The Hidden Inventory and Shibuya Incident arcs in particular echo each other in set up and outcome—Kenjaku's plan being a finessed version of Toji's. Gojo panics over Riko and strangers potentially dying with the same expression as his weakness is exploited until he comes up with a solution on the spot. And these solutions ultimately fail to stop the villain from obtaining their goals. The difference between them is how Gojo follows up on the collateral damage. Post-Geto fallout, he starts more directly checking in on the people he potentially hurt.

The follow-up with Ijichi about Shibuya is illuminating. It reiterates that unconsciously Gojo created a domain on the fly that wouldn't be lethal to strangers, and it reveals that his cursed energy itself is hellbent on protecting others. What this indicates is that Gojo's soul is devoted to others. If he didn't care, none of this would be possible.

That being said, Nanami also isn't wrong to call Gojo a Jujutsu Pervert. Gojo does very much get off on fighting to the point where he starts disconnecting from other emotions. Just as the Hidden Inventory and Shibuya Incident showcased how much Gojo cares for other people, the same arcs showcased how unhinged Gojo is when left to his own devices.

He's both caring and a freak at the same time. Polarizing behavior included.

Gojo’s Students

Gojo cares a lot about his students, their enjoyment of life, and their futures. He also wants to change Jujutsu society without senseless bloodshed so he goes out of his way to recruit strong children with potential as his allies (Megumi, Yuta, Yuji, Hikari). Some may think he’s only using the youth for his own purposes. Others may think he just wants to help troubled youths. But it’s both. Gojo is doing both of these things. And boy does he feel immense guilt over it when it goes poorly. See how he handles Yuji "dying".

It should be noted that he still tries to maintain his jokey persona with Shoko and Ijichi while he genuinely gets upset. And he does this by bullying the tar out of Ijichi. (It's really no wonder the poor thing thought Gojo hated him.)

As stated in CFYOW, JJK Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust, Chapter 4: Ijichi at Work, Gojo’s style of care is one that is focused on helping the children handle the emotions he couldn’t at their age. (See Pages 116-118 for full context.)

Gojo basically finds children who are like himself and tries to make sure they don’t wind up like him. This is how he has chosen to cope with his trauma.

You could read this as manipulative and selfish if you find Gojo unbearable. It did turn out poorly in the end. But remember how he forced Nanami to speak of Yuji as a person and not a vessel. And how Gojo discusses with him the fragile hearts of youth and how he wants to prepare them for grief. Gojo is anticipating Jujutsu society ruining their lives and acting preemptively.

Gojo also postures in front of the students. As their pillar of stability, he pretends everything is ok because he's the adult in charge. Look at how quickly he buries his grief when they notice something is up.

And each time he does this, it works. He definitely believes what he says and that does make him annoying. However, the students feel secure because he's promising to take responsibility. When he fails them, he blames himself and no one else. That's the attitude of someone that cares despite most of his students not seeing through his arrogance.

Geto Suguru

It's not up for debate that Gojo was in love with Geto. Gojo 100% was gay for Geto. What is up for debate is whether or not the two of them ever acted on it when they had the chance. I lean towards the interpretation that this love was never realized in life. (Gege is a huge fan of yaoi that ends in tragedy.)

I want to make it very clear, after reading the contents of JJK 261, I believe Geto is the one who failed Gojo the most. He had a fundamental misunderstanding of his best friend so bad that he abandoned him and was shocked that Gojo still loved him in the end. It took him until the afterlife to see that all Gojo wanted was him.

Gojo checking in on him wasn't enough, Gojo not killing him for 10 years even though he could've wasn't enough, Gojo saying something that caused Geto to blush before he killed him wasn't enough, Gojo dying and immediately greeting him first wasn't enough. This is when he finally understands.

Before not denying the fact Geto saw Gojo as a self-satisfying Jujutsu pervert who cared about no one else.

Geto was too consumed by his own trauma and hang-ups to see Gojo with love. He wound up doing the exact same thing he killed non-sorcerers for; putting all the burden of their relationship on the strongest and expecting him to do all the work.

And yet somehow Geto was able to find the love Gojo also deserved. He made a family and was surrounded by people who openly loved him and even understood him. It makes me a little bitter.

At one point Geto did understand Gojo a lot. Enough to be his moral center and sense his suffering. He even accepted Gojo's awful personality when everyone else wouldn't. Since their breakup, Gojo has been mourning him. Every little thing Geto told him to do while they were together is something Gojo incorporated into his life.

Using the personal pronouns "Boku" and "Watashi" over "Ore" to be more polite? Done. Not killing ordinary people, even if they suck, because that would be pointless? Done. Even to the point where he spares most curse users or rehabilitates them. He takes care of Geto's family even after he's dead. Looking after the weak because he's strong? Done until it kills him.

Gojo is chasing after a Geto that no longer exists. These little rituals keep that ghost alive. And they turn out to be super beneficial to other people so let's make it another 2 birds and 1 stone that hides the fact he's grieving.

Gojo's Guts

In summary, Gojo does care about other people despite treating them in bizarre and unpleasant ways that aren’t ok. He may be using them as a way to work through his own trauma, but he is also determined to see that they live better lives than himself. 2 birds, 1 stone.

His status as The Strongest isolated him so severely that he was doomed to being misunderstood by everyone he loved. Both because of how Gojo treats them and how they treat his power. (Limitless being the metaphorical and literal barrier between himself and others.)

Gojo wants to give love and be loved but is denied it at every turn. His heart is that of a pathetic sopping-wet cat that pretends it's completely dry.

Narrative Cruelty

The narrative ire for Gojo Satoru cannot be overstated. This person sums it up the best.

After JJK 261, it has become abundantly clear to me that Gojo was intending to die the moment he made the date December 24th (the most romantic day in Japan and the death date of Geto Suguru). He has all this grief and guilt and truly believes that no one living will ever understand or care about him in the way he wants. The only one Gojo believes will understand him is Geto and he wants to be with him. (And that didn't pan out well either.)

Gojo is also refusing to burden the students with being a monster even though they're offering. As an adult he is in the right to do his damndest to make sure the minors in his care don't become as broken as him. He knows being a monster sucks and his whole goal is to put an end to that.

Plus, he blames himself entirely for this situation in the first place. He's taking responsibility by killing the elders to ensure that when he dies, his students don't pay for it. In a way he's correct, failing to kill Geto properly because he loved him is why they're here now. Kenjaku exploited that love to seal him and Gojo knows it.

The Gojo vs Sukuna fight was Gojo effectively committing suicide to be with his one and only love who fundamentally misunderstood him in life and barely understands him even in death. And ironically, the one who kills him is the first and only person relate directly to his suffering and acknowledge him as himself. Sukuna frees Gojo from the title of Strongest and leaves him as Gojo Satoru, appreciating him as the one who cleared his skies.

This is so unbearably cruel it makes my stomach twist just thinking about it.

It's why I want Gojo so desperately to come back to life. I want him to experience love and know that he is loved. I want him to come to terms with his grief and work through it. But we don't get that. He dies and is surrounded by people that barely understand him while claiming to have no regrets.

What's the point of this narrative ire?

Japanese society is largely Buddhist. Detachment, a kind of Stoicism, is a tenant of Buddhism. Emotions are to be let go of. Ideally when they arise, you don’t cling to or bury them. A version of this idea from Zen Buddhism manifests in Japanese culture as a mantra known as Suffering in Silence or Gaman. In summary, if you're hurting, you hide it. That's the proper thing to do. It leans much more towards repression of emotions instead of their release/detachment.

JJK deliberately draws inspiration from Buddhist teachings and imagery so I'm assuming Gojo Satoru being the poster child for Suffering in Silence is intentional. Taking everyone's burdens and pretending it's all ok because he's the strongest and that's what you're supposed to do.

He took on most of the burden for protecting Amanai Riko and they both died for it.

He took on the burden of being stronger, going on missions for both Nanami and Geto while they grieved until they both left him.

He took on the burden of raising Megumi and Tsumiki and look at what happened to both of them.

He took on the burden of every student no questions asked, money food, dealing with higher ups, etc and all but 2 of them treat him kindly.

He took on the burden of killing Geto, which Principal Yaga forced onto him when he was 17 and it came back to bite him 11 years later in Shibuya where he took on the burden of dealing with that veil.

This is a cautionary tale demonstrating just how much this kind of mindset can ruin your life. JJK has always been a massive critique of Japanese societal standards. And despite Gojo rebelling against it, the toxic ideas a part of his upbringing are ones he can't let go of for himself. He believes he can't be fixed, so he paves the way for the future generation with all his body and soul.

That's why this is so cruel.

In life Gojo was treated like an object by everyone around him. His clan saw him as a tool for their glory and pushed everything onto him. The higher ups, Yaga, Nanami wanted to push everything onto him and they did when they could. You can say whatever mean thing you want to him because he can clearly handle it. You can assign whatever mission or task because he's reliable as the strongest but not as a person. He gave his life for others and even his body, only to be scorned by those very ones he's helping. (Think back to how he forced Nanami to speak of Yuji as a person and not a vessel. He doesn't want any of his students to be dehumanized like himself.)

Yuta is only person who stopped to ask if Gojo was ok. He's the only one that noticed his status as a monster was eating him alive. He's the only one who had a problem with everyone talking about Gojo's body like a tool. And to help him be less lonely he asked for explicit permission to be the one to desecrate it.

Gojo doesn't want his students to give up their humanity and be lonely or give their lives to win. He's ok with them taking risks if it means they survive (see Megumi). And from what it looks like, Yuta will be the only one to fully understand him (obtaining his memories and all) and then die as the result of it.

So in a cruel twist of irony, Gojo will have one person know him fully as a monster and they will likely die as the result of it, further justifying his self-isolation in the first place. It's a game he always loses no matter how he plays.

Sukuna wasn't really wrong when he called Kashimo greedy for wanting Love and Strength. With how their society is structured, they really can't have both.

Note: I'm leaving Yuji out of this because he had no idea this was the plan and always saw Gojo as his teacher first, aka a person. This is also his general reaction to Gojo going things alone.

There's still more...

I also want to note Shoko's reaction here is another instance of Gojo not understanding those around him. From her first official character profile it's noted that Shoko has finally quit smoking for 5 years because Utahime asked her to.

Now what is Shoko doing in that panel and during the entire fight? Smoking. She's just mirroring Gojo's own behavior towards her. Pretending everything is ok and saying nothing of her true feelings. After getting blown off emotionally by both Geto and Gojo as a teenager, Shoko gave up on reaching them.

Gojo did this to her for over a decade and she's doing it back to him. Not because they want to me mean to each other, they just don't know how else to deal with their own trauma. To an extent the other students are doing the same. They're just being like their Sensei.

Gojo went out on a suicide mission believing only Yuta and Yuji cared about him in life as a person. (Megumi's getting his own post and believe me it's not fun.) The 2 most empathetic characters were able to let him know they saw his heart. With love it was seen. Other people cared and didn't show it or they flat out treated him like an object. Gojo is both at fault and not at fault for this.

It hurts me a lot and it's very cruel, but I think this has severed its purpose. If you don't tell people how you feel, they'll never know. Emotions will eat you from the inside out and no one will notice because on the surface you look ok. There aren't a lot of people like Yuta who will take the time to look for your heart, so it's better to outright show it. Don't put off grief, it will consume you.

Gege Akutami...when I get you...

Another prominent theme of Umineko is how poorly readers treat the creators of the story they are experiencing. Often times fans will say and wish horrible things on the author when the story they like doesn't go the way they want it to. You're free to feel upset by how this story's direction and critique it to your hearts content, but please remember Gege is a person too. Don't do to Gege what everyone else has done to Gojo.

Remember: "Without love, it cannot be seen."

However JJK ultimately concludes, I make you this promise.

"This game story will not have a happy ending."

[cosmicjoke]

I want to talk a little bit about Levi’s relationship with Erwin, and why Levi, for most of the story of Attack on Titan, was dedicated to and so trusting of Erwin’s judgment.

I see a lot of people say it’s because Erwin gave Levi a “purpose” in life.  That it’s because before he met Erwin, Levi had no direction, no goal, etc...  That might be part of it.  But I think, more than giving Levi a purpose, I think what Erwin gave Levi was hope.  

Levi’s big, character defining moment, the one that influences and impacts all of Levi’s choices throughout the story, and indeed, influences his very life philosophy, comes with the deaths of Furlan and Isabel.  I don’t think the importance of these two characters in Levi’s life gets nearly enough attention.  They’re often written off because they’re “side characters”, not actually invented by Isayama himself, and so their import to Levi is often overlooked.  But if we’re being honest, and not viewing Levi’s relationships through the lens of shipping goggles, I think, out of everyone, it’s Furlan and Isabel who were probably closer to Levi than any other character in the series.  I don’t say that to offend anyone, so please don’t take it that way.  But both Furlan and Isabel come from the same world as Levi.  They, presumably, both grew up in the Underground, the same as Levi, both experienced poverty, deprivation, and the same struggle to survive from day to day that Levi did.  That, alone, would give them a connection to Levi that no other character in SnK has.  No one else that we know of in the Survey Corps came from the Underground, no one else in the Survey Corps experienced that particular kind of disenfranchisement or alienation from proper society, or truly experienced what it meant to be treated as second class citizens, the way those who came from the Underground did.  The people of the Underground are there largely because, for whatever reasons, they’ve been deemed pariah’s of society, unwanted, unneeded, driven there, in the case of Levi’s mother, by persecution, others likely for having fallen in bad with the law, somehow, or because their own, impoverished circumstances left them with no place else to go.  Likely a large portion of the Underground population was born there, born into poverty and deprivation and labeled, through no fault or action of their own, as the “dregs” of society.  I think it’s even stated at some point in the manga that the people of the Underground don’t have legal citizenship up on the surface.  Meaning they’re literally treated as illegal aliens, and if they’re caught up above on the surface, they’ll be deported back down.  In this sort of environment, in which the population has been cast off from regular society and deemed unfit and undesired, cut off from the typical benefits and privileges one garners from being a part of a working and ordered society, like regular food, regular work, safe and reliable shelters, an education, health care, opportunity for advancement, all the sorts of rights one enjoys from having citizenship of any society, circumstances of desperation come into play, a constant, frantic struggle to acquire the basic necessities of living day to day, of simply surviving from one day to the next.  This of course breeds an environment of crime.  Engaging in illegal activities just to manage day to day life.  This is all stuff that Levi was born into, this kind of deprived life where he could rely on no one and nothing to help him get by.  No sorts of state implemented programs, no sort of educational system to help him learn a trade, no sort of regular job opportunities or income, no access to health care, no legal or human rights, no legal path to gaining citizenry up top, no  safety net of any kind to help him, essentially.  This is what it truly means to struggle to survive.  When there isn’t any time to think of banal or frivolous pleasures, when one can’t afford to indulge in fantasies or dreams, or hope.  All Levi would have known, for the first 25 years of his life, was the desperate struggle to not die, to make it to the next day.  Truly the definition of existing, not living.

Furlan and Isabel, we can surmise, shared this same experience with him, underwent and experienced similar struggles and desperation and deprivation.  That shared experience, then, must have bonded them in a way impossible for Levi to find with anyone else, no matter how close he grew to his comrades in the SC.  None of them could ever have understood the experience of growing up totally deprived, as Levi did, the way Furlan and Isabel could have.  And I think, because of that, to Levi, Furlan and Isabel were the closest thing to family he probably ever had.  They found each other in the most desperate of circumstances, and bonded through the shared struggle of their existence.  They found comfort and love and friendship in one another in an otherwise brutally harsh, unforgiving, cruel, uncaring, isolated and forgotten world.  A world literally shunned by the light of the sun, and by the acceptance of society above.

Well, how this all relates back to Erwin and Levi’s relationship with him, comes down to what Erwin says to Levi after Furlan’s and Isabel’s deaths.  Levi is drowning and blinded, in the moments following their deaths, by pure grief and rage.  He can’t understand what’s just happened.  He’s lost the only two friends he’s ever had in the whole world.  The two people who he found in the darkest, most difficult and most desperate time of his life, the two people who shared in and understood that hardship better than anyone else ever could.  He’s just watched the both of them being eaten alive by Titans, torn apart and killed in one of the most horrific and terrifying ways a person can die, and found himself unable to save them, helpless to stop this horrible thing from happening to the only two people in his life he could, up to that point, regard as family.  He was alone.  Utterly alone, then.  Likely transported back to the days before he met them, after Kenny had abandoned him on the streets, left completely on his own to survive in, again, one of the harshest, most unforgiving environments imaginable.  Levi’s life, before he met Furlan and Isabel, must have been one of suffocating loneliness and isolation.  A life filled with no real human connection, no real warmth, or love or friendship.  He found those things when he found them.  And then he had to sit there and watch as those things were torn violently away from him once more.  The pain must have been incomprehensible, the fear and disbelief and grief so deep, he couldn’t think past it.  He sees Erwin in that moment, then, and it all comes crashing down on him, all of that rage, pain and despair, and the only means for him to keep it from destroying him then and there, to keep it from consuming him, is to direct it at the man he sees a responsible for their deaths.  So he attacks Erwin, fully intent on killing him.  And then, Erwin tells him not to let Furlan and Isabel have died in vain.  He tells Levi not to regret his choice to come with them to the surface, not to regret having chosen to come out on expedition with the SC, not to regret choosing to leave them behind with the rest of their squad and go out on his own after Erwin, not to let them die without MEANING.  This entire exchange forms what comes to be the crux of Levi’s life philosophy later on.  Erwin tells Levi that he can’t let Furlan’s and Isabel’s deaths be meaningless, he can’t let them have died for no reason.  He tells Levi that humanity needs his strength, and that if he lends that strength to their cause, then Furlan’s and Isabel’s deaths will gain purpose, that, in spite of it’s horrific tragedy, their sacrifices will matter, because they will have brought Levi to the cause of humanity’s salvation.  

Essentially, Erwin plants in Levi the idea that people don’t have to die meaningless deaths.  Levi, who grew up in a world where doubtless he saw, day after day, people dying for no reason at all, succumbing to things like disease and starvation and depression and violence, Levi, who grew up doubtless SURROUNDED by meaningless death, is told by this man, whom Levi had meant to kill in his own, misguided attempt to make the lives of his family better, that death doesn’t have to be meaningless at all.  That people can die in ways that will make the world a better place for everyone else, that people can die for a cause that makes not just their deaths, but their very existence, meaningful, valuable, important.  Erwin plants this idea in Levi’s head, that no matter how ugly, or awful, or cruel, or painful, or seemingly pointless life can be, no matter how unfair or unjust the deaths of those we care for may seem, we can, even if only a little, redeem that cruelty and unfairness and that pain, by making their suffering and their sacrifices count towards something better.  Even if that something better is a distant hope, or an unreachable dream, to simply fight for it in the name of those who have endured hardship and lost their lives, is enough to save them from the indignity, shame and hopeless despair of having died forgotten and purposeless.  To Levi, who grew up surrounded by meaningless struggle and death, the thought that what we endure and what we suffer doesn’t have to be for nothing must have been a revelation.

This is why I think Levi is so devoted to Erwin, why he follows Erwin with such loyalty and trust.  It isn’t because of some silly bond due to his bloodline, or because he’s “in love” with Erwin.  It’s because Erwin made Levi believe that life, and death, could both hold something better than the desperate suffering of his childhood.  It’s why Levi thinks of Erwin as someone with a great, far reaching vision that Levi himself could never grasp.  Because he considered this thing that Levi himself never had, that a person’s life and death, both, could be given meaning through the continued actions those still living take in their name.  That WE can give their lives and deaths meaning.  Erwin’s ability to see that made Levi believe in him, and his ability to lead humanity to salvation.  Erwin’s words to Levi that day essentially rescued him from the depressing and brutal darkness of his own life experiences.  They made everything Levi had suffered up to then gain meaning.  No longer did Levi feel he’d lived such a hard and painful life for no reason other than his own misery.  No longer did Furlan’s and Isabel’s deaths have to have meant nothing and gained nothing.  Levi could take all of that, could take all of the pain and grief and sadness, and make it into something which would give it reason.  He could use it to form something which could have value for others.  Erwin’s words help pull Levi up from an existence of pure suffering and loss, and instead tell Levi that those things he’s gone through, those losses he’s experienced, those trials he’s endured, weren’t for nothing.

We see Levi apply this philosophy to almost everything he does throughout SnK thereafter, in which he tries with uncompromising determination to make sure every loss suffered, every sacrifice made, every action taken, is done so with meaning, with purpose, with reason.  Whether that be the lives of his comrades being lost in the fight for humanity’s freedom, or Historia needing to step up and take her rightful place as Queen, or his squad having to take the lives of other people to survive, or the numerous lives given to protect Eren, all of it is only tolerable to Levi so long as he believes there is MEANING behind it all, that there is a greater good to be achieved, that it will all lead to a better life for humanity all around.  For someone like Levi, who grew up in such utter depravation and abject poverty, in a world of ruthless and uncaring violence, where his own life was deemed by society to have no worth or value at all, the import of being able to believe in something better, in a better world, where all that suffering didn’t have to happen for nothing, can’t be overstated.  It was like his one, shining light to be found in an otherwise pitch black world, and when he saw it, Levi grasped it with both hands and never let it go.

It speaks too to Levi’s own, inherent idealism, I believe, that he was ABLE to believe the words coming from Erwin’s mouth, when everything in his life up to that point should have crushed any sort of idealistic fancy from him.  Levi wanted to believe it.  His own, innate kindness is what allowed him to.  I don’t think Levi ever fully believed life to be hopeless, or pointless, even before he met Erwin.  It’s why he was able to form bonds with people like Furlan and Isabel, why he did everything he could to help them, to make their lives better, to take care of them, and to help other orphans and delinquents in the Underground.  That he was able to open his heart up to the possibility of friendship and family, and have in him the desire to help those in need, even as it was already a struggle just to keep himself alive, is proof of Levi’s always pure and giving heart.  I think Levi has always desired to make the lives of others better, to do all he could to help others, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, and to give value to the lives of those deemed worthless by society.  I think Levi’s always held that kind of compassion and caring and kindness in him, that he’s always just been naturally inclined towards helping others, and wanting to improve their circumstances.  I think where Levi probably struggled was in believing he could achieve those things on his own, or at all.  In believing the plausibility of those dreams, or the value in even harboring such secret desires for something so idealistic.  In believing even in the possibility.  Life, after all, had shown him nothing but the opposite.  What Erwin did for Levi was make him believe in the possibility of his own power to make a difference, and validate his hope as something more than just fancy, turning it to something tangible, something he could work towards and achieve with his own, two hands.  Surrounded by so much pain and suffering without purpose, Erwin gave Levi the realization that, even if he had power in nothing else, he had the power to give the sacrifices and suffering of others meaning.  He had the power to make sure the lives of others were worth something more.   Erwin didn’t make Levi a better person.  Levi was ALWAYS a good person.  What Erwin did was give Levi the ability to believe himself capable of making the difference he always wanted to make.  He gave Levi the ability to genuinely, truly hope.  

[benevolentbirdgal]

A “brief” reference guide to modern Jewish denominations / Jewish Writing Advice / Jewish Identity / Jewish Reference Guide [graphic at bottom]

Writing a Jew or Jewish family? Aware that Judaism is not a monolith and want to honor that? Great! Need help with that? 100% cool - I’m here as your friendly (virtual) neighborhood Jewish professional to help. Just want to know more about Jewish denominations in comparison to one another? Also great! Fair warning - this is a long one. At least I included a graphic at the bottom?

Quick notes to acknowledge: As always, this is an American and Americanish perspective (and denominations as discussed here are MOSTLY relevant in the U.S. anyways). Additionally, the modern denominations as we think of them today really sprung from Ashkenazi communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most extant U.S. synagogues, day schools, and groups follow Ashkenazi customs and align with a denomination born of Ashkenazi tradition (aligning with the approximately 90% of Jewish-Americans who are Ashkenazi or Ashkenazi plus another community). Sephardi, Mizrachi, and other Jewish communities have their own traditions and jurisprudence. Most organized non-Ashkenazi communities in the U.S. identify as nondenominational but most closely compare in practice to orthodoxy, and many non-Ashkenazi Jews (especially outside of major population centers that may have other specific subgroup’s synagogues) are members of and very involved in Ashkenazi-originating movements, institutions, and synagogues. 

For the purpose’s of today’s discussion, we’ll start in the 19th century, because Karaites vs Pharisees vs Sadducees is a (his)story for another time. This also isn’t a history of how these denominations came to be-with the exception of some ultraorthodox groups, which may have sprung from the shtel a little earlier, all the below movements popped out of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I’m also going to list approximate percentage of the American Jewish population, and I’m going to (kinda) go in order from most to least strict/traditionally observant. 

Ultraorthodox (aka Haredi): The strictest, more traditional and expansive observance of the Torah, Talmud, and minhagim (customs). About 1% of American Jews are ultraorthodox. Ultraorthodox is not a unified movement. 

1a. Haredi, Satmar, and most other groups generally isolate themselves from the wider Jewish world and secular world.

1b. Chabad is also ultraorthodox, but specially seeks to interact with less observant Jews. I wouldn’t call it proselytizing, because they don’t seek to make gentiles Jewish, but they do try and find less observant Jews and bring them closer to Judaism, also establishes small synagogues around the country and world in isolated place. 

1c. Ultraorthodox are the most visibly Jewish attired group, wearing Kippahs for all men and boys and tichels (headscarves) and/or wigs for married women. Very modest attire for all. In Ashkenazi Ultraorthodox communities, men also tend to only wear black and white, hats in addition to their kippah (for grown and married men), and wearing tzitzit (a garmet with four corners with strings attached worn under a shirt with the threads sticking out). 

1d. Most likely to speak Yiddish or Hebrew as first language.

1e. No gender equality, very strict kosher, and intense community adherence to particular brand of Judaism.

1f. Communities generally led by a Rabbi and a Rebbetzin (Rabbi’s wife) as pair (rabbis are generally expected to be married).

1g. No female Rabbis, same-sex marriage, or intermarriage. Lots of children. Pretty much all boys have Bar Mitzahs, rarely do girls have Bat Mitzvahs. 

1h. Services entirely in Hebrew (except maybe the sermon).

1i. Only count matrilineal Jews and converts-Jewish father and gentile mother doesn’t count for them. 

1j. Very strict observance of prohibitions and commandments pertaining to Shabbat and holidays. 

Modern orthodox: Orthodox, but with some adaptations to modern life. Roughly 9% of American Jews. Also some division within modern orthodoxy (with some congregations being more liberal than others, particularly in regards to women and LGBTQ+ folks), but there are a couple of major organizations that most modox rabbis and congregations affiliate with one another through larger denomination movements (i.e. the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America). 

2a. Modern orthodox Jews regularly interact with other Jews who are more liberal. They tend to live in more Jewish communities but no issues with interacting with outside world.

2b. Modest clothing and men wear kippot everywhere (when safe). Married women also usually cover their hair (with wigs or tichels). Men also typically wear tzitzit. 

2b. Gender roles, but progress being made. Handful of female rabbis emerging in 2010s/2020s. Whether women count in a minyan depends on the specific congregation and many modern orthodox shuls will have separate women’s prayer groups. The prevalence of Bat Mitzvahs also varies wildly congregation to congregation.

2c. Like ultraorthodox, communities are typically led by a Rabbi and his wife the Rebbetzin. Some acceptance of homosexual individuals as members of the community, but no same-sex marriage (some alternate ceremonies emerging). Like one out gay male rabbi. No intermarriage.

2d. Very strict adherence to kosher, would likely not eat at someone less kosher’s home.

2e. Usually have on the higher end of a “normal” amount of children. Services entirely in Hebrew (except sermon).

2f. Only count matrilineal Jews and converts-Jewish father and gentile mother doesn’t count for them.

Less traditionally observant than this is often known as “liberal Judaism” - around 90% of American Jews.

2g.  Very strict observance of prohibitions and commandments pertaining to Shabbat and holidays. 

Conservative: Brands itself as middle of the road Jewish movement. about 18% of the American Jewish population. No connection to conservative politics, most Conservative with a C Jews are liberal or moderate politically. Often called “Masorti” outside the U.S and hypothetically a unified movement under several connected organizations (i.e. the Masorti Olami and the Jewish Theological Seminary). 

3a. Gender equality. Female rabbis and LGBTQ rabbis definitely an acceptable thing, but not as common as with Reform or Reconstructionist. 

3b. Formally sanctioned ceremony for same-sex couples to wed under Jewish law since 2012 and affirmation ceremonies since 2006.

3c. Modesty in synagogues but comparable to regular American attire otherwise.

3d. Generally comparable family size to other American families.

3e. Kosher, but not as strict as orthodoxy. Many Conservative Jews have kosher homes but are willing to be more lax when eating out. Synagogues are always kosher.

3f. Services mostly in Hebrew, sermons and some prayers definitely in local language.

3g. Intermarriage is frowned upon, but many otherwise Conservative Jews will be married by a less traditional rabbi or justice of the peace to non-Jewish partners. Although Conservative rabbis do not perform interfaith marriages, many interfaith couples are in Conservative synagogues. In the 90s/2000s it was way less friendly to interfaith couples/families (laughs in having a goyish dad) but that has improved in the past 3-5 years substantially. 

3h. Observance of prohibitions and commandments pertaining to Shabbat and holidays is regulated but less strict than orthodoxy. Varies a bit by community. A good example to illustrate this is getting to synagogue on Shabbat:

By the book (not necessarily reflected by attendees): Orthodoxy says you have to walk there (no driving), Reform says it’s no issue to drive on Shabbat, and Conservative says you can drive but only to get to shul and back. 

3i. As with orthodoxy, only matrilineal Jews count. Most interfaith families with non-Jewish moms (or moms who converted post-birth of the kid), particularly those who want to participate in Conservative communities will convert the child as a baby so they can have a normal Jewish upbringing (beyond an extra blessing/prayer in the Bnai Mitzvah process and social awkwardness that oft accompanies interfaith families in Jewish spaces).

3j. Most dress comparably to others in geographic area (synagogue notwithstanding, see my other post). Men on the higher end of observant might also wear kippahs all the time as well. Outside of explicitly Jewish contexts, similar lifestyles to surrounding populations. Around the same number of children as in gentile families. 

Reform: Not at all traditionally observant. About 35% of American Jews. More or less a cohesive movement linked by organizations (i.e. Women of Reform Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism).

4a. Reform Judaism is the largest group. It generally views Judaism through the lens of social justice, repairing the world, and cultural heritage as opposed to religious mandate. 

4b. Very big on personal choice in what one observes, I like to call it “choose your own adventure” Judaism. 

4c. Keeping kosher is uncommon. Some shuls aren’t even kosher.

4d. Reform services use the least Hebrew, although this is changing in some places. 

4e. Reform’s standard of Jewishness is 1+ Jewish parent(s) and raised doing Jewish things, regardless of which parent is Jewish. 

4f. Very feminist/egalitarian and welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks. Highest number of not-straight rabbis and female rabbis. 

4g. Intermarriage very common and can be performed by Reform rabbis. 

4h. Reform Judaism was way ahead of the curve in terms of LGBTQ+ rights and religion. The movement has had members advocating for homosexual rights (protection in housing, employment, civil marriage, and other nondiscrimination protections) since 1965 (finally passing formal resolutions in 1977), began proactively including/welcoming out gay rabbis in 1990, created same-gender marriage Jewish ceremonies in 1996/7, and has made resolutions explicitly including bi and trans people as well since 2004 (stuff earlier than that generally specified “gay and lesbian”). An additional resolution was passed in 2015 regarding trans and nonbinary inclusion, alongside guides to help congregations do so. 

4i. See #3j - also applies here. 

Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, are the biggest and “standard” movements people will most typically list and identify with, most likely to appear in surveys and studies, are older than everything listed below. Modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform all started in the 19th century and some Ultraorthodox groups trace back further than that. I’ve outlined some practical differences, but the basic theoretical difference is that Orthodox considers traditional Jewish law (Halacha) binding and you can’t change it, Conservative believes it it’s binding but the community can change it, and Reform believes that it’s nonbinding. 

Some smaller movements: 

Reconstructionist - Newest even remotely well-known and organized movement, founded in the 1920s as an offshoot of the Conservative movement. I would describe it as “build your own adventure but Halacha matters (or at least some of it).” The first thing almost every recon Jew I’ve ever met has told me when describing reconstructionism is that they invented the bat mitzvah in 1922, which basically translates to “tradition matters but also egalitarianism.”

Maybe 2%-5% of American Jews today self-ID as Reconstructionist, but I would argue that a lot of nondenominal practitioners have philosophies fairly aligned with the recon ethos. 

Jewish Renewal: very small and relatively disorganized movement started in the 1960s. Attempts to bring Jewish tradition and modern sensibilities, hippie Jews who care about Halacha. Big on mysticism and music, doing Jewish enthusiastically, and a tendency towards more traditional observance in conjunction with progressive politics. Kind of the laid-back cousin of reconstructionism, although neither sprung from the other. 

(Cultural) Humanistic Judaism: “Non-theistic” Judaism for atheist Jews who still want a connection to their history, culture, and celebrations. 

Nondenominational - Nondenominational and post-denominational Jews are the fast growing group. Variety of liberal/non-traditionally observant beliefs and practices, but most will still contextualize themselves around the denominational scale.

[spiritus-sonne]

The Plasticity of Otherkin

To clarify, in this writing I’m using “plasticity” to refer to changes that can occur, particularly psychologically, in the experience and/or identity of being otherkin (and related identities). This does not mean that such changes are by conscious choice (though maybe they can be in some cases) nor that they are easy to occur (in which plasticity as a definition can denote “easy to mold” but I’m not using it that way, this is instead something at least more similar to how it is used in neuroscience with the ability of the mind to change). It is generally accepted by otherkin that being such is an involuntary thing and that being otherkin is essentially permanent and life-long from whenever it begins.

It used to be a very common belief and ‘standard’ in the therian and otherkin communities that one must be born as therian/otherkin and any belief to the contrary was treated as invalid, sometimes with people stating that an individual always was therian/’kin from birth but just didn’t know it until later in life. Eventually such insistence calmed down in these communities, seemingly from people who adamantly spoke against that ‘norm’ and offered reasoning as to why it isn’t an invalid belief, myself included amongst those who spoke against it (specifically in my “Becoming a Therian” writing). There also tends to be a lot of people in the otherkin community who believe their own otherkinity is due to spirit-based reasons, and some of those people (though seemingly less so anymore) believe that such is the case for othekin in general. With that, they tend to believe that one’s spirit is anchored to a human body at or near physical birth and thus that the spirit (and therefore their nonhumanity) would be a part of them from birth. Which is a fine view to have but it certainly isn’t the only legitimate one and fortunately many otherkin in the community now accept other views including psychological ones.

When it comes to the debate about whether otherkinity can be voluntary or if it is only involuntary, I feel kind of grey about it, undecided as to which ‘side’ I take because, really, I think my view is somewhere in-between. I do hold that otherkinity/therianthropy are not choices in a simple sense nor that one can easily or quickly become ‘kin/therian or easily lose being such. But that doesn’t mean I view it as strictly “involuntary”. The matter is more complex than a simple black-or-white definition of “otherkin are only such involuntarily”. I totally get why these identities and experiences are viewed as involuntary, but to those who feel they fall in that grey area or to those who want to dive deeper into this concept instead of taking it at face-value--well, that’s why I’m writing this piece. It has just never sat right with me that otherkin-is-involuntary is treated as some factual truth that can’t be questioned.

So to start off, I’ll cover the concept of ‘becoming otherkin/therian’, though much more briefly than my essay I mentioned. It appears most common for someone to essentially have always been ‘kin/therian, from birth, but it does occur sometimes that an individual will develop their nonhuman identity and experiences at some point later in their life, after early childhood. A person’s sense of self and their personality can change quite significantly between their baby or toddler years and their near-teens, teenage years, and into being an adult. I, personally, can’t track back my nonhumanity to before I was 10 to 12 years old--a very critical changing point in my development as an individual and who I have been since then. Actually, I can even date back my monster-heartedness to early childhood but not my otherkinity. So why would I just assume those experiences were there when I can’t so far find the evidence to believe such? Just because some other people want to believe that every otherkin had to be such from birth? That’s not a good enough reason for me. That crucial pivot point of my life at 10 to 12 years old changed me in many ways as an individual, and causing me to develop my otherkinity was a big part of that. I don’t know *why* exactly my otherkinity developed, and when in particular certain ‘kintypes developed enough that I would now consider them ‘kintypes, but it did.

The mind is a plastic thing, with the level of plasticity dependent on various factors, including but not limited to: age or stage of life, social factors and influences, trauma and stress, and learning, among other things. And with that, the Self is also similarly plastic. It’s easy for people to take for granted the Self as being static because most of the time it develops so slowly it’s hard to notice the changes until one looks back at their memories or other people’s memories of them to find contrast to who they are at present and at different points in their life. The Self does have static, or at least mostly static, aspects, and the extent of such varies from individual to individual, but it also has aspects that can and do change on an individual basis. So it calls into question this concept of a “true self” that one’s otherkinity is a part of. I do believe that otherkinity is a deep, integral part of who someone is, that it is part of one’s Self. However, that Self can and does change over the course of one’s life, so why can’t one’s otherkinity necessarily change with it, including to the extent of either developing or losing whole ‘kintypes or their otherkinity entirely? That doesn’t mean that such happens by choice, let alone by some superficial kind of choice.

But what of people choosing to gain or lose a ‘type? Copinglinks and otherlinks are essentially experientially the same as otherkin and fictionkin with the key difference being that ‘links are formed voluntarily--by choice--unlike how otherkin are believed to form. Yet there can be a grey area here, in that some ‘linktypes may develop in such a way as to become completely involuntary, regardless of whether the individual with the ‘type likes it anymore or not. And the question is whether these now-involuntary ‘linktypes could be considered ‘kintypes? Personally, I think they can, but that it’s ultimately up to the individual experiencing such to decide if they feel otherkinity, fictionkinity, therianthropy, coping/otherlinking, or whatever fits their experiences and identity better. It’s not up to other people to decide for them, and that does not make the matter insulting or disrespectful of otherkin and related or types of ‘linking. I believe that it also is possible to voluntarily lose one’s otherkinity, though I figure it is very difficult to do and would likely take an extensive time to complete, along with it quite notably changing core aspects of the individual’s Self, including in ways the individual couldn’t predict. As to whether anyone has done such, I don’t personally know, but I would like to see the communities open and respectful of the concept, at the least.

I’ve known of people before who have lost one or more therio-/’kintypes over time, not that they were actually “just wrong about being those ‘types” but that they felt they legitimately lost them for whatever reasons. And I believe that such can similarly happen to the individual’s full nonhumanity or fictionkinity, even if it may be a rather rare occurrence. And that’s, as a concept, okay. The individual has the place and right to believe they lost that part of who they once were, whether they wanted to or not, whether they even liked that part of them or not, and they shouldn’t be shamed, disrespected, or insisted they are wrong about it because of it. These cases, in my opinion, aren’t ruining these nonhuman and fictionkin parts of alterhumanity, despite how some people may act like they are. It’s especially problematic if these people do exist and for any of them their loss of their nonhumanity or fictionkinity is a bad, emotional part of their life. Or even if they consciously chose to lose such, their reasons behind making that choice could be surrounded in rather negative parts of their life and previous self, so people shouldn’t be making them feel bad about it because others are viewing their experiences as “invalid”.

The point to all this is that otherkinity and related are still highly subjective things and we are learning more about the vast diversity in the experiences and identities of such over time, so our communal knowledge needs to remain open to certain extents and willing to let that knowledge grow when new information emerges. Otherkin is not necessarily a for-life static thing in various ways and we need to be more careful to view it not through a black-or-white lens but through a whole spectrum of possibilities before we decide what exactly is set-in-stone about it. And doing this does not render the definition of otherkin meaningless.

[hansolmates]

jeongguk; a royal exchange (02)

feat. the rom-com college!jeongguk x princess!reader au no one asked for

she’s the man!au where the princess impersonates her brother yoongi in order to finish his degree on time while yoongi is thrusted into princely duties. jeongguk is in the mess purely through room arrangement.

notes: p.2 is a straight up roll of pure crack and fluff. lil sexy for like .2 seconds. super self indulgent and inspired by the princess diaries. princess is stressed the whole time and we live to see her suffer

w.c: 7.1k 

01, 02

“I’m sure this is probably the hundredth time you’ve heard since you’ve landed, but welcome to Illyria! The palace welcomes you to your new home away from home.” 

“Ho-ly,” Jeongguk slaps a hand in front of Taehyung’s offending tongue, in case swearing is forbidden on royal territory. Wouldn’t want their scholarships taken away over Taehyung’s potty mouth. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Hoseok, sir?” an exchange student from a university in New Zealand (yet Korean-born, ironically) pipes up, “why does the infrastructure of the building look like that?” 

The student is referring to the ravines of gold metal that stream the walls of the palace. While the architecture is classic, the sheen of the metal definitely gives it an air of regality. 

“Good question, Namjoon. The castle is wired and designed after our main export, Illyrium. The element was discovered in the early 1850s in what is now the ruins of Oros,” Hoseok quips brightly, patting the stone affectionately. “It has a conductivity percentage of 106% percent, more than silver. It is also quite durable.” 

Namjoon’s deep laugh echoes throughout the pavilion, “I was just asking because it makes the castle so beautiful. Thank you.” 

Jeongguk takes the time to snap more pictures of the castle, switching between his Sony and his phone. He zooms in on a low balcony overlooking the terrace they landed from. A figure rolls into his shot, stumbling barefoot with a ruby silk robe swishing between steps. You’re tired, sleep-laden as you clutch a snow white mug between your two hands, leaning your elbows against the metal bearing. You’re staring at nothing and everything, glazed over your backyard that seems to stretch on for eons. 

“You’re right,” Jeongguk marvels at your visage between his lens, “absolutely beautiful.” 

“Can I please get a better assignment, Jimin?” 

“Your highness,” Jimin frowns, following after you, “you love teaching the exchange students, what has changed?” 

“Exactly, Jimin,��� you sigh, stopping in the middle of the hallway. Jimin’s nose nearly bumps into yours, “nothing has changed. I teach students every quarter, the same subjects every time. It’s not to say that I don’t love teaching,” you exhale, blowing into Jimin’s honeycomb bangs, “but can’t I have a more challenging assignment? Conversing with dignitaries, renovating the town square, I’ll even do culinary!” 

Your poor secretary squeaks, pushing up his rose gold iPad to carve some distance between you two. “You-you know those jobs aren’t suitable for a Princess,” Jimin cuts himself off once he sees your eyes soften in defeat, “b-but! I’ll see if Hoseok would be willing to take on another class? And maybe we could arrange a presentation to the King in regards to your proposals?” 

“Right,” you smile sadly, folding your arms and stretching the tight blazer your mother forced you in, “as if another Google Slideshow will impress him.” 

Jimin squeezes your shoulder, as if he could tell you all the things he could never say through body language. “Showtime’s in two minutes, your highness.” 

You nod, making haste to the large double doors that lead to the main living room. Normally, the scholarship program’s presentation is done in the throne room, a big show of bravado and an ego booster to your family. However, this particular class is entirely post-grad and under ten students, so you figure they were placed in a more intimate area for the sake of comfort. 

Jimin pulls a lint roller out of nowhere, careful to catch every bit of dust that dares meet your presence. You tug uncomfortably at your collar, and give the signal to the door bearer. You fight the urge to flinch at the usual bombastic announcement. 

“Introducing, the Princess of Illyria!” 

The students and staff are bowing when you enter, and you send a look to Yoongi, who only offers you a lazy smirk. It’s a look you’ve feared since childhood, an explicit tell that he knows something you don’t. Nevertheless, you tack on a smile, standing in front of the ten students who are still dutifully lowered. You have to hand it to them, the undergrads would already be turning heads to get a peek at the princess. 

“You may rise,” you voice floats. As mother always said, your voice must replicate a dandelion seed, bouncing in the wind. 

The student directly in front of you elevates, a pair of doe eyes taking his sweet time to appreciate the view. 

Jeon Jeongguk gives you a lazy smirk, mirroring your brother’s. The smile evaporates from your face, taking in the handsome man that you lived with for two months over two years ago. His eyes have certainly not lost their spark, but his hair is trimmed and showing off his forehead. A Sony camera wraps around his neck, held tightly by a strong pair of hands. He’s even dressed brightly, wearing a navy blazer over a plain white tee and a pair of dark jeans. Something twinges in your heart when you see that a familiar pair of black combat boots remain. 

Jeongguk is the first to break eye contact, deciding to at least pretend to care about Hoseok’s presentation on the flatscreen. An overplayed video about Illyria’s history drones on, while Hoseok and Jimin are exchanging schedules in between. You’re sure that Jimin is passing on your word about choosing not to teach this quarter, and now it’s personal. 

This urges the students to take seats on the couches, while staff floats around with various pastries and refreshments. 

Your family takes their respective seats, and you fight the urge to pinch Yoongi as you hiss, “You knew about this?” 

“Surprise,” Yoongi sing-songs, munching on a linzer cookie. “I handpicked all the students.”

“Couldn’t give your sister a heads up?” you snap hotly, making sure no one was looking as you pop a whole cream puff in your mouth. 

“Sorry,” Yoongi leans over the shell of your ear, “Your hot ex-roommate is here, just wanted to let you know before you eat the dessert table.” 

You mouth a fuck you, taking a stab at him under the table with your heeled foot. 

After Yoongi’s not-so-subtle reveal of each other’s identities in a crowded Chinese restaurant two years ago, you’ve since cut off all contact with Jeon Jeongguk as you resumed your life as Princess of Illyria. Simultaneously shocked, but not surprised due to the obvious hints of suspicion, Jeongguk had forgiven your lie and allowed you to leave in good spirits. You remember leaving him at the front door of your dorm, hugging you warmly and bidding you safe travels. 

It confused you, because it would've been easier to leave if Jeongguk had gotten angry at the complete breach of trust and kicked you out. 

Hoseok is now presenting a slideshow of the intended schedule and itinerary for all students. You’re now glaring at the back of Jeongguk’s head, trying your damn hardest not to shove three brownies in your mouth in the presence of guests. Your tiny dessert spoon picks pathetically at the measly crumbs, and Jimin is urging you to smile from his position opposite you. 

“And as always, our lovely princess will be conducting our class on Modern Illyrian Anthropology and will be organizing your field studies!” Hoseok practically shouts across the room, where you’re sitting wide-eyed with your family. You feel Yoongi reach over to dab the crumbs off your lips, enjoying your suffering. 

You shoot a look at Jimin who was supposed to take care of things, and he gives you a pained expression that reads don’t fire me.  

With a tight-lipped smile and feigning ignorance to Jeongguk’s interest in you teaching, you reply to the expectant students, “It’s always a pleasure to teach, I promise to not bore you with Illyrian history, that’s Hoseok’s job.” 

“Hey!” he scrunches his nose, then turns to the students who are hiding their giggles, “Better get on her good side if you want a nice field assignment.” he warns good-naturedly, giving you a mock glare. 

You suppose giving Jeongguk a field assignment far, far away from the castle. 

After the long-winded presentation and a handful of brochures, the royal family is escorted out to retire for the day. As the youngest in the family you're the last one to leave.

Out the doorway you hear Taehyung utter, "That's her? What a babe!" 

As to not arouse suspicion, it takes longer than anticipated to get a private moment with Jeongguk. No one but Taehyung and Jimin know of your circumstances, and it is to remain that way due to the fact that you and Yoongi committed fraud, royal or not. 

Jeongguk is a quiet student, surprisingly. Choosing a seat by the window, he spends most of your classes doodling and looking out the pavilion. As stimulating as Namjoon and Irene’s questions are, you’re a little disheartened at the fact that Jeongguk has made little effort to talk to you, even if it’s as impersonal as classwork or office hours. 

Today Hoseok’s teaching, and that gives you ample time to work out where you want to assign the students for field study. You’ve shaken off Jimin for now, and you’re currently roaming the halls with your phone, checking off your schedule. 

Called the Museum of Modern Illyrian Art for Namjoon … check. 

Sent staff to the villa in prep for the kiddies’ weekend getaway … check. 

Sent e-vites and physicals to the Genovian royals … next.

Find a quiet corner to stress cry before 2:30—

A hand flies out of nowhere, grabbing your waist roughly and throwing you in a small room. The hand clasped over your mouth swallows your scream as the door shuts tight. 

The captor turns on the singular lightbulb, grinning at you like a madman. “Hey Princess—what the fuck!” 

You grimace, putting down your switchblade that was dangerously close to Jungkook’s jugular. “What the hell, Jeongguk! I could’ve killed you!” 

“Dang, princesses are something else nowadays. Where on your body are you hiding knives?” Jeongguk marvels as if he wasn’t ten seconds away from being dead!Guk, patting down your lavender pantsuit in a way that’s highly inappropriate. “What are you, Ty Lee?” 

“Self-defense secret,” and under your breath you add, “and Mai’s the one who hides knives. Ty Lee’s the acrobat.” 

The grin easily returns to the tall boy’s face, burnt eyes shining against the naked bulb. This is the most emotion you’ve got out of him since classes started, and it’s doing nothing to ease the butterflies in your stomach. “So, come here often?” 

“To the storage closet?” you snort, “not particularly.” 

“And where’s a place I can go that you do come often?” 

“My office hours,” you deadpan, “in which you haven’t visited, by the way. As a friend and as a teacher, I’m insulted.” 

A low whine erupts from his throat, and he leans against the shelves, long arms spread across the three-ply toilet paper. “But your little secretary’s always there. It’s awkward when we’re not alone. I don't know if I should act like a friend or a student. Speaking of, where is he?” 

“Ah, Jimin’s getting Starbucks.” 

“Lit, can you tell him to pick me up a pink drink?” 

“No,” but you send a text to Jimin anyway. “Shouldn’t you be in class?” 

“I’m supposed to be coming back from the bathroom,” he air-quotes, “AKA, running around the palace until I can corner you.” 

You sigh, fiddling with the hem of your blazer. 

“Are you annoyed at me?” and for a second, Jungkook’s eyes betray a hint of vulnerability. “Am I being too forward? Or do you not want to catch up? I don’t know, I figured you’d be excited to see me but you’ve just been so busy.” 

“Jeongguk,” you put a hand on his shoulder, ceasing the rambling. He opens his mouth to add more, but you squeeze his bicep. “I’m not annoyed at you. I’m annoyed at the situation. I’ve missed you,” you offer him a shy smile, and he returns a small, hopeful one in return, “but you’re right, it’s been really busy with the usual duties and I’ve been a little on edge with keeping things together without letting any secrets out.” 

You’re also confused as to why you’re still harboring feelings for him, but that’s another secret you keep to yourself. 

“Well, your duty is doo-dy.”  Jungkook huffs, but is placated by your confession. “Don’t worry Princess, I’ll think of something.” 

A knock startles the both of you, and Jeongguk squeaks, brandishing a plunger in defense. With a dainty finger, you push the plumbing tool back to the ground, as the knockings did not stop. 

“Ohmygod—am I going to be beheaded for kidnapping the Princess?” Jeongguk panics and checks his phone, realizing his bathroom break turned into a straight up game of hooky. “Do you guys still behead? I mean if you’re pulling out knives from who knows where—” 

“Guk, relax,” recognizing it immediately as a code between you and your brother, you swing the supply closet open. 

Yoongi looks between the two of you, gauging the situation. When he notices that no, you two did not just romp between the 3-ply and were in fact only talking, he huffs. “Losers,” he mutters under his breath, hiding a grin as he leaves you two to splutter. 

It’s already well over twenty minutes past your class time, but Taehyung just wouldn’t shut up. 

You can’t blame him, he’s thrilled that you managed to snag him a field study with your personal couture designer. He’s lit up like a good boy on Christmas eve, getting his present early. He’s gushing about how excited he is to use authentic Swarovski crystals and rub noses with the fancy fabrics. 

“I’ll make you the perfect dress for the upcoming gala, Your Highness.” Taehyung’s vibrating in a manner you never imagined on a human before.

“Thank you,” you reply awkwardly, “I’m sorry, but what gala are you referring to?” 

He shrugs, “I’m sure there’s a gala you have to go to sometime. I’ve just always wanted to say that, makes me feel special.” 

“Tae,” Jeongguk is sitting on your desk, heels bumping into the mahogany. With a stiff jerk of his head, Tae’s lips morph into an ‘O’ and he finally gets the hint, bowing to you and scurrying off. 

“Y’know, his fashion’s kind of eccentric.” he nods over to the excessive fur lining on Taehyung’s slippers, “I’d make sure your designer keeps a close eye on him.” 

“And what do I owe the pleasure of your presence,” you click, “twenty minutes after class?” 

Jeongguk has the audacity to roll his eyes, rolling his head back to crack out the stiffness. “The chamber choir, really?” he exhales, dropping the itinerary you spent the better half of your nights preparing. 

You raise your eyebrows, “What? It pertains to your major.” 

“For the past six years all I've done is eat, sleep, and breathe music,” he says, and you’re suddenly reminded that you had a glimpse of that version of Jeongguk two years ago. A slave to the music, as much as he loved the subject, it sometimes felt like a tether that weaved far too deeply under his skin. “Can’t my field assignment be something different? More eclectic?” 

“Do you have anything in mind?” 

“In fact, I do.” Jeongguk lolls his head to the side, chestnut bangs falling softly. “For my field study, I want to shadow the Princess’ duties.” 

You slam your hands down, standing up so you’re nearly nose-to-nose with the young man. “Are you crazy? Do you want Yoongi and I to get caught?” 

“Listen, I’ve thought about it all throughout class—”

“—what? You didn’t listen to my lecture?—”

“—and today in class you mentioned that you graduated with a Master’s in Public Affairs, because in fact I always listen to you,” Jeongguk presses a finger to your lips when you try to cut him off, “and lo and behold, one of my minors was in public affairs! What better way to get more experience in the business when I have the master right in front of me?” 

“I don’t know, Guk,” you try, mulling through all the possible situations and horrors that could occur because of it. 

“Princess, we’re killing two birds with one stone!” Jeongguk pleads, giving you the puppy eyes, “not only do I get a far better field study assignment, but it’s far better because I get to spend more time with you!” 

You hate how absolutely weak you’ve become under his gaze. In the span of less than three weeks, Jeon Jeongguk has re-entered your life like he never left. He wanted to spend time with you. The selfish part of your brain says you wish the same. Who are you to deny such a simple desire? 

“Fine,” you spit out, putting up a front and pretending to be annoyed, “but you better not get all huffy around Jimin.” 

He shrugs, throwing his bag over his shoulder. “Worth it.” 

“You’re different,” Jeongguk states bluntly, actively ignoring the way Jimin tries to push between you two. Jeongguk continues to press into your shoulder as you weave through the gardens. You’re picking flowers for a specific theme arrangement and pattern. A diplomat from Spain is coming and he is bringing her young daughter. You've heard that she’s recently taken in interest in constructing flower crowns. 

“Well, two years can do that to a person,” you reply airily, dropping a tiger lily in the wicker basket Jeongguk insisted on carrying. 

Having Jeongguk follow you around like a duckling is fun, to be frank. Jimin is no longer hyper-focused on you, forcing him to spread his attention between you and your overly-attentive  student. Jeongguk can’t attend every single one of your events because some of the information’s sensitive, but when he does it makes your job feel less of a job and more like a fun group project. 

Like when you and Jeongguk would stumble in the farmer’s market every Sunday morning, hungover but aching to fill your bellies. You two were walking zombies, forcing yourselves out of bed to feed yourselves. But it was always fun because you were together, whenever it was Jeongguk’s turn to pay, you’d sneak in more KitKats for yourself. Whenever it was your turn, Jeongguk would smuggle more cartons of banana milk. 

“No, no. It’s not that,” your friend admonishes instantly, “your personality’s still the same, even though it was Yoongi-fied. Your heart hasn’t changed,” you turn your head sharply towards a field of carnations, concealing your flush. “I mean, you’re more confident.” 

“In other words,” Jimin pipes, looking up from his iPad, “an air of regality.” 

You scoff, putting a hand on your hip and looking expectantly at the two boys. “You’ve changed too, Guk,” you reason, shaking your head. “Old Jeongguk wouldn’t be wearing white dress shirts and shoving princesses in closets.” 

“You shoved the princess in a closet—!” Jimin starts, having half a mind to cancel the field study all together.

“Well, Old Jeongguk didn’t have a chance to really get to know you,” Jeongguk twirls a baby’s breath between his fingers, tucking it in-between your ear. “That’s New Jeongguk’s job.” 

“So, you’re the Princess’ head of security,” Jeongguk tilts his head to look up at the slightly taller man, his visage covered by a pair of shades. The bodyguard is never really present, only when citizens enter the castle or you’re out of town. “You know you’re inside, right?” 

The man only slightly inclines his head to acknowledge Jeongguk’s prodding. Hmph, he looks like a talker. 

“If you’re her head of security,” Jeongguk leans closer, trying to avoid any further attention to his conversation, “do you know where she hides her knives? Because sometimes she wears those tight pencil skirts and I can’t help but wonder—”

“That’s classified.” 

“Alright, where do you hide your knives—”

“Also classified.” 

“Jeongguk,” you relent, sliding your footrest next to your throne, “leave Seokjin alone and come here, please.” 

You can’t blame him. It’s always been a pastime of yours to ruffle Seokjin’s feathers, but you must admit that meeting with citizens is a long and frankly, boring process. The routine is fairly simple, the citizen bows and offers something for the table, and in return you lend your ear and offer assistance if possible. 

“For your table, Your Highness,” the next citizen bows, carrying a foil-lined tray filled with fresh baked bread. 

“Smells delicious, Bertrand.” you beam, ripping open the tin to snatch a hot slice off the top. Rosemary and thyme are egg washed atop the brown bread, and you proffer a piece to Jeongguk, as you could imagine the poor guy is as antsy as ever. “And may I introduce you to my student, Jeon Jeongguk? He’s studying my diplomacy for his field study.” 

Bertrand tips his head, “Lucky you, she’s a true leader.” 

Jeongguk nods shyly, nibbling on the crust. “Truly an honor.” 

Jeongguk offers to bring the gift to the table with the other offerings across the room, and you nod, conversing lightly with Bertrand. His worries are simple enough, he feels pressured by a catering request from an Illyrian Duke, and wishes to serve a party fit for a royal. In resolution, you offer to send a palace chocolatier and chef to help with the preparations. Jeongguk returns to his seat next to yours just as Bertrand leaves. He pulls up his iPad, feigning notes that he should be writing while observing you. 

The next citizen hobbles over, holding a large ivory wicker basket covered by a beige tarp. “For your table, Your Highness,” they bow, “I hope you like omelets.” 

If you weren’t on the throne with an audience of one-hundred, you’d be delivering a very confused expression, coupled with panic. “May I?” you inquire, forcing a smile as you lift open the tarp.

In the basket there are two small jars of marmalade, and one huge chicken sitting fat and proud that its skin overflows between the gaps of the wicker. Its head twitches in your direction, barely turning because its neck is hugely bulbous with excess weight. Its beady little eyes mock you. It smells fear. 

“Her name’s Dixie,” the citizen supplied helpfully. 

“Holy shit,” Jeongguk whispers next to you, but not soft enough for it to not echo in the throne room, “Dixie, you are a thick chick.” 

“Jeongguk!” you exclaim, which causes the whole room to reverb at your shrill cry. 

Of course the chicken has to freak out, flapping its wings and freeing itself from the confines of its package. The animal dives for you, and you press yourself as much as you can against the throne. Jeongguk knows no bounds, throwing himself in front of you to catch the large bird. Feathers weave unto his umber tresses as the bird meets gravity, Jeongguk unable to calm down Dixie. 

 It’s more or less a wild goose chase (chicken chase?) after that, Jeongguk follows Dixie down the platform and around the throne room. The citizens and staff are clutching their stomachs in laughter, endeared by the young man following the chicken. Jimin is laughing and slapping Seokjin’s shoulder, his face breaking in an unabashed smile. 

And you can’t help but laugh along with them, trying to smother your giggles by covering your face with a silk fan. You peek over the thin fabric to see Jeongguk looking especially concentrated on his mission. It wasn’t like the chicken was going to escape the throne room because the doors are closed, but surely it will be a workout as Dixie’s a trooper and isn’t going down without a fight. 

“Don’t worry Princess, I got this!” Jeongguk’s voice reassures you from the far edge of the throne room. He’s taken a break, but the glint in his eyes show he’s committed to catching Dixie as she scuttles in circles.

He flashes you a breathtaking smile, all gums and pearly whites as he runs a hand through his wavy locks. Your smile falls slightly, and you clutch your fan tighter at the realization. Oh, you are besotted. 

“Hoseok’s had me on my back about teaching a full class before your weekend getaway but I’ve long decided,” you lift your chin haughtily in a way only princesses do, jutting out your lip in confirmation, “that you should enjoy the time you have here. Summer’s almost over. You all should get a headstart on your packing so you can get to the beach early.” 

Your class erupts into hoots and hollers, the Powerpoint presentation about the minerals of Illyria long abandoned. Two months have already passed, and in a couple weeks they’ll be saying their goodbyes. A twinge of sadness hits you as you relish in your students’ happy smiles. As each semester passes, each group leaves something behind you’ll never forget. This summer, as much as you taught them, you’ve learned a lot from them as well.

Students are already starting to pack up, but Namjoon’s butt is firmly planted in his seat, raising his hand. “Sorry, I have a question.” 

You smile goodnaturedly, already used to his usual spiel. “I can email you the Powerpoint and we can go over whatever you want on Monday.” 

“Ah, no. I was wondering if you were coming with us,” Namjoon mutters sheepishly. 

You’re surprised, even moreso when Irene and Yerin insist that you should go. “Yes, you have to go!” Yerin bounces in her seat.

“Oh,” you blush, “I can’t. I don’t normally go on these things, wouldn’t it be weird to have your teacher at your party?” 

“Hell no!” Yerin gasps shamelessly. It’s one thing you liked about this class, after class is over, they always managed to make you feel normal. Maybe it’s the closeness in age and education, but they remind you so often that you’re still young. After all, they weren’t Illyrian, and while outside of class they put on the whole shebang for you, it didn’t take long for them to get comfortable around you. “We can show you what real college life is like! We can roast barbeque on the beach and tell scary stories!” 

Taehyung snorts, already halfway out the door, “I’m sure the Princess doesn’t wanna see you shitfaced in the ocean.” 

You placate Yerin with a small smile, “I have to work after this, but I’ll see what I can do.” 

Namjoon walks up to your desk as the rest of the students file out. He runs the spine of his journal along your desk, “Prince Yoongi and Hoseok will be there too, if it makes you feel any better. Hope you can come.” 

The room is soon vacated, leaving you and your Star Student alone. 

“‘I’ll see what I can do’, really?” Jeongguk rolls his eyes, plopping himself atop your desk. Your eyes snap to the way the dark denim cords around his thighs, and you make a deal of slamming your laptop shut. “C’mon, of course you wanna come. I’m not taking no for an answer.” 

“Not really,” you admit. “I used to really like spending the weekend at the villa. I loved getting to know each class and know what it feels like to be like you guys,” you downplay yourself, stuffing books and electronics in your briefcase. “But ever since we roomed together two years ago, I can’t bring myself to go anymore. It’s not the same when you’ve actually had a taste of it.”

Jeongguk’s eyes soften at your confession. You could feel that he wasn’t prepared for your honesty, and you don’t blame him. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I leave in two weeks, you know.” 

“I know.” 

“Can you at least try to come, for me?” 

You lift your head up to reach his eyes, looking equal parts nervous and vulnerable. You’re suddenly thrusted back to two years ago, cornered in your dorm room where Jeongguk was upset at the thought of hurting him, lying to him. You didn’t want to hurt him, or yourself. 

But as Jeongguk’s large hand reaches across the desk to your smaller one, you don’t think to pull away. 

“Your Highness!” Jimin interrupts the two of you, and Jeongguk snatches his hand back with a glare. Jimin ignores him, looking breathless as he leans against the door of your classroom. “Your 3 o’clock is ready. We have to hurry if we want to get through the crowd.” 

With one last look, Jeongguk excuses himself, brushing past Jimin with a gruff “Bye, Princess.” 

“Today’s not your day to meet with citizens,” Yoongi mumbles next to you, looking disapprovingly at the way you wait for the next citizen to approach you. 

Seokjin holds the crowd off as you converse with your brother, who looks ready to leave to the villa. He’s dressed in a plain white t-shirt, foam slides and baggy slacks. If it wasn’t for the family crest proudly presented on his right breast pocket, he could easily be mistaken as the average citizen. “Mother insisted,” you reply shortly, growing more irritated by the second. 

“Really?” his brows disappear under his bangs, “because from the way she said it, you were looking for work.” 

Caught, you turn away from his watchful gaze. “I have a problem, okay?” you say stiffly, “I needed a distraction.” 

“Alright,” Yoongi shrugs, leaning close to your ear to murmur, “where’s the dead body?” 

You slap his arm, “Yoongi! I didn’t kill anybody!” 

“At this rate, it looks like you’re wasting yourself away.” Yoongi replies bluntly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “C’mon, Loverboy was all pouty in my room not too long ago. Don’t disappoint him.” 

With that, Yoongi turns on his heel and walks off. Citizens bow at him like dominos as he exits, your break definitively over. 

Whatever is blooming between you and Jeongguk, is and never will be fair to the both of you. In your eyes Jeongguk isn’t the type to settle, not relationship-wise, but life-wise. He wanted to grow and cultivate his art, and taste freedom every step of the journey.

You weren’t freedom or growth, and you could only hope he realizes that before you become too selfish. 

“Your Highness?” you break out of your reverie when a young woman your age looks at you shyly, “My name is Wendy. I didn’t get anything for the table but, I got you a caramel macchiato.” 

She brandishes a venti iced caramel macchiato, condensation dripping from her fingers. Your face lights up, accepting the caffeinated drink. “I really needed this!” you perk up immediately, taking a sip and letting the cool flavor soothe your tastebuds. “Thank you, Wendy. What is it that you request?” 

“Advice,” she admits, a blush creeping from her neck. She looks down at her work boots, caked in grime. “I’m an engineer who works in manufacturing Illryian technology.”

“We are eternally grateful for your service to this country,” you reply evenly. Engineers are highly revered in your country, as your economy is dependent on their brilliant minds. 

“But I have fallen in love with a man who is under my station, and wishes to find work elsewhere,” she bites her lip, her eyes growing glassy. “I haven’t told him my feelings yet, however I’m also worried for my family who finds men like him to be unworthy of an engineer like myself.” 

“Ah, bound by duty and expectation.” you reply grimly, “a rock and a hard place, huh?” 

“Yes, forgive me for my crassness. I felt as if you would understand my predicament.” 

Putting your drink down, you reach for her hand. Oil and dirt cake her fingers, and she attempts to pull away as to not soil you, but you hold on tighter. “Tell him how you feel, Wendy.” you whisper, a conversation so intimate it’s only proper it be for her ears and her ears only. “Whether he leaves or not after you tell him is his decision. However, I assure you it will hurt far more if you don’t give yourself a chance.” 

Her voice cracks, “But what if it doesn’t work out?” 

You start to feel a little teary at her candor, and you run a thumb over her palm. “Then you’re one heartbreak closer to happiness. Nevertheless, you are a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman. Don’t let your fears reject that.” 

Wendy finds the strength to squeeze your hand, and you belatedly realize that if this piece of advice was personified, it’d be slapping the shit out of you. 

“You came!” 

Hopped up on bitter caffeine and potential regrets, you stand in the living room well past midnight, party in full swing. Jimin trails behind you sans iPad, feeling lighter in a pair of trunks and a black tank. A playlist of Namjoon’s organizing is blasting from the surround sound, coupled with the flatscreen television projecting an intense lap of MarioKart. Irene and Taehyung are shoulder to shoulder, concentrating on getting that Mushroom Cup. The sliding doors that lead from your villa to the beach are cracked open, wide enough to hear the conversations the other students are exchanging. 

It was always nice to have your villa occupied like this. Less empty, more familial. 

Yerin is the first to greet you, throwing her arms around you and smelling like seasalt and vodka. She’s drenching your clothes, clad in a yellow polka-dot one-piece. “This weekend’s gonna be killer,” she whispers in your ear, causing the hairs on your neck to rise. For a petite thing, she really wastes no time cutting to the chase. 

You detach yourself, holding up a bag of pastries. “Snagged some munchies for your inevitable drunk crash,” you smirk, placing the container on the kitchen island. 

Yerin gapes, red tinted lips mouthing an ‘o’ at your language. “You’ve been hidin’ out on us, haven’t you Princess?” Yerin then brushes past you, ready to get her fingers on the confections. You’re over her shoulder, pointing out both Illrian delicacies and pastries she’s familiar with. 

After Irene snags the Mushroom Cup they’re joining you at the island, lips coated in powdered sugar and jam. The girls laugh when some powdered sugar gets into Taehyung’s hair, Irene patting him a little too hard on his bangs. 

“You’re here!” 

You whip around to see Jeongguk sliding the glass doors hurriedly, bare feet slapping across the tiled floor to reach you. He’s dripping wet, ocean water rivering around his body. Your eyes can’t help but follow the flow of the cool liquid, finding purchase between the planes of his chest and honeyed abs, glowing from the heat. 

Three years of your life were spent studying preparation and execution for war or nuclear threat. Unfortunately, at this very moment you feel way more prepared for war than Jeon Jeongguk standing in your villa, looking like that. 

Instead of the usual pleasantries, you hold up a leather wallet. “You left this in the classroom,” you chide. 

It’s a baldfaced lie. Somehow, Jeongguk’s wallet had conveniently ended up in your office between reams of paper. The bastard himself has the audacity to feign surprise, coral lips gaping in relief. “Wow, Princess. Totally not a ploy to get you to come here.” 

“Right.” 

“Give it here, I’ll drop it off in my room.” 

“Wait, wait!” you hold up both your hands, centimeters away from Jeongguk’s pecs. You’re nearly eye level with them, and you force yourself to look up at his smug face. “You’re dripping wet on the tile! Your feet still have sand you heathen! Do not get our carpets dirty!” you hold the wallet to your chest protectively, “where’s your room?” 

He tilts his head adorably, droplets flecking from his slicked back mane. “Third door on the right.” he doesn’t dare to argue with your sudden passion to keep your villa clean. 

You nod, “go enjoy the water. I’ll be right out.” You don’t give him a chance to reply, kicking off your sandals as you reach the cosier part of the villa. Soft carpet meets your toes as you pad off to the guest bedrooms. 

Jeongguk managed to snag the corner room, albeit smaller, it’s a single with a full mattress. You see his Superdry backpack open on the floor, its bottom worn with the white lining peeking through. Despite only arriving in the afternoon, his fresh scent is palpable. You drop the wallet on his desk, and you notice that his laptop’s still on. 

The Macbook Pro glows confidently, his screensaver revealing a photograph of you on your balcony. 

“Snooping around, Princess?” 

You whip around, seeing Jeongguk appear fully clothed, running a towel over his hair. He is no longer dripping water or sand, but he still smelled like salt and fire. He nonchalantly closes the door behind him, taking a seat at the foot of his bed. 

“You know it’s illegal to take unsolicited pictures of royalty, right?” 

“And who should I answer to, hm? The Princess?” he teases, face blooming from the fluffy white towel. 

You’re not upset about the picture, he knows that. But there you sit, slumped over his desk, looking forlornly at his picture of you. 

“I’ve locked the door,” Jeongguk pipes up, looking at you worriedly. “Yoongi mentioned that the room’s are soundproof. He said you looked upset today. Tell me what’s on your mind.” 

The room feels smaller, swallowing you whole. You’re tired from today’s events, both emotionally and physically. Jeongguk is having nothing of it, reaching between the two of you to pull the arms of the desk chair, wheeling you between his thighs. 

“Jeongguk,” you start, “why weren’t you mad at me when you were right? Right about me hiding something from you.” 

His brows furrow, “You made a sacrifice and protected your brother. Why would I be mad at that?” he says honestly, “sure, I was upset at first. Who wouldn’t be? But you did it out of love.” 

You smile wanly, knowing that there wasn’t going to be a chance that he’d be upset at you. It was out of your devices. “I wanted you to be mad,” you admit, wringing your fingers between your skirt, “it would’ve made it easier to leave.” 

“It would’ve, wouldn’t it?” he replies, his voice cotton soft. “After you left, Yoongi wouldn’t let me talk to you on the phone. Said you needed time. But I got him to tell me stories about you, stories that made me realize that I missed getting to know you.” 

It’s then you feel the weight of today express itself onto your cheeks, the wetness dampening your skin. You feel his thumb brush away the tears. 

“Tell me,” Jeongguk requests softly, “tell me what you really feel.” 

You let your head collapse in his hands, relishing the warmth and comfort it brings. “I feel hurt. And confined.” 

“More,” Jeongguk bids, his other hand squeezing your thigh, “let it out, Princess.” 

You are a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman. Don’t let your fears reject that.

“I miss acting like fools at the grocery store, falling on top of each other half-asleep.” Everything tumbles out shamelessly, like a waterfall. “I hate how frustrated I am when you call me Princess, because while it is my title, it turns me on in the most devastating way when you say it.” you drop your head in the crook of his neck, embarrassed to see his reaction. “I want to laugh with you, hold you, I want you, so badly. But I want you to be happy, to make music and art, and travel the world to find your muse,” you shake your head, pushing yourself away from him. “I feel so stuck here, I can’t hold you back when you’re free and—”

“That’s enough bullshit,” and he’s kissing you, a clashing of teeth that has you sensitive and reeling. His hands grasp your cheeks, and you’re stumbling in your chair as the wheels make moves on their own. You squeak against his lips before you’re wheeled back to the bed. Hot hands pull you forward to teeter your body onto the bed, keeping you in place. 

The man in question breaks apart, but close enough that his lips brush against yours when he speaks, “I’ve never kissed a princess before,” Jeongguk says wryly, cupping your cheek, “but if you make one more gripe about freedom and your stupid self-righteousness and I’ll stop.” 

A pure, unprepared whine escapes your lips, shame be damned. 

“You’re my muse,” he plants a kiss on your forehead, “I bothered Yoongi for weeks, working tooth and nail for that scholarship,” a kiss on both your nose, “you’re what it means to feel free.” 

And that’s all it takes for you to surge forward, toppling over him until he’s pushed against the headboard. Capturing your lips with his, you catch droplets of saltwater and a flavor that’s so distinctly Jeongguk, feeling high off the taste. 

Your skirt rides to your waist, your underwear damp from the ocean and arousal. You straddle him, feeling so unbounded and free as Jeongguk lets you do what you’ve both wanted to do. With a roll of your hips Jeongguk grunts, forehead pressed to yours. “Princess,” he rasps, meeting your thrusts, “we have until Christmas to do this, no need to rush.” 

Wait, Christmas? 

Jeongguk grins, kissing away your surprise. For now, you’ll ignore the burn between your thighs. “Before we left today, Yoongi and I asked the King, your father, if he would consider extending my scholarship for a full semester. I mentioned that Yoongi and I had some unfinished projects from undergrad,” he pecks your lips, “and he’s going to help me produce a full album for my final thesis.” 

“That’s amazing!” you cheer, pulling him into a hug. “I’m so proud of the two of you!”  

“Mhm,” he nuzzles your neck, pressing featherlight kisses to your skin, “can’t produce anything without my muse around, so I’d say Illyria is the perfect location.” 

Your fingers thread into his damp locks, and you feel your heart swell with happiness. Here, under the gaze of the beautiful boy who wanted to offer you his heart and his world, you felt free. 

extra.

It takes the strength of both your hands to pull Jeongguk in the storage closet, but it isn’t like he’s putting up a fight anyhow. 

“Come here often?” you drawl, leaning forward to press a kiss to his cheek. 

“Impressive,” he chuckles, “usually it takes you an hour to shake Jimin off ya. It’s only been thirty-five minutes.” 

“I just wanted to show you something funny,” you pull up your Instagram, and play the featured video. While it was posted weeks ago, it started to pick up traction after Yoongi liked the post this morning. Jeongguk is dashing around the palace, sweating bullets and cooing “c’mon Dixie!” to the sprinting chicken in the throne room. 

“You’re viral!” you giggle, “you put Illyria on the social media map!” 

Under the lowlights, it’s still easy to see Jeongguk’s skin has gone placid. “If I ever hit it big, that shit better not haunt me,” he groans into your neck.  

“Please,” you roll your eyes, “every famous person has a backstory. Aubrey Graham had Degrassi and the Yodeling Wal-Mart boy–”

“Are you really gonna compare your boyfriend to the Yodeling Wal-Mart kid? Tell me what you really came here for,” And like a teenager, Jeongguk reels it back in, winding his hands around your waist. He gives you bedroom eyes like it's a session of Seven Minutes in Heaven, “so, we’re gonna make out or what?” 

[painted-crow]

Some Discworld Sortings

@missbrunettebarbie​: Monstrous Regiment, The Truth, the first 3 City Watch books, Going Postal, Mort and Unseen Academicals. And I would love to read those sortings :)).

I already have most of Unseen Academicals’ Sorting written out--I just need to tweak it for publishing :) 

The short version of UA

The cast of UA is a pure-House matched set, aside from some models, and the characters each swap models around and interact with each others’ primaries in interesting ways. Glenda is a Hufflepuff/Hufflepuff, Juliette is a Gryffindor, Trev is a Slytherin, and Nutt, of course, is the loudest double Ravenclaw ever (I love him).

Nutt helps Glenda realize her community’s worldview is toxic and stop seeing herself through their lens. Glenda then stops pushing the same worldview on Juliette and starts encouraging her to follow her Gryffindor instead. Nutt doesn’t remotely fit into the class framework Glenda’s used to, and he challenges her assumptions just by existing. (Glenda also picks up a Gryffindor secondary model from Juliette that’s very healthy for her, but that’s getting into a bunch more detail that I’ll save for the full post later.)

Nutt’s system is very Hufflepuffy, but he sees himself as more of a tool than a person, and Glenda consistently argues with him about this until he starts to believe her. Then she’s his champion in the community, where Nutt desperately wants to belong but keeps getting rejected for what he is. It’s such a good ship, they’re so healthy for each other--and if you’re looking for a wholesome, fuzzy romantic subplot with an autistic-coded character, it’s right here.

Trev slowly un-Petrifies as he starts to let himself care about his friends, and they in turn inspire him to contribute and make something of himself. It’s not immediately obvious that Trev is Burned, because he’s so carefree--but he’s carefree because he isn’t letting himself care. He’s an orphan, and he’s felt helpless for a long time.

We know he’s unburned when he finally prioritizes his loyalty to his living friends over the promise he made years ago to his mother (who seems to represent the last loyalty relationship Trev had, and he's still holding on to her; letting her go means Trev has accepted that he has new relationships and those are real). Juliette’s presence in particular reignites his ambition--he wants to do better for her, be better for her, and that gives him direction in a way that his previous goals of leisure and self-preservation didn’t.

(That’s what’s going on with their primaries. Eventually I’ll get off my butt and fix up the full post.)

A quick sampler of main characters from the other books...

Monstrous Regiment

Polly is a Slytherin primary. The whole reason she joins the army is to rescue Paul (and, secondarily, to make sure she has a stable future when her father dies--otherwise some unreliable relative of hers inherits the inn, she’s not allowed to own it because of Nugganite customs). Ravenclaw secondary, I think, for how much her narration criticizes the others for not having a plan. 

Going Postal

Moist is of course a double Slytherin--he's blatantly obvious. He has a Claw secondary model but he tells us through the narration that he doesn't value it quite as much as his Slytherin. He's also very good at performing Puff secondary and seeming like a reliable people person, but the second he's asked to actually be reliable and hardworking he starts to go nuts and look for dangerous, exciting stuff to do.

The only thing that really ties him to Ankh-Morpork, aside from its general entertainment value every time Vetinari tries to give him a job where someone inevitably wants to kill him, is Adorabelle (who is also a threat to his life, just a little, enough to be interesting). She’s a double Slytherin too, but she spends most of her time in neutral state--yet she’s even managed to turn her neutral state into a game to play with Moist. Of course he’s enamored with her, lol.

City Watch series

Vimes is a Ravendor: he has very thoroughly laid out views about the law and its role in choosing the right thing to do. You could argue that he’s a burned Gryff, given how tight of a lid he has on his “inner darkness” (that shows up more later, and he’s not being entirely metaphorical), but he seems pretty stable and content with his system. Vimes doesn’t trust himself without his checks and boundaries, but he seems to be okay with that, even if he’s secretly afraid that the rules and accountability he’s laid out for himself someday won’t be enough.

His system doesn’t always match up with the law, but he uses the law to make sure he doesn’t stray too far off moral ground and into taking his wrath out on the guilty. Vimes actually gains a really useful reputation in later books as being fair and consistent and impossible to corrupt.

As for his secondary... he’s known as “Vetinari’s terrier.” He thinks he should be better at Ravenclaw secondary (putting together clues and so on) but mostly he runs off charge and intuition. There’s a really silly bit in Thud! where he’s constantly arguing with a magical Palm Pilot Sybil got for him, because he doesn’t have the patience to learn to use it. Whether he likes it or not, he’s a Gryff.

Sybil is either a Puff or Gryff primary; I lean towards Gryff for her. She’s got this very certain, intuitive core to her, and while she clearly holds a lot of Hufflepuffy values, she’s also very hard to sway or influence. She’s very solid in her morality, and I think that’s one of the things Vimes loves about her. Vimes has to work at staying moral 24/7, while Sybil just... is.

She’s a Ravenclaw secondary with a REALLY loud Hufflepuff secondary model. Hufflepuff is how she was raised to behave, and she likes it a lot, but she uses Ravenclaw without even thinking about it--the number of times she just pulls the "I happen to be prepared for this very specific situation" card out of her hat is wild, and she doesn’t even seem to think that what she’s doing is unusual.

It’s most obvious in The Fifth Elephant: not only does Sybil speak Dwarvish, but she sings a piece of a Dwarf opera to get them out of a tight corner, and then she semi-accidentally becomes an expert trade negotiator out of sheer curiosity, reading up on the notes left by the previous ambassador.

Also, it’s really cute that Vimes is a Ravendor and Sybil is a Gryffinclaw.

Carrot is hard to Sort. He gives off REALLY strong Hufflepuff vibes, of course, and he knows everyone and can be empathetic toward anyone. But he’s actually really hard to read. Angua certainly keeps expecting that he’s hiding layers of himself, but that’s probably because she’s got a lot of Slytherin to her (either Slytherdor or double Slytherin, her secondary might be a little singed; her primary definitely is).

I want to say that he’s a Hufflepuff secondary who’s really good at adapting to and mirroring other people, and Angua keeps mistaking this for Slytherin secondary. I think he’s a Gryffindor primary with a lot of Hufflepuffy values, like Sybil, and maybe he has a Slytherin model specifically for Angua (he drops everything for her early on in Fifth Elephant, possibly staking his life on the fact that she’ll come and find him when he does) --but I could be persuaded otherwise.

Phew, this is longer than I thought it’d be.

[sanstropfremir]

second part of that long ask from ur swf anon :)

after the main dancer was chosen for each class, they would complete the choreo and decide formations for their performances. one of the benefits of the main dancer was that they were always center. they also had the benefit of wearing more embellished clothing to stand out (most noticeable in x class, where rian the main dancer was wearing orange while everyone else was wearing green). here is the full list (mnet truly has the WORST camera angles, so i only included the full cam ver of the performances):

1. assistant class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF2evLz98h4&ab_channel=MnetTV

2. leader class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srjJzRVVmxc&ab_channel=CHANNIECHANNEL

the judges shared that even though no:ze was the main dancer/in the center/had the most shiny outfit, they didn't really see her. all the other dancers, in their opinion, stood out and overpowered her.

3. sub class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY_3E7W8v30&ab_channel=CHANNIECHANNEL

4. x class (i'm not sure what this class was called): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC-_8fbn_s4&ab_channel=Whatthejess

judges shared that lip j was the stand out of this class. she's the girl on the far left at 0:36. (it was originally her choreo but rian was chosen as the main dancer so that's why she is credited.)

*i only included comments that were stand outs.

-

i'm not sure how much creative input the main dancers were given regarding stage design... they didn't show it in the episode so i'm assuming that mnet just told them to show up and perform (because like, the rainbow thing they shot at the end of the leader's performance seemed so random? it didn't match what they were doing). after each performance, the main dancers from each class were asked to pick someone who they thought was the worst dancer. in doing so, the person chosen would lose points for their crew.

judges also chose an mvp crew they thought were the best. prowdmon (monika + lip j + others [sorry i don't know their names. the show really only focuses on these two]) was selected and this gave them the advantage of choosing which crews went against each other in ep4. so, it wasn't a random lottery draw! in the episode, they only showed the part where prowdmon chose to go against wayb (context: no:ze, the main dancer from the leader class, chose monika as the worst dancer. and this made her mad so she was like we're going against wayb - no:ze's crew). i'm not sure why they didn't show how the other crews were paired up. because ya, coca n butter + hook is definitely an interesting match.

also like, wayb was eliminated from the show after ep4's mission.

-

and it seems like from here on out, there will be a mission each episode to determine who will be eliminated. i'm honestly not too sure. for their next mission, they're doing a mega crew mission and mnet doesn't really explain it; but it seems like each crew is doing a performance on a larger scale (with more members added to their crew). also, like mnet is ass and doesn't upload all the performances onto their channel..... they only upload the ones that were the most popular/had the biggest public reaction which is why i had a hard time finding the clips for the classes mission. hopefully they do from here on out.

another v long post. thank u again for reading and sharing ur thoughts! always love hearing them. (also, pls let me know if i'm oversharing. u mentioned not caring for the competitive nature and drama so i'm not sure if i was adding too much. there really isn't drama imo. mnet tries to do their best to edit and make it seem that way but when u watch the show, the girls truly root for each other and are friends.)

mnet truly has the worst camera angles i hate them so much. also why are they still streaming on a goddamn potato. the quality is SO bad i can barely see anything!! there's a lot of me complaining in this one i'm sorry in advance.

1. assistant class

i have to assume that whoever they chose as the main dancer is the one that stays in centre because i cannot tell from the clothing at all. i don't think she was a standout performer here, but also the camera and the fire effects are WAY too wild to actually get a good grasp on who even was the standout. i also have to assume that the dancers have no say in the design because design is not a big part of street dance and this kind of chaos screams m 'too-much-money-dont-know-how-to-use-it' net. they built this massive set, barely used it, and didn't leave enough room for the proper formation spacing!! ugh. i hope the judges actually got to see a locked off version of this without all that fire in front of the camera because if i were them i would be squinting down the end of my glasses like a grandma at the screen. that's what i was doing anyways but still.

2. leader class

i have to agree, i don't think noze stood out as the main dancer here. and geniunely i cannot tell that they embellished her costume more. like damn, that stylist took a masterclass in subtlety, because i was easily paying more attention to whoever was wearing those massive thigh high cutout garter stockings and woven bodysuit combo. i am assuming that the point of these challenges was probably to be noticed the most so that they can score points and pick who they went up against for the elimination round? i'm not entirely clear but my point remains; ngl i don't really like this method of creating performance because it means that no one is there to create a performance, yanno? troupe/group choreo like this thrives on teamwork to actually make it a good performance. i know it's a pretty classic method of weeding out people for auditions and stuff like that but personally i find it a wholly uncompelling viewing experience, especially when it's a fully produced stage like this. i know everyone very likely gets along behind the scenes but the incohesion of intent is very obvious. also what's up with the assistant class getting a massive set and the leaders getting a bunch of cars and some smoke pyrotechnics? i mean, i am glad they filmed it during the day, but i am confused by the disparity.

3. sub class

i wish i could describe how poorly mnet shot this. it's not a fucking mama stage, it's a dance stage!! we need to see the choreo properly!!!! and together!!! obviously i don't care about stitching together different takes for the final edit but just...not having a continuity at all in the choreo is a bit jarring. again, i am also not sure how one is supposed to evaluate how well these dancers did, because i can barely see what people are doing. or who the main dancers are. i know i'm railing a lot on mnet here but i can't give an accurate reading of the dancers because legitimately it is so hard to tell what's going on. if they want to bill this as a legitimate dance show, why are they shooting it like a kpop performance? the camerawork for kpop serves a specific function: to add to the visual spectacle and to highlight the idols' faces. you don't need either of those things for shoot choreography, so why do we keep getting closeups of dancers' faces? not that these dance videos aren't spectacle-y or fun, because they very much are, but they really suck at their one primary function, which is displaying the choreo.

4. x class

this is definitely the one where the camera work is the closest to what it should be, but then they go and fuck it up by adding rain! just the groundwater would have been fine, but noooo they had to add the extra rain so there would be extra water drops on the lens!! this is my favourite choreo of all four of these, i think there's the most cohesion and (excluding the rain) it's got a good mix of spectacle with the water and the blacklight and the right camera angles to show the choreo mostly well. i still don't understand why they cut in those sections that don't fit with the rest of the flow though. why. you could have one-taked this and it would have looked dope as fuck. i agree that lip j stands out the most, obviously it's her choreo so it's the best suited to her character and abilities.

---

if it wasn't a random lottery draw they should at least have the courtesy of showing people why who picked who!! that's the most interesting part! and i'm not that surprised about wayb being eliminated, prowdmon really stomped them into the ground with that revenge energy. i'm interested in this larger scale performances concept, because i'm not really sure what that looks like in this particular context. if they do end up on youtube i will review them! and you're not oversharing at all, the context is fine! i don't mind reading it as information, i just don't like actually watching it with my own eyes. i can't watch that kind of thing in reality tv because it makes me want to sit everyone down like a kindergarden teacher and go "ok, now why are we all yelling?". too many years of tense rehearsal conflict negotiation and i just want to whack everyone upside the head. it's not very cathartic for me lmao. i have no doubt that everyone is friends because dance scenes are small and i'm sure they've all worked together lots, but even just the editing sets off my fight or fight reflexes.

[ohmylove--mydarling]

It’s true what they say about your early-to-mid 20s. This particular span of ten blissful, wanton years is the only time in your entire life where you will ever feel truly invincible. And yes, you absolutely better enjoy it while it lasts. Lithe-bodied, hopeful, capable of both pounding an entire handle of rail vodka all while making it to your 8 am sociology class the next day, they’re a little like your teen years, with one prized difference. Your early-to-mid 20s are blessed with the seemingly novel, universe-bending element of freedom.

And freedom doesn’t simply mean the ability to make stupid decisions without the fear of getting grounded. It also means the freedom to live in an idyllic sort of vacuum, where you’re surrounded by friends – if we’re being honest, the family you get to choose – and cradled in this serene philosophy, this security blanket of an idea that hangs in the air but is never outwardly or directly expressed, that this, all of this, will last forever. That these people will always be there, they will always be around, floating with you in this bubble, as free and easily accessible as a coatrack or your neighbor’s WiFi. Always holding your beer, always holding your hair back (while you puke, or maybe while you cry), always holding your hand. Always at the very least in the peripheral, if not the forefront, of your vision.

During these years you know everything, and yet somehow you know nothing at all.

***

Like most of the sorority sisters I grew close with – and as is probably true with anyone else who pledged a very tiny chapter at an equally tiny school – I don’t remember much about how I met Taylor beyond the first night she “rushed.” Rush is an interesting social phenomenon, for multiple reasons. Picture a gaggle of young college-aged women who typically spend every waking hour of their day primping and glossing and adjusting for the sole purpose of the male gaze. Except this time, their attention is entirely drawn to a smaller group of girls (not that much smaller of a group, if we’re lucky this semester) that they want to impress instead. A frenzy of compliments and genuine interest, a dormant volcano of estrogen and hot girl energy and reciprocation, madly overflowing in a span of two hours over something as innocuous as an ice cream social or tie-dying a pile of crewneck t-shirts (I think we did the “hippie” recruitment theme every other semester). It is one of the very best parts of what is an often problematic-at-best Greek culture, and this rush was no different.

I’m not sure what my first impression of Taylor was, other than that we obviously had the same first name, and oh yeah, she was beautiful– effortlessly pretty but not the least intimidating. I could approach her and talk to her and not feel like a complete toad. She was a little soft-spoken, incredibly polite. I think she wore navy blue. And an aura of genuine kindness seemed to radiate from her with the soft glow of candlelight.

After rush ended and Taylor chose to join our ranks, where she belonged, it felt like she had been in my life from the very beginning. And, though this idea was never spoken, it felt like she would never leave.

***

In a sorority, there is sometimes a tendency, however unintentional, to categorize your sisters, and to turn to certain ones for different needs at different times. There’s the sister you study with, the sister you go on your morning run with, the sister(s) you are always down to party with. There’s the sister who makes amazing grilled cheese, the sister whose dorm is the only place you’ll binge-watch Supernatural. When you’re riding the waves of a breakup, you got mad options: There’s the sister who brushes your hair as you ugly-cry and choke on your own snot, the sister who pledges to hook you up with her brother’s hot friend the moment you’re ready for a rebound, the “dump him sis” sister who yanks your phone out of your hand in the middle of what is probably a very unwise text and threatens to stab him with her eyebrow razor if he so much as looks at you again, the sister who makes you forget the whole thing ever happened, that it ever even mattered.

There’s the maid of honor sister, the future fun wine-aunt sister, the sister you have on speed-dial even though speed-dial isn’t a thing anymore. There are the sisters who teach you how to do winged liner, how to hide a hickey with coral lipstick and concealer, how to chant, how to chug, how to memorize the Greek alphabet and the …numbers (at least for the ones who are most definitely going to ask). There are the sisters whose weddings you bawl at, whose babies you hold and immediately love as an extension of the incredible mother who brought them into this world.

And there are the sisters who teach you grace and humility, strength and resilience, kindness and self-love. The sisters who changed your life for the better the moment they put on your letters, the sisters who hand you the mirror and force you to see yourself just as they see you.

The thing about Taylor was that she was all of these. The whole package. Everything good, all in one.

***

Though our friendship was at its strongest during my college and immediate post-college years, Taylor remained a calming, grounding presence in my life. She married an incredible man who loved her for all the reasons we did and plenty more, and I went to her wedding and cried. She got a job as a nurse at the local hospice, a profession she seemed put on this earth to do. I could picture Taylor in her element there, literally surrounded by an entire ocean of grief, serving as an island of hope, a beacon of light and love for those who so desperately needed all those things, the things she provided us without question even when our lives were comfortable. Soon after – and this thought still makes something in my throat ache – she brought life into this world, a beautiful daughter with both her mother’s eyes and her genuine love and gratitude for life, a joyful curiosity coloring everything she did.

Taylor’s life, we knew, was finally the one she had always deserved.

***

I won’t, and can’t anyway, get into the details of Taylor’s passing. I can say that nothing about it was expected and literally every detail about it is horrific. Personally, it feels like a robbery, like something was taken from me; but on a grander scale, on a scale that actually matters, it is simply heartbreak. Riding the waves of grief not only for my own loss, but for a husband, a child, a family, a community whose lives were upended and whose hearts were crushed by something that simply should not have happened in a universe where they say justice and kindness exist.

Frankly, this grief is unlike any other I have experienced. It has a way of blanketing everything around me, like mosquito netting. It is as thick and choking as a cloud of black smoke, permeating my clothes, filling my lungs, making it impossible to see, so all I can do is desperately cling to whatever gives me the slightest amount of peace, no matter how fleeting. As someone who has always struggled with my faith (and moments like these certainly do not help), I try to remember Taylor’s. It brought her comfort and strength, the belief that God loves everyone so naturally she was going to love everyone, too. And all I can hope is that this belief of hers, this faith, manifested in her final moments. That there was a light, a voice, a presence, something there that reminded her that she was loved. That we knew she loved us, that her family will never be alone, that we will desperately miss her. That her legacy is as wide and expansive as all the oceans.

Her funeral is in a few days. Her funeral, a concept still as foreign as my own.

***

At this point it’s probably clear, but the things I want people to remember the most about Taylor are, quite simply, her kindness and her intrinsic ability to love. She was kind without questioning. She loved without strings or conditions, tirelessly and endlessly. At a time when an icy, impenetrable layer of cynicism seemed to blanket so many of our hearts – including my own – Taylor managed to crack it a little, to let just enough of her light and her warmth in to make a change.

I teased her often – probably too often –  for her unbreakable habit of bringing home literally any stray cat she ever found (and then naming it something either really cute or painfully dumb, like “Moe” or “Cheese”). But even as someone who unapologetically hates cats, and more honestly as someone who spent most of her 20s thinking that if I hardened my exterior and never let love in I was somehow protecting everything it surrounded, I viewed this habit through a secret lens of adoration. I adored Taylor’s heart. I hoped to absorb some of it, its ability to love everything, to find beauty in the darkest and loneliest spaces and to also force people to see it and feel it for themselves.

I felt Taylor was going to be around forever. It was a selfish thought. I hadn’t physically seen her in over a year (there was a pandemic and she was a nurse and I was subsumed by my own now meaningless world). I am filled with an omnipresent regret that I have no control over. I miss her so much my heart feels swollen and achy with a pining, a real grief.

There is no happy ending to this, no concise, comfortable, heartwarming way to wrap this all up in a pretty package, though Taylor was the type to want everything to have a good ending. So instead I cling to the memories, the photographs. Our banquets, homecoming, Lana del Rey, cherry blossoms. The way she rapped that entire A$AP Ferg verse one night. The way she looked in her wedding gown. The way she talked about charity and good deeds. The way she talked about God. Her love, no matter what transgression I made or no matter if I failed to give it back. I hope to love harder now, and if I can, it’s because Taylor taught me how.

I love you, Taylor. DZLAM.

[killian-whump]

I am so drawn into your insights around asexuality and whump and would be curious to know your current state of mind in both these camps - maybe in the style of a sort of whump manifesto, if I may be so bold. I find it so relatable when you touch on these topics together.

Hi Nonny! I am SO sorry it’s taken me forever and a half to reply to this. I was busy when you sent it, and wanted to wait until I had the time to devote to a good answer… but then as it got later and later, I felt worse and worse about not responding yet and just sort of… avoided it entirely. Sorry!!!

But this is Asexual Awareness Week, so I’m doing it now!

I’m going to start out by saying that I absolutely do not think it’s a mere coincidence that so many whumpers consider themselves asexual. In the world at large, asexuals are a small minority of the population, but in the whump community, they’re practically the majority. That is fascinating.

Now, when I was struggling to understand my own interests in whump, I came to the realization that how most people describe the sensations of sexual attraction (a tightness in the abdomen, a zing in the belly, warmth spreading through them, tingling sensations, moisture in the nether regions, mental preoccupation) is exactly how I feel when I “enjoy” whump. Mind you, seeing whump doesn’t make me want to have sex - but the physical sensations appear to be the same as those felt by other folks when they are actively wanting to have sex.

With that in mind, I came to my own conclusion that somehow my brain was wired differently and was mixing the two things up. I also started considering whump to be, for me, a sexual thing. I can more easily relate to the world at large (a place that’s essentially obsessed with sex) by correlating others’ sexual feelings with my own whumpy feelings. In other words, when I’m at a bar and a friend tells me she’s horny and needs a man to take home, I envision how I feel when I’m in one of my whump moods and I just need whump RIGHT THAT MINUTE and every minute thereafter until the mood passes. “Oh God, girl,” I say. “I feel you. Go get you some.” Because I actually get how she’s feeling, even if my feelings are centered on something entirely different. In general, it also helps me relate to the world around me and all of the advertising and innuendos and constant bombardment of sex everywhere you look. I mean, if they started advertising perfume with giant billboards of tied up whumpees, I WOULD NOT EVER COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT.

So when I joined the Whump Community here on Tumblr, I made a rather premature manifesto of sorts where I urged my fellow whumpers to really dig deep and consider that their feelings may actually be sexual in nature, even if they don’t think they are. For me, coming to the realization that my brain’s wiring was confusing the two concepts provided a LOT of clarity that I was hoping to help others also gain with my insights. In fact, I was so deeply entrenched in pressing the whump/sex connection that I didn’t even think to mention that, while I view my love of whump as sexual in nature - I identify as asexual, because I lack any desire to actually do the deed itself. As it stands, that post of mine does a major disservice to many asexual whumpers (myself included), because it doesn’t account for the lack of sex that is inherent in the whump/sex connection.

Simply put, while it makes me feel more “normal” and able to relate with a sex-obsessed world by correlating whump and sex… there are many among us who identify primarily as asexual and have no interest in having any sexual feelings or fitting in with the sexual world at all. And my original post didn’t account for that. I was too busy sharing my personal revelation of, “You might be sexual after all!” to realize that some folks don’t want to be sexual and don’t want to view their love of whump through that lens.

And that’s perfectly okay, because while the two things are, I feel, intrinsically entwined, they’re also completely and utterly different. There are many asexuals who aren’t whumpers, and many whumpers who aren’t asexual. Where one chooses to place themselves on the spectrum and how they choose to view their orientation and their identity is entirely up to them. And while I do feel that whump and sex are intrinsically connected by their undeniably similar sets of typical physical sensations, that connection can easily be viewed as either a sex/whump one or a nonsex/whump one. In other words, the whump connection is there for many of us, I believe, because the sexual connection isn’t there. Whether one chooses to view it as their unique form of sexual attraction or to see it as a byproduct of a profound lack of such attraction is really up to them to decide.

As for why our minds latch onto whump in the absence of sexual desire… I believe it comes down to intimacy. Whump provides our minds with a vehicle for our very human needs for emotional and physical intimacy. Sex satisfies these drives for sexual beings, but for those who don’t feel any interest in that particular act, we may still desire the intimacy and intense emotion that comes along with it. Whump allows us to experience those things without the physical act of sex.

This also accounts for the differences in preferred viewpoints found throughout the whump community. Some of us relate to the whumper. Some relate to the whumpee. Some relate to the caretaker. Some of us relate to all three in equal turns. I feel that our viewpoint preferences tell us a lot about the kind of intimacy we’re lacking or needing in our lives. Those who prefer the “comfort” part of the H/C dynamic and relate to either the caretaker or the whumpee in those scenes are likely craving love, affection, and some tender loving care - regardless of whether they’re relating to giving or receiving it.

But what of the hurt portion? Most of us enjoy that, too - and that tends to be where a lot of us feel the most guilt and concern over why we enjoy it. However, I think for many of us, it’s simply a matter of driving a scene or a relationship to the point where the “comfort” can occur. It’s less of a primary drive… and more like the foreplay in an intricate emotional dance. Many of us even refer to it as a “build-up” of sorts, and we confess to feeling profoundly unsatisfied when the aftercare doesn’t live up to the desires the scenario built up inside of us.

Again, the correlation between whump and sex shows up here. Foreplay is an essential part of sex for most couples. It enhances the mood and builds up their desire for the main course. So, too, does the hurt portion of the typical hurt/comfort scene. Just as every kiss and caress in a sexual scene increases the desire and makes the payoff more intense, every lash and cruel word in a whump scene increases the whumpee’s need for care and makes our payoff that much more intense.

True, some of us do just enjoy seeing someone in pain. There’s going to be sadists out there in the world, just as there are masochists - and there’s plenty of both in the whump community ;) And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being either one of those things, provided you are finding safe, sane and consensual ways to satisfy your needs. And enjoying fictional whump is absolutely that. However, for those who don’t see themselves as being either of those things… take heart, because your love of seeing people getting hurt may very well be based solely on that pain being necessary in order to make the emotional intimacy you crave possible. And like a Pavlovian dog hearing a bell, you’re going to respond to the things that signal to you that your needs are about to be met (unless, of course, they stiff you on the aftercare - which is precisely WHY that feels like such a betrayal whenever it happens).

So I guess that’s where my mind’s at currently on these two subjects. As always, I welcome any and all thoughts in response! I certainly don’t profess to have all of the answers, but I’m definitely excited by the questions themselves and the journey we’re all on to find the answers for ourselves, once and for all! :)

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Select: Heavy is the Head

There is a criminal lacking amount of material about Godzilla on this blog. I feel ashamed that i have so haphazardly neglected the Big G. I've spoken about this before, but Godzilla means a great deal to me. I didn’t have the warmest of experiences during my childhood so i cherished the ones that weren’t horrifying. I’m melancholy for a reason and a lot of that can be traced back to my unkind environments as a kid. Godzilla is tied to many of those good memories i was able to glean off the darker circumstance of my halcyon days. I’ve seen every movie and own about half of them. It occurs to me that there are, like thirty of these things and, with the release of the what might be the final Monsterverse movie on the horizon, Godzilla vs. Kong, i wanted to take a look at the entire catalog. I wanted to revisit the films and choose what i believe to be the best in the franchise.

10. The Return of Godzilla

This was probably the first Godzilla movie i ever saw in my entire life. The second is actually on this list a ways down but this one left a massive impression on me. It was gorgeous, lavishly produced, and completely different than the film i had just watched. Not in the sense of tone, they both are on the darker side of the Goji spectrum, but this is the first time i witnessed the “death” of a Godzilla and it f*cked me right up. I remember weeping about that for days. Imagine my surprise, years later, when i found out that Godzilla 1985 was the start of an entire era of Goji films. This thing is actually a direct sequel to the 1954 Gojira film, ignoring everything in the Showa era. As such, it takes a ton of cues from that film, not only the tone, but visually as well. This Goji is like an updated version of that Goji and it really shows. I initially saw this film in the re-cut, Americanized, version Godzilla 1985. It was fine. I was a kid so i didn’t even know about the way the US butchers foreign film yet. As an adult, i made it a point to watch the original Japanese version and i can say, hands down, that version is the superior watch. I’d say check both out, Godzilla 1985 and Return of Godzilla if you’re a Goji fan but Return is definitely the better of the two.

9. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

This is the first appearance of Kiryu, the third Mechagodzilla. You’ll notice that Mechagoji makes a ton of appearances on this list. That’s because it’s films are some of the best in the entire franchise, hands down. Plus, it’s my all-time favorite Goji villain. This particular version was our introduction into the loose continuity of the entire Millennium era. This saw Goji in a ton of one-shot type and experimental narratives. The only two story lines actually connected were this film and it’s direct sequel, Tokyo S.O.S. I chose this one over it’s follow-up because of the raw emotion i felt seeing the best design of Mechagoji ever captured on film, for the first time. Kiryu is a masterpiece and i loved every second it was onscreen. The narrative is an interesting one, too. It’s not top-tier but, for the Millennium series, it’s pretty ambitious. Objectively, Tokyo S.O.S might be the better film, but this one made a great first impression. If you see one, you have to see the other. They’re kind of a set.

8. Godzilla: Final Wars

Oh, Final Wars. Your ambition is only matched by your absurdity. Look, final Wars is Endgame before other was an Endgame. It’s the cap to the entire Godzilla franchise to that point, kind of like how Destroy All Monsters was supposed to close out the Showa era. We saw how well that worked, just like this “conclusion.” This thing is unapologetic fan service, rife with the campiest of performances. I mean, the Xilliens in this are a direct reference to the original, would-be world conquerors from Planet X, first introduced in 1965. I love that sh*t! It’s chock full of Aliens, Mutants, Monsters, and more! Almost every Goji villain gets a cameo, including the first US attempt at a Goji adaption, Zilla. Gigan got an updated design that was just gorgeous, King Ghidorah gets a promotion to Kaiser, and Monster X is introduced as it’s own thing. That initial design was absolutely filthy and immediately made my top five Goji villain designs. Speaking of designs, Final Wars Goji is my favorite version of the King, Slim, mean, and breathtakingly regal in statue, it was dope seeing this suit in action, even if it was the only time.

7. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I’m a huge fan of the new Monsterverse being woven together by Legendary over here in the States. So far, I’ve enjoyed every release, even Kong: Skull Island. I don’t like King Kong. Never have. It’s a rather offensive allegory when you think about but that’ a discussion for another day. This is about the latest release of Legendary’s universe; King of the Monsters. Like Final Wars and Destroy All Monsters before it, this film is kind of a celebration of the Goji franchise as a whole but with a Yankee twist. For the first time, we get to see what classic Toho monster look like, filtered through a modern Hollywood lens and, let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. I was already on board for the Godzilla reveal a few years before but Mothra and Rodan killed it. Those designs were amazing, particularly Mothra. She seemed like a proper threat and not some mascot. I loved it. That said, and this might be blasphemy among the fandom, but the Monsterverse version of King Ghidorah is the best goddamn version of the monster ever captured on film. This motherf*cker is smarmy, conceited, arrogant, and just plain awesome. The design, the personalities, the cruelty; It’s everything a challenger to the Throne had to have and Legendary nailed it. The movie, itself, is kind of weak in the narrative department, mostly as a knee-jerk reaction to the heavily human story of the initial Godzilla release, but the monster action is premium.

6. Godzilla vs. Biollante

Among the fandom, this is considered the very best Godzilla movie in the entire franchise. I wouldn’t go that far but i can’t deny the objective quality saturating this film. It gets right what so many of these movies get wrong; The human story line. That aspect of the story, rather than feeling like something tacked on for perspective, is integral to the overall narrative. It’s rare for that to occur and this film was the first time experienced it, myself. This is easily the best film in the Showa era but it took some time for it to be seen as such by the entire fandom. Initially, people hated this movie. They hated Biollante and wanted to see old monster with new tech. They got their wish and those films are kind of bogus. Heisei closed out strong with Space Godzilla and Destroyah, but that was after a series of mediocre retreads. Toho should have followed their instincts and moved forward with the new look they pushed with Biollante. She was dope and deserved better initially. and, yes, Biollante is female. That’s part of that integral human story i spoke of before.

5. Terror of Mechagodzilla

The second appearance of Mechagodzilla was one for the history books. The bionic monster was just a ferocious, just as menacing, as his initial outing but even moreso here. Terror is less heavy that the first time we saw Mechagoji, but it’s still got a ton of blood on it’s hands. This thing skews closer to the darker Showa outing but never really gives you pause like those other films do. No, it;s true to the narrative established a year before and tends to be an exercise in violence the whole way through. I really like this film and it has one of the best stories in the Showa era. It's not as tight as it’s predecessor, which is on this list, but it does a spectacular job with what it has.

4. Godzilla

So this is the first of several adaptions of the the initial Godzilla encounter. This particular one, is the first appearance of the Big G in the Monsterverse. The 2014 Godzilla film is derided for having next to no Godzilla in it, but that didn’t bother me too much. Of course you want all Goji, all the time but that makes for a lousy film. King of the Monsters did that and it is vastly inferior, narrative wise, to this flick. This film, while Godzilla-starved, does accomplish that rare thing Biollante was able to pull off and so few others in the franchise seem to do; Make the human narrative relevant. This sh*t does that exceptionally, even if they kill off the best character in the entire goddamn movie, almost immediately. Still, after Bryan Cranston bites the dust, i was still on board. A lot of this movie feels like a test run for what comes later but what a Beta it turned out to be. As a film, Godzilla is amazing. I loved the narrative, the characters, and even the monster action, what little there was initial. I really hate the MUTO. They’re kind of corny looking, a little generic, but the best designed of all the US Titans. All of the US Titans are gross looking. All of them. Great movie though!

3. Gojira

The first appearance of Godzilla and the most harrowing tale in the entire franchise. The name Godzilla is actually a misnomer. Goji’s original name was Gojira, which basically means “whale ape’ but this was mispronounced by Americans as Godzilla, thus the moniker we use today. Gojira is the correct, Japanese name, for the King of Monsters but people, worldwide, recognize Godzilla more so it’s been accepted as the proper name. Now that that little tidbit is out of the way, let’s get into the many, MANY, different cuts of this film. Similarly to Return of Godzilla, this one was recut, had scenes added with a well known US actor, dubbed, and released under the title Godzilla: King of Monsters! I’ve seen both versions and there each have their merits but the aggressive bleak tone and tragic narrative of Gojira make for a truly emotional viewing experience. Godzilla isn’t a monster in this movie, he’s literally the physical personification of that devastation inflicted upon Japan, by the atomic bomb. This film is Japan mourning the death of their great country. This is Japan reflecting on their sins. It’s an incredibly raw, violently bleak, take on such content, easily held in the same vein as Schindler’s List. That’s not hyperbole either, this film hits the same as that one. The US cut is good as a film but lacks a lot of that genuine Japanese energy. Gojira does not and of the tow, this one is far superior. both version are absolutely required viewing if you’re trying to get into Godzilla.

2. Shin Godzilla

I love Shin Godzilla. I was mad hyped when Toho announced they were going to release a proper Goji film after some years and even more on board when i heard that Hideaki Anno was going to be in charge of it. Dude is the principal architect of my all-time favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, so i knew there was going to be a brilliance to this flick not seen in the entire franchise. The take on Godzilla being a manifestation of how crippling bureaucracy and tradition clot the Japanese culture was not lost on me. This is another one of the Goji flicks that puts precedence on the human story and it does that so goddamn well, i was stunned. Look, i loved film and, as a film, this thing is outstanding. I get that it can come across as plodding and slow paced, but you have to understand, it’s showing you, real time, what it’s like to move through the Japanese government. All of that red tape, all of that inaction, is a noose around Japan’s neck and you get a real understanding of that. Not only does this thing have great direction and exceptional performances for a Japanese product, that Shin Goji design is absolutely horrifying. It’s wholly original, brilliantly executed, and easily my second favorite in the entire franchise. I love this movie and everything it represents. Shin Godzilla is absolutely required viewing for the Goji fan.

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

I alluded to this before, but Mechagoji is my favorite Godzilla villain of all-time. This film is why. Terror was the second Godzilla movie i had ever seen. It was the first VHS i ever bought with my own money. I remember, vividly, the emotions i felt watching this mechanical monstrosity decimate both King Shiisa and Godzilla. Mechagodzilla was a legitimate powerhouse and it demonstrated that with every assault on Tokyo. I mean, he shows up, and damn near rips Anguirus’ face right the hell off! We saw blood, so much blood, spew from Goji’s best friend and it was truly heartbreaking. Angie just scuttled away in defeat, inflicting almost no damage to the violent impostor and, from there, it was just a massive show of power. Unlimited power. Narrative wise, it’s actually one of the best, most coherent stories in the entire franchise. In my opinion, it could give Biollante a run for it’s money but most would place is a step behind. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is my favorite Goji film and required viewing for any fan of the series.

Honorable Mentions: Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs Gigan, Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Destroyah, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out attack, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S, Godzilla Raids Again

[smokeybrand]

Smokey brand Select: Heavy is the Head

There is a criminal lacking amount of material about Godzilla on this blog. I feel ashamed that i have so haphazardly neglected the Big G. I've spoken about this before, but Godzilla means a great deal to me. I didn’t have the warmest of experiences during my childhood so i cherished the ones that weren’t horrifying.  I’m melancholy for a reason and a lot of that can be traced back to my unkind environments as a kid. Godzilla is tied to many of those good memories i was able to glean off the darker circumstance of my halcyon days. I’ve seen every movie and own about half of them. It occurs to me that there are, like thirty of these things and, with the release of the what might be the final Monsterverse movie on the horizon, Godzilla vs. Kong, i wanted to take a look at the entire catalog. I wanted to revisit the films and choose what i believe to be the best in the franchise.

10. The Return of Godzilla

This was probably the first Godzilla movie i ever saw in my entire life. The second is actually on this list a ways down but this one left a massive impression on me. It was gorgeous, lavishly produced, and completely different than the film i had just watched. Not in the sense of tone, they both are on the darker side of the Goji spectrum, but this is the first time i witnessed the “death” of a Godzilla and it f*cked me right up. I remember weeping about that for days. Imagine my surprise, years later, when i found out that Godzilla 1985 was the start of an entire era of Goji films. This thing is actually a direct sequel to the 1954 Gojira film, ignoring everything in the Showa era. As such, it takes a ton of cues from that film, not only the tone, but visually as well. This Goji is like an updated version of that Goji and it really shows. I initially saw this film in the re-cut, Americanized, version Godzilla 1985. It was fine. I was a kid so i didn’t even know about the way the US butchers foreign film yet. As an adult, i made it a point to watch the original Japanese version and i can say, hands down, that version is the superior watch. I’d say check both out, Godzilla 1985 and Return of Godzilla if you’re a Goji fan but Return is definitely the better of the two.

9. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

This is the first appearance of Kiryu, the third Mechagodzilla. You’ll notice that Mechagoji makes a ton of appearances on this list. That’s because it’s films are some of the best in the entire franchise, hands down. Plus, it’s my all-time favorite Goji villain. This particular version was our introduction into the loose continuity of the entire Millennium era. This saw Goji in a ton of one-shot type and experimental narratives. The only two story lines actually connected were this film and it’s direct sequel, Tokyo S.O.S. I chose this one over it’s follow-up because of the raw emotion i felt seeing the best design of Mechagoji ever captured on film, for the first time. Kiryu is a masterpiece and i loved every second it was onscreen. The narrative is an interesting one, too. It’s not top-tier but, for the Millennium series, it’s pretty ambitious. Objectively, Tokyo S.O.S might be the better film, but this one made a great first impression. If you see one, you have to see the other. They’re kind of a set.

8. Godzilla: Final Wars

Oh, Final Wars. Your ambition is only matched by your absurdity. Look, final Wars is Endgame before other was an Endgame. It’s the cap to the entire Godzilla franchise to that point, kind of like how Destroy All Monsters was supposed to close out the Showa era. We saw how well that worked, just like this “conclusion.” This thing is unapologetic fan service, rife with the campiest of performances. I mean, the Xilliens in this are a direct reference to the original, would-be world conquerors from Planet X, first introduced in 1965. I love that sh*t! It’s chock full of Aliens, Mutants, Monsters, and more! Almost every Goji villain gets a cameo, including the first US attempt at a Goji adaption, Zilla. Gigan got an updated design that was just gorgeous, King Ghidorah gets a promotion to Kaiser, and Monster X is introduced as it’s own thing. That initial design was absolutely filthy and immediately made my top five Goji villain designs. Speaking of designs, Final Wars Goji is my favorite version of the King, Slim, mean, and breathtakingly regal in statue, it was dope seeing this suit in action, even if it was the only time.

7. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I’m a huge fan of the new Monsterverse being woven together by Legendary over here in the States. So far, I’ve enjoyed every release, even Kong: Skull Island. I don’t like King Kong. Never have. It’s a rather offensive allegory when you think about but that’ a discussion for another day. This is about the latest release of Legendary’s universe; King of the Monsters. Like Final Wars and Destroy All Monsters before it, this film is kind of a celebration of the Goji franchise as a whole but with a Yankee twist. For the first time, we get to see what classic Toho monster look like, filtered through a modern Hollywood lens and, let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. I was already on board for the Godzilla reveal a few years before but Mothra and Rodan killed it. Those designs were amazing, particularly Mothra. She seemed like a proper threat and not some mascot. I loved it. That said, and this might be blasphemy among the fandom, but the Monsterverse version of King Ghidorah is the best goddamn version of the monster ever captured on film. This motherf*cker is smarmy, conceited, arrogant, and just plain awesome. The design, the personalities, the cruelty; It’s everything a challenger to the Throne had to have and Legendary nailed it. The movie, itself, is kind of weak in the narrative department, mostly as a knee-jerk reaction to the heavily human story of the initial Godzilla release, but the monster action is premium.

6. Godzilla vs. Biollante

Among the fandom, this is considered the very best Godzilla movie in the entire franchise. I wouldn’t go that far but i can’t deny the objective quality saturating this film. It gets right what so many of these movies get wrong; The human story line. That aspect of the story, rather than feeling like something tacked on for perspective, is integral to the overall narrative. It’s rare for that to occur and this film was the first time experienced it, myself. This is easily the best film in the Showa era but it took some time for it to be seen as such by the entire fandom. Initially, people hated this movie. They hated Biollante and wanted to see old monster with new tech. They got their wish and those films are kind of bogus. Heisei closed out strong with Space Godzilla and Destroyah, but that was after a series of mediocre retreads. Toho should have followed their instincts and moved forward with the new look they pushed with Biollante. She was dope and deserved better initially. and, yes, Biollante is female. That’s part of that integral human story i spoke of before.

5. Terror of Mechagodzilla

The second appearance of Mechagodzilla was one for the history books. The bionic monster was just a ferocious, just as menacing, as his initial outing but even moreso here. Terror is less heavy that the first time we saw Mechagoji, but it’s still got a ton of blood on it’s hands. This thing skews closer to the darker Showa outing but never really gives you pause like those other films do. No, it;s true to the narrative established a year before and tends to be an exercise in violence the whole way through. I really like this film and it has one of the best stories in the Showa era. It's not as tight as it’s predecessor, which is on this list, but it does a spectacular job with what it has.

4. Godzilla

So this is the first of several adaptions of the the initial Godzilla encounter. This particular one, is the first appearance of the Big G in the Monsterverse. The 2014 Godzilla film is derided for having next to no Godzilla in it, but that didn’t bother me too much. Of course you want all Goji, all the time but that makes for a lousy film. King of the Monsters did that and it is vastly inferior, narrative wise, to this flick. This film, while Godzilla-starved, does accomplish that rare thing Biollante was able to pull off and so few others in the franchise seem to do; Make the human narrative relevant. This sh*t does that exceptionally, even if they kill off the best character in the entire goddamn movie, almost immediately. Still, after Bryan Cranston bites the dust, i was still on board. A lot of this movie feels like a test run for what comes later but what a Beta it turned out to be. As a film, Godzilla is amazing. I loved the narrative, the characters, and even the monster action, what little there was initial. I really hate the MUTO. They’re kind of corny looking, a little generic, but the best designed of all the US Titans. All of the US Titans are gross looking. All of them. Great movie though!

3. Gojira

The first appearance of Godzilla and the most harrowing tale in the entire franchise. The name Godzilla is actually a misnomer. Goji’s original name was Gojira, which basically means “whale ape’ but this was mispronounced by Americans as Godzilla, thus the moniker we use today. Gojira is the correct, Japanese name, for the King of Monsters but people, worldwide, recognize Godzilla more so it’s been accepted as the proper name. Now that that little tidbit is out of the way, let’s get into the many, MANY, different cuts of this film. Similarly to Return of Godzilla, this one was recut, had scenes added with a well known US actor, dubbed, and released under the title Godzilla: King of Monsters! I’ve seen both versions and there each have their merits but the aggressive bleak tone and tragic narrative of Gojira make for a truly emotional viewing experience. Godzilla isn’t a monster in this movie, he’s literally the physical personification of that devastation inflicted upon Japan, by the atomic bomb. This film is Japan mourning the death of their great country. This is Japan reflecting on their sins. It’s an incredibly raw, violently bleak, take on such content, easily held in the same vein as Schindler’s List. That’s not hyperbole either, this film hits the same as that one. The US cut is good as a film but lacks a lot of that genuine Japanese energy. Gojira does not and of the tow, this one is far superior. both version are absolutely required viewing if you’re trying to get into Godzilla.

2. Shin Godzilla

I love Shin Godzilla. I was mad hyped when Toho announced they were going to release a proper Goji film after some years and even more on board when i heard that Hideaki Anno was going to be in charge of it. Dude is the principal architect of my all-time favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, so i knew there was going to be a brilliance to this flick not seen in the entire franchise. The take on Godzilla being a manifestation of how crippling bureaucracy and tradition clot the Japanese culture was not lost on me. This is another one of the Goji flicks that puts precedence on the human story and it does that so goddamn well, i was stunned. Look, i loved film and, as a film, this thing is outstanding. I get that it can come across as plodding and slow paced, but you have to understand, it’s showing you, real time, what it’s like to move through the Japanese government. All of that red tape, all of that inaction, is a noose around Japan’s neck and you get a real understanding of that. Not only does this thing have great direction and exceptional performances for a Japanese product, that Shin Goji design is absolutely horrifying. It’s wholly original, brilliantly executed, and easily my second favorite in the entire franchise. I love this movie and everything it represents. Shin Godzilla is absolutely required viewing for the Goji fan.

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

I alluded to this before, but Mechagoji is my favorite Godzilla villain of all-time. This film is why. Terror was the second Godzilla movie i had ever seen. It was the first VHS i ever bought with my own money. I remember, vividly, the emotions i felt watching this mechanical monstrosity decimate both King Shiisa and Godzilla. Mechagodzilla was a legitimate powerhouse and it demonstrated that with every assault on Tokyo. I mean, he shows up, and damn near rips Anguirus’ face right the hell off! We saw blood, so much blood, spew from Goji’s best friend and it was truly heartbreaking. Angie just scuttled away in defeat, inflicting almost no damage to the violent impostor and, from there, it was just a massive show of power. Unlimited power. Narrative wise, it’s actually one of the best, most coherent stories in the entire franchise. In my opinion, it could give Biollante a run for it’s money but most would place is a step behind. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is my favorite Goji film and required viewing for any fan of the series.

Honorable Mentions: Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs Gigan, Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Destroyah, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out attack, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S, Godzilla Raids Again

[libtard-blazkowicz]

Alright, I’m going to do the thing I said I might do. I’m going to make a post responding to the attention surrounding my “Conservative Girls TM” shitpost.

This will probably be longish so, here’s a continue reading thing in case you don’t care and you don’t want this clogging your dash. Also, here’s the link to the original shitpost that I’m writing about.

Part 1: Why did I make it in the first place?

The main reason is that it was a shitpost that I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into. I was mainly trying to be funny in a way that would appeal to my list of followers who are mainly left leaning. However obviously, it isn’t “just a joke”. There was a specific butt of the joke and a mentality I was trying to satirize. So this is partly a coherent explanation what my feelings at the time were making it, as well as my sort of post-hoc interpretation of what I want it to mean.

So basically I’m making fun of conservative anti-feminist girls. No, it’s not a demand that every girl be a feminist. I’m not even necessarily a feminist myself even though I do hold several third-wave/intersectional feminist beliefs. It’s not my place or anyone’s place to force people to wear that specific label or even conform to all of those beliefs. It’s making fun of them for being outright “anti-feminist” and then using that to condescendingly maternalize men who feel underprivileged and as if their voice isn’t heard. It’s making fun of these anti-feminist women not for simply being non-feminist, but for holding reactionary beliefs and having a “sorry for my pussy-privilege ):” self-loathing attitude. 

It’s also about hypocrisy that I see on the right surrounding their interpretation of how the left talks and how they very frequently use the same rhetoric when it suits them. The right frequently complains about how “Everything is looked through a myopic lens of privilege vs oppression”, “I hate virtue-signalling!” and “I hate identity politics!”. The fictitious conservative/anti-feminist lady is using those things to express her anti-feminist/pro-man point of view. 

And that about sums it up.

Part 2: Addressing specific reactions and brainlet arguments surrounding that shitpost.

Now, I’m not going to name and shame anyone and I also am not really interested in debating most people who responded personally. I think most of them are smoothbrained marsupials who are not worth my time, and me trying to engage their bad faith and sub-humanly stupid cringe takes would seriously compromise my mental health and intelligence. I’m mostly going to try to read and respond to the rough approximation of what a lot of people were getting at.

“This is straw-man argument!!” 

A straw-man is a fallacious debate tactic where you take your opponents argument and then you deconstruct an inaccurate and rhetorically weak version of what they said because that’s easier than honestly examining the complexities and nuances of what they said. This wasn’t me arguing with any particular person. This was a comedic exaggeration of some general things that I’ve seen from people with the intent of making people laugh, not purposefully misconstrue a specific person’s point of view. I after all used to be an anti-feminist edgelord and that’s the kind of people I hung with, so I remember what the kind of things they’d say.

“This is misogyny! You are man-splaining how wamen should be!” 

Again, what I said I said about how people on the right use the same talking points and rhetoric that they say they don’t like. I’m not making an exact normative claim about how I think women should be. For the most part, they should be how they freely choose to be. It’s more so mocking that specific self-loathing “I have so much pussy privilege. It’s men who do all the hard work and they are so oppressed!” attitude. 

“Girls like that are based/queens.”

I mean the fictional lady was intended to sound self-loathing, but that’s your idea of based. Cool. 

“You’re a male-feminist who has the ulterior motive of getting laid rather than authentically advocating for women.”

Yeah. Saying what I say on tumblr where most of my mutuals are all across the world and nowhere close to where I live will definitely get me laid. Also, I don’t have this toxically-masculine attitude of “The number of people I sleep with is what makes me a man. I will get more coochie by any means necessary.” That’s probably you though if you’re making that accusation. You’re projecting that onto me. Again, this was a shitpost. This was mainly meant to make people laugh.

“Why are you shaming women who are empathetic towards the struggle that men face?”

Men struggle a lot. I think in many aspects I think they struggle more than women. After all, men successfully commit suicide about double the rate that women do. Women should be empathetic to the struggles that men face. Men should be empathetic to the struggles that women face. This isn’t about being apathetic towards men. It’s mocking the mentality that “I sit on mountains of privilege”. I’ve seen cis-het white male feminists do that before too. If you’re one of the people who reacted negatively, you’ve likely seen white male feminists do that yourself. So you probably thought that was me doing that. I wasn’t. Lol.

“’Woke’ people demand how you should be. Conservatives just live the way they want to.”

I’ve generally observed the exact opposite to be true, but I do sometimes see dumb liberal feminists saying shit like “We need more wamen billionaire CEOs and war criminal presidents, and shame on women who just want to be simple housewives!”. Fuck them. I hate dumb liberals like that, and I’m not one of them.

Part 3. Why are people so triggered?

A common stereotype of the left is that they’re “triggered” and argue with their feelings. They don’t think with facts and logic. Maybe you’re conservative or you just didn’t find my shitpost funny. You could have ignored it then. I see stupid bullshit all the time that gets on my nerves or maybe even offends my sensibilities. I most often just ignore it. 

This was a reaction of anger and insecurity that I received. And nothing that was said at me displayed an honest or accurate understanding of what the shitpost was about. It was mainly a wash of “YOU HATE WOMEN WHO AREN’T LIBERAL FEMINISTS. REEEEEEE” or “HOW DARE YOU CHASTISE WOMEN FOR SHOWING BASIC EMPATHY FOR MEN’S STRUGGLES.”. 

Plus it was basically just as I described it and tagged the original thing. It was a shitpost. 

[cosmotographer]

Photo Credit: Stephen Gandy (CameraQuest)

The 35mm focal length is the most versatile focal length for any camera system and I’ve talked about this in depth in one of my reviews. It’s a great middle ground for general, street, travel photography and anything in-between due to its balanced field of view. It has a “wide” (but not too wide) field of view to capture your context with just enough distance and pull, while maintaining its composure relatively well when it comes to distortion. This “middle of the road” focal length make it an ideal choice for most people as the only focal length they really need, which explains why the 35mm had become ubiquitous as the “do it all” lens.

This new-ish lens by Voigtlander hits all the spots mentioned earlier, but it enters murky waters. This particular segment is challenging for most manufacturers as they have one major obstacle to overcome, which is the benchmark for all 35mm lenses: the Leica Summicron.

In this review, we will go over what might be Voigtlander’s most promising proposition and see if it has what it takes to take on the great lens of power.

Introduction

When the Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH was released in 2019, there was a lot hype surrounding this lens as people saw this as the second coming of an affordable 35mm f/2 lens since the Zeiss Biogon. A lens, they hoped, to compete against the Leica Summicron 35mm. Things were looking good as the lens had a more affordable starting price tag of $799.99 USD, therefore it wasn’t surprising that it quickly gained traction and popularity within the Leica community. This price point allowed Voigtlander to position itself comfortably cheaper than the Carl-Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2, and thousands cheaper than a new Summicron. This was more than enough of a reason for people to get excited and when initial reviews were released, people were shocked how well the lens punched above its weight.

People took notice and money was thrown at computer screens.

Competition is always good right?

Classical yet sharp with amazing transitions. The bokeh is a little busy though.

@cosmotographer

@cosmotographer

“…they’ve also managed to create the smallest 35mm f/2 lens currently in production.”

Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH

Competing in this sacred segment may seem like an uphill challenge for the Voigtlander, but fortunately for them, its competitors had left a wide berth for improvement where the little Ultron could stand on its own. By choosing to position their new lens as the cheaper alternative without compromising image quality, they were able to squeeze in as a viable alternative to its other German (and Chinese) counterparts.

The 35mm f/2 Segment

The cheapest option: 7Artisans 35mm f/2

Image Quality: Excellent

Render Type: Modern

Build Quality: Good – need manual adjustments

Ergonomics: Good

Price: $289.00 USD

Made in China

The budget option: Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH

Image Quality: Excellent

Render Type: Classical tones and modern sharpness

Build Quality: Excellent

Ergonomics: Good

Price: [eafl id=”5285″ name=”Voigtlander Ultron 35 f/2 Vintage” text=”$799.99″] USD

Made in Japan

The premium option: Carl-Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Image Quality: Excellent but soft corners wide open at f/2

Render Type: Modern tones and cooler colors.

Build Quality: Excellent

Ergonomics: Ok

Price: [eafl id=”5495″ name=”Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2 ZM” text=”$1141.99″] USD

Made in Japan

The top shelf option: Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH

Image Quality: Excellent

Render Type: Classical tones and modern sharpness.

Build Quality: Excellent

Ergonomics: Excellent

Price: [eafl id=”5272″ name=”Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH (11879)” text=”$1999.99″] USD+ (Used)

Made in Germany

From the list of lenses above, Voigtlander’s only real rival would be its sister lens, the Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2, which is also manufactured by the same company that assembles the Voigtlanders: Cosina. Despite their manufacturing similarities, build quality and the strange 43mm filter size, their differences lie in their characters as the Zeiss had quirks of its own.

For example, while the more expensive Zeiss 35mm is a sharp lens, its corners were known to be muddy wide open and surprisingly not up to par with its slower (albeit excellent) brother, the C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8 ASPH. There is also the controversial “issue” that Zeiss lenses tend to render cool and clinical compared to the Voigtlander and even Leica, but this is a subjective matter as there are people that like the way the Zeiss draws images.

Very sharp | f/4.8 / 1/4000 / ISO 200

Sunset | f/3.4 / 1/4000 / ISO 200

Photo Credit: Stephen Gandy (CameraQuest)

“…keeping some of the quirks that hipsters like to call, ‘character’.”

Build & Design

During its original development, Voigtlander’s goal of the Ultron 35mm f/2 was to create a vintage looking lens that nods back to the 1950s when lenses were tiny and lightweight. They definitely achieved that and then some when they also added a modern aspherical element to bring the optical quality to 21st century standards, but maintaining some of the quirks that hipsters call, “character”. The aesthetics of the lens body may not be for everyone, and the chrome parts give off a retro Cadillac vibe, especially for those that prefer a more stealth look like the Summicron. Personally, I’m not be a fan of the design.

I am, however, impressed with its overall size and weight when I first held it in my hands.

This is truly a tiny and featherlight lens.

While the body is lightweight and compact at a mere 6 ounces, its packed tightly with an aspherical element as part of its 8 elements and 5 groups, which gives the lens more of a modern look with improved sharpness. Not only is this lens Summicron level sharp, but they’ve also retained the image quality that Voigtlander lenses are known for: classical rendering with a bit of softness added to it. It’s as if the lens designers went into Lightroom and just turned down the clarity level just a little bit. Not only do they squeeze out every optical performance in such a tiny lens, but they’ve also managed to create the smallest 35mm f/2 lens currently in production.

Photo Credit: Stephen Gandy (CameraQuest)

Welterweight Champ

Don’t let the size fool you as the lens is solidly built with an all aluminum construction, packed with glass, will surprise people with its $800 price tag ($700 new during Voigtlander’s sales). This is a very solid and durable lens. What most people don’t know is that the front filter ring and the focusing helicoid is made entirely from brass, similar to the Summicron. Another cool reason why the front filter ring is brass is that if you want to install a UV filter onto the lens, the brass mount prevents a softer metal like aluminum (common for cheap UV filters) from getting stuck. A Cosina* trademark that is consistent with all Voigtlander and Zeiss lenses. I personally recommend B+W Nano MRC 007 filters as they’re made of brass as well.

Nothing on this lens feels flimsy or cheap and if I had to compare the lens build quality to a Leica lens, it would be the slower, but lightweight Summarit-M 35mm and the [eafl id=”5494″ name=”Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8 ZM” text=”Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8″]. Both extremely well built and solid lenses.

Weight: 6 ounces

Minimum Focus Distance (MFD): 0.58m

Build: Aluminum

Flare resistant and fantastic micro-contrast

@cosmotographer

@cosmotographer

“…the Ultron as the lens itself is as modern as they come with a hint of classical rendering.”

Mechanically, it’s not as refined as the Summicron, or even the cheaper Summarit lenses, but they’re on par with the rest of the Zeiss lenses as they’re both assembled in the same factory, built to the same standards.

However, not everything is perfect and if I had to nitpick about a few things…

The focus tab is a small tiny pin, which is easy to miss due to its minuscule size. One of the few compromises to fit that “vintage” aesthetic that Voigtlander was going for. More form than function.

The silver finish on the aperture and focus rings showed some moderate wear pretty quickly and I don’t believe it’s coated with anything to protect the paint.

The [eafl id=”5567″ name=”Voigtlander LH-12 Lens Hood” text=”LH-12″] Lens Hood is very expensive and adds to the length of the lens significantly. I don’t recommend picking one up unless you’re very particular about it.

43mm Filter Size – not a big deal if you already own a few Zeiss lenses as they use the same filter size, but this is an awkward filter size.

Fantastic rendering | f/4 / 1/125 / ISO 200

“…modern as they come with a hint of classical rendering.”

Image Quality

Regardless of the high build quality mentioned earlier, the most important factor of a lens is its image quality and rest assured, this lens exceeds all expectations for this price point.

Beautiful rendering and micro-contrast | f/2 / 1/4000 / ISO 200

“It’s as if the lens designers went into Lightroom and just turned down the clarity level just a little bit.”

The images have a certain look to them and the way the images are rendered with this lens is typical Voigtlander: sharp, neutral colors, subtle micro-contrast and classical bokeh.

What was most surprising to me was how the images kind of remind me of the Leica Summicron 35mm ASPH that I reviewed here. The sharpness is on par but you will hear people on the internet saying that it’s sharper than the Summicron. It’s a possibility and the performance of this lens does show its merits, but side by side, any differences are immaterial in practical uses.

Stop pixel peeping. It’s a $700 lens.

The micro-contrast is also very good, but falls a little short to the Summicron, but overall  renders very similarly to the Leica. To be completely frank, I can honestly say that the Ultron is optically equal to the Summicron for the most part and for any shortfalls, it’s so small that it doesn’t matter.

What can be said, is that based on image quality alone, this lens beats out the Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2.

RAW | Another flare shot | f/5.6 / 1/4000 / ISO 200

User Experience

The handling of this lens is close to perfect, but the focusing knob is something that people have to get used to, especially if you’re used to the crescent shaped tabs like on the Summicron or the Nokton 35mm f/1.4. This is the only handling issue I have with this lens as the focusing knob is easy to miss when you’re about to take a photo. There is a good chance that you’ll forget where you left the focus if you had to take your hands off the camera. Otherwise, the focus throws are extremely smooth and fast, but accuracy can suffer due to the focusing knob. I’m definitely not a fan of this.

The aperture controls are set by two subtle, yet protruding metal tabs with machined serrations, where the user can easily manipulate the aperture just solely on feel thanks to its positive detents. I actually prefer the stiffer clicks on both Voigtlander and Zeiss aperture rings over Leica’s offering.

That being said, I wouldn’t consider this lens a handling demon like the Summicron or the Summarit for those quick focus hits.

In Summary

I would be lying to you if I said that I didn’t have my own prejudices towards this lens when it was first announced for the Leica M mount. This was not because I didn’t like Voigtlander (on the contrary), but because I didn’t believe there was a sub-$1000 lens that could match the Summicron’s superlative glass and user experience. This bias from my previous experiences with Voigtlander lenses set a low standard for me, because while Voigtlander made great lenses, they also came with a lot of compromises. What Voigtlander had accomplished this time, was that they were able to build one of the best 35mm f/2 lens you can buy and it demands your attention.

*Cosina is the parent company of Voigtlander and manufactures Zeiss ZM line of lenses for the Leica M mount in their factory in Japan.

If you’ve enjoyed this review and plan on making a purchase, please help out the site by using the affiliate links below as that helps the site to maintain its good relationship with its WordPress overlords and buy the writer a cup of coffee.

[eafl id=”5285″ name=”Voigtlander Ultron 35 f/2 Vintage” text=”Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH”]

Overpriced Lens Hood: [eafl id=”5567″ name=”Voigtlander LH-12 Lens Hood” text=”LH-12″]

[eafl id=”5272″ name=”Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH (11879)” text=”Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH”]

[eafl id=”5495″ name=”Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2 ZM” text=”Carl-Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2″]

Featured Image by Stephen Gandy at CameraQuest

Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH – Summicron on a Budget Photo Credit: Stephen Gandy (CameraQuest) The 35mm focal length is the most versatile focal length for any camera system and I've talked about this in depth in one of my reviews.

[zamancollective]

In his intriguing debut book, EPPY Award-winning nonfiction writer Massoud Hayoun tells his family’s compelling story as a means of engaging in a deeper re-evaluation of its place in a larger politicized history. As his grandparents’ lives unfold between Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles, the author reshapes existing narratives about Arabness, Jewishness, and the legacies of colonialism.

ZAMAN editors Sophie Levy and Evan Mateen contacted Massoud Hayoun to learn more about When We Were Arabs, which was released on June 25th.

ZAMAN Collective: Tell us a little about your background and who you are.

Massoud Hayoun: I’m from LA, born and raised. I went to UCLA and Columbia [University]. I’m Tunisian, Moroccan, and Egyptian-American. I am Jewish — I was raised in a faithful household and remain faithful, in a way that looks very different from that of my youth. I continue to pray, although mostly alone. I read psalms several times a week. I fast on Yom Kippur. I occasionally study Torah, also alone these days. I try to observe Shabbat and allow the restfulness of it to include watching television and using electronics that I find enhance my repose. I was raised by my grandparents, Oscar and Daida, while my mother worked very hard to support us financially. I am left-handed. I am into Beach House and Abdel Halim Hafez. I love Killing Eve, Pen15, Diary of a Chambermaid, Russian Doll, and Silence of the Lambs. 

ZC: When did you first become interested in Mizrahi historical / cultural affairs?

MH: I don’t think there was a particular moment when I became interested in my family’s history and belonging to our homelands. Those things were ever-present. When my grandparents who raised me died, the need to preserve everything that came before became so much more tangible to me, because it was clear that otherwise, entire universes would have ended with them. My grandfather Oscar died when I was a teenager, and that pushed me to interrogate this belonging. And then my grandmother Daida died when I was 30, and I began to interrogate things with even greater ferocity. I am 31. 

ZC: For people who don’t know too much about When We Were Arabs- Can you talk a little more about the book’s subject matter?

MH: When We Were Arabs is a decolonial memoir of my Jewish Arab grandparents — that is to say, it is a re-reading of their lives and what came before with a view to regain things that were robbed from us by various colonial projects and their enforcers. 

Hayoun family photo (source)

ZC: Why did you choose this title? Why in the past tense?

MH: The fact that you ask the question “why in the past tense” means that the title was successful. You’re meant to ask whether we — the readers and me — can suffer all of the universes in this book be relegated to the past. Or are the readers and I engaged in a discourse about the future? The dedication of the book is ‘To Our Youth’ — it is forward-looking. Paired with the title, the flurry of tenses upfront is meant to raise questions. I had hoped that people would find the title to be fundamentally wrong — to feel ill-at-ease with or suffocated by it. Suffocated enough for those uncomfortable feelings to become actionable. With this title alone, I challenge the reader to drag the universe and the people I describe into the present and future. To move forward with them in mind. 

ZC: Why did you decide to write a book in a pivot away from shorter-form journalistic articles? Why now?

MH: In my defense, I did write a lot of long-form articles, it’s just hard to make a living only writing a few big articles a year. I also didn’t pivot, per se. I’m still writing the same short-form journalistic articles, and I’ll keep writing them until I win the lottery, I guess. And maybe even still…

My grandma and I had something we wanted to say. We said it in a book, while my life and career continued on, pretty much as usual. I remain a journalist until now, and it gets tedious and daunting at times, but it’s still more fulfilling than other lines of work, precisely because I’ve worked for some exceptional publications that have allowed me to talk to people who are frequently disregarded. My short-form articles seek to help uplift voices — not just those of analysts and academics, but on many occasions of people who are systematically silenced. 

ZC: Why write about Mizrahiut through the lens of a family story? 

MH: I wouldn’t say I wrote about Mizrahiut. I say in the book specifically that I do not identify with the term Mizrahi, to be clear. I also never say that others from my background (even from my own family) shouldn’t identify as Mizrahi, but I have clearly explained in When We Were Arabs why that term is not one that I find empowering for myself.

I am also clear that I do not speak for anyone but myself and my family. At moments, I’m also careful not to speak for my own family, where I do not feel the closeness necessary to do so. In this book, I am writing about my own very human situation, in the hopes that people — Mizrahi-identifying and otherwise — will connect with some aspect of it.

ZC: What is the relationship between your Jewishness and Arabness? Are they two separate entities that coexist or are they more intertwined?

MH: Both are important components of who I am. My Jewishness governs matters of the spirit, for me. I do also stand with Jewish Americans in practical matters, particularly at moments when our lives, dignity, and freedom are under siege. But in this life, I am Arab first and last. Many similar people, like Moroccan human rights activist Sion Assidon, whom I interviewed in the book, have described themselves as Arabs of Jewish faith. That’s accurate to my experience, as well.  

Hayoun family photo (source)

ZC: How political vs how personal is this book? Is there even a sharp divide between these two qualifiers?

MH: Politics are personal — and the more people benefit from certain oppressive power structures, the less likely they are to notice (or to feel, rather) the degree to which all politics are personal. The book intertwines politics and the personal as a function of simply trying to convey lives, deaths, and their meaning accurately. You could not have understood anything at all about my family — especially not as we were in the 20th century — without understanding a great deal about world politics. I feel that’s universally true; it’s just less evident to some. 

ZC: In an NPR review of When We Were Arabs, Martha Anne Toll characterizes you as a “severe critic of Zionism.” How do you feel about having this issue brought to the forefront of your work? How would you describe your relationship to Zionism? 

MH: Martha Anne Toll’s characterization was accurate; I am a “severe critic of Zionism.” This issue is an important component of the work, but the project of claiming the Jewish Arab identity and preserving this lost world is paramount and must not be subsumed by this one crucial component. The beauty of Toll’s review was that she realized this was an important but not an all-consuming element of the project I undertook with When We Were Arabs. 

ZC: What’s the importance of reclaiming Arabness as a Jew, especially one whose family has relatively recent, politicized history in Israel?

MH: Reclaiming that Arabness has allowed me and my family to come to terms with a lot of inconsistencies in our and our community’s concepts of self. We empowered ourselves to answer a number of long-unanswered, uncomfortable questions: Why does the word Arab incense so many people? How many of the people whom the word incenses have actually spoken with Arabs about what Arabness means, particularly in the contemporary use of the term? If they haven’t undertaken to understand Arabness, how is that term at once so detestable and yet not important enough to try to fully examine its definition by modern Arabs? 

ZC: Ultimately, what do you hope that readers will gain from reading your book?

MH: I hope that readers will feel inspired to look at themselves and their understandings of certain belongings and relationships to humanity with a critical lens. Of course, I hope they look at all facets of reality with that critical lens too. There’s nothing about these times that doesn’t deserve to be turned on its head — including but not only [limited to] the Arab-Jewish divide. 

When We Were Arabs is available for online order at IndieBound, Barnes&Noble, Target, and Amazon. Click here for a list of independent booksellers that also carry Hayoun’s book.

[liskantope]

A response to Aella’s essay “The Responsibility Narrative”

I initially planned to quickly link to this piece @aellagirl put up a few days ago just to highlight it as a piece of writing containing ideas that I’ve tried to express for a while (longer-time followers know that the whole agency/responsibility topic is right up my alley) and to thank her for expressing them so much more elegantly and from a much more powerful point of view. Then I noticed a bunch of points I wanted to pick apart a bit (while I overall really like this post there are some places where I think she goes a bit further than I do or just want to respond to in other ways). Also, it seems that she turned comments off for that post or something, so I guess this post is my way of dropping a (very long and slightly erratic) comment under hers while at the same time linking my Tumblr followers to her piece and providing a response.

I’ll start by saying that I really envy the author’s writing skills, in the sense that Aella seems to have an uncanny ability to put forth highly controversial theses that many would take offense to in an eloquent, concise, and direct manner (I might even go as far as to say “blunt”), and yet manages to do this in a way that facilitates in the audience opening one’s mind and listening rather than taking offense or feeling attacked. This is something I’ve noticed for a long time in her writing. An example is her piece on monogamists rejecting polyamory out of fear, where her thesis is one that I strongly disagree with and may well have responded to with resentment if it had been displayed by any other writer. I wish I knew how to emulate this. From time to time I argue positions that are controversial and potentially threatening or angering to some, but in my writing there’s all this hemming and hawing and insertions of softening qualifications and so on which can often make those essays look like sloppy messes by comparison in which my central point is nearly lost amid all the carefulness.

As for the actual content, first of all, I’m always happy to see someone else writing things like this:

Responsibility is weird. Ultimately there’s no free will and agency is a trick of the light, but we seem to have particular rules for when and where we throw responsibility at something. Sometimes we throw responsibility at the environment, and sometimes at the person.

...and I’m especially happy to see this (as most people in my vicinity have seemed to shy away from describing the Left vs. Right divide in this way or agreeing with me when I did):

Responsibility placement seems to occur along political divides, too. Conservatives see everyone holding their own glowing ball of responsibility, while liberals see the responsibility in the environment and the cruel, unchangeable past.

Aella’s views on how we assign free will (or responsibility, which after all is treated by most as equivalent to free will) in practice is the same view as mine and seems to be pretty much the universally-agreed-upon way forward on the pragmatic side, at least judging from the (admittedly very limited) set of people whose writing on that question I’ve read. I wish there were a way to translate that pragmatic solution to a metaphysical one that we could all agree on -- I think my solution is to say that “free will” is just a word that we have no choice but to define according to the pragmatic solution because any attempts at a more “cosmic” definition are in fact meaningless. Perhaps Aella would differ by emphasizing the term “responsibility” in place of where I used “free will” in the sentence above, as after all she does call free will nonexistent and agency “a trick of the light” -- that view seems equivalent to mine for pretty much all means and purposes, though.

And as for “if someone is very lazy, shouting at them to be less lazy sometimes works”, well yes, although a key word there is “sometimes”.

Then we get to the much more controversial thesis of the essay, which is initially presented with “In my old society, men were formally and strongly given the glowing ball of responsibility... [which] sucked bad enough that I don’t think being a woman was worse than being a man.” On first reading, I’m pretty sure I misread that last bit to instead say, “I don’t think being a woman was as bad as being a man”. When just now I read the phrase correctly, my eyebrows didn’t raise quite as high as before, but they’re still raised a little bit. Because while I’m really glad that the author is presenting this alternative view and wish more people could be exposed to it and take it seriously, I still lean fairly strongly towards believing that on the whole it was still better to be a man.

(In this and what follows, I do want to point out that the author is considerably more qualified than I am to speculate on such things given her experience as a woman who actually grew up imprisoned in an ultra-conservative community; however, let me offer my own speculation based on my general impression of how humans react to power and responsibility.)

The author comes across to me as emphasizing the seductiveness of believing that fault lies not in oneself but in the environment while seeming to ignore the potentially negative effects of such a belief, or equivalently, the benefits of feeling a sense of personal responsibility. Yes, the essay highlights the (very obvious) benefits of having power, thus drawing a rough equivalence between the benefits of power and the benefits of not being assigned responsibility in a society where men hold most of the power and most of the responsibility, but I’m talking about how the holding responsibility part comes with psychological benefits along with the psychological disadvantages. Namely, in my view and in my experience, feeling a sense of responsibility is empowering, while feeling a lack of responsibility or agency is certainly easier in many ways but also comes with a sense of weakness and helplessness that can create a lot of depressed feelings. As I remember reading once in an advice article (whose title and author I don’t remember), “It’s easy to be miserable.” In the context of that article, I think its author was trying to say that a lot of misery arises from a failure to take responsibility, which is seductive because of how easy it is... but of course, due to the being miserable part, that deal definitely isn’t better than one where one feels empowered through the weight of responsibility to not have to be so miserable.

(Rereading what I’ve written here the following day, my words in the above paragraph look like contradictory nonsense in the context of the essay I’m responding to: it may sound like I’m saying “Aella is wrong to equate the benefits of lesser responsibility with the benefits or greater power, because carrying lesser responsibility also comes with the disadvantage of having lesser power.” But this is because I’m struggling to make a clear distinction in words between power in the sense of institutional power or authority to make decisions -- the power that Aella refers to -- and the feeling of personal empowerment in the sense of being able to tolerate or withstand adversity. I’m saying that a direct negative consequence of not carrying the ball of responsibility is a feeling of personal weakness that comes with it, which is fairly separate from the fact that lesser responsibility tends to be correlated with less society-bestowed power. Perhaps I’m slightly confounded here by viewing everything primarily through the lens of modern times, where differences in concrete society-bestowed power have mostly disintegrated and a lot of the oppression that activists complain about boils down to some adversity being intolerable mental-health-wise. Not sure if this edited-in aside clarifies my position or makes it even more muddled.)

This is not to say that in practice people don’t choose the less-responsibility route far more often than taking the glowing ball of responsibility. They do, I believe increasingly as our society becomes more socially progressive, and the younger generations recently seem to be embracing a norm of doing it more than ever. And that’s in large part because in a certain sense, it is the easier path. But that doesn’t mean they’re better off psychologically for it. Here let me try my hand at saying something potentially offensive very concisely and directly *deep breath*: the people I know who are most committed to shooing away that ball of responsibility -- the “environment-changers” as Aella might call them or the low-agency-goggle-wearers as I might call them -- the ones who go to the most extreme deep end in that direction tend on the whole to be the most bitter and frustrated, the most terrified of life in general, and the least emotionally or psychologically healthy people I’ve known, to an extent that I don’t think can fully be directly explained by the disadvantages that were handed to them.

As for Aella’s observation that on average men tend to have a more high-agency mentality while women tend to have a more low-agency one... yes, this has certainly occurred to me although I don’t think I’ve ever noted it in writing -- for some reason, I hesitate to feel fully convinced. I still lean towards claiming that the tribe one belongs to is a bigger factor here than gender, but it certainly makes sense that gender is a factor, and her observation does jive with my experience.

Now we get to the part about the Gillette ad, and again I can’t bring myself to go as far as the essay does. I should probably write another post describing a fuller reaction to the ad. As a response to the essay, I would argue that the author is making a point I strongly agree with about modern feminism in general (perhaps it can be applied to some other wings of SJ but far less so since for most other axes of oppression the reality really is something much closer to members of one group directly oppressing the members of another), but that the Gillette ad is not really a great example of this.

I understand “toxic masculinity” in this context to refer to certain behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity that are harmful but still encouraged or normalized for men in our culture. I agree that the ad places responsibility for fixing toxic masculinity solely on men and that this is an overly-simplistic judgment (although to some extent a statement that brief has to be simplistic). I also have some of my own issues with the ad. But sometimes the solution to overturning a cultural norm for a particular group really does almost exclusively rest on the shoulders of that group.

Aella states near the end of the essay, “Women reinforced gender roles just as much, if not more, than the men did.” My personal impression is a variant of this: I think it always has been and continues to be the case that women are the primary enforcers of female gender roles (including some of the most oppressive ones to live under) while men are the primary enforcers of male gender roles. In other words, gender roles are policed most heavily among one’s own gender group. That would imply in this case that many of the traditionally-male behaviors brought up in the ad -- physical aggression, sexual harassment, objectification of women and so on -- are reinforced in men primarily by other men. This strongly jives with my personal experience: it’s never been girls and women in my life who shamed me for not being fiercely competitive about something or for not picking fights or for not being aggressive enough at approaching women for dating/sex. In my life, it’s almost exclusively other guys that have. Of course I’m not saying that these masculine norms are entirely not enforced by women -- in particular, objectification of women arguably is perpetuated on a certain level by some subset of the female population. But I think by and large women tend to promote values for everyone of all genders which are the opposite of the uglier traditionally-masculine norms: diplomacy, sensitivity, gentleness, and so on.

And one corollary of men being the main perpetrators of “toxic masculinity” behavior among fellow men is that the most effective way to push things in the opposite direction is for men to start pushing other men away from these behaviors (”Not cool, dude!”). Which is exactly what the Gillette ad is preaching.