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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER PRE-GAME 9/30/2020: 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE/CONFESSIONAL (2019)

Spoiler alert. Or whatever. It’s not going to matter, you don’t care.

So, I've been away for a minute. Just about any reason to be away from Tumblr is probably a good reason, but I have an especially good one. I'm finally working on a "real" writing project, which demands, and deserves, all of my attention. My social media abstinence isn't just a matter of time management, though. Once I had a long term obligation on my plate, I became very aware of how the short term satisfaction I get from posting mindless rants was eating away at the fuel I have available for sustained efforts. When I wind myself up with a 500-1000 word blog post, it generates a lot of electricity, but I blow it all as soon as I experience the catharsis of posting it, and I'm further pacified by ego-stroking likes and reblogs. Not to sound like a sanctimonious luddite--I mean, I'm still here, after all!--but it turns out that the staying focused on the long haul has been surprisingly revivifying. In fact, I haven't been talking about my big fancy project for the same reason; I don't want to lose any of the juice I've been storing up by wasting it on the shallow pleasure of describing it. Also such things should probably be somewhat confidential until they're approaching the publishing stage, but I digress! There is an actual reason I'm saying all this, that has more to do with this blog.

(Don’t get all excited, I’m not doing EVIL ED right now, I just need a relatable image.)

As I got deeper into my experience of "real" film writing, I started to reflect on the meaning of my personal writing. Like, the point of it. I tend to write in a sweaty, compulsive, sadomasochistic haze, in which I'm sometimes hyperbolically generous, and sometimes--perhaps more often, unfortunately--as nasty as humanly possible. Sometimes the movies deserve it, when they're lazy, pretentious, or otherwise demonstrate an open contempt for the audience aka ME. Often, though, I'm just creating an opportunity to vent my generalized rage and frustration. That can be very entertaining for myself and (hopefully) my teensy-but-devoted readership, but lately I've asked myself whether there isn't some negative tradeoff for all this amusement. In this phase of my life, it's reasonable to assume I'll make more and more friends and acquaintances who create things I don't always care for, but I don't necessarily think they deserve to be abused for it. As much as I have a right to say whatever I want, technically, I'd be embarrassed if I were caught just jacking myself off by making fun of their work in public. And more to the point, I don't necessarily want to contribute to the growing atmosphere in which people feel more afraid to try and fail, because the public so commonly misidentifies sarcasm and mean-spiritedness as intelligence and superiority, and that form of petty darkness spreads across the internet a lot faster than a movie can reach a wider audience. After all, I'm in the process of potentially turning myself into one of those well-meaning failures right now. I could stand to be a little more deliberate about how I speak, and about what, in general.

My father is an art critic, and once in an extra petulant moment, teenage-me asked him in an accusative tone what he thought the point of his profession was. He replied calmly that he wouldn't publish any comment that he didn't think the artist could make use of somehow. I don't know if he always stuck to that policy, but the thought sure stuck with me.

So anyway, over the last few months I've been giving myself a bit of an attitude adjustment, through a combination of personal reflection, and hard work on something meaningful/not for the internet. I've been feeling all proud of myself and shit, but today reminded me that any path to enlightenment is always marked by setbacks, doubt, and temptation. For today, in complete innocence (or at least a melange of innocence and ignorance, as I very much invite this type of problem), I managed to watch TWO (2) movies about an academic film-cum-psychology project, focused on a gang of college buddies who inevitably reveal what bad people they are under the unique conditions of the project, and then the project turns out to be run NOT by its presumed-dead originator, but by the originator's even-crazier lover. It's amazing how particular something can be, and still be utterly obvious and cliche. In my defense, I really tried to turn the second movie off, because it was...just instantly terrible, but the seed of suspicion had taken root--is this randomly selected movie ACTUALLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE PREVIOUS MOVIE?--and I just had to find out if this could be true. I suffered, deliberately, for another hour and a half, to confirm my awful hunch. I don't know how I would have felt if I had turned out to be wrong (better? worse?), but I don't have to worry about that now. Now I just have to worry about my overpowering impulse to be as ugly as possible about what I have personally subjected myself to.

(The completely deceptive poster for our not at all witchy or eerie opening feature.)

In need of a passable time-waster this afternoon, I put on 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE. Released in March of 2019, Caitlin Koller's claustrophobic black comedy feels oddly like a product of 2020. A group of estranged, middle-aged college pals of the BIG CHILL ilk--which one of the characters calls out, out loud, just so ya know--come together for a fallen comrade's funeral, only to find themselves trapped in his widow's increasingly creepy cabin in the woods. Said comrade was driven to suicide by the failure of a psychological experiment he conducted that plunged its subject into madness, and if you don't realize right away that the obnoxious and unstable cast are the new subjects of their not-quite-dead friend's renewed project, then you're firing a lot slower than 24 frames per second. The dialog is often decent, aiding a handful of funny, natural performances...but it's hard to forget that you're just waiting for the conspicuously crazy widow to reveal that the "unexplained events" in and around the cabin are part of a controlled attempt to get the guests to devolve into their worst selves, which isn't such a difficult task considering the undesirable state they all arrive in.

It just made me ask myself, what was the point of this? Why do people make movies that are entirely predicated on the shock of the twist, knowing that if the twist isn't so shocking--or is baldly obvious from the start--then the whole experience just falls apart? Why not hedge your bets with a little more depth, or purpose, or style, or really anything more reliable than a smug attempt to prove that your script is smarter than your audience? Even if you do manage to pull off this dubious accomplishment, it reduces your movie to something like the experience of having somebody jump out of a closet and scream in your ear to "get" you. I've always felt concerned that if somebody ever tries to "get" me like that, I might just automatically punch them in the face. But anyway, whatever shred of good will this movie could have accrued with its plucky performances is blown away by the final insult, when the cops arrive to clean up the inevitable bloody mess. The responding officers are hilariously unimpressed and unsurprised by the byzantine scheme that has resulted in a shocking act of violence, because the cabin's "guest book", which our heroes all filled out, was actually the signatory page of a complicated waiver form granting full permission to the hosts to, like, do whatever the hell they want to everybody. Presumably this shit just goes on all the time, leading the local law to shrug off anything that happens to or because of the dumbassed lab rats who frequent the cabin? I dunno. I mean, what can I say? ACAB, I guess!

At the time, I managed to resist the urge to take to the internet and decry the crimes of this lame-o party joke. I really don't like the sensation that a movie is just trying to trick me into thinking something that isn't true. But, this isn't, like, an affront to cinema. People make annoying, below average movies all the time, and maybe you kinda have to, if you eventually want to make better movies. I imagine myself in the shoes of the people who actually put some elbow grease into this production, having to wade through the rantings of internet ghouls like myself while they're trying to see how their efforts are paying off. Making a movie is probably a lot harder than I think it is.

But that's part of the point I'm heading toward. I'm always amazed by people's willingness to pour huge amounts of energy and capital into something to which there is ultimately very little point. I mean, I have bad, unoriginal, boring ideas every single day of my life. But I almost never DO any of them. I have a hard enough time convincing myself to just get out of bed in the morning, let alone devote blood, sweat, and money to deliver unto the world material evidence of my personal mediocrity. I can't imagine thinking it would be worth it, for myself or the unfortunate people who are subjected to my project, to actually execute on my bad ideas. I'm being judgmental, but honestly, I don't even know if my attitude makes me better or worse than someone who accomplishes the task of completing and selling a movie that's mainly a waste of time. Movies are so complicated, and realizing them requires the consensus of so many people, that it's sort of incredible that there are people capable of making one that doesn't have a powerfully compelling motivation behind it. People who are able to do such a thing obviously have something that I don't, and it isn't just "consideration for the audience."

So, I could probably stand to be more forgiving--or just, less eager to absolutely flay someone alive on my dumb little blog because they so opened themselves up to my arsenal of elaborate insults. But like...not all the time. Sometimes, a movie really fucking asks for it, and in revealing itself to me, it has effectively signed a waiver giving me patent freedom to do whatever I want to it. CONFESSIONAL is the latest movie to give me such a gift. After the final credit rolled in 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE, I looked for a little palate cleanser. As little as I like movies that put their single egg in the motheaten basket of a "shocking twist", I also have a problem with what I identify as canned theater. Not that I think all movies have to be lavish productions, but I think they should try to do something that is natively cinematic. It's very rare that I'm impressed by anything that is literally all talk. So, I went in search of some more familiar form of trash to help me recallibrate, and trash is definitely what I got.

(Me crying over my own bad decisions.)

To be fair, I kind of should have known that I was in for a challenging experience. The 2019 found footage thriller CONFESSIONAL is more or less based on the "confessional" part of sleazy reality TV shows, isolating each cast member in a soundproof stall so they can spill the rotten contents of their guts. Unfortunately, I spotted a review suggesting that the movie succeeded, against all odds, at remaining visually dynamic despite the unchanging scenery, and I was intrigued. The reviewer was correct, impressively; the monotony of the coffin-like environment with its dark foam walls was the least of my concerns. Other problems superseded that threat, immediately. The plot concerns a group of college pals who come together to remember a recently deceased friend--a filmmaker who expired mysteriously while completing a psychology-tinged project in which she recorded all of her friends' most shameful personal secrets. Now, somebody else has taken over the project...someone who "has never been identified", according to an early title card in this movie-within-a-movie (EVEN THOUGH THIS PERSON WILL BE EXPLICITLY IDENTIFIED AT THE END OF THE MOVIE SO LIKE WHY), but who seems likely to be the decedent's ex-lover...who continues to expose their subjects' most shameful secrets on film. I mean, what the fuck? Did I somehow manage to pick a second movie with almost the exact same plot??? I couldn't believe it. I didn't know if I could take it. My prospects only got worse when the cast showed up and started talking. I tried to turn the movie off. I backed out and walked away from it, twice. But I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know if it was really the same movie.

CONFESSIONAL concerns characters who are contemporaneously in college, which actually goes a long way to making everything worse. Each of these walking cliches is connected in some way to Amelia, a film student whose mysterious death has created a campus scandal, leaving shattered hearts and lives in its wake. The living have each received a blackmail-flavored invitation to speak about the deceased in a tiny "confessional booth" somewhere on campus, where, predictably, they find themselves locked in until they confess whatever they know about Amelia, and their classmates. I don't know why practically every single movie about young people has to be so miserable, but this is one of those. I assume that it has something to do with the fact that youth is simultaneously so desired and so ignored. People in their teens and early 20s are so sexually coveted, yet so easily dismissed as individuals, that we wind up with all this media that panders to them relentlessly (or at least, panders to the legions of ticket-buying perverts who enjoy watching them prance around), without almost any consideration of how they actually think and act, and look. Movies like FAT GIRL and WELCOME TO THE DOLL HOUSE may be accused of their own form of pandering, a venal form of voyeuristic schadenfreude, but at least they reflect something of the awkwardness, isolation, and incompleteness of adolescence; something more than the dissociated, pornographic fantasies of adults who have long since forgotten what it was like to be powerless and ignored, or desired by people who don't even like you.

Not that CONFESSIONAL is supposed to be a work of grim realism, but it is most definitely rooted in a fantasy about college life that makes its contrived, message-y plot a lot harder to take. With almost the sole exception of "the nerdy one", every single character looks like a Bratz doll, oozing an exaggerated indecency that belies the movie's pretentious insistence on addressing the sex & gender Issues of the Day. What you get is a really good example of what happens when millennial characters are modeled, not on any actual millennials, but on other forms of marketing that are aimed at millennials, which are themselves just based on other preexisting youth-targeted commercials, et al ad nauseam. Even setting aside the deliriously slutty wardrobe choices, makeup appears to have been laid on with a trowel, coating each actor in a thick creamy layer of spackle that only makes any scars, pits, or other evidence of individuality look utterly bizarre. Accordingly, everybody preens, pouts, and generally behaves as if they're about to take off their clothes, which might be a huge relief given the profusion of chafing, cheapo mesh and straps they're laboring under.

So, ok, not every movie can have a great costume department, but the dialog here is a perfect match for the disastrous aesthetic decisions. Actually, this is the real reason I almost walked out on CONFESSIONAL. If I may ramble briefly, without substantiating any of my broad-ranging claims: Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s, horror cinema seemed to suffer a degenerative slide away from genuine thrills and chills, and into a version of the genre that is best characterized as the Slutty Halloween Costume approach. Any sense of existential dread, revulsion, or bodily vulnerability was widely replaced by a cutesy, Hot Topic-y preference for fast fashion and sex appeal, in which bloodshed more facilitated an informal wet teeshirt contest than any real fear induction. Horror's new mall goth look came with an equally shallow, boring verbal affectation: a sullen, sleazy, tooth-sucking sarcasm, that ushered in a new era in which, instead of making fun of the scummy coked-out dialog in porno movies, we now expect everybody to just talk like that, because it's hot. There's probably a line to be drawn between this unfortunate development, and the boneheaded real-world trend of identifying "sarcasm" as an important personal selling point on dating sites, but I won't try to prove that here. For now, I will just say that as soon as I heard the CONFESSIONAL characters start to speak, with their sneering, insinuating tones, with the vocal fry, with the head wagging, the jutting jaws, the smoldering gazes, the juvenile dragging-out of horny grownup words like de-bauch-er-y...I almost lost my nerve. Listening to these little creeps hissing and spitting for 84 minutes is a lot like being hit on by some barfly who continues to bludgeon you with his hot breath and corny lines without ever noticing that you've thrown up into your pint.

Uh, anyway. So what actually happens in the movie. Why would anyone ever allow someone to record video of them revealing the ugliest, most embarrassing parts of themselves? Especially a kid, for whom popularity and reputation are often a matter of life or death--literally and specifically, in the case of this story. The flimsy reason is that the late filmmaker, Amelia, was the most awesomest girl ever. Everybody loved her, because she was so sweet, and so smart, and so cool, and so nice, and so deep, and so original, and so talented, and so sexy, and just like, the bestest most perfectest girl in the whole wide world. N.B. "The greatest of all time" is, perhaps counter-intuitively, a really bad quality that makes for really shitty, boring characters. For better or worse, Amelia is rarely on screen (and when she is, she's no Laura Palmer, frankly), so it's up to the viewer to just sort of imagine a type of person who could make you act against your best interests on account of you just like them so much. After all, so many of the characters were obsessed with her in some way, that it's like they're here to help you clap your hands and believe in this seductive, compelling part of the movie, that just isn't actually there on the screen. The anonymous antihero behind the confessional booth scheme slowly extracts from each character the selfish, destructive behavior that in some way contributed to the tragic loss of the most amazing person of all time--and part of the result is, if not a very interesting excuse for Amelia's death, then a story so wacky that I really wish they had centered the movie on it, instead of on the tawdry soap opera we're locked into. Even if that imaginary movie had been really bad, and it probably would have been, at it would at least have been entertaining.

Part of what leads up to the death of Amelia is the existence of a secret school fight club, led by a stereotypically sleazy gender studies major, named Major, who is out to prove men's inherent superiority. The club is called CFB, or Cock Fights Back, which is somehow a garbled pun relating to cock fights, and Trump's famous line of "locker room talk": "grab'em by the pussy" > "pussy grabs back" > "cock fights back". CFB is different from your ordinary fight club in that the fights are always between girls and boys, and the boys are always blindfolded, in order to prove that a fully-abled female is no match for even a handicapped male. To complicate things, a new designer amphetamine is gaining popularity on campus, called "odds-on", meaning that it makes you the odds-on favorite in your CFB fight. As awkward as that is, it also seems that men are never the guaranteed winners of these fights, which makes you wonder why Major insists on continuing to host them. As much as I would have preferred to watch a stupid movie about this stupid idea, I'm stuck instead with a movie in which Major is such an aggressive MRA because he's secretly gay, and he thinks that hating women is a great way to hide that...as if that isn't what we all openly suspect about aggro MRAs. Secret gayness is a big part of this movie, involving multiple characters, although it amounts to very little other than the perpetuation of some stale, harmful cliches about how unfulfilled homosexual urges lead to suicide, sexual abuse, and murder. CONFESSIONAL is just as reliant on this grim vision of gay life, as it is on its weirdly obtuse discussion of drug addiction, for the suffocating sense of self-importance that it uses to try to elevate itself above its porn-y trappings. None of the movie's hot button issues are given any real thought, but are only dragged through the mud to create the illusion that there's a point to all this, thus relieving the film of any sense of innocence that could have made its condescending sleaziness forgivable.

Admittedly, I can't really remember all the details of the film's tortured intrigue anymore, even though I basically just saw it. A lot of its meandering revelations just left me thinking, "Why did I need to know that? Why should I care?" I do know that about half way through this ordeal, I became really anxious about whether it would turn out that CONFESSIONAL did NOT have exactly the same plot as 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE after all, and I put myself through all this for nothing. But no, I was right to begin with. The wonderful Amelia's ethically dubious film project has been picked up by the unhinged lesbian character who loved her so much she wanted to become her, and killing Amelia and usurping her confessional project was apparently the best way of doing that. I guess exposing all the dark, violent secrets of all these tangentially involved characters was just an added bonus, or whatever. Ultimately, this ugly, ignorant PSA about something-or-other only deals itself further damage by relying so heavily on the potential of its clumsy twist to blow your mind, which it does not at all.

So that was it, that's how I burned a whole afternoon allowing my mind to implode-not-explode under the ponderous force of TWO (2) movies about exactly the same exhausted cliche that is still being peddled by certain pretentious assholes as fresh and exciting, and beyond the capacity of the audience to anticipate. There's probably a whole slew of other movies that employ this overly familiar "surprise", but I don't have it in me to dig them out of my long-suffering brain. Feel free to contribute in the comments. For now, I must prepare myself for the ordeal of Blogtober, during which I will *hopefully* choose my screening selections and words more thoughtfully than I have in previous years, when this blog was motivated by just as much abject misanthropy as these movies, which do nothing but willfully insult the audience's intelligence. Maybe today's detour into degradation will help me go forth toward more additive experiences, having purged several lungfuls of meaningless venom from my system, and this season will bring with it more interesting, provocative posts than the last. Or maybe not! In any case, I promise to keep trying my hardest to make it funny.

PS I actually love both FAT GIRL and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. I’m “just saying”.

#blogtober #2020 #confessional #2019 #30 miles from nowhere #horror #thriller #black comedy #found footage #brad t gottfred #jennifer wolfe #jennifer bosworth #caitlin koller

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emotionalsupportaudino · 5 years

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literally me just complaining

I am very genuinely hurt by the treatment my school gave me in the three years I was there. This is my gentle full on vent. This is me getting out my incredible pain in a timeline.

When I went to NCC, my mental health was literally improving in strides. Two years and I walked out confident, happy, assured of my own worth. It was such a great school. I had such great friends! I was losing weight, I was running 5ks every day in the summertime, I was learning to love myself.

And then I started at Moore. My first year, my first day, my first class, I walk in at 8:30AM ready to fucking learn. I have my notebook, my flash drive, and my confident spirit. Here I was. I was at this fantastic school. All my professors at NCC were so proud of me for getting there. I was in a class studying my absolute favorite topic of my major: Character Design.

My professor walks in, six months younger than me and with a chip on her shoulder. She tells us that if we’re not pulling all nighters every project, we’re failures. She tells us we have an assignment worth 20% of our grade due the next Friday. A 4-person set of silhouettes from a fairy tale that make each character clearly defined as their characters. She gives us a rubric and only explains 80% of it. I ask about the other 20% and she responds “Oh I’m not grading on that, don’t worry.”

Anxious about this huge chunk of my grade, I skip out on a free music festival with my NCC friends and spend every night until midnight working on this project. I go through dozens of iterations of silhouettes for my characters. And then, I turn it in, and I barely pass. Because she gave me a 1/5 in the section of the rubric I asked her about. I ask her why? “These are too identifiable. They’re too obviously what they are.”

She continues this to the point where the rest of my semester is a fucking blur. I was miserable, having mental breakdowns once a week, and this lasted for about two months before I dropped the class because I was literally on the verge of killing myself.

She puts down every aspect of my personality, my very being. I worked in cut paper when I was at NCC and I did really well at it. I tell her I like working with shapes and it was my specialty at my previous school, she tells me “It doesn’t look like it.” I tell her my favorite games are Persona 3 (this is before 5 comes out) and We Know the Devil. She says the artist behind WKTD is a bad person and no one should play it, and that Persona is bad because why would any adult want to play as a teenager. She catches me listening to Love Live music and makes fun of my taste. When I had thought too hard about my project (a chimera where she literally threw an entire in-depth illustration at us the night before it was due and required us to pay fare to the zoo or she’d take 50% off our grade, WHEN I HAD LITERALLY JUST RECEIVED MY FIRST PAYCHECK and had almost nothing), and had everything about this animal planned, she asks me: “What’s the Latin name?” It was not mentioned anywhere on the sheet, it wasn’t involved at all. She docked me 5% for not knowing Latin

I seek out help, first, from my head faculty. I tell him the things she tells us. He says “oh I’ll talk to her, but that’s just how she teaches.” She comes in the next class talking about how much he praised her and how great she’s doing. She’s even worse to me. I cry in the bathroom for half the class and the head of first year classes catches me and literally lets me cry on her despite the fact I am not in any of her classes and tells me to drop. So I do.

My classmates for the rest of the semester are miserable. Everyone except for me and 3 others in my program are literally miserable for the rest of the semester. She cost kids their scholarships. One of my friends is so bad that literally the mention of this professor’s name causes her to have a panic attack. I accidentally caused one and felt awful.

This professor is the start of my Xanax dependence. And she’s never disciplined.

In the same semester they start teaching 2D animation. Except by start I mean start and finish. We are expected to know everything about 2D animation in one semester. We are never offered another class.

My second semester, two of my classes are taught by a man who DOESN’T KNOW THE PROGRAM and is teaching it to himself as we go along. He smells of alcohol, and at the end of the semester he disappears during critiques. We have to teach ourselves everything, except, SURPRISE. One of the classes is 3D modeling, teaching us the foundations of Maya.

We never learn the foundations of Maya.

Third semester, first of junior year, we find out the school has lied to us from the getgo. After saying every student got 1k for their internships, we find out students get $500. And the other $500 goes right to the school if you paid by month like I did.

We also find out that everything we didn’t learn in our modeling class was super important. Our professor--THE HEAD OF OUR PROGRAM--gives up teaching us and kinda says to do whatever for our 3D Animation class. I ask him how to do several things specifically (2D animation on a 3D model being one of them). He does not know how. He does not bother to learn.

During that semester, my grandfather dies. I am told by my Admissions department job that if I miss more than one day of work for the funeral, I will be fired. I never got time to mourn. I still miss my grandfather. I cried about his death literally every day from October to May.

Second semester of Junior year is a blur because I am having so many panic attacks. I find an internship, but it’s outside of my typical field. That internship saves my life. And that’s barely exaggerating. I hadn’t felt happiness in a year when I started it and suddenly every day was... exciting again. I made friends, I had fun, I felt human.

First semester of Senior year is... rough. But not overly rough, mostly because I’m only taking two classes. And one of them is with one of the three (3) competent teachers I had teach me my studio classes. It’s great. I genuinely enjoy working despite thesis.

I had won a grant in the spring of my Junior year to travel abroad for two weeks at the beginning of September. My head of program swears he will present my game and get feedback. I return and he says there was no feedback. I ask my classmates--he never presented. I never got critique on my concept until three months into it because I thought everyone knew what I was doing.

Second semester of senior year was the worst four months of my life. I had never been so hurt, so ignored, and so honestly lost.

-My senior thesis class is taught by a woman who has no experience in any of the programs we are using. She has never animated in 2D or 3D. She has never programmed or designed a game before. She keeps asking for more work because she doesn’t understand that the 12 hours a week I’m putting in in coding is seriously beginning to harm my health.

-The same professor teaches the modern culture of Animation/Game Arts class. She refuses to touch on queer subjects. Repeatedly. She drops the hbomberguy stream but knows nothing about it. I wind up being the one who had to explain what it was about.

-She requires us to take a trip to New York and doesn’t get funding for us. This includes transportation there and back, subway fare, tickets to events, and meals. Had she mentioned it to ANYONE in administration, we would’ve gotten free meals. She did not. She left most of my class alone in New York City with literally no idea where to go and no instructions on how to get back. That trip cost me nearly $100 in the end. (I did get to see the original Taminella puppet at the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image, and the costumes from Labyrinth, which was totally worth it and I broke down crying at it because like, Jim Henson means the world to me? I want to be like him. I just want to make the world a little brighter.)

-Oh did I mention we were never fully taught C#, and yet I was expected to code an entire game in it because for my thesis I wanted to combine 2D art and gameplay? Yup. She didn’t know that either.

-They refused to let us know anything about setup for Senior show until less than 2 weeks before hand. We had to pay for anything installed for the show and any decor. Every other major knew at least a month in advance. We had less than 14 days.

-I walked in on my one friend about to harm themself more than once. I found others saying they were on the verge of suicide. I comforted more people than I think I ever should have had to in those last 4 months. Whenever I asked for help, I was met with a door in my face.

DESPITE ALL OF THAT I have a deep love for my underclassmen. I genuinely want the fucking best for them. They’re in that hellhole and they deserve better, and I want to be as much help to them as possible. Our major has no connections in the paid art world.

Last March, due to my work in the library (AGAIN THAT INTERNSHIP SAVED MY LIFE ), I was offered a job teaching game design to kids in an underserved area. It’s good pay and great work and great people. So when they said “We need more people,” I immediately said “Let me get in contact with my school.”

The head of the program and his full time faculty both REFUSED to either answer emails or meet with me and my job leads. It’s good fucking work. I love every second of it. I’m happy doing it. And I know I have classmates who would be happy too.

And they’re refusing to meet with me.

Everyone else I came in contact with at the school was happy to see me again. The deans were happy, my old bosses were happy, my career center was happy, my old classmates were happy!

But it stings to be rejected like that after busting my ass for three years to do my best.

I just... I feel like I’m never enough for anybody. And the damage they did to my mental (and physical) health is irreversible. I got addicted to anxiety medications, I’m struggling to be confident in myself, I literally get told almost daily at work to not do the things the program drove into me.

I’m getting better and learning to be okay again, but... I’m really fucked up by this school. And I don’t know what to do.

(Oh and the school counselor apparently didn’t actually have a license to practice and often told me my anxiety was in my own head and that it was my own fault bad things were happening to me. Like deaths in the family. And the way my teachers treated me.)

#cw: Suicidal ideation #i am okay #this is talking about years ago #if you're a student at my old school currently #heed my warning

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daemon-knight · 7 years

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Allen’s Ramblings XXIV: Venting... Also talking about Canon RP Blogs

Well folks, after doing that meme I stole from Aster of wearysouls I’ve honestly been thinking about going back to doing canon RP blogs again. I mean, I’ve been seriously thinking about it. I really miss a lot of my old partners in certain fandoms and I’m honestly curious about the state of some of them, but... I’ve been worried about going back.

The main reason I strictly do OC blogs nowadays is because I was seeing so much drama and pettiness going on in the bigger fandoms I was in, specifically the Touhou and Dangan Ronpa communities. There was a lot of vague blogging, shipping drama, complaints about power levels, and so on. I just... walked out after that. It’s been a few years since then so maybe things have settled down a tad. Plus I’m 23 now and not 17, so I know when to say no, and unfollow people now, but I’m still weary. However, I’ve really been wanting to write for Sanae Kochiya, Tsubaki Yayoi, and even Orie and Nanase from Under Night again now that late[st] is coming out this year, and my hype for that game is UNREAL (BLACK THINGS). Hell, I really wanna’ try my hand at playing Cranberry from MGRP too, so.. yeah.

However, I’ve still got some worries about coming back to those fandoms, so... I just... need to vent a tad about some of the frustrations I had when doing canon RPs back then, some of the precautions I’ll be taking when I go back to RPing canon blogs in the future, as well as my own personal thoughts RPing in general.

I was debating on if I should make this a Rambling or not since this is less of an essay and more an... actual rambling, but I think this’ll be worth archiving on the Rambles blog for future reference, so... yeah, here’s Rambling number 24.

Also, much like when I did my off the cuff post a while back on this blog, I won’t be hiding my opinions under a read more since I’m not talking about NSFW-related things nor spoilers. If anyone wants to discuss, break down, or refute my opinions they are more than welcomed to. I’d be a coward to not allow it after publicizing my bare thoughts after all, especially my more jaded ones. Anyway, onto my... vents, I guess.

I think I’ve said this at least twice on this blog before, but if I see one more post about power levels and “respecting my character’s power” in OOC in some way, shape, or form, I’m gonna’ start blocking people. This was super prevalent in canon RP, especially in the Touhou community. It drove me nuts then, and it drives me even more nuts now that I’m starting to write my original stories. To quote myself from a few months ago:

I, the writer, indeed respect the character you wrote. I, the writer, respect that the character you wrote may have abilities, powers, and skills that exceed my character. I, the writer, respect and know that your character may, can, and will become violent toward my character and will act accordingly if pushed to that point. I, the writer, will not make complaints if your character reacts in a way I didn’t expect because (ideally) the profile of your character will have made it very clear your character could and would react that way. However, the characters I write are usually arrogant, violent, self-entitled assholes that neither know nor care about those things. They (the character) will be outwardly snarky, rude, and violent themselves, I don’t need the warning labels for things I already know. I’m not going to throw much of a fit if something happens, but I will say big dramatic moments like that should probably be plotted out so there’s no surprises and no one assumes anything.

Another thing that might make me block people: dash commentary. It’s either lighthearted and comedic or it’s pathetic vague blogging. Look, if you’ve got a problem with someone, how they write their character, or how they’re treating your character, just talk to them directly about it. The writer is rarely as bad as the character they’re writing, and they’re probably willing to pull the reins a little if asked, or discuss how to get your character can get out of the situation they got in. Most of us just want to write stories after all, not hurt feelings. So don’t vague about it using your character as a mouthpiece.

Less of a vent and more of an announcement, but any canon blog I make won’t have anon on it. Anons and canon blogs usually lead to a bunch of shipping drama and trash talking I don’t want to deal with, so I’m not.

Fandom Drama usually means the respective RP community is going to have drama too, and I’m not looking forward to that when it happens. I know the Naruto fandom was losing it after certain pairings weren’t fulfilled when that series ended, god only knows what’s happening in the Fairy Tail fandom, but I know the quality of that manga is debated everyday, and god forbid you tried to have a discuss about the political arrange of Gensokyo in the Touhou community without someone losing it... again, this was a few years ago, so maybe things are better, but... I’m still keeping this in mind.

My feelings on canon-divergent blogs are kind of mixed, so I don’t know how I’ll be handling those yet if I see them following me. As an OC blog, it doesn’t really matter to me since my character doesn’t follow any series’s canon by nature, but when I do Canon RP stuff again this might be an issues since I tend to have single-verse, single ship muses.

As much as I want to go back to playing Sanae, The opinions of the Touhou RP community are just... low... Again, that RP community really jaded my views of canon RP to the point of wanting a three-year break from the whole thing, but... I’m willing to give another shot, albeit at the cost of being hyper-selective.

More of a general vent, but I will lose my gosh dang mind if I see another fighting game character RP blog with a mun that refuses to do fight RPs. What’s the goddamn point of writing for a character that’s known for punching people if you refuse to punch people and be punched in return? This might be because I come from several forum RP groups that specialize in battle storytelling (if you couldn’t tell from how I write Clauds here), but still... just... why write for them? Their personality? Their character design? Their ships? Friend, just write fanfiction and do art of them in that case. I just... I mean... I just don’t get it... I just don’t..

Another thing I’m gonna’ lose my mind over: villains and villainous characters. Guys, villains do bad things. Those bad things create conflict in the plot, which makes protagonists/heroes grow into better characters and make the premise of that story interesting. That’s how you write a goddamn story and how you make interesting characters. Most people don’t write villains to have them cuddle kittens and sip tea with their first love, they write villains to push other characters and create plot. Using my OCs as an example, Claudia is a fight-happy, morally neutral character that can be villainous or heroic depending on who she’s killing/fighting and why. Amber is a goddamn street gangster that has robbed and beaten at least three defenseless characters for the sake of pushing them mentally and physically. Villains have a purpose and it’s not to look cute. Understand this or don’t RP with villainous character.

Speaking of villains, most villains will fail and lose despite their power or standing because that’s the point. They’re villains, and villains/antagonists are meant to be toppled 90% of the time to show how even great odds can be overcome and teach readers to never give up, believe in the power of friendship, all that fun stuff. Especially anime/video game villains. Half the interest of the villain is seeing how they’re knocked off their high horse. A villain without a hero may be successful, but they’re also kind of boring without an obstacle in their way to show off their villainy. Understand this or don’t write for villainous characters.

Wow, these vents have gotten real general... anyway, moving on. Character’s flaws. Your character has them, and you need to freaking deal with that. Your character isn’t perfect, they’ve got flaws, they’ve got bad alignments and twisted morals at times. They’ve got issues that people in your fandom can, have, and will write paragraphs about, calling them shit characters and saying they should be removed from the show/game. Those aren’t attacks on you personally, but they are points about the show and game and how they’re written. If you can’t handle that, then I wouldn’t suggest writing for that character. I mean, if the Sword Art Online RP community can deal with that, then... what are you scared of?

Last vent, and it’s more general complaint really, but please know that RPing requires communication. I’ve been seeing blogs that have been saying they prefer to have minimal communication because of... several reasons I don’t feel like debating, but a lack of communication between partners is just shooting yourself in the foot for when communication needs to happen. It’ll make your partners just silently drift away and you really only have yourself to blame for that.

And... that’s really it in terms of my venting and complaints about... well, RPing on tumblr in general I suppose, given how I’m ending this. I’ve got a few dummy accounts still online and activated, so I’ll just re-purpose them for a Sanae, Tsubaki, and Orie blog once I get some research done. I’ll promo those whenever I get to them. Anyway, that’s all for me, I’ll be getting to my drafts soon enough, and like I said before I’m willing to take any criticisms of the rant I just gave so... come at me I guess? Anyway, see you all next Rambling. Hopefully it’ll be something a bit more pleasant.

#.ooc #.ramblings

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