#i /am/ being facetious but also accurate

[postgraduate]

in my dream world diane is brought back into the frasier reboot to support (hopefully still) goth freddie crane. i am not even being facetious.

diane, once upon a time, thought she was counter-culture (i emphasize thought) -- this is, in my interpretation, why she attended bennington which was perceived as a ‘hippie school’ in the early 70′s.

so, if she met a goth freddie crane he wouldn’t be made fun of like frasier made fun of him. she’d be like: oh, this is cool. i get it. i like gothic literature myself - this style derives from, etc. etc. and who knows how he’d take to that but i just know that when freddie called the talking dog/eddie commercial on tv “goth” diane would be like: you know, what? that’s right. and cite faust’s goth influences + specifically when mephistopheles took the form of a dog to convince faust to sell his soul for knowledge.

frasier said freddie wasn’t right to call talking dogs goth? literally so culturally incorrect, mr. ivy league. don’t let your jealousy for a canine rage away the fact that you DO know literature and can teach more gothic lore to your son

[bedlamsbard]

ooo tea on your no-go tropes if ur comfortable sharing

oh sure they're nothing so weird or specific that it's going to call out one specific fic writer, since it's all stuff that I've seen multiple people write and/or talk and/or speculate about. (and some are holdovers from the comics; comics are hardly immune from me not liking things in them.)

Steve getting de-serumed. This one is a huge absolute no for me, and I'm not sure what about it makes me so uncomfortable, but it just does. It makes me so uncomfortable that I don't want to poke at it to figure out why. I know there was a lot of speculation about this circa CACW, around when the title was released but before there were any details of the movie known (when it was assumed it would be closer to the comics counterpart), and then it came again around IW and Endgame both, something about the idea of like..."both the audience and the in-universe characters need to know that Steve isn't Captain America just because he has the serum!" something about the "he needs to be physically depowered in order to Prove Himself" just rubs me absolutely the wrong way. (I think this is another factor in why the Captain Carter What If timeline bothers me so much, but like. there are multiple factors there. I think I talked once about how I have set points in canon and Steve getting the serum is one of them.) (there is one fic I like where the Avengers got deaged and Steve got shrunk back to pre-serum size, but not de-serumed, that one's fine.)

post-Ragnarok (usually IW/Endgame AUs) fics that have Loki on the Raft -- no-go, makes me super uncomfortable, don't want to read it -- I've read enough of it to know that I don't want to read more and it's just not my thing. fine if people like it, just not for me; not something I want to read, not something I'm ever going to write.

anything that characterizes Loki's adoption as baby-stealing (again, What If is not immune) -- I go on fairly regular rants about this, but I (somewhat unusually) have the background of someone who's done a not-insignificant amount of academic work on infant abandonment in the pre-modern world, so it's something I know a lot about on a legal/cultural level. I sometimes say only semi-facetiously that I got into this fandom because as someone who actually knows about this stuff I have a moral responsibility to write about it in a historically-accurate-inspired manner, except as we all know I have not actually posted the chapter that deals really extensively with it. But it makes me really frustrated that people don't seem to realize this was a historical reality and something that had a lot of laws associated with it, instead of being a freak occurrence that is Obviously Bad.

there are a lot of common tropes about Asgard that just make me insane. a brief survey: feudalism, primogeniture, sexism/misogyny -- like, the standard-issue high fantasy stuff that just gets transferred over without any critical thought. which, if that's what you want to write, fine, I hate it, but that's my problem, not yours, no one's forcing me to read it. people putting racism in Valhalla, hate that one, so much.

anything that uses comics!Natasha's backstory for MCU!Natasha. I realize that ten years ago this seemed a lot more reasonable (Natasha having a version of the super soldier serum, being extremely long-lived, etc.), but really from TWS onwards it should have been obvious that that was not the backstory that the MCU was using, and if you are still using that as a writer in 2022 I am judging you. like, I try not to judge people too much in terms of like. ignoring canon, but I literally can't read anything that still uses 2012 base assumptions. (this is hypocritical for me on several levels, though it's also one of the reasons I had to get out of Star Wars, but hey, brains aren't rational. it's one of the casualties of me coming back into the fandom late. it probably would not be a problem for me if I'd stuck around. I'd probably have the same problem I have in Star Wars.)

on a related note, one of my MCU NOTPs is BuckyNat and part of that is because so much of it depends on transferring comics!Natasha's backstory over to MCU!Natasha. they have only interacted twice in canon and both times they were trying to kill each other. every other time they have been in the same scene one or the other of them was interacting with Steve, not each other. like, the heart wants what it wants, shipping is shipping, but treating it as canon-established (which many, many people do in and out of fic fandom, I'm in non-fic fandom circles and people talk about it there as if it's something onscreen) is absurd to me and I'm just ????? to the extent that now I hate it. but no one is forcing me to read it, the heart wants the heart wants, I obviously ship something else so I'm not objective there -- it's just another no-go for me.

comics transference in general. this is going to sound weird, because obviously the MCU is an adaptation of the comic books, but at fourteen years in it should be obvious that you cannot uncritically transfer things over wholesale, especially when it comes to established characters, especially if it outright contradicts canon. I can't read comics!Clint characterization in MCU fic. that ship sailed in 2015 -- honestly, it sailed in 2012, but whatever; we have established that people saw a different movie in 2012 than the one that's on the screen. by the way, the actual MCU is not immune to this; it is at its absolute weakest when it just transfers things over from the comics and expects them to work. they don't. because the MCU ain't the comics. (the worst offender is the Loki ep "Journey Into Mystery" but it is not alone.)

just various characterization tendencies that I see in fandom -- characterization is actually the number one reason I don't usually read fic in my writing fandoms, because we all see characters differently and it's one of the very few things that will make me start doubting my own writing. or just making me angry. (I actually have a very short temper, I hate so many things, I just don't talk about them on main.) I know my characterization does not fly for a lot of people (though unlike in Star Wars, MCU readers don't tell me about it, but I know it has to be true because I've been in fandom for two decades), so again, it is what it is. I know how to click a back button.

there are so many ships I either outright hate or just dislike, but I tend to OTP pretty hardcore once I get there and no one is forcing me to read them. it just gets frustrating sometimes when the ships I dislike are the most common ships for the characters I also write and/or ship with other people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but then I also can't really read fic for my own ships because uuuuuuuhhhhhhh the characterization is Wrong. not wrong, just Wrong for me personally. which is why I by and large don't read in my writing fandoms.

Steve Rogers is all hard edges. stop softening him. what the fuck.

[thankthehevans]

The area of focus I’ve decided to blog about is the use of “big data” in the advertising industry. I chose to link this article from Forbes because it gives a great overview of the general uses of big data in the field of advertising. The article references the rapid expansion of data analytics in recent years, which hearkens back to this week’s reading in “The Second Machine Age”. Much like the computer chip, the science behind data analytics has shown immense progress at an ever-increasing rate.

Also in reference to this week’s reading, improvements in big data science present a new reality that was once imagined only in science fiction works. The article mentions users’ increasing concerns related to privacy. As the use of big data becomes more and more present in our everyday lives, it can often feel like we as consumers are under constant surveillance. This is reminiscent of George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, in which citizens are constantly monitored by “telescreens” controlled by the government.

Personally, I have read many social media posts and articles written by panic-driven citizens who claim that the expanding use of big data will lead to the collapse of our democracy and to the establishment of the “New World Order”. Once the technology obtains the capability to track our every movement and thought, the lizard-human hybrid species will take over and force us all into labor camps constructed out of Walmart superstores. While I am obviously being facetious here, I do think that people severely overestimate the want / need of businesses and governments to personally track them.

[meyerlansky]

since I watched u play thru marble nest and you had all those withheld Thoughts and Opinions can I ask ur thoughts on one aspect of the story: the way everyone in town seems to disagree on what kind of person dankovsky is, what he wants to do, etc.? it feels to me like it's meaningful on a story and meta level that he's so built up by others to be whatever they want to see?

admittedly most of those went unsaid because i’m inarticulate as shit when i can’t write my thoughts out and i lost my train of thought talking to npcs, and also all of them basically just end in "godDAMN i love him"

BUT YES oh man i definitely agree, daniil is on the receiving end of a TON of projection and assumptions, and i think the thing is, he sort of... cultivates it? like artemy gets people's assumptions projected on him too, but he's MUCH more vocal about correcting it when someone's expectations of him don't match up with how he sees himself. daniil, on the other hand, tends to wear people's perceptions of him like a second skin, and doesn't push back nearly as hard or as often when those perceptions don't sync up. i will be nice to my dash and put my rambly bullshit under a cut, but tl;dr i think daniil finds value in finding out how people see him and utilizing that perception to get what he really wants, and he's willing to play the villain in particular because a. negative perception is as useful as positive perception if you're clever enough to use it to your advantage, and b. based on some stuff in artemy's route but especially based on the particular circumstances of marble nest, he thinks that, to some degree, he deserves to be thought badly of.

so i realized halfway through writing this you probably meant marble nest's story specifically, but i think it's relevant to his characterization in artemy's route too, because... marble nest daniil is not that different from artemy route daniil, as far as i'm concerned—he's just more desperate and more beaten down. as for the actual question, overall i get the vibe that daniil's used to leveraging how he's perceived to get what he needs out of a situation, and he's waaay more comfortable playing the villain than, say, artemy is, if that's what people are putting on him from jump. it's less work, right? correcting people's assumptions is a waste of valuable time and energy, and people are hard to convince once they've set their mind to something. why bother when you can just play along and, if you're clever enough about it, get what you need out of the interaction anyway? he gets built up into so many different versions of himself by different characters because he's willing to be different things to different people without it eroding his goals or his sense of self. he has a flair for the dramatic, obviously, but i don't know how much of it is innate and how much of it is cultivated in service of that kind of perception leveraging. like, prime example, the day 1 conversation with artemy reads as EXTREMELY performative—from his word choice to his demeanor to the exclamation points in the dialogue to the fucking LIGHTING, he comes off like he's playing a role, and not a new one. and when the conversation's over, he's learned some things about what kind of person artemy is, what kinds of things get a rise out of him, all without really revealing too much of his own hand. but the front sloughs off the closer he gets to artemy, and it sloughs off QUICK, to the point that A DAY AND A HALF LATER he's gone from saying "you owe me" in the most facetious way possible to "i need your help" and "if this goes badly, i'll take the consequences" completely unselfconsciously, and subsequent conversations with artemy are complete turnarounds from how he approaches artemy and their relationship on day 1. on the whole, i think he cares way less about his reputation than he does about Getting Shit Done, and he's surprisingly willing to be the scapegoat for other people's fears and other negative emotions, as long as the end result doesn't hamper his goals. which makes some sense considering his corpus of research involves spitting directly in the face of natural law and the people who consider themselves responsible for enforcing it. you don't do that kind of shit if you care about being well-liked. so i think 99% of the time, daniil gets read multiple ways—often incorrectly—because he finds more value in utilizing those perceptions than he finds in correcting them and Being Known. as far as characters we see in the game go, artemy's the exception, which might change once daniil's route is out, but every comment everyone else makes to artemy about daniil leans on their assumptions about him, which means he's not going around showing anyone else what he really thinks.

i also think daniil has sort of... internalized that he's Unlikable, on a personal level. he doesn't walk into a single situation in p2 expecting to be liked, or willingly helped, or for his presence to be wanted beyond the utility he can provide. he relies almost entirely on his ability to deliver solutions [with, uh, declining success as the game goes on], the respect his reputation and his status as the kains' guest confers, and on the rumor that he's willing to get violent if things don't go his way. i think he's utterly convinced his ultimate goals will benefit humanity as a whole and therefore are fundamentally good, but i don't think he thinks HE'S good. there's a couple of moments in marble nest where he can pretty explicitly shoot down people saying nice things about him, and the "i guess i had to prove them right" and "do you condemn me?" lines in the shelter convo do not read to me like the words of a man who thinks he's 100% in the right in the way he's gone about achieving his goals. so like as much as i think he does have a very solid sense of Who He Is, i don't think it's a very generous self-image, and i don't think it's entirely accurate either, because i do think he's fundamentally a good person, despite people [in the game and out of it] not really bothering to push past whatever front he's put on. artemy pushes through it, and the kids in marble nest push through it, and i think it's somewhat telling that the kids in marble nest are... the only real people IN marble nest. georgiy undermining his authority as soon as he's indisposed is part of the fever dream; the soldiers and orderlies believing he's the one giving the okay to kill kids and civilians are part of the fever dream; the clerk assuming daniil will agree with his racist bullshit is part of the fever dream. all these negative images of himself are in his head—based on previous conversations with the real people, but at the time of marble nest, in his head. they're all things he, somewhere in his mind, expects people to think of him or expect of him, and to me, that's not the kind of stuff someone as arrogant and convinced of his own awesomeness as people seem to think daniil is would think about himself. but the kids worrying about his health and taking care of him while he's infected are real, and for whatever reason they think he's worth trying to save. THAT'S the reality, THAT'S who he really is, even if he can't see it himself, and i don't think he can.

so ANYWAY i think the multiplicity of daniils in marble nest in particular is to some degree a manifestation of the fact that he IS willing to be different things to different people, that he knows this about himself, and that he has SOME level of anxiety over the thought of the various masks becoming the reality, and him losing control over who he ACTUALLY is, not just how he's perceived. i think this bothers him in artemy's route as well—the last thing he says to artemy translates to "the greatest power is to have power over oneself" and i do not think he's talking about himself. i think he's talking about artemy, and the fact that, ESPECIALLY from daniil's perspective in artemy's route, artemy very much controls not only his own narrative, but at the very least strongly influences daniil's and everyone else's too. [there are also layers and layers with that line and the doll narrative but i am too tired to get into it right now and also the doll narrative fucks my feelings up in so many ways.] i have no idea if any of this makes any sense, but here it is /gestures weakly at All This

[future-dregs]

Hey-O! So I was tagged (geeze, last week, I think. I'm so sorry), by Embers over at @colorfuldreamerdaze to do a -

November Ice Breaker

So here we go.

1 - What was the last thing you were really excited about? - Uhhhhhh. Honestly? Dabi... And Christmas shopping for my kids. I haven't gotten worked up in awhile actually.

2 - What do you wish someone taught you long ago? - That I am indeed a little weird, and it's not wrong or something to hide and be ashamed of. I blame my father for this. I made him nervous, and so he tried to quash my interests and be "normal". But being a bit odd is okay, healthy even sometimes, and I wish I'd known that when I was a kid, rather than in my twenties. Also math. I'm not being facetious, I really wish I knew how to do math.

3 - What are some of your guilty pleasures? - I try not to engage in things that leave me feeling guilty, cause I am prone to it, but there is one thing. Amachin wa Jishou. It's a gender bender manga that makes boner jokes constantly and I know I probably shouldn't like it...but I do...and I do feel guilty about that. Sometimes.

4 - What topic could you give a twenty minute presentation on without any preparation? - Norse Mythology! I never could get into the Greeks or Romans, and while I loved the Egyptian myths, I've forgotten most of them by now, but I love the Norse myths so much and have sometimes rattled on and on about them to my poor mother. I think that they're fascinating and I love reading and rereading about them. Helen A Gruber wrote my favorite translations of them.

5 - What scene in a movie or tv show gives you goosebumps every time you watch it? - When the Rohirram come over the hilltop to aid Gondor in The Return of the King. When that horn blows (one of the few good horns in whole deal, massive disappoint to me btw) and they come teeming over the hill and into they fray filled with battle-lust and the determination to fight or die? That is one of my favorite moments in cinema. Ever.

6 - What were some of your favorite holiday traditions growing up? - My father's side of the family is Dutch, and one of the Dutch New Year's traditions is to make Ollie Bollen and have hot cocoa. Ollie Bollen is a fried yeast donut, with dried fruit. (Traditionally it's raisins or apples but we like cranberries and cherries) rolled in either powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar (we prefer cinnamon). We have done this every year I can remember, and we still do it and look forward to it as the year draws to a close.

7 - What book had the most significant impact on you? - This is a really difficult question for me, and I don't think I can accurately answer it, but I'm going to choose The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I have so many sentances and passages highlighted and underlined that have helped me to understand myself, and brought me...comfort (?) I guess? Idk. I can't really nail down an answer that feels accurate to me, sorry.

8 - What weird thing do you have nostalgia for? - Okay so my family has moved a lot. Like a lot. And I've always loved that. I liked packing things up and the driving and then putting things into a new empty house. But the nostalgia comes in with the gas stations. There's something...different about going into a gas station at 2:30 a.m when you don't even know what town (or sometimes, state) you're in. And I miss that. I miss that indefinable feeling.

9 - What's a problem you have, that might be entirely unique to you? - When I like something, when I'm into a particular fandom, I can't remember what I used to like. So I have to keep lists of my past interests or else I completely forget about them in the face of my New Cool Thing. No one else in my family seems to have this problem.

10 - What are two of your favorite snacks? - Uhm. Cooked sushi, and cookies. Crunchy cookies, I don't like soft ones.

Alright, there we go, my answers. I hope they were good and that you enjoy reading them and I was elaborate enough. Thank you for the tag, this was fun :)

I'll tag (with no obligation attached) @nitghowl1600 @liveandletrain @nb-zashi @sketchartist444 @deadly-safety-scissors @a-sleepy-gnocchi @candymuse if you'd like it. Have fun guys, and be well!

[caoscompanion]

Witch Laws: The Path of Night or the Path of Light but not Both. It is ‘Sacred Witch Law’ for a witch/warlock not to marry a mortal.

Dark Baptism: The powers of a witch fade if they do not have their Dark Baptism. Initiates must be virginal at their baptism. Sabrina’s Dark Baptism is taking place on her 16th birthday which is also an eclipsing blood moon, which only happens ever 66 years. A Dark Baptism is the ritual/ceremony is leaving girlhood/boyhood behind and requires the initiate to renounce any and all meaningful connections to mortals. Before a witch can be baptised, the temple of their body needs to be purified, cleansed of its toxins. Witches choose a baptismal name at their baptism much like Catholics do

Hilda’s Cleansing Potion: Milk, eggs, rosemary, acrimony, a capful of vanilla, a pinch of John the Conqueror Root, other herbs from Hilda’s garden. Cinnamon is added to the second batch

Displays of Power:

Sabrina turns on the music with a point of her finger.

Lilith uses telekinesis to throw scissors through the air.

Weird Sisters arrive by teleportation/witch flight.

Spells:

Body changing spell. Lilith draws sigils in Mary’s blood, while chanting ‘Dominos parta respica ad mea creo faciem’ which roughly translated, means, ‘dominate this look to create a face of my own’. Lilith then looks entirely like Mary from head to foot (though as she is still in the same grey night gown, it confirms she has not possessed the body of the woman, but created her own version of the body). 

Familiar summoning spell. Sabrina rings a bell, then says ‘spirits of the forest I pronounce my intentions to thee. Come forth and seek me and equal we’ll be’. She rings the bell a second time. “Not master and servant but familiar to familiar. To share our knowledge, our spirit and our traits” She rngs the bell a third time. Meanwhile, through the spell, she draws a circle in the earth with a line running through it. 

Weird Sisters Blood Curse. Though the spell is hard to hear over Sabrina talking,what can be heard appears to be ‘Vos omnis minis niota et destruciones et servis e discor et queme tempera facetis et tractarus corde nocimus mer ad mes, Sabrina’. Which, roughly translated, means ‘With all shaking threats, the hour of destruction at whom he and his servants meet, bringing harm to the heart of Sabrina. My Latin is not the best, so this is a very rough guess translation. 

Hex Removal Spell: While showering under running water, Sabrina chants in repeat ‘if truly I am cursed today, let water wash the hex away’

Sabrina’s Forgetting Spell: She chants ‘bless your mind, bless your heart, let these painful thoughts depart’ and then kisses him to seal the spell. 

Blood Curse Removal: Saltwater baths and reversing candles for a couple of weeks. 

Hawthorne Scare Spell: Requires a graven image. This image is then placed in a box of spiders (the thing he fears), while Ambrose and Sabrina chant ‘Spider o spider pray why do you spin your pretty white web so fine and thing? To catch flies and make them into pies. Spider o spider, pray do you not see? Here comes a big, buzzing, blundering bee. He’ll spoil your fine net while you fume and you fret, but no mercy you’ll grant and no mercy you’ll get’

Scarecrow Monster: Lilith creates a puppet from scratch, attached to strings, which exists as a scarecrow in reality. She controls its movements with the puppet strings and uses it to attack and chase Sabrina with the intent of keeping her away from the apple tree. When it is attacked by Salem, the puppet is also destroyed. 

Minor Direction Spell:  Cast like a children’s rhyme. Sabrina chants ‘Hickory pickory hickory pickory where shall this girl go? She’ll go east she’ll go west she’ll go to the crow’s nest. Hickory pickory hickory pickory’

Grimoire:

Egg Breaking: Hilda has Sabrina break an egg to see if she is truly cursed. When the egg cracks and reveals a blood fetus, it confirms Sabrina is under a blood curse. 

Blood curse: A curse which slowly eats away at your healthy will and your sanity. 

Malum Malis: An apple. If a man bites it, it’s the apple of evil, but for a woman it’s the fruit of knowledge. It whispers secrets, grants knowledge, offers glimpses of the future. You must go to an orchard, find the oldest tree, the older the tree the more it has seen, the more it knows, the more accurate its reading will be. 

Curse Shoes: There are at least twenty single shoes on shelves lining a wall in the Spellman house. These represent each person Zelda has cursed.

Visions: 

Bath in the woods: While in the bath, Sabrina has a vision which takes her to the woods where she was born. There she sees Diana and Edward in the grove in the forest, Diana is holding a crying baby we presume to be Sabrina. The parents walk off towards the altar, where they place the baby alongside another. When Sabrina lifts back the blankets off the babies’ feet, one has human feet, the other has cloven.

Malum Malis: Sabrina asks the apple if she should be baptised and when she bites it the apple, the fruit turns entirely to maggots. The vision it shows her is in red and shows ash in the air, burning, and thirteen witches hanging from the tree. The tree trunk then begins to break open and out steps the Dark Lord in his full goat-like form. While Sabrina watches in horror, there is a light behind her that looks like the fires of Hell she summons as Sabrina Morningstar in the Part 3 finale.

Mythology: 

Witch Hunters are mentioned as a legitimate and current threat, and witches without covens are considered ‘easy pickings’. 

Zelda laments not having had ‘long pig’ for dinner in ages, confirming the coven indulges in cannibalism. 

Their coven is called the Church of Night. 

The Book of the Beast is the name of the Dark Lord’s Book

‘Dark Lord’ is the church’s name for Lucifer. 

Witches have a Witches’ Mark, a spot on their body that does not bleed. 

There is a council of witches, simply called the Witches’ Council or The Council for short. Among being a clear source of government within the covens, they also have a registry of familiars. The Familiar Registry is a catalogue for choosing one of the familiars that have been purposefully bred for service to witchkind. 

Familiars are goblins who have taken on the shape of animals in order to better serve their witch masters.

[faejilly]

fourthage replied to your post “so, I write a fair amount of smut. porn? Rated E Fic? People fuck, is...”

Because you are writing porn about fictional people and it’s not real. Commenters who cross the TMI line are bringing you into their personal sex life without giving you an option to opt out. That doesn’t stop being inappropriate because it’s happening on a computer screen instead on face to face.

Oh, definitely. I was mostly being facetious in my original comment, but yes, that is very true. BUT. To be more serious: I think the problem is, in a world where sexual-styled language is used to describe things that aren’t sex all the time, and where some people find some things more vulgar than other people, and when commenting on one’s personal reaction to fic is considered a good thing, I can see where the line gets blurry.

Like, “wow, good smut” to “hot” to “hnng” to “I’ll be in my bunk” is an easy to follow progression, and all innocuous (especially since that bunk-line is explicitly a Jayne quote when in context everyone knew he was being inappropriate but it works well as fandom short hand? If you’ve observed any Whedon/Firefly fandom, anyways) but then it is a really small side-ways step to more physical comments that still aren’t explicit for all they’re obvious iykwim? *shrugs* 

idk. I’ve gotten a few comments that I think were more than I needed to know, but very few that I could unequivocally say were pushing the lines of appropriate in a generally accepted sense such that maybe I should say something about boundaries.  

ellexa1622 replied to your link “i am for you (ch 14) | Archive of Our Own”

I Love that fic so much, I know we're going o be hurt...I'm already ready fr the fact that Alec's hurting will hurt me (and Magnus). Thank you for your work

awww, the hurting’s almost all past tense, it shouldn’t be too bad. Then again, I usually think it all ends well, this isn’t so bad! and then people yell “ow” at me, so perhaps I’m a terrible judge of such things?

thedivinemissema replied to your link “a blight unbearable | Archive of Our Own”

I still very much love this story!

I’M SO GLAD. I’m still sorry it took so long. 💖💖💖

twistedsinews replied to your post “power went out. inexplicably. (*magnus.gif: TWICE!*) So I lost the...”

re: followers. We are a hedge, please move along.

ilu 🐱‍👤🌿

syzara replied to your post “power went out. inexplicably. (*magnus.gif: TWICE!*) So I lost the...”

agreeing with office & bedroom not being a good combination.

yeah, we’ve been trying to figure out a way to rearrange for awhile, cuz the husband’s office set-up isn’t really working either, but we have to keep him sort of separate since he teleworks periodically? *shrugs* We’ll figure it out eventually.

lynne-monstr replied to your post “power went out. inexplicably. (*magnus.gif: TWICE!*) So I lost the...”

ughhh thata sucks about the power. good luck hunting down the chocolate and please save some for me!

sorry, ate all the chocolate. there’s some bailey’s left, if you wanna join me for alcohol at some point tho? 💗

annakie replied to your post “lynne-monstr reblogged your post “Leverage for the fandom thing!” ...”

IT SHOULDN'T BUT YET IT DOES. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH AND IT'S SO SAD EVEN WHEN IT'S FAKE. (Also I shoulda finished reading before responding lol.)

nah, it was an accurate response, no apology needed. BECAUSE THEY REALLY DO AND IT REALLY REALLY IS 

[saltyfilmmajor]

FUCK YOU @ineverhadadoubt, I’M NOT INTO SUBMISSIVE MEN IT’S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT

A slightly humorous critical response to @ineverhadadoubt on my irrational attraction to Daniel Kaffee 

A bit of context before the main argument. I’m known on the Benthan Discord Server as the Resident Kinkster, not because I’m kinky per se, but because I don't shut up about them. As well as my very peculiar thirst objects: Rolled Up Forearm Sleeves, Voice Kink, Rope. Jk lmao. (or am I, you don’t have proof). And Well, look. I really like Danny Kaffee and this post by @academicgangster slightly inspired me to write this. Also because I have a lot of thoughts and I need to get this out and defend myself from Libel™ and False Narratives™ from @ineverhadadoubt and @misstangle about kinks I don’t have. 

So, having watched A Few Good Men three and a half times over the course of three days has led to various conversations and speculations on the film. Mainly centering on the character of one, Daniel Allister Kaffee. In this essay, I will be responding the frankly egregious accusations the Mainstream Media™(e.g. Ruth) that the author is into subish men when the reality is a far more nuanced and complex situation having to do with the themes present in the film and the characterization of Daniel Kaffee in particular.

Firstly, the film deals in the philosophical discourse of “good” men, loyalty, honor. In essence, it’s a dive into what happens when men follow their own code. Jessup, the motherfucker, believes himself to be above the law and in the most famous scene in the film he demonstrates the ideology clearly through his anger at the question Danny presents to him, “Did you order the code red?!”. He takes offense at it, stating that he “defends a country” much like how at the time of writing Trump takes offense that he is an agent for Russia, but that’s another can of worms.

While on the outset the film is set up as a classic courtroom drama, with a plucky attorney and obviously evil character, that is forced a little more into the background and follows more on the character of Daniel Kaffee and how he overcomes his insecurity in order to do the morally right thing and in essence come to understand what honor and code really mean.

So, with this in mind, we can begin to unpack Daniel Kaffe’s character arc. He begins as the Smartest Smartass to ever Smartass in the history of Smartassery, litigating a plea bargain over softball practice, getting the deal he wants. This is his establishing moment. Thus, in the mind of the audience, he is in control and gets what he wants, despite being facetious during the entire process. He is cocky, young and doesn’t care but he’s good at his job. At the prospect of being handed the case by division, he still does not take any of the case seriously, at least at the surface level. He appears to be obfuscating stupidity or rather obfuscating disinterest. But at the minute at being yelled at by Joanne, he begins to take a more proactive approach to the case.

You see Daniel Kaffe’s whole character is one who desires control and yet despite outward appearances is always under the thumb of other characters. Division? They hand him the case. Joanne? Makes him take it to trial. Sam? Makes him wear the whites to Cuba. Jessup? Makes him “ask nicely” for the transfer file. Jack? Also goads him into taking it to trial and points it out to him later on in the narrative. He is pulled and pushed into moving in one direction or another but is dependent on those around him to make the choices he makes. This comes as a result of the insecurity that Kaffee has from living in the shadow of his father’s legacy. Joanne in their second meeting calls out Daniel’s current behavior as a “brilliant, but lazy” lawyer, and by bringing up the legacy of his father causes him to push himself to confront his insecurities and meet with his clients.

So being that he’s insecure, he lets everyone control him to varying degrees, with Jessup being the most prominent example. The whole point of Jessup telling him to “ask nicely” in the narrative is to show he knows he’s under suspicion but there is nothing Kaffee can do to him. So Kaffee must submit to established authority in order to do his job. The turning point in this conflict is when Sam tells Kaffee that is Kaffee who is lead counsel, not himself or his father. With this Kaffee is starting to be free from the shadow of his father’s legacy. This is finalized on his final cross-examination of Jessup, where he breaks from everyone’s control going against Jo’s advice and as he looks to Sam disagreeing, he decides to go for it. He rolls the dice, and for the first time makes a decision of his own volition ending with justice being served. This ties into the idea of Free Will™, and is a military man truly free? Is any man ever free to do what is right?

With this interpretation of the film being established, we can begin to unpack the misrepresentation of the author’s attraction to Daniel Kaffee.

For Fuck's Sake. Ruth. Ruth honey. DID, Did you think about this sentence before you typed it out? THIS JUST MAKES IT SEEM THAT IM HAVING FANTASIES OF BEING A SUB, which unless you have direct evidence of, do not accuse me of this kink. This is Libel™.

Ok, look. The reason I keep saying The Sub™ Scene is because he submits to authority. And the authority is not attractive or likable at all, so I’m not including Jessup in this interest. It’s a personality thing. Kaffee, the Smartest Smartass to ever Smartass, being forced into politeness and courtesy to prove a point is just. Hot. Because his establishing moment is getting what he wants being flippant, coasting by and doing just fine, makes the audience understand that this is his everyday normal base behavior. He’s used to doing whatever the fuck he wants when he wants (within reason anyway) and he’s used to litigation going his way. He has an inherent issue with authority, established when he meets Jo for the first time, his superior. When she calls him out the second time they meet does he start taking his job a little more seriously. Jack also very accurately observes and breaks down his personality in the movie twice. See he goads him into going trial, as well. And when he discusses putting Jessup on the stand, he perfectly states that Kaffee was “bullied into that courtroom.”  Kaffee unable to accept it starts shouting at him.

Kaffee is a very Covert Sub™, it is subtle because his forefront personality is always in control and commanding attention. AND TO ME THE AUTHOR, THE FACT THAT HE GETS PUT IN HIS PLACED AND HE HAS TO TAKE IT IS JUST VERY INTRIGUING. His Harvard trained mouth can’t help him because he is ultimately trying to do his job, and he can’t damn all the consequences. Smartasses being put in their place is the hottest thing don’t @ me. But in the Final Cross-examination, when his Harvard trained mouth can finally be taken seriously by authority, he goes all for it making a point that all the frustration and forced submission he’s gone through will have been very much worth it because he’s going to absolutely obliterate Jessup on the stand. So, he speaks low and carefully, much like how Jessup does early on in the film. And when he has Jessup where he wants him, he starts shouting. And the last thing he says to Jessup face to face is “The witness is excused.” Making it clear that Jessup may be a colonel, and he may think he’s above the law, but this is Kaffee’s domain and he’s the authority Jessup must answer to.

In short, my attraction to Daniel Kaffee cannot be attributed solely on to his submissive moments, rather how his character is set up as a man who is used to getting what he wants his way, who has to submit to the authority he has a problem with to in the end get what he wants. Also his eyebrows, eyes and Class A™ Navy Uniform is very nice. AND HE SWEARS. Also when he has to submit to authority, he gets quiet™ and I love it when Tom’s voice gets quiet™

( @sweetbouquetartisane  i proofread it lmao.)

[mcarfield]

5 times Andrew and James were totally platonic boyfriends (and the first time they weren’t)

(#1) (#2) (#3)

4.

A bunch of things happen once they all reconvene in New York. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that a bunch of things shift and converge once they’re in New York, things that are hard to disentangle from each other.

Among them is that Andrew hurls himself as deep into Prior as he can go; he tries to become the part even more intensely, and that means he starts trying to consciously experience queerness as authentically as he can, not from watching episodes of RuPaul or taking fashion tips and drag tips from his queer friends, but from plumbing the deepest and most hidden parts of himself in order to seek out the parts that don’t conform to normative gender and sexual and social expectations. He’d done that to some extent in London, though it had mostly manifested in painting his fingernails and re-examining his drink choices and doing lots of Pride events, but he’s thought about it a lot over the break and he wants to go deeper, thinks that he can go deeper. And he’s not sure what that means, but he’s had a few moments of experimentation during the break, exploring bodies and being explored, and it hasn’t really yielded a lot of conclusions, but it’s been nice, not scary, just nice.

And he’s been thinking, a lot, about the way it felt to kiss James out on Marianne’s patio — not just because it’s a part of all of this, but because it’s James, and because things between him and James are shifting as well.

By mutual unspoken assent, and also because Marianne keeps praising them whenever they pile it on, when they resume playing Prior and Louis they, well, pile on the physical affection. They touch more, they kiss more, they keep working in more ways to be physically affectionate onstage. And because they spend such a long time apart the moments they do spend together start to feel more urgent and charged with intimacy.

On Broadway, everything is much, much more intense, everything feels bigger, larger and realer and higher-stakes, more politically charged, just, more. That makes Andrew’s feelings for the whole cast more intense, on a level. The addition of Lee throws a whole new dynamic into the mix; he’s far more compatible with James’s Louis than Russell was, and Andrew is immediately and drastically aware that the two of them get along extremely well.

And that shouldn’t be surprising, because it takes work to fail to get along with James McArdle, but it makes Andrew hyper-aware that James’s dynamic with him isn’t like his dynamic with anyone else. He and James don’t joke much, unless they’re mocking their infinitely mockable characters; they both tend to focus on the work, and on each other on a practical level — has the other one been getting enough sleep, have they eaten today, are they emotionally holding everything together — the important things to ensure their partnership is functional. James is always playful and facetious with everyone else; with Andrew, however, he tends towards serious, sincere. They do flirt, but increasingly it’s a bit of an afterthought.

Instead, they cling to one another. It starts the first day back, when they’re all sitting in a circle listening to Marianne talk about production changes, Andrew holding hands with Nate and James, James holding hands with Andrew and Denise. Or at least, it starts out that way, but somewhere along the way it becomes Andrew leaning into James with his head on James’s shoulder and James’s arms tucked around him.

And without anyone talking about it, exactly, that becomes the default for the rest of the production — James taking his hand at odd moments, or squeezing Andrew’s arm when they’re backstage and hurrying between scene changes, Andrew seeking James out for a long embrace or dropping by his dressing room to massage his shoulders before places — the two of them reaching for each other whenever they can.

It’s not flirtatious, is the thing, it’s not coy or really even conscious. It’s just a thing they do now; they touch each other, they hold each other, they take every opportunity to just... give one another physical touches as though they can send strength back and forth to each other through their fingertips.

It’s an entirely new emotional and physical part of his life that he has no words for, can’t really articulate, and wouldn’t part with for anything, so he just lets it happen. He hopes that James understands that it’s about love and gratitude and admiration for him, and about wanting to take care of James in whatever way he can; he’s not sure what it’s about for James, because it’s so out of character for James to interact this way with anyone. But James is all softness and fond smiles these days where Andrew is concerned, and Andrew will take it, he’ll take it all.

When the production opens on Broadway and everything goes into full swing, the exhaustion, combined with the constant red-carpet and press appearances that greet them in New York, is nearly overwhelming. A day after Andrew all but passes out one night in James’s dressing room, James slips a key into his hand.

“What's this?”

“You're always struggling to get back and forth from your place to the theatre and back again on nights we have to be out til arse o’clock in the morning,” James says. “Just stop over at my apartment instead, it's right down the block, and maybe you can get in a couple more hours of sleep coming and going.”

“This is your key,” Andrew says blankly.

James rolls his eyes. “They have these things called copies.”

“Thank you,” Andrew says sincerely.

“Just get some sleep,” James says, ruffling Andrew's hair.

Andrew takes him up on it the very next night, stumbling from the theatre to James’ apartment and collapsing on James’ couch. He's woken up by James entering an hour or two later and nudging him awake, saying, “God, I didn't mean you had to sleep on the couch, come on.” He drags him into the bedroom, where his king bed takes up most of the room.

“Honestly I figured you'd sleep on a roll-out mattress on the floor,” Andrew says, ending on a giant yawn.

“I never stint on sleep,” James says, turning back the covers on the right side of the bed and pushing Andrew gently down to the bed. Andrew gingerly curls in on the far side, and James tugs the topsheet over his shoulders and goes into the bathroom. Andrew means to thank him when he comes out, but the next thing he knows, it's morning, and he's awaking slowly from the best sleep he's had in ages, gradually adjusting to the sound of the shower running and the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. He turns his head into the pillow and clings to it just as James materializes long enough to say, “Hey, yeah, go back to sleep.”

Andrew mumbles something incoherent into James's pillow that he hopes translates to “I'm never leaving this bed, I plan to sleep forever.” Somewhere above him James huffs out a laugh and then disappears. The next time Andrew awakes, it's to an alarm clock James has set next to the bed. He's left him ninety minutes before call time, plenty of time to get showered and dressed and raid James's fridge before strolling into the Neil Simon early for once. James is already there, which is unheard of for him, and he beams at Andrew’s fresh face and bright eyes, smug as anything.

“You look well-rested,” he says. “Practically perky.”

“And you look entirely too self-satisfied for someone who slept with me and didn’t make me come once.”

“You look like it was the best sleep you’ve ever had,” James grins. “I’ll take that over a shag any day.”

Andrew laughs. “A lesser man might challenge your priorities,” he says, looping his arms around James’s neck. “But I’m too grateful to care.”

“Good,” James says, resting his hands lightly on Andrew’s waist before giving in and pulling him into a firmer embrace. “I’m being selfish, too. I can’t get through this mess if my partner’s half-dead from exhaustion.”

“Yes, that’s you,” Andrew says, snuggling against his shoulder. “Entirely selfish. No care for anyone else at all.”

A few days into this new arrangement, Andrew caves and goes shopping and stocks James’s fridge with real food. The next morning, James slips from bed and goes through his morning routine while Andrew is still clinging to sleep, which is the new normal — except then he goes to open the fridge and lets out a yelp.

Andrew cracks one eye open blearily and peers into the kitchen, where James is staring inside the refrigerator blankly.

“Someone broke in and filled the icebox with food,” James says.

“A burglar who wants you to eat proper nutrients,” Andrew mumbles.

“But I had protein shakes,” James says.

“Protein shakes can’t be all you're eating,” Andrew calls. “Your fridge was nothing but protein shakes and days-old takeout, it was begging for a makeover.” He can hear James rustling around.

“These are eggs.” James still sounds baffled. “And strawberries. And cantaloupe? Some sort of melon. What am I supposed to do with eggs and cantaloupe?”

“Make us breakfast,” Andrew yawns, and the next time he opens his eyes, James is sliding a breakfast tray gingerly across the expansive king bed.

“You didn’t have to make me breakfast in bed,” Andrew says, unable to keep the grin off his face. James shrugs and joins him, curling up against the headboard, legs crossed. He takes one of the glasses of orange juice from the tray and offers Andrew a pristine red strawberry as Andrew sits up and takes stock.

“We are very Bert and Ernie right now,” Andrew says, taking the strawberry from James’s fingers.

“Meaning we don’t exist below the waist?” James smirks.

“Meaning we — ooh, you made toast, I love toast.”

“God, you’re easy to impress.”

“You say that like I get people making me toast all the time,” Andrew says, and James turns pink and stuffs his mouth with a toast slice instead of answering, and after they finish breakfast Andrew volunteers to clean up and wash dishes while James showers, and then it’s Andrew’s turn. And James is usually eager to get out of his apartment before going to the theatre, but today he settles on the couch and watches Cartoon Network while eating strawberries out of the carton, which means he ends up waiting for Andrew, and they walk over to the Neil Simon together, and it’s nice.

The next night Andrew returns to his own apartment, partly because he doesn’t want to crowd James and partly because he wants to get a few changes of clothes so he’ll have them the next time he’s at James’s place, and he intends to stay there, really, but he can’t seem to shut his eyes once he hits the pillow. After nearly an hour of tossing and turning and missing James’s shallow breathing from the opposite side of the bed, he gives in and texts him: You awake?

James replies within a few seconds: Just come over, you silly twit.

So Andrew does, and by the time he gets across town, makes it inside, toes off his shoes, and wriggles into his pajamas, he’s completely exhausted. James is half-asleep and slanted sideways across the bed, but he doesn’t move when Andrew eventually flops down next to him; instead he just stirs and drapes one corner of the bedsheet over Andrew and goes right back to sleep. Andrew is asleep within minutes.

When he awakes the next morning, it’s to the steady rising and falling of James’s breathing beneath him. Somewhere in the night, he’s drifted towards James, and wound up tucked against his chest, using him like a pillow, one arm slung across James’s stomach. James has shifted fully onto his back and he has one arm draped loosely around Andrew’s shoulders. His t-shirt’s ridden halfway up his stomach, and Andrew’s fingers are splayed there, just below his belly button.

It’s really nice, Andrew thinks, half-hazy still from sleep and addicted to the delicious warmth emanating from James’s body. They’ve held each other like this hundreds of times onstage, and this is no different, but it’s nice. He’s still processing it all, barely coherent, when James stirs beneath him. He can sense from the sudden halt in James’s breathing the moment he fully wakes up and registers Andrew’s head on his chest — followed by the moment immediately afterwards when he relaxes and slips his fingers gently through Andrew’s hair.

“You awake?” James murmurs.

Andrew hums noncommittally and turns his head into James’s chest. “Sorry,” he says, not sorry. “I’ll move.”

“No, stay,” James says, but he stretches as he says it, body arching up involuntarily into Andrew’s arms. Andrew leans up and presses a light kiss against James’s shoulder before moving away. He misses James’s reaction because he burrows back into his own side of the bed, but a moment later James runs his hand over Andrew’s back, not quite a caress, before slipping away.

Sometime during the next night, it’s James who’s tucked against Andrew’s back, one arm wrapped around Andrew’s waist, his leg nudging its way between Andrew’s. Andrew wakes an instant before James, who comes to with a start and mutters a groggy, “Fuck,” before Andrew solves his crisis by rolling over on top of him and going back to sleep the way he was the day before, head ensconced firmly on top of James’s broad chest. In the morning, he comes awake slowly to the feel of James still beneath him, lightly scratching his back, coaxing Andrew to wake up enough to shift away on his own before he slowly disentangles himself, presses a kiss against the back of Andrew’s neck, and leaves Andrew in bed.

The next night is a two-day show, and they’re both so exhausted when they get home that they don’t even bother with the pretense of starting out on opposite sides of the bed: James faceplants more or less in the center of the giant mattress, and Andrew collapses right next to him. In the morning, they’re wrapped up in one another, James’s arms around Andrew and Andrew curled into him, forehead brushing his on the pillow they’ve somehow wound up sharing. And — and they’re both hard, he realizes, with something more like wonder than panic.

It’s just morning wood, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that hasn’t happened before, but now they’re touching, and he can feel James’s hard-on against him, and it’s such a new sensation that he almost takes a moment to enjoy the novelty of it before he finally, slowly, pulls away, excruciatingly careful not to wake James.

It’s just morning wood, he reminds himself as he’s showering. It doesn’t count, it’s not real.

“You woke up before me,” James greets him when he steps out of the shower. “That’s a first.”

Andrew shrugs as James shucks off his shirt and grabs a towel before heading into the bathroom himself. “I guess I’m finally making up my sleep deficit,” is all he can offer, because he’s suddenly newly aware of how almost-naked James is, how very bare his chest is and how close Andrew’s been to it all week. He’s also newly aware that James definitely exists below the waist, that they both exist below the waist, and it’s suddenly dawning on him that perhaps this sleeping arrangement they’ve developed isn’t exactly the usual kind of roommate situation. Maybe roommates are supposed to be more bothered than he is when they wake up to their roommate and bed partner sprouting an erection against their thigh. Maybe it’s strange that he isn’t more weirded out. And thinking about this is starting to make him feel weirded out that he’s not weirded out, which is weirding him out on the original level.

“Hey,” James says, voice gone wry, and Andrew realizes he’s been standing numbly in the doorway of the bathroom, blocking James’s path.

“Oh, sorry,” he says, inanely, but James just laughs softly.

“I take it back, you’re not awake yet,” he says, and he reaches up to ruffle Andrew’s hair.

And it’s because Andrew is standing there being weirded out that he reacts the way he does — he flinches away, like a complete asshole, like James is somehow making him uncomfortable, and he hates himself as soon as he does, because that’s not what’s happening, it’s not James’s fault, he just...

But James jolts and takes a step back, clearly startled for a moment, before an odd, unreadable look sweeps over his face. He rolls his eyes at Andrew and swats at his arm instead, and there’s something about it that makes Andrew’s gut twist.

“Go back to sleep, mate,” he says, stepping past Andrew into the shower.

But Andrew is suddenly wide awake.

[caroloftheshells]

tbh re that post about labels i still get label-based (?? i guess is the term) anxiety All The Time while actively being a woman who factually experiences attraction to women as well as men and people of other genders like. that is in fact what being bi is and yet i Still have the “not bi enough” thing going on that i would venture a looooot of bi women inc. many of the bi women i know do. and for a while i was really puzzled by why that was because like this is something i have known about myself for 8 or 9 years (lmao...wow) and i think that post explains it very well. it’s the idea that “being bi” means doing a particular set of things or necessarily experiencing cultural commonalities x y and z with other bi women or enacting relationships in a way that looks “bi” to other people (whatever that means lol). rather than “these things that i actually am as a person are allowed to exist regardless and i can use this or that word because it’s accurate to me at this time.” 

i especially feel this as someone who is (facetiously and from an external perspective) a terrible horrible example of bisexuality both in terms of what that is and how it ought to operate. this isn’t “labels are bad uwu” discourse to be clear, it’s more like “this label is accurate and i like it but it does not metonymize me” (side note. is that even the right word or the right word order? what i mean is i am bisexual, i am even A bisexual but i am not bisexuality because bisexuality doesn’t exist in the same way my feelings and relationships exist, and bisexuality is purer and more encompassing than my reality)

i also feel this way about political labels and all the subgenres of “left” that i’m sure have differences but don’t mean anything tangible to me yet (this may have been more like what op was about, idk). basically i think the less time we spend asking ourselves buzzfeed.com/quiz/what-kind-of-leftist-are-you and the more time we spend doing left things like being compassionate to those who need our help and forming mutually supportive relationships and proposing alternatives to discriminatory practices the less of that anxiety we might feel. but i don’t have as good of words on this point or anything much to add really.

[rorywritesstuff]

Have A Nice Life

There are twelve weeks before I leave Japan. There are people that I see less often than once every twelve weeks, ergo, I am at the point where I am seeing people for what will likely be the final time. However, twelve weeks still sounds like quite a long time to most people. And talking about July, when one is in April, seems unbearable long-sighted, like discussing what will happen after the sun burns out. So, I am in that awkward stage where I am seeing people for what will likely be the final time but no one wishes to admit that it will likely be the final time.

This makes goodbyes very difficult. What does one say? I’ve always been a fan of ‘have a nice life.’ I think it’s the right mix of blunt and sweet: it’s kind of comical in its forward admission that you probably won’t make the effort to keep in touch, but also carries a message of positivity, ‘I hope the rest of your life is pleasant.’ Honestly, sometimes I say it to people when I’m just popping off to the shops. ‘Have a nice life’ would be the way all social interactions would end, if I had my way.

However, most people have an instinctive, viscerally negative reaction to the phrase. They don’t like it. To them it signifies a flippant attitude to parting that does not accurately reflect its sweet sorrow. They rage against this dying of the light of acquaintance and its attendant facetious parting quip. They don’t wish to admit that death will probably come before a reunion.

(Of course, these people never seem to make a greater effort to keep in touch. They don’t want to admit that this meeting will be the last, but they’re okay with it being so. I feel that’s a very succinct encapsulation of modern socialisation.) When I have ventured to say ‘have a nice life’ and been rebuffed, even chided, I have asked my conversant what they would prefer me to say instead. The most common response is a simple ‘see you’. But ‘see you’ makes a promise, it says that you will meet again and I can’t make that commitment. If my last words to someone are going to be a lie, I’d much rather sign off with ‘I’m the King of Nantes!’ Go big or go home, I say.

‘See you later’, from which ‘see you’ is obviously descended, also has a somewhat resigned air to me. It seems to hint at a kind of cuckoo clock world, where once every hour we all roll by each other on tracks and wave. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter that we missed each other today, we’ll have another chance when the hour hand reaches four.’ ‘See you later’ contains no warmth of sentiment, encompasses no feelings on behalf of they who say it or they to whom it is said. At least 'have a nice life' shows our relationship to not be totally without affection.

I say 'see you' to people who live in my building whom I absolutely loathe because I know that, unfortunately, they will be a part of my life in the future. Trust me, though, when I'm speaking to those people for the last time, there will be no 'have a nice life'; I won't even bother with 'goodbye' because I don't want God to be with them. I want them to fall in a pit and not be able to get out. When I tell people to have a nice life, I'm giving them something of a command. I'm telling them to treat themselves the way they deserve to be treated. I'm telling them to be kind to themselves. A lot of my friends are too harsh on themselves; they criticise themselves with great vehemence and lead abstemious existences. I want them to cease this. I won't be around to help them feel good anymore, so they need to start to recognise their own self-worth.

Naturally, it's the finality that people have a problem with. 'Have a nice life' draws such a damningly neat line underneath a mutually beneficial relationship, and it can be hard to admit that such a thing can end. We would rather delude ourselves that something can continue and be rewarding ad infinitum, despite all evidence to the contrary from The Simpsons. I would rather face the truth and end on a high note. I like that the last thing I've said to a lot of people is 'have a nice life.' It means I finished on something positive, like a satisfactory final line to an essay.

[kinuskikakku]

Something off about Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Editions

Okay, so! I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while now. And if you’re fan of the good ol’ Baldur’s Gate games, you might have.. all sorts of thoughts on the matter. But here are my thoughts. (there will be spoilers)

Okay, so, some of the old fans in general seem to have been generally against of just.. adding anything to the Enhanced Edition. Which, sure, people tend to dislike change in things they love. But one thing that seems to cause a lot of discord is the new available party members in the games, some seem to dislike the fact alone that they.. well, exist. Even more so some people seem to just loathe the fact that The Gays(tm) dare to exist. Like how dare The Gays(tm) do that? This stupid PC bullshit is ruining everything. (disclaimer- I am super gay myself, and I’m actually being facetious).

Me? I’m fine with these new characters existing, they can be nice additions and now Baldur’s Gate 2 has something it didn’t really have before: a pure-class thief. I do have a different sort of gripe with these new characters though. Wanna know what it is? Well too bad, I’m going to tell it anyways.

So, I’m gonna focus more on BG2 (particularly SoA) here, since it’s got a lot bulkier story, generally a lot more character interaction, more in-depth romance and so forth. But anyways, I’m gonna go just point by poitn here.. kind of.

First thing is... a lot of these new possible party members have this weird tendency just intersecting your adventures with drawn out cut-scenes that just shove them in the player’s face. This seems invasive, takes away any sense of discovery, and just.. I dunno. I understand that Beamdog wants to bring out their creations and make them easily accessible. But when you have to halt what you were doing for what seems like.. way too long after a couple of playthrough, I feel like they’re doing something wrong.

Granted, the vanilla game also made some characters kind of intersect your character with their.. thing. Like Jan Jansen trying to sell you his dubious stuff, or Viconia DeVir being on the stake about to be burned, or Edwin Odesseiron being a quest giver, or Anomen Delryn getting on your face about duty and honour and stuff while hanging out in a seedy bar). Yes, they do that. But also, in the vanilla game these moments seemed a lot more well-woven and these characters were acting in-character. (to be fair, the new EE characters are also acting mostly in-character but.. much less well-woven)

While I’m not against adding new things and new characters, I’m just wondering if there could’ve been some better, less invasive way to implement them in the game?

Then, the new romances. Baldur’s Gate 2 was one of the earliest RPGs to implement romance in their games. And to their credit, the vanilla game handled things exceptionally well for their time. (honestly, this over 17-year-old game handled romance much better than some modern games do)

So, how are these added romances handled in Enhanced Edition? Generally speaking, okay. The people writing them clearly put their best into writing them, I’ve no doubt about it. They do a really tough act to follow, though. So at times, they seem less good compared to the vanilla game’s romance. Still, for the most part, they’re fine.

But now, earlier I mentioned two things: 1. I am super gay, 2. the evil Gays(tm) dare to force themselves in this.

And here, “evil gays” is sadly kind of accurate.. not just kind of, but literally accurate. I do think they were genuinely trying to add diversity with the best intentions, but it comes off.. weird, when both possible queer romances - the bi-/pansexual Dorn Il-Khan and the purely homosexual Hexxat - are Neutral Evil by their alignments. I mean.. EVIL gays. 

Okay, sure, in DnD “Evil” is mostly about self-interest and stuff like that, not exactly about mustachio twirling cartoon evilness. STILL I feel like there’s some really bad implications when you make your queer characters that way!

But I do have some other gripes too, especially with our big Dorn here. And that’s... it’s not really romance, and for another.. Dorn doesn’t seem really Neutral evil, but rather Chaotic Evil. To comedically summarize the “romance” with Dorn: “Hey, let’s go commit mass murder and use blood as a lube on top of the pile of bodies!”

But to be more in-depth. First, the alignment thing. Dorn’s deal seems to be that he just wants to go around murdering people just for the thrill of murdering people, without paying any mind to to whether or not this benefits him in the slightest. Which is CHAOTIC EVIL. A Neutral Evil person in this world would mostly focus on the question of how does a thing benefit them. Sure, they would have zero qualms about killing someone, and might even do it if someone looks at them funny in a bar if they’re in a lousy mood. But they’re not usually interested in the thrill of killing itself, death and murder are just means to their ends.

Then.. the.. ugh.. “romance”. The thing is, what you get with Dorn isn’t romance or love. What you get with Dorn is lust and something that is purely physical. Dorn never is interest in your for you, Dorn is attracted to power, and you are playing as Gorion’s Ward, a Bhaalspawn, a demigod. From the get go, Dorn makes it clear that he sees power in you wake, and that’s what draws him to you. 

And even if you argue that there is some semblance of love, it’s purely conditional on Dorn’s part. It’s his way or the high way in this relationship.

Now, I can’t speak for all of The Gays(tm), but as a gay man myself, I can’t be into this. I don’t understand why is this sociopath appealing. And why after the interest piqued by a queer guy in this game am I so badly let down.

Hexxat though? I think she’s pretty cool. I mean, haven’t finished Throne of Bhaal with her. But her behaviour seems to be focused more on the question of “how does X benefit me?” as per Neutral Evil. But in SoA it wasn’t like she was devoid of compassion or empathy to others. Sure, she might act nice and cool to others for her own benefit, but hey.. at least that makes her someone appealing. Not sure what to think of using the evil lesbian vampire trope, but.. even with that, she seemed fairly well handled.

Ugh, this got so rambly, but at least I got out all my steam about this! If you bothered to read this through, thanks. And if you don’t like The Gays(tm) in your games.. I dunno.. go away, don’t tell me about it. I get to see it more than enough already, trust me.

[azapofinspiration]

Lance Really Doesn’t Remember

So I posted part of this meta at the end of one of my stories about Sendak’s attack and the Bonding Moment, but I think I’ll just write it here as well with further evidence.

Anyway, I am pretty sure that Lance actually doesn’t remember the Bonding Moment. I’ve seen a lot of people split over this, with many people seeming to assume that Lance is just being facetious in his denial and maybe getting some petty revenge for Keith not remembering. However, it’s highly likely that his lack of memory is legit.

For starters, we need to take in Lance’s injuries. He got blown up, and he was in pretty bad shape. He wasn’t even wearing his helmet during the explosion, so you know his head got injured and it was enough to render him unconscious. In fact, he was unconscious for a very long time. Of course, we can’t be sure how long he was knocked out initially, but we know that it was long enough for Pidge to Home Alone the Galra and for Coran and Hunk to travel to the Balmera, repair the pod, retrieve a crystal, and probably escape the Galra there. So this was probably an hour at the very least, but probably more. And with head injuries, being unconscious for more than, like, a minute means that things are serious and there is most likely brain damage.

Yeah, brain damage.

Plus, you know that this head injury is serious not just from how long he was unconscious, but by how much Lance went through while this initial unconsciousness. After all, he was moved multiple times. He started out on the bridge where the explosion happened. Then Shiro managed to carry him all the way to the front doors, where he didn’t even twitch as Shiro put him down and fought Sendak. Then he was manhandled by Haxus to get Shiro to stop fighting. Then Lance and Shiro were dragged all the way back to the bridge. And you know that they were moved around several times once they got there, because their positions move in the various scenes with them up until Pidge reaches the bridge herself.

Lance didn’t even show any signs of waking during this time at all. Which is a major concern considering his injuries.

Quite frankly, it is a miracle that he woke up and had enough cognizance to shoot Sendak and save Pidge. God only knows how he managed it.

Though, of course, he then passed out immediately following this, which again, is not a good sign. Lance then was out through the rest of the confrontation with Sendak.

Keith then helped bring him back to consciousness and they had the Bonding Moment. Which, at least on screen, had no actual cradling. It was an epic handhold and some touching words from what we did see though.

What are the chances that Lance stayed conscious for much longer than what we were shown? Very low. He probably was out like a light soon afterward.

(Which is why I’m thinking the cradling came from Keith carrying Lance to the cryopods, but alas, there is no proof.)

Considering the damage that Lance had gotten, can anyone really blame him for not remembering?

This is not the only evidence that Lance doesn’t remember though.

When Lance gets out of the pod, he asks what happen. I suspect that he may have some recollection of the explosion and the moment leading up to it, but probably not much else. In any case, he doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s going on.

The next scene cuts to the team finishing up explaining what exactly happened, and he even makes a comment based on what he heard. Note the “sounds like” meaning that just from the story, it seems like Keith didn’t do much. Keith protests that he punched Sendak (which he didn’t do, he attacked him with his bayard; considering he has to wield his sword like he’s punching someone though, I guess it’s somewhat accurate). And Lance counters with saying , “Yeah, apparently after I emerged from a coma and shot his arm off.”

I’ve seen some people say Lance remembers the Bonding Moment because he remembers shooting Sendak, but it’s clear that he doesn’t actually remember that either. He says “apparently” because like with his earlier comment, he’s basing this off of the story he’s just been told. Also, similar to the punching thing, Lance may have shot Sendak in the shoulder/arm, he didn’t actually shoot his arm off. Pidge managed to get rid of the glowy prosthetic in the end.

So clearly, Lance is basing everything about this encounter pretty much off what he’s been told. Which is for the most part accurate, but not quite as happens when people are recounting an incident. And that’s all Lance has to go on.

Now, did he have to brush off Keith’s claims of the Moment so brusquely? No. That was probably him trying to push the idea of their rivalry and his tone was maybe due to the whole Keith-didn’t-remember-him thing. Maybe him also trying to get things back to “normal.” But he legit doesn’t remember it.

TL;DR: Lance probably legit doesn’t remember the Bonding Moment because head/brain injuries suck and mess with people’s ability to remember things. Even if cryopods heal all the damage in the aftermath, it can’t restore a memory that wasn’t fully recorded in the brain.

[tessatechaitea]

Batman #87

James Tynion IV and Guillem March team up to make me stop buying Batman.

Part of me just wants to write "UGH!" and be done with reviewing this comic book. But another part of me is hungry. But still another part of me, the one that is against just typing "UGH!", is outraged that I just paid five dollars for a regular issue of Batman because of a stupid glossy and thick cover and that part of me demands that I vent more fully. And yet that's not even why I'm fucking livid! That's just my first and most shallow complaint! I'd prefer if DC Comics just gave me a regular issue of Batman with a regular comic book cover and simply printed on that cover, "We know this is the exact same quality comic book that we'd sell for $3.99 usually but it has Batman in it which means it will sell way more copies than the other issues we sell and we want that sweet, sweet extra dollar per issue windfall!"

Complaint #2: The Riddler believes that a riddle without a solution is the greatest riddle.

Never mind that Guillem March drew The Riddler naked while he's thinking about the greatest riddle ever while on weapons grade amphetamines and he has no visible erection. That's a minor side complaint that I simply assume was on everybody's list of things wrong with this issue. But the revelation that James Tynion IV doesn't understand the concept of riddles is beyond criticism. It's post-critical! The entire purpose of a riddle is that it has a fucking clever answer! A riddle with no answer is a mystery and The Riddler isn't called The Mysteryer! A riddle with no answer is something The Mad Hatter might be into but not The Riddler, Mr. Scott-Snyder-Lite IV! And before some Riddler-loving cuck nerd decides to argue that what Tynion meant was that The Riddler loves a super duper challenging riddle, let me say this: "Then he should have fucking wrote that in the dialogue, shouldn't he have? Not that a 'riddle with no solution' is 'a riddle befitting a riddler.' But 'a riddle with a fucking super tough and challenging solution' is 'a riddle befitting a riddler.' Now go jerk off to your tepid Riddler sex role play Tumblr blog." Just an aside about my use of the word 'cuck': it's just fucking funny to use! The only good thing the terrible incel Internet community (unless I mean the MRA community (unless I mean the PUA community (it probably doesn't matter. They probably mostly share the middle area in a Venn diagram))) has done for this world is to bring back the insult "cuck." I don't even care about using it in the historically accurate way! I don't actually care if Riddler fans' spouses have a little extra side of ass on the down low. It's just fun to say! Plus, if you say it to the kind of person who actually thinks "cuck" is a scathing insult, they get super fucking angry when called one! It's Goddamned hilarious.

Complaint #3: Guillem March's depiction of The Riddler.

Yes, yes. March fixes my whole "The Riddler doesn't have a visible erection" problem from the first scan by implying one with his Riddle Wand here. But the main problem is why did March think The Riddler suddenly needed to look like Bernie Wrightson's Anton Arcane? The Riddler has always just been a skinny creep who was so into getting punched in the face by a muscular man in a bat costume that he planted clues that would ensure it happened. But I guess March has decided that his obsession needed to be mirrored in his physical appearance? Or is it a kind of pervasive attitude that Batman is such a scary and serious fucking cartoon hero that his villainous gallery of rogues has to be just as wickedly serious and horrific? Sometimes it feels like fans still feel as if the Batman television show was some kind of pernicious poison that, to this day, needs continual application of anti-toxin. "Batman isn't silly and his villains shouldn't be either," scream the rabid base of comic book fans that take this shit way too seriously. Hey! Fuck you! I'm angry for valid reasons and not stupid comic book fan reasons! Don't try to use my own words against me!

Complaint #3: Guillem March's depiction of The Penguin.

See my previous argument for Complaint #2. Although there's a history of making The Penguin as creepy and fucked up as possible because nobody needs the image of Burgess Meredith playing The Penguin to already come to the conclusion that a short dapper fat man with a bird obsession isn't the most intimidating villain, even with the mob attitude and homicidal tendencies.

Complaint #4: Batman and Catwoman's banter.

My main complaint with this conversation is that Batman and Catwoman never once argue about whether they met on a boat or on the street. I thought that was how they always began conversations! Also, they don't call each other "Bat" and "Cat." I'm sure a lot of people are thrilled about this change. But to me, it's a slow reset to getting them back to a relationship that denies the strength of their love and commitment to each other. They're slipping back into professional modes of communication! Next thing you know, we'll find out that Alfred didn't really die! It was Clayface the entire time and Alfred simply let people believe he was dead so he could have a peaceful vacation for once in his long life of servitude to an obsessed man-boy with too much money. Okay, that's enough poking fun at Tom King and the people who hated Tom King. I'm sure I'll get my fill of the Bat/Cat relationship whenever King's Bat Loves Cat comic book comes out. Let me be serious about my complaint in this paragraph (although not the kind of serious where I'm a comic book fan taking shit too seriously! The kind of "serious" where I pretend to be in an apoplectic rage which convinces a number of casual readers into thinking things like "This fucking Lobo fanboy wants to fuck Lobo in the face" and "Why is this nerd so obsessed with Supergirl's butthole? Can't he get a real woman down at the real club where he probably dances like a fucking dreamboat?"). Batman is supposed to be the World's Greatest Detective and yet he engages in stupid retorts like "What makes you think I don't have that device?" You fucking imbecile! What makes her think that was expressly stated by Catwoman when she said you wouldn't have needed to ask her if she was still with the body! Also, even Batman can't have that technology because it would take magic to use that technology and Batman is against magic which is why he keeps Kryptonite on hand to defeat Superman instead of the Ace of Winchesters. Side Complaint #4: Guillem March draws asses in the uncanny valley. He wants you to know they're sexy asses that do more than poop and fart. But he tries too hard to make them sexy and they fall into the uncanny valley of sexy asses. Those are asses where you go, "No, no. I can see that that ass is sexy but I am not in any way going to put my tongue into it." Complaint #5: The villains' plan is so complex that it relies on things that couldn't have been planned for happening. This is a standard complaint of mine and such a comic book trope that I probably should have gotten over being upset by it twenty years ago. I suppose it's why I stopped reading comic books for ten of those twenty years though. A bunch of assassins planned to get caught so that one of them could escape so that Batman would be distracted by that one while the others escaped. Batman falls for it although this time there's a twist to a plan so well planned that it works no matter what the hero does: this plan was stolen! This plan was originally the Penguin's plan and he recognized it when the first part fell into place: five assassins came to Gotham and were caught by Batman. Yeah, see? That was part of this stupid plan! So at least The Penguin is going to interfere with this awesome plan. Although, being that the plan was so well planned, the person who stole the plan probably planned for The Penguin to recognize the plan and to interfere. So The Penguin interfering is probably now part of the overall plan.

Complaint #6: Batman builds a prison that even he can't get out of which means Deathstork gets out of it immediately.

Every time, right? Every time a hero does something that is super duper foolproof to the nth degree of foolproofness, they get fooled! Fool the DC villains once, shame on the DC villains. Fool the DC Villains twice, and, well, you know what? That's never actually happened because they've never actually been fooled once. They only get fooled in the ultimate issue of a story arc when the hero decides maybe they should redouble their efforts and buck up their willpower and believe in themselves slightly more than they did in the previous five issues.

Complaint #7: A Cheshire-sized clay body double was captured by Batman, hauled into custody by police, and locked up without anybody noticing.

Batman uses the word "clay" so I'm assuming we're supposed to believe this is some kind of non-Clayface clayface body double? Some kind of mindless automaton that walks and moves and blinks and breathes and acts exactly like a living person? Sure, it's not presented in that way. But the audience has to assume some level of intelligent trickery went down here or else they're going to read this and think, "Batman was fooled by a squishy, drippy sex doll? This is worse for the Batman mythos than when Kevin Smith had Batman confess to peeing his pants!" Complaint #8: Both Deathstork and Cheshire tell Batman they're "playing a game." Why do they call their terrible and vicious crimes a game? It's bullshit to make everything the villains do some kind of contest pitted against Batman. It inherently makes super hero comics less about trying to make the world a better place and more about how heroes are the cause of all of the trouble because the villains' only ever expressed motive is to best the heroes. It's lazy and ultimately damaging to the entire medium. Yes, I said the entire medium! That's not hyperbole! But that was facetiousness!

Complaint #9: Cheshire wears see-through undies and we never get to see them from the front.

Okay fine. Not all of March's asses are in the uncanny valley. That one is staunchly in the valley of cans. Sweet, sweet cans.

Complaint #10: Batman kills Cheshire.

Sure, sure. Cheshire is still talking after getting creamed by a semi truck so Batman didn't really kill her. But he should have killed her doing this and the only way we accept that she isn't dead after smashing her face into an advancing semi is because we, the reader, know Batman doesn't kill. Maybe Batman lovers would defend this as an accident brought on by Cheshire herself. But then what is Batman's defense in letting her get smashed by a truck instead of saving her from being smashed by a truck in the amount of time it takes him to smugly say, "Brace yourself"? This fits into my belief that Batman has killed dozens of people but they die later at the hospital after which he can pin the deaths on the doctors who failed to save them from the mortal injuries Batman gave them. Side Complaint #10: Cheshire's last words are asking Batman how he survived her poison. I mean, she's obviously dying here and that's all she cares about? I would think she'd be all, "Tell my daughter I love her! ACK!" Batman #87 Rating: C. I think I made my points. My main problem now is that I've declared I'm going to stop buying Batman but I'm not the sort of person who avoids staring at train wrecks.

[mirolovejoyteplitzky]

‘BTF’ Notes

Here are some of the essays I have been reading recently that are informing ideas am putting together. 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/23/mark-zuckerberg-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-facebook-cambridge-analytica

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/23/ignoring-the-lessons-of-the-financial-crash

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-21/imf-growth-forecasts-world-economy-is-stumbling-toward-disaster

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/20/world-sleepwalking-to-another-financial-crisis-says-mervyn-king

https://www.gq.com/story/on-conservatism?utm_campaign=falcon&utm_source=facebook&mbid=social_facebook&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=gq&utm_medium=social

I have also been taking notes from several books that are shaping ways of thinking about what this project might contain. 

I have been reading:

My first time reading this book and its been an extraordinary experience. As I have gone through I have realised that whilst we do not live in the London that Orwell presents, in many areas like surveillance and extremism we are not all that far off. More so his metaphor and social commentary on how we think we are free but in actual fact not, is both terrifying and exhilarating to read.

I picked this up after going to see Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition In Real Life. I get the feeling Eliasson struggled with the idea that maybe our world is not all it seems and we are heading in a direction both environmentally and ideologically that may devastate our ability to survive and be equal, free beings. I am only on its early pages, but have gathered a lot in how Solnit writes. Especially as the book was written in 2004, at the height of the Bush administrations failings, and yet things have only gone and repeated in very similar and extremely unusual ways. What the book does do though is offer a hope that is not frail or facetious, but instead she describes hope as the emotional energy to put one foot forward and fight for the possibility to destabilising corrupt and violent organisations or powers. 

This is my favourite fiction book. A story written by a very good historian set in an alternative world where Hitler had won the war and taken control of Europe. The book is a thriller and based on factual evidence as to what the world may have looked like. It is constructed out of plans and documents that were found after the war. Whilst the story doesn't necessarily have too much to do with my project, seeing as its fictional, what it does very smartly and accurately map is the evolution of events and the hypotheticals of our decisions.

Both Hitchens books are extraordinary pieces of opinionated writing. Mainly, within the context of my project, I have been looking at religious systems and the untouchable and non-negotiable pillars of power they all have had for such a long time. Religion is a very easy way for people to justify horrendous and inhumane acts without the bat of an eyelid - especially in the global-political structure. Much of the wars that rage on in the middle east have roots in religious ideology as example to share. What Hitchens does so brilliantly is links tangents and builds an argument that exposes the fragility at the heart of belief and also just what a powerful tool belief can be to control masses of people.

[digdeepergravedigger09]

So I was tagged both by @naferty and @imaginestarkquill about this ... post meme thing. It took a while because of some certain questions. And also I talk a LOT. It’s just a thing I do. Talk a lot. Get into a tangent. I may have taken this way too seriously. One of the questions also contain a certain aspect of myself that I really dislike about myself. I tried to answer honestly, but I have to admit I am very defensive and I’ve qualified a lot of things trying to excuse myself. I answered it as honestly as I would on a personal blog that this is.

Also, gross insect death.

Rules: answer the questions in a new post and tag 20 blogs you would like to know better!

A - age: 25... 26? I’m not entirely sure. It’s hard to remember when you’re one year older than your birthdate says you are apparently B - birthplace: Korea C - current time: 3.46 PM D - drink you last had: Water E - easiest person to talk to: It depends on what I want to talk about. I usually talk most of everything with my mom, and all that I don’t want to talk about with her, with my bf, and all that I don’t want to talk with either of them, with @deredana.  F - favorite song: For the longest of time, it had been Chrystalanthemums from the Homestuck Album 1-4, but these days I’m in love with Hey Judy by Julie Robert from the Event [0] Soundtrack.

Continued under Keep reading.

G - grossest memory: Grade 7. First biology class of the year. Sat next to this kid who had a plastic folder/bag. Very sturdy, holds textbooks. There was a fly in the room, and apparently it sat on the table, before this kid with the bag. He slams it on the fly. Apparently, the fly tried to take off, but its lower... half... got crushed by the folder bag. Apart from the disgusting black mess that was the fly, there were.... white... tiny... things. That were crawling everywhere. Just... tiny, tiny tiny maggots crawling to every which direction. I don’t remember what happened after that, but I’m still scared of hitting/killing flies that I will just run away from them instead of swatting them away. I don’t want to look at flies, I don’t want to think about flies.  H - horror yes or horror no: Horror no. Just no. Thriller is fine, but horror is no. I - in love?: In love what? Am I in love? What is love? Baby don’t hurt me No but seriously, everything that people say about “love” seem to be accepted to be all simultaneously accurate and incoherent mess of contradictions. How can you know the “love” you say is the same “love” I feel? I know “love” can be felt in differing intensity, but how would I know, in the root, that they are the same feeling? I can’t tell if I am “in love” because I don’t know if what I’m feeling is love. I don’t understand whatever feeling the world’s literature describes love to be, it’s all nonsense. I think I’d prefer the phrase “extreme fondness” over “love” to be honest. “Love” is such a loaded word. But yeah, I guess I am “in love” currently, with someone.  J - jealous of people?: Yes. I’m a jealous and envious person. I hate that I can’t be 100% genuine when I say I congratulate people for succeeding, especially in areas where I myself want to succeed. I don’t actually hate the individuals themselves, I don’t think. But I do get resentful - I know that it is irrational and petty and ridiculous and just overall it says a lot about what person I am - when I am not the best/better. I think I got it down to a point where I will have a constant, low undercurrent of envy and resentment under my skin, but I like to think that I do a good job on not outwardly hating the people themselves for their success, at the very least. And I know this might taint some people’s perception of myself, that I may be lying to them about me being happy for their success. I’m not lying about that part; I really am glad they are getting a good thing in their life. But if you don’t believe me (and I don’t blame you, after everything I’ve written), don’t mind the selfish person being jealous. You got your success because you worked hard for it, or if it was a lucky break, but it was your well-deserved lucky break.  K - killed someone?: Only in my dreams. Wow, that sounds wrong. I mean nightmares. But also dreams sometimes. I kill a lot of people in both my dreams and nightmares. That’s not a better answer.  L - love at first sight or should I walk by again: I don’t believe in “love” at first sight. I prefer the understanding that “love” comes after years of stable, familiar relationship where you can accept everything of each other. So, no, no love at first sight, nor walking by again would help. M - middle name: I don’t have a middle name. N - number of siblings: I’m an only child. O - one wish: To have enough money to not have the audacity to make up an excuse to pass by any people who ask for help on the streets. To have enough money that I made on my own, to not be a burden on my parents or on my significant other. To be self sufficient and more, to be able to be generous without feeling guilty and facetious. P - person you called last: My boyfriend. Q - question you’re always asked: "How’s life?” “What will you do after you do (this thing I’m currently doing)?” Everything is going horribly, thank you, and I have no idea where my life is headed currently. But I’m trying to manage everything. I appreciate that you’re trying to help, and they probably will help in the end, but right now as I hear that question I am filled with anger and resentment and everything that pops into my head is venom and vitriol.  Unfortunately I don’t get asked many questions that don’t have to do with things I hate to think about the most. R - reason to smile: Healthy, happy animals. People who enjoy their lives. (I’m envious, but I’m also happy to see others be happy and passionate about their life and work. I don’t know what that’s about either) S - song you sang last: As in Karaoke? It’s been so long - 낭만고양이 by Cherry Filter, I suppose. Gosh, it’s been ages. Just by myself? Art is Dead by Bo Burnham.  U - underwear color: Navy and Black. V - vacation: I might go to where my parents are for like a week, once everything is over.  X - x-rays: What do you want from this question? I don’t understand. Have I ever been x-ray’d? Yes. I think most people would have, at least once in their lives? Y - your favourite food: Noodles. All noodles. Instant noodles, Udon, Ramen, Gooksoo, Pho, Bun Cha, Spaghetti, Phat Thai, Bun Bo Hue, etc and all that I may not remember. With few notable exceptions: I don’t like Korean Soy noodles, and I don’t particularly enjoy vermicelli, unless cooked in a very specific dish. Z - zodiac sign: Virgo    

 I do have some certain people I would like to get to know better. I have a feeling many of you have already done this - it’s been a while since I got tagged too, so. But if you haven’t, please do?  @reioka @tonystarktogo @saved-by-the-notepad @westbrookwestbooks @feelingsinwinter @deredana @beir @bloody-bee-tea and any of you who might want to try too, consider yourselves tagged!