#exact inverse

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

havent really had more indepth thoughts since than the posts i made last night but i just got to the "my name is zephyr" line again

like it's meant to be heavy bc we knows names are Sacred (<- lots of worldbuilding questions there forever to remain unanswered) and so yes theres the trust in penance, but it's also like, to claim a name, "my", is to claim an identity. it's an expression that there is something more to you than just your role, your function, the cause youre in service of.

and if transition is the only thing shes ever done for herself, right? and all the rest has been in Service. what shes called at any point is just the title of her function in the circumstances. but to say My Name is to claim an identity, that exists for its own sake. as is. not for anything. just is.

and if she chose the name herself, it's like an expression of a Want. which is what i was talking abt with the joy/pleasure thing. she doesnt Want anything, really, except maybe just for "this to be over". she starts out, in this story, at like the most Unwanting state you can have. being suicidal, most of the time, rather than a positive wanting to be dead, usually it's more a negative not wanting to be alive, you know what i mean?

and she remains in that state for all of the story we get. she doesnt really Want anything in a positive sense, mostly just wants like, things not to be like this. the world not to be like this. and not to be in the position shes in. but shes stuck in that position bc the world is like this. so the only way out is to try and make it,,,not like this. which is the main thing driving her for the whole season i think.

to say "my name is zephyr" i think is an expression of a positive desire. it's i want to be zephyr. it's, maybe, i want to just live. i want to just live instead of i want to stop fighting.

[clarkgriffon]

BUFFY SUMMERS & DAWN SUMMERS ➤ Outfit Parallels

[lucabyte]

So does anybody else ever think about how Loop felt the need to demonstrate that the party's deaths wouldn't have any effect on the loops. I know I do but that's besides the point. Anyway I don't think Loop actually needs to bathe, they just like to feel included.

[spokenfromtheheartandsoul]

oh but the clothing choices are SO interesting here.

right when mew finally seems to be letting ray in, mew starts dressing in a style that's awfully reminiscent of ray himself:

meanwhile, right when ray is finally getting to receive the type of affection from mew he's yearned for ages - ray's not dressed the way he usually does for nights out.

in fact if i didn't know any better, i might even say he's dressed up in an outfit that's awfully reminiscent of a style a certain someone picked out just for him:

what a coincidence, that right when mew's external appearance finally seems to imply he's ready to be on the same page as ray...........ray's external appearance has shifted to reflect the lingering influence of someone new.

[centrally-unplanned]

To share another thought on the Folding Ideas video I Don't Know James Rolfe from my last post, while I enjoyed it a ton I do think its core "meta" element fails to reach the heights it could. It is never made that explicit so I am making a subjective read here, but essentially while most of the content of the video is textually about James Rolfe, there are dozens of moments where Dan performs actions that mimic or parallel James, culminating in his own parodic angry video game review as the finale. The idea is something of a "there but for the grace of god I go" point, that perhaps all youtubers, and Dan specifically, are too close for comfort to Rolfe's reality of limited creative options and a hostile fanbase clinging to the past .

But I can't really say for sure! Because he is very adverse to making this concrete enough for the audience.

At times the visual parallels are incredibly direct. There is one moment, where Dan is explaining the real skill and craft of being an internet clown on demand, where he mimics Rolfe's style of rant to explain it while projected AVGN videos that were looping in the background flash over his own body:

And it really works, the meaning shines through; it is a moment you can see back through time where the idea for this shot was, spiritually, the impetus for the film, that this idea must have come to him and he built the essay around making it happen.

Other visual parallels are less explicit; when the parody sequence starts, Dan - who has built a 1/12th scale recreation of the Rolfe's "video game basement" aka studio set in order to "understand" him like normal people do - represents himself in that room via a tiny hand puppet

Which is cute if, like probably most people, know him as the guy who makes videos about NFTs or Qanon. But close to a decade ago, when he was first making ~20 minute media analysis takes, he represented himself on screen with a wooden puppet like this:

It is even like the same color, I am confident this is intentional, it is saying "yeah this could have been an alt version of me; I was not so far from this".

All these symbols function to make the emotional impact; but an emotional impact in service of...what? So in the essay he discusses the film Wavelength, a 1967 avant garde film that is almost entirely composed of filming the side of a room with minimal camera movement while actions occur around it. It is a movie that never gives you a meaning, and therefore you must project meaning into it, bring yourself to the table. That makes sense for Wavelength, and the aggressive cinematography of I Don't Know James Rolfe - which is stellar to be clear - is making the film out to be sort of its own personal Wavelength for YouTube.

But then we go back to that text, which is over an hour of Dan directly talking to the camera about a real person. It is incredibly concrete and detailed, with explicit points being made over and over. And through what those explicit points reveal... I don't think Dan Olsen is like James Rolfe! Does he have an hostile fanbase trapped in nostalgia? Do people acuse him of being cucked by his bitch wife? He has evolved as a filmmaker, intensely so, he does things completely differently than Rolfe does and completely differently from how he himself used to. He doesn't have a shitty biography that self-outs his own creative narcissism, he isn't obsessed with remaking his own childhood films - I am pretty sure as a kid he had never heard of NFTs, they didn't really exist! The final line of the film is "maybe you aren't a filmmaker either" - but idk, Dan, I kinda think you are! If documentarians can be filmmakers you have to qualify.

Now I'm not a fool, I understand that the film could be suggesting these are differences of degrees and not kind; that Dan is equally "trapped in the room" making vlogs for the net, just with more outward trappings of success. But, in the ruthless specificity and detail of his treatment of Rolfe...this film cannot be Wavelength. I am not capable of forging my own meaning from the pieces, he connected way too many of them. This is the trap of avant-garde; you are tempted to help the audience, but once you try to answer some of the questions, it forces the hand of the rest, they all have to fit into that schema. And the film is just too coy with Dan's own parallel life for me to figure the schema out. I make my guesses and I lack confidence in them, they feel "contradicted" by the text.

More detail would have been the easier path; less detail and more symbolic expression would have been the harder path. But right now the balance is just a bit too out of whack for it to come fully together.

[karouvas]

“You’re as bad as Gansey” said Adam in a tone that made it clear he was turned on.

[malinaa]

i don’t have any intelligent thoughts because i haven’t rewatched dw. Ever bc of the emotional damage it left me. but tenrose and twelveclara are fraternal twins to ME

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

It’s gonna be really jarring to go back to reading fanfiction written in the third person whenever this Jeeves and Wooster hyperfixation ends

[blackjackkent]

All right. Time to go in and see Malus.

-----

The blood smell is even worse in the surgical theater. The air feels thick with it. Rakha can taste it as she breathes in.

Like the rest of the House of Healing, this place was once fine and has deteriorated terribly. The walls are lined with seating and stairs and balconies of polished wood long since left to rot. The tilework floor is stained with long streaks of dirt and blood. The creeping vines of the curse have broken through the ceiling and walls.

At the very center of the room is a raised platform even more stained with blood than the rest. Four more of the strange, blank nurses stand in a circle around a half-naked body stretched on an examination table. And next to them is a form quite unlike anyone Rakha has ever seen.

A tall, lanky figure - his ears are elven but the rest of his body looks deformed, misshapen. His arms and legs are wrapped and stretched and replaced by tarnished mechanical limbs twice their intended length. His metal "hands" twist, revealing sharp, curved, blade-like fingers. His eyes are covered by a strange goggled mask that gives him the appearance of a staring, gaping madman. Every part of him, every fiber of his clothes, is drenched in blood.

"The objective of the scalpel, sisters," he is crooning softly, somewhere between an academic lecture and a lullaby, "is to soothe, for the scalpel indeed is an extension of Shar. See how the patient reacts when I but stroke the right nerve. Hear its comfort. Hear the very melody of mercy..."

He drops one of his long, taloned claws and drifts the blade eagerly across an open wound in the side of the body stretched before him.

Their victim, it seems, is very much still alive. At the brushing touch of the blade, the broken man squirms and cries out in terror and pain, too weak even to put full voice behind the sound.

"Pray, sister," Malus says. "Show us the extent of your beneficence." He gestures one of the nurses forward.

She steps forward, lifts a rusted-looking scalpel in one hand, and takes an unsteady swing with it down into the victim's midsection. There's a sudden splash of blood. The man whimpers piteously.

"STOP!" Malus snaps. "Stay your hand, for it slaps where it should stroke. We can hardly hear the patient's sighs of solace..." The man's whimpers seem to punctuate this speech.

Malus turns slightly. His eyes are hidden by the goggles, but his gaze has clearly fixed on Rakha as she enters the room.

"Perhaps it is our unexpected audience that makes you quiver..." he purrs. "Come - step forward!" He gestures again with his strange mechanical hand, this time to Rakha, gesturing her towards the dais. "You are no sister, but that matters none. Every student is welcome!"

Rakha's mouth has gone very dry. She doesn't move.

She is remembering, suddenly, the flickering set of images which the noblestalk provided to her in the depths of the Underdark. The only clear memory she has ever attained of her past before the nautiloid.

Rakha and Sceleritas, side by side at a vivisection table. Blood spatters across her hand as she severs capillaries one by one, delicate, careful. The search for perfection in agony. She shoves Sceleritas's face into the corpse as he clips the aorta, killing her victim too quickly. Another failure. Another not-quite-perfect death...

The blood pulse thumps in her head and her vision blurs. Yes, growls the beast in her head. This man understands. He knows... everything that we once knew...

"A student. Yes," she hears herself say, her mouth moving without her volition. "Do please... enlighten me..."

"Absence..." one of the nurses murmurs vaguely.

"Absence," Malus agrees with a sort of casually manic satisfaction. "No other word captures the heart of Shar so very perfectly... it is the scalpel-led journey that leads from pain to peace..."

As if to punctuate his words, he turns and swings two sharp blows with the knives of his hand, puncturing into both of the restrained man's eyes. The man screams weakly and spasms on the bed as a new river of blood pours out onto the soaked wooden floor.

"Hells," Wyll hisses under his breath. "Only a monster would inflict misery and call it medicine."

Malus looks down at the bleeding, shivering man before him and smiles, pleased. "See? What is the light of eyes but the cancer that causes one to witness the laceration of being? If light is the symptom, then darkness is the cure, for in light there is presence, but in darkness there is absence."

"In light is presence, in darkness absence," all the nurses intone together in unison.

Malus turns back towards Rakha. That unsettling smile still touches his lips. "But you... look how the succor of Shar eludes you!" he cries. "See how painfully present you remain. We do not wish to see you suffer so..." He takes a step forward on his long, gangly, metallic legs, his smile widening. "Let us cure you..."

Rakha's head has begun to ache. Her vision is whiting out at the corners and the beast is roaring in her head with sudden eagerness - and with anger. In her own voice it cries out within her, echoing down from that memory of the long-ago vivisection.

No. He does not understand after all. He has it wrong. There is no peace to be found in this slow torture. One kills to see the body twist and writhe and bleed and pass out of the world in unpeaceful agony, with no answers, no closure, and no serenity.

Kill him. He insults his craft.

She shakes her head sharply, trying to clear it of these thoughts. Malus is monstrous, yes, but Wyll would find these thoughts in her head equally so.

And yet this is who she once was, isn't it? Another killer, another cutter and slicer of flesh. They are two monsters staring each other down over this brutalized half-corpse, each only differing in the philosophy behind their blades - Malus and the beast, with Rakha as she is now caught between them like a struggling fish on a hook.

She clamps her jaw down tightly and tries, desperately, to focus.

[INVESTIGATION] Examine the sisters and their implements.

Narrator: The sisters' blades are bloodied and dully. Only the most measured hand could make a clean incision.

Pitiful, murmurs the beast. This is not perfection. This is amateur. Slipshod. Pathetic.

"Their blades are uneven," she says abruptly. "Efficient surgery will require further training." There is a plan forming in the back of her mind - and she cringes inwardly even as she thinks of it, because it is the beast's plan and not hers. It smells of viscera.

Malus tilts his head thoughtfully. "Their incisions are, as yet, still streaked with imperfection - that much I must concede," he says, with the air of a man discussing the weather. "How to steady their hands, I wonder..."

Rakha's harsh, off-kilter gaze bores into him. [PERSUASION] "Why not have them hone their skills on each other?"

Her mouth is operating without her. This is the beast speaking, the past version of herself that exists only in that single fragmented memory, reawoken by the familiarity of this blood-soaked room.

And Malus drinks every word down eagerly. "Yessss..." he hisses, his smile never shifting. "For are we not all in need of a cure?"

He draws back, lifts both grotesque hands in the air, and calls out to the nurses. "The scalpel does not discriminate! Let each and every one of you partake in its soothing journey! Absence, sisters! Acquaint yourselves!"

It's incredible, the alacrity with which the sisters obey.

Within moments they have cut each other apart. Four fresh corpses lie stretched on the floor, and Rakha sways dizzily as the beast feeds on the sight with eager hunger.

"It is a proud moment," Malus says dreamily, "when one sees one's teachings so lovingly taken to heart."

He turns slowly towards Rakha and flexes the mechanical joints of his piercing fingers. "You are to be commended for their graduation," he murmurs. "Rewarded with the promised cure. Come... I will acquaint you with the Lady's dark-fingered embrace..."

Rakha tips her head to one side and the beast's strange, feral smile tugs at her lips. For a moment she is aware of no one else but herself and Malus - of his madness and her own. [PERSUASION] "I would rather acquaint myself," she says, her voice calm and flat. "If you show me how."

(A/N: Slight artistic license - Rakha had a [BARD] persuasion option here instead, but it was much more verbose and performative and not Rakha-ish. This is the actual fallback dialogue line that is normally offered if you don't have a class-specific option.)

A long silence. Then Malus smiles again.

"Your diligence is exemplary..." he murmurs. "Very well. Your own scalpel will you be. Observe - then succeed me, into the succor of Shar!" His voice lifts in a sudden fanatical yelp--

And then without the slightest hesitation, he sinks one of his blades directly through his eye and into his brain. His body topples over backwards with a heavy, clattering thump and is still.

-----

Silence.

Rakha sinks slowly to her knees, staring at the sudden pile of corpses which has taken over the dais. She is trembling all over. The beast purrs in her head, sated, satisfied.

"What... in all the hells... was that?" Wyll asks faintly.

She jumps. She'd half-forgotten that he was there, or any of the others. "I... I don't know," she mutters. "I hardly knew what I was saying."

"An efficient resolution," Lae'zel says, just the slightest bit dryly. "Though I would not have objected to a fight."

"It is as I have already said," Minthara says, quiet and disdainful. "The Sharran philosophy is selfish, self-indulgent. This was a foolish performance, and Rakha put an end to it." She fixes Wyll with a pointed glance. "Or do you wish to say she has erred in securing that abomination's death?"

"No...ooo," Wyll says cautiously. "He had to be dealt with, that's certain. I'm just surprised, that's all."

He knows, of course. He was the only person to whom she explained the memory that the noblestalk gave her. He knows this echoed something terrible in her, and that she gave that echo voice, even if the cause was good. He is kind enough not to say anything, but he knows, all the same.

She hates it, all of it. And she hates that he knows, most of all.

[metanarrates]

mulling over my reading today some more. it's such an interesting angle to take for jhw's paradise arc to culminate in her choosing her own life over thousands. it would have been a very easy angle to have jhw object to becoming fertilizer on moral grounds - I mean, she JUST saw the evil at the heart of paradise. while it's true that her sacrifice would have saved people, it would make a lot of sense for her to say "no, I don't want to uphold an unjust system. I will find a way to save them anyway."

and while that is definitely part of her objection...

the strongest choice, as always for orv characters, is to value one's own survival. live with the consequences, even if they are terrible. it is not cowardice.

she believes fully in kim dokja's resolve to find a way out.

[artof-mirage]

Gourrina Screenshot redraw 💖💙

[criticalrolo]

Drives me Buck Wild that the narrative of rdr2 has a very specific pattern, where the worse things get for arthur personally, the more consistently he doubles down on trying to do good. he Cannot perceive himself as A Good Person but he can be a person who does good things, specifically as the world and the people he knows gets crueler and harsher. anyway I love him so much

[bandsanitizer]

nah but why tf they bringing mama to la?

[brittlebutch]

fragment of a partially written “what if Evan went through with the magic-exorcism and had his memory of Gowpenny erased?” fic -- specifically a scene in which Jammer/K/Sam track him down to some middle-of-nowhere rest stop in order to meet him again

[dustorange]

Every time you read an article from da gray lady or her circle, you should entertain the possibility in a sidestream thought: What if everything this writer said was false? Intentionally false—or incidentally, accidentally false? The accused innocent and now wrongly persecuted and life-ruined, and the crime justified, or falsified, or sensationalized? Even and especially do this when the article’s themes fit your priors. This alternate reality you furnish yourself is probably like, by virtue of being the inversion of the acceptable journalistic line, or of being more thought-through, however inexpertly and uninformedly, than an article on FP slammed together to meet a deadline, 75% truer than whatever the article says and most importantly it develops your capacity to like to borrow a term from chewy instagram infographicworld “hold space” for the “characters,” that is, real people, not in fact so easily reducible to graft-sucking stage machiavel or like brave human rights crusader, the real people about whom the articles are written. Imagine if a 28-year-old with a J-school masters degree and no subject-area-expertise self-confidently condemned you on the world stage and manufactured a legitimation by paralogy by which every “well-read” “good person” would feel totally confident condemning you, too

[domesticatedmeatpig]

i kind of hate art. i can never make anythin.g i enjoy anymore. all i can draw nowadays is souless anime boy twink adopts for money. money money money. i dont even want money. i hate twinks. i hate drawing them .i hate the people that buy them. i hate my life