#i hate my art. i hate my lack of creativity. my art is so bland i just dont think its in me anymore

[yelloworangesoda]

gotta get off the internet and only interact irl with people who were 30 before they got their shit together i cant keep doing it like this

[artcommunityvent]

heres my rant for today: (sorry in advance for long post)

i hate how modern art communities have to “fandom-ify” every single new trendy thing literally DAYS (and sometimes even hours) after it drops. i know this is a lot of the same sentiment as those people that just go “popular thing bad” but honestly it really puts me off some medias because i dont want to associate with anyone else who likes it

do we really need a million different fan ocs and aus for EVERYTHING? and like, i know its nothing new, obviously we have the onceler and undertale aus to look back on, but its exhausting at this point because while those communities were presumably genuine, in the present day it just feels like the fandom equivalent to an industry plant. and most people dont even stick with the thing they decide to make their entire personality!!

remember when spiderverse came out and everyone made spidersonas? who can you name thats actually drawn their spidersona more than once? it feels like everyone just trend hops, and yes i know thats how the internet is but its just exhausting especially when it brings down otherwise creative and inspired works

fnaf security breach: everyone makes fnaf aus and glamrock animatronics, then spiderverse as previously mentioned, then welcome home dropped and thats becoming a shitshow with how yall are fandomizing what is essentially a small creator telling their ocs lore in a creative way, and now its happening with digital circus. im so tired of seeing projects that are cool and visually appealing becoming a cesspit of bland, unoriginal aus and piles of fanart only to get dropped when the new shiny comes out

and i wanna elaborate on welcome home for a second because i know damn well if one of these people who makes “daddy dom priest wally is actually the devil” aus had an oc they loved, and someone came along and made their own aus of it in the same way, that person would bitch and cry oc theft. some people dont even change up the characters design, like how entitled do you have to be to essentially just steal someones oc and call it your own? it disgusts me how people are treating clown and honestly i wish they would put the series on indefinite hiatus or complete their story privately to teach these people a lesson

another thing that puts me off is how every piece of media has to have the “fandom daddy” for lack of a better term. glamrock freddy, hobie brown, wally darling, or jax, its all the same thing repackaged; someones gotta be the tumblr sexyman. its so tiring—ESPECIALLY as a lesbian who doesnt really wanna center men in my life at all—to wanna see fanart of the media you like and its only: “heres the one character everyones horny for drawn in a totally different and more sexualized body type” with everyone in the comments salivating over them. i really like digital circus! but all i see are people who would walk across a mile of broken glass just to suck a fart out of jax’ ass. what about the other interesting characters? why does EVERY conversation with popular media have to be about “which guy is the most fuckable” (guy specifically because come on, when has a female character been the highlight of attention; using the previous example have you seen ONE person talking about digital circus that even remembers zooble exists)

it feels like nobody can appreciate work anymore without having to claim some form of ownership over it, to say “hey this thing is so popular and important that it is now a part of my identity!! look at my millions of ocs that i will draw one time and never again!” im just tired of people being unable to passively interact with media they enjoy and everyone seeming to fight over and prove some connection to the things they like

tldr: im tired of everyone in the art community making heaps of fanart, aus, and fan ocs for stuff the second it gets popular and then totally forgetting about it the next time something else gets popular

(and before yall bring up hyperfixations: i am autistic; i understand having so much love for a piece of media for a short while and then dropping it for no reason and its heart shattering; BUT AT THE SAME TIME this pattern is on oxford to me and its on such a large scale that it infects the greater art community as a whole)

That is indeed the nature of media consumer at its finest. I do feel like it is more appearent now due to the way most social media algorithm works. They only show what is trending at the moment, so naturally, we are exposed only to this specific thing until another trend eventually takes over.

Even artists who never create fan content can be influenced to do so by looking at the other artists, be it to dive in along the hype for the popularity of it, for the geniune fun, for the sense of community, and many more reasons.

- ☁️

[inthe-neighbourhood]

Fighting Creativity Block

Recently I've been feeling a block in my creativity, with my writing and art, with a massive lack of motivation, so I thought it would be good to list a few ways to get over this block. Tactically both writer's block and art block.

Feel free to leave suggestions as well, I'm still trying to get past this block so any help is appreciated! <3

______________

Ways to fight Creative Block

Taking a Break

You can't always have unique ideas, that's just a fact. Instead of forcing new ideas, it's better to take a step back and come back after some rest. Creative block can come from tiredness and overworking; sometimes you don't realize it until you can't keep going.

Remember it's essential to take care of yourself, and sometimes a good nap, a hot meal and some self-care go a long way.

2. Consuming Different Media

One of the best pieces of advice I got as a writer, was to look at different media for inspiration.

If you are working on a particular project, for example, a story about the Wild West (defiantly not what I'm working on hehe) and you don't feel passionate about it, or just feel stuck. Watching a cowboy movie can help, or reading about the history of the American Frontier, lets you make new ideas and sparks your creativity.

Or, if you have no ideas at all, but you want to write or you want to draw, watching a new movie, or playing a video game can get your creativity going. Sometimes we're so busy in our lives, working on our projects, that we forget what inspired us to do these things. Also, don't feel guilty if you think what your writing is too similar to another story. Originality is dead, but I'm not sure if it was ever alive. All stories are reiterations of other stories or a melting pot of multiple.

3. External Creativity

I did not know how to word this, but you know that feeling when you have a concept that really interests you, but when you open the google doc, your mind is blank. The words aren't wording.

To deal with this, exploring the concept is helpful. Cultivating a playlist that encapsulates, a character you are interested in writing, or a scene you really want to write helps it become more than a vague concept. Also, make a Pinterest board, for either your character or an area in your story, it helps you visualize your story, making the writing process easier.

This also applies to art, I can be in the mood to draw or have a good drawing day, but I don't know what I want to draw, having an interesting board helps. I have one that has random images I thought were cool for if I ever just want to draw. It can also help with finding references for poses, buildings, faces, etc.

4. Try Different Activities

I'm stubborn, and I hate doing anatomy practice, or writing exercises, but they can help you bully your creative block. This is for the creative block, where you have ideas but your writing is bland or your art formatting is bad, it can just mean you need practice, it happens to all of us. It's boring, but it is necessary.

Look at videos for writings, pertaining to what you are struggling with particularly. For example, what I'm struggling with is planning and show don't tell, giving the reader an image in their mind.

For artists it's relatively the same, look at what you're struggling with and find videos or websites that help with that. For example, I'm struggling with formatting my sketchbook pages. I haven't been able to find many videos to help me with this, but just looking at other artists' sketchbooks helps.

5. Background Noise

We all listen to music, youtube or a show in the background while writing or drawing. If you don't, I'm scared of you. I find what you listen to can help with what you're doing. This isn't an exact science, but try it out and let me know if it helps.

Writing, I believe while writing it's more helpful to listen to informative videos in the background. While writing this I was rewatching Jacksepticeye's "Youtube has some serious issues..." and hbomberguy's "Vaccines and Autism: A Measured Response" Listening to more wordy content, puts me in a more professional headspace, making it easier to form paragraphs and sentences.

Drawing, I find it more helpful to listen to music, maybe it's because it's a visual art form, although listening to youtube and watching shows can help as well.

Again, not an exact science, I'm curious how people focus now so let me know.

_____________

I hope this helps! Feel free to give suggestions on how to deal with creative block and I'll make a part two.

[gwagwagwagoogoo]

I feel so stuck with my art that I feel like I need to rip everything apart and start from the fundamentals but I earnestly. Don’t know where to even start

Nor do I have the time to commit myself to hours of study but I want to

I just feel so stuck creatively it’s pissing me off I can’t draw anything bc how I draw just isn’t smth that works well with me anymore and I feel underdeveloped in my skills

I hate how I draw people and in general how I shape the body and the head and I want to break out of it and actually learn how tf to do it but I also want to develop my own “style” and so on

Idk I think I’m just unhappy and in one of those ruts and it’s affecting my everything

It isn’t even just specifically my drawing, like even with my writing it feels so bland and mediocre. I just don’t think I’m winning today at all or these past few months, I feel sapped of the joy I had

Idk what I need to change or rather I do know what I need to change but I’m struggling to pursue it

My Art’s really important to me and my ability to create art is very important to me too so having a lack of that is like getting ball stomped

[foxconfessorandthewolf]

It sounds like I'm gonna be interviewed on a podcast in January and I'm kinda really excited. I know I mostly vent here these days but I've been making a lot of progress lately on my own boundaries and myself and staking out my own healthy existence in fandom. I'm sort of ready to talk about things (not necessarily what happened per se, as I don't think it really is ultimately interesting) but to finally feel comfortable to have a voice again in fandom, if that makes sense?

I spent a long time as an effectively silent person because I valued the way others perceived me, and others' comfort, over my own self-worth. It's not a surprise to me, as I was a good Calvinist child and this is all a bunch of packed-together bullshit from my own past, but I'm very much learning that kindness does not always mean niceness and that I have to be kind to myself as well as others. I'm increasingly okay with being perceived as a bitch or cruel or whatever someone wants to label me if they dislike where I've chosen to set my boundaries. It's not my obligation to allow someone access to me just because they want me to.

Honestly, I think there were some positives in deleting my original account. I hated being that name because it became like this weird fucking cage? Like a brand and expectation. I also hated my own keen awareness of my stats and how dependent I became on them. In deleting my account, and knowing that I will never reach those stats again, there's a lot of freedom now. A lack of pressure. I simply write what I want to write and it doesn't matter. I don't know but, at the end of my original account, writing had become a chore. Now, there is no expectation, no pressure, nothing but the pursuit of my own creativity and pleasure. I feel free to follow any fandom, write any strange thing and in any experimental manner, and it just is what it is. It's purely mine, and I relish that.

It's also interesting because, as hellish as the experience was, I've gained a remarkably thick skin when it comes to criticism. I'm paraphrasing something Tristan Tzara said, but critique always says more about the critic than it does either the art or artist, and that kind of shook me to my core. It's important to remember that art and writing is subjective, that you will always be learning and improving, and that it is impossible to please everyone. A great story does not make everyone happy, but a bland one strives to upset no one. I've learned to trust my own instincts and opinions and to seek critique from other trusted sources, like the writers' workshops that I've been attending over this past year.

This is really a lot of navel-gazing, and if you suffered through all that, by God, I am so sorry. I'm just a bit of a verbal processor and needed to put some feelings into words, as I'm really doing a lot of processing and healing at the moment, and seeing what fandom life looks like on the other side.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Piper Sargasso

Piper Sargasso has 25 stories at Gossamer, but don’t miss her website where the fics each have cover collage art. If you are a fan of Mulder/Scully romance, there are a lot of MSR fics to read that are set in different seasons of the show. But like the show that never stuck to one type of story, Piper’s stories have variety, so you can also find AUs and /Other.  Big thanks to Piper for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

It does, but I love that people are still into it! Writers back in the day put so much work and love into their writing, and it's nice to know that the stories are still being appreciated to this day. As for my own stories, it puts a huge smile on my face to know there are still people out there checking them out and hopefully enjoying them.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

It was such a positive period of my life. I made some amazing friends who became something like older sisters (and some brothers) to me, even though I was a little ridiculous when I was in my early to mid-twenties. It was also a much-needed confidence booster. I was a pretty shy person and loved writing, but never had the nerve to show anything to anyone. My first fanfic was completely horrible, but because of it I made my first XF friend and super beta, Mimic117. Between her guidance and the encouraging words from my Yahoo group I was able to do something I really loved and felt great about myself and my abilities for the first time. That will stay with me forever. That first story was truly atrocious, but it was a catalyst for great things in my life when I needed them the most.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I remember trying this cool new thing called an AOL chat room, but they were more interested in perving on each other than talking about the show. Once I knew about fanfiction I kept seeing that some of my favorite authors kept mentioning IWTBXF in their notes, a Yahoo group named I Want to Believe. I looked it up, joined, and with great trepidation made my introductory post. Everyone was so warm and welcoming, and talking to my favorite authors in the group was a little like meeting a celebrity and finding out that they're awesome in real life. After IWTBXF fell apart, an off-shoot called Beyond the Sea was created with almost all of the original group transferring over. I stuck to my little family there and didn't branch out into much else, other than the rare dip into Haven. Ephemeral and Gossamer, of course.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

Mostly the overwhelming feeling of acceptance and confidence to write, something I was sorely lacking before in my life. I fell in with the best group, that's for sure! They made me feel like being a professional writer could be an achievable goal.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

The commercial advertising. The pilot spoke to my supernatural-loving, angsty 15 year-old soul. I watched it religiously every week. There was nothing like it. It was off-beat, but serious (most of the time) and fulfilled my insatiable craving for the paranormal and weird. You just couldn't get that from Melrose Place and Beavis and Butthead, you know? It definitely helped that David Duchovny was adorable and the character of Scully was the strong and intelligent icon we needed in the 90's and beyond.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

In high school I had a friend who was as obsessed with the show as I was. Maybe more, since she once had a slumber party that was exclusively to binge watch her taped episodes (the other girls who wanted to mess around with spells and the Ouija board weren't thrilled that she couldn't be swayed away from it) and she often drove me from play rehearsals in her convertible with the top down and the theme song blasting to the heavens, much to my delight and mortification. A couple years after we graduated she told me about the piece of fanfic she wrote. Insert a record screech here. What?! You mean there are thousands of stories dedicated to my favorite show? And hundreds more get added every month?! I was obsessed. If I could've stopped working and slept at my computer desk I would have.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Sadly it's nonexistent these days. I have great memories and it holds a big piece of my heart, but I haven't been active in a long time. I would love to see a huge revival, and would definitely want to be involved in that in some way, were it to happen.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction for a while, but I never could expend the kind of energy and time I did for the X-Files fandom. It came at a perfect time in my life, and so far nothing else has measured up to it.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Besides XF characters? Off the top of my head I really love Hermione Granger, Buffy Summers, Elizabeth Bennet, and Claire Fraser for their sass and strength of character, Severus Snape for his complexity, and Christina Ricci's version of Wednesday Addams for her pure awesomeness. She's pretty much my spirit animal.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I do occasionally. I watched the series from season 1-7 so many times that I started to burn out, but I get on my X-Files kicks sometimes and binge it again.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

Like with the show, I'll get nostalgic and need to consume all the fanfics my greedy little eyes can behold until I move on to something else. It can feel a little lonely though, if you'll excuse the drama. We're not in the heyday anymore, so it feels a little like walking through a ghost town. Many of the stories out there are suspended in time because the show ended, or people stopped writing.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I know I have dozens, but I'm drawing a blank. My ultimate favorite is any well-written MSR casefile with UST finally resulting in RST. Those are my unicorns!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I have a silly one called Baby, It's Cold Outside that I sometimes read around Christmastime. It was a fluffy song-fic, but I can see the scene so clearly in my mind when I read it and it's just pure fun. I also like my Donnie Pfaster series. I can see the potential in my writing with those, which makes me feel I could really write something special someday. Plus, he's such an interesting little slimeball to write and read about. Bless his heart.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I still think about the two WIPs I haven't finished. I wrote myself into a corner with This Mortal Coil, and honestly I think it needs a total overhaul. I think Dana Scully's Diary would be a fun one to finish. I hate that I never finished them.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I think about writing fanfic now and then and I've had a couple original novels sketched out, but there are so many other demands on my time that I haven't gotten very far. I still plan to see the novels through, even if no one but interested friends and family read them.  

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I used to watch an episode and really study the actors' expressions and actions, always trying to find new angles to the stories we all know. A lot of times things would just come to me and I'd get so excited I couldn't sleep until I wrote a good chunk of it down.

What's the story behind your pen name?

The friend who introduced me to fanfic told me the best way to choose a pen name was to make sure it derives from the show. For a couple days I looked at the titles and summaries of episodes and agonized over just the right name. Finally Piper Maru and the summary from Triangle, which mentions the Sargasso sea, stood out and just clicked.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My now husband always knew, and he thought it was cool that I had a hobby that made me so happy, but he was never a reader. My parents found out when I was about 24 and my step-dad would tell EVERYONE about it, much to my horror. Most reactions were of the bland, "Oh yeah? That's nice." variety but I definitely got some weird looks from others. The worst was when I found out how much of my racier MSR stories my parents read. My step-dad thought it was hilarious and teased me a little. My usually open-minded mom was uncomfortable, but tried to be supportive. It's all fun and games until your daughter starts writing psuedo-erotica for anyone to see!

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Circe Invidiosa very generously hosts a page for me at http://pipers.invidiosa.com.

(Posted by Lilydale on January 26, 2021)

[beyondstupidityblog]

On March 13th 2021, two friends and I did what never could have imagined possible, I watched Freddy Got Fingered for the ninth time, and it will by no means be the last. I’m explaining this to you, dear reader, so you and I have an important understanding between us. You will be reading the ramblings of one whose brain has curdled like milk left out in the hot afternoon sun. Now that introductions are out of the way, let us begin.

Freddy Got Fingered is a 2001 Comedy starring and directed by Tom Green as the Non-Titular Gordon Brody; an aspiring animator who goes to California to realize his dream, only to be constantly crushed under the weight of his father’s expectations. Sounds tame at first, but what lies beneath the veneer of mediocrity is truly impressive. Completely bombed,  audiences hated it, and critics loathed it. Roger Ebert got angry, saying “it isn’t even below the bottom of the barrel” and “Green should be flipping burgers somewhere.”. “Tasteless”, “appalling”, “offensive”, “gross”, and “poo poo,” are just some of the things people have had to say about this film. Animal genitalia can be seen on screen for much longer than anyone could have expected, Tom Green swinging a baby akin to a morning-star with its umbilical cord, said umbilical cord being stolen and taped onto his stomach, gratuitous caning of a nymphomaniac paraplegic, and the dissection of a deer carcass. It is an abrasive experience that leaves a terrible taste in the mouths of those who mention it. Nonetheless, I love this movie. 

You ever see a contemporary art exhibit that has a piece that just looks like garbage somebody left out but in actuality is a tongue-and-cheek allusion to the pitiful state of modern art? That garbage is Freddy Got Fingered, and that exhibit is Hollywood. At face value it just seems like a poorly done film by a comedian trying to use his name to get a few butts in the seats before his irrelevancy arrives, but when scrutinized as a commentary of comedy films do the pieces start to fall into place. Tropes like the Protagonist being an unremarkable honkey, gross-out designed to get some cheap quick chuckles, side-characters who occupy the space solely for comedic relief, a shoe-horned romantic side-plot, and an equally as shoehorned in happy ending are all present in a mocking fashion. So many of these Hollywood schlockfests that this movie is paying homage to abuse tropes in some vain attempt to trick the audience into thinking they’re having a good time, when in reality it just reminds viewers of films that they’ve already watched before and could be enjoying instead. All of the awkward and uncomfortable scenes of gross-out and romance are purposeful, because nothing is quite as awkward and uncomfortable than a film disengaging the audience with its own mediocrity. “This is what it’s like to endure this trash!” Drunkenly screams Freddy Got Fingered atop the tallest piece of furniture in the room, while also exposing its genitals to keep you from getting too comfortable around it. Unlike the films it is parodying, its obsession with making a fool out of audiences rips them away from the comfort of the cinema, making them genuinely ask if it is worth wasting their time watching a film called Freddy Got Fingered. Even the title is an intentional slight, as it seems to be completely untethered to the actual plotline and is instead a reference to a seemingly inconsequential scene. But then again, that is the point of it all. Tom Green is an artist, and on his canvas is a portrait of Hollywood with all of the ugly little imperfections that cause a movie like this to be created. But this is just the meta-narrative of Freddy Got Fingered, something that you could find all over the internet. Why do I resonate with it so much, and what about it makes it so exceptional that led to this unhealthy fascination?

    Every instance that I’ve rewatched Freddy Got Fingered has always brought about a new side to it, and in the process leaves me craving for more. Gord is an interesting take on the average leading man. He is on the surface bland and inoffensive, made so in order to allow the majority of the audience to immediately identify with him, said group being 20-something skater guys with unrealistic expectations of themselves. Made especially ironic when after the introduction of Gord as an adept skateboarding rebel escaping from authority, he starts to show that in reality he is an unlikeable, bratty, entitled, and all around unpleasant person. Barely a scene passes before we see him masturbate a horse while exclaiming he is a farmer to his father who is not present, seemingly a crude gag but is in reality an insight into his low self worth caused by his imposter syndrome stemming from distant paternal relationship. I would like to remind you, dear reader, that I am still writing of Freddy Got Fingered, in case you were beginning to think I have lost my mind (The answer is yes by the way). All throughout the film Gordon Brody puts on masks for different situations, never allowing himself to be who he is. When infiltrating the Animation studio where he wishes to pitch his cartoons, he pretends to be a mailman to get past reception and then impersonates a police officer when the former stops being effective. Donning the visage of a British Bobby, he dashes into the restaurant where the man he is searching for, Mr. Wallace, is eating. Showing him his cartoons, Wallace is impressed with the potential they have, but says that they are incoherent and lack real substance. Upon rejection, Gord puts a pistol in his mouth before Wallace stops him and advises what he should do to improve. Gord was genuinely ready to blow his brains out the back of his skull if he wasn’t able to get his show greenlit, and it hit me in that moment that he isn’t just some random jackass, but a victim of detrimentally low self-esteem.

The origins of his complex are made apparent when he goes back home to Oregon and are reintroduced to his Family. We see that his father Jim, played by Rip Torn, is disappointed in his return and begins to sneer at him for his failure. This father and son dynamic always has tension in every scene from this point onwards. Gord, who just wants to be accepted for who he is and not judged by what the world expects him to be, is always at the receiving end of Jim’s wrath, who values his idea of a successful life over the happiness of his sons. From here it becomes little wonder why Gord is the way he is, all his life he was told that who he was is not good enough, he has to be what his father wants if he is to be considered worthy of not only love, but being treated with a modicum of dignity. Whenever Gord acts eccentric or divulges his interests to his father, they are met with either resentment supplemented by verbal assault, or physical violence. After a late-night skateboard outing to escape from his father’s wrath goes awry, he visits his convalescing friend in the hospital, whereupon he meets one of the more interesting characters in relation to Gord, the love interest Betty.   

A horny wheelchair bound temptress may not seem like it upon first glance, but Betty is actually the most interesting character out of the entire cast. She feels genuine, introduced as a bored receptionist flipping a coffee creamer idly. Gord immediately strikes up a conversation, whereupon he and the audience find out she has an interest in physics, and apparently an interest in him as well. Betty is strangely well written for what most considered at the time to be a crass sexual joke, so much so that she would actually be a better protagonist than him. She is everything Gord is not, she’s smart, funny, ambitious, and  kind to a fault. Even her side plot to create a rocket powered wheelchair makes for a much more unique plot than the one given. Even Gord reciprocates this sentiment in their meeting, lying that he is a stockbroker in an attempt to impress her. In fact, sectioning her off as just the dull protagonist's love interest is a jab at how women in these movies are only there to serve in the development for the male protagonist, just nothing more than their muse. Nonetheless, without this relationship the movie would lose a lot of its soul. Romantic chemistry in comedy films is always hit or miss, but Gord and Betty do seem to have it surprisingly. They’re both silly and impulsive, creatively driven to a fault, but just different enough to eek out the best and worst in them. Gord  thinks that what he wants to do with his life is wasteful, but Betty doesn’t. Now I don’t mean that she directly affirms that he is worthwhile like most poorly written love interests would, stroking their lover’s(and by extension the director’s) ego, rather she confronts him with her optimism. He asks if she would feel stupid and like a loser if her experiment failed. Taken aback at first, she questions why she would, relaying that her failures are just as important as her successes. Gord’s self-worth is directly tied to his ability to succeed, whereas Betty doesn’t need this affirmation. Their dialogue further cements how detrimental his father’s overbearingness was to his outlook, and how he is slowly beginning to realize how destructive that mindset is. 

At their dinner date, Jim sees Gord and Betty across the restaurant, then reveals that Gord was lying to both him and her about his office job while poking fun at her disability, leading to a father-son scuffle that throws the entire floor into utter chaos. Cops show up, Gord and Jim are detained, and Betty bails Gord out. Most mediocre comedies at this point would have the love interest be upset that her significant other lied to her, leading to him having to make things right to repair their relationship before the happy ending. Breaking the mold, Betty does not get angry with Gord even a smidgen, choosing to be understanding of his situation now that she caught a glimpse into his home-life. She just plain likes Gord, willing to put up with him more than she really should, but still chooses to look past his lies and self-destructive nature for who he truly is, someone who just wants to be accepted by the world around him. Someone just like her.

Right after that enaction of social terrorism performed by the Brody father and son duo, they decide it would be best to go to family therapy and assail the audience with what I fondly refer to it as, “The Scene.” “The Scene” is Freddy Got Fingered’s statement to the world, it is what instills a man with the impetus to rewatch a glorified stoner daydream for the ninth time and leave him wanting more! Gord accuses his father, in a final act of defiance, of molesting his younger brother Freddy. During the ensuing confusion Gord picks up a bust of Sigmund Freud and throws it into the glass window pane, allowing him to escape into the evening sun. The authorities take Freddy away and send him to The Home for Molested Children, and the family slowly unravels from then on. Besides the heavy handed metaphor of Freud’s theories being used as a way for Gord to escape his predicament while simultaneously discrediting them, “The Scene” also recontextualizes Freddy, innocuous of a character as he is, as Gord’s foil. He is in the movie very little but when he is it is to serve one of two purposes: To be compared to Gord, or to be treated as an object. During breakfast much earlier in the film after a fight between Gord and Jim, Freddy tries to explain to his brother that he should grow up. Gord, surprisingly, talks down to him and halts the conversation.

Gord: “He's driving me insane.”

Freddy: “No. No, you're driving him insane. You're older than me and you still live at home. I have a job, you know. I pay my own way.”

Gord: “You work in a bank. Should I be dazzled?”

Freddy: “Well, at least I don't live at home!”

Gord: “No, you live in a tiny shithole and you come here to eat for free.”

With these lines it is plain to see that despite Freddy’s idea of success directly lining up with his father’s, he is even more pitiful than Gord. What little we know of him is to show that his acquiescence to his father’s expectations has left him bereft of not only genuine personal success, but of dignity itself. When child protective services come to take him away, he is half naked, mouth agape, watching open heart surgery on television, a palpable indication of emptiness. He isn’t treated as an adult either, as his protests to the police fall on deaf ears as both them and the psychologist infantilize him. Why would Tom Green name this movie after a character like Freddy, whose lack of presence and characterization make him little more than an afterthought when looking back on the story? Or did I just answer my own question? Freddy is not a character because he is not allowed to be one, he is just too passive and accepting of his circumstances for him to stand out. All he can be is a doll that Jim uses to dress up as the perfect son, and this passiveness leads to Gord, the “failure,” to both pity and resent what he let himself become. That’s why Gord accuses their father of molesting him, after all he does narratively violate Freddy’s autonomy by consistently making decisions for him. Evidently enough, as soon as Gord dons a suit for a quick bit Jim is elated because he believes that his son finally gave in to his demands for him to get a job, because he is acting more like his obedient brother. In this sense Freddy is the most tragic member of the Brody clan, a literal manchild whose growth was stunted by overbearing guardians. When I think of him, a bonsai tree comes to mind. Sure, it looks healthy, but when you realize that it could have grown into a much bigger plant if it were not for its small pot, that realization of wasted potential comes with a tinge of melancholy.

I want to end this essay with a moral that I took away from Freddy Got Fingered, as strange enough as that sounds, and what it has to say about art as a whole. Put simply, this is a story about revenge. Despite and because of his Father’s harsh ways, Gord managed to take from the trauma he sustained throughout his life and sublimated it into his animation. Creation not only lets him heal, but also acts as retaliation against Jim once he becomes successful. So long as you have the drive to prove everyone’s doubts and admonishments wrong by persevering out of wicked spite, you will have the last laugh. Freddy Got Fingered is a story about revenge through artistic expression, and I think that is quite beautiful.

[davidmann95]

Superman’s 10 Best of the ‘10s

Good Miracle Monday, folks! The first third Monday of May of a new decade for that matter, and while that means that today in the DC Universe Superman just revealed his secret identity to the world on the latest anniversary of that time he defeated the devil, in ours it puts a capstone on a solid 10 years of his adventures now in the rear view mirror, ripe for reevaluation. And given there’s a nice solid ‘10′ right there I’ll go ahead with the obvious and list my own top ten for Superman comics of the past decade, with links in the titles to those I’ve spoken on in depth before - maybe you’ll find something you overlooked, or at least be reminded of good times.

A plethora of honorable mentions: I’m disqualifying team-ups or analogue character stories, but no list of the great Superman material of the last decade would be complete without bringing up Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #7, Avengers 34.1, Irredeemable, Sideways Annual #1, Supreme: Blue Rose, Justice League: Sixth Dimension, usage of him in Wonder Twins, (somewhat in spite of itself) Superior, from all I’ve heard New Super-Man, DCeased #5, and Batman: Super Friends. And while they couldn’t quite squeeze in, all due praise to the largely entertaining Superman: Unchained, the decades’ great Luthor epic in Superman: The Black Ring, a brilliant accompaniment to Scott Snyder’s work with Lex in Lex Luthor: Year of the Villain, the bonkers joy of the Superman/Luthor feature in Walmart’s Crisis On Infinite Earths tie-in comics, Geoff Johns and John Romita’s last-minute win in their Superman run with their final story 24 Hours, Tom Taylor’s quiet criticism of the very premise he was working with on Injustice and bitter reflection on the changing tides for the character in The Man of Yesterday, the decades’ most consistent Superman ongoing in Bryan Miller and company’s Smallville Season 11, and Superman: American Alien, which probably would have made the top ten but has been dropped like a hot potato by one and all for Reasons. In addition are several stories from Adventures of Superman, a book with enough winners to merit a class of its own: Rob Williams and Chris Weston’s thoughtful Savior, Kyle Killen and Pia Guerra’s haunting The Way These Things Begin, Marc Guggenheim and Joe Bennett’s heart-wrenching Tears For Krypton, Christos Gage and Eduardo Francisco’s melancholy Flowers For Bizarro, Josh Elder and Victor Ibanez’s deeply sappy but deeply effective Dear Superman, Ron Marz and Doc Shaner’s crowdpleasing Only Child, and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro’s super-sweet Mystery Box.

10. Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics

Oh, what might’ve been. In spite of an all-timer creative team I can’t justify listing this run any higher given how profoundly and comprehensively compromised it is, from the status quo it was working with to the litany of ill-conceived crossovers to regular filler artists to its ignominious non-ending. But with the most visceral, dynamic, and truly humane take on Clark Kent perhaps of all time that still lives up to all Superman entails, and an indisputably iconic instant-classic moment to its name, I can’t justify excluding it either.

9. Action Comics #1000

Arguably the climax to the decade for the character as his original title became the first superhero comic to reach a 1000th issue. While any anthology of this sort is a crapshoot by nature, everyone involved here seemed to understand the enormity of the occasion and stepped up as best they could; while the lack of a Lois Lane story is indefensible, some are inevitably bland, and one or two are more than a bit bizarre, by and large this was a thoroughly charming tribute to the character and his history with a handful of legitimate all-timer short stories.

8. Faster Than A Bullet

Much as Adventures of Superman was rightfully considered an oasis amidst the New 52′s worst excesses post-Morrison and in part pre-Pak, few stories from it seem well-remembered now, and even at the time this third issue inexplicably seemed to draw little attention. Regardless, Matt Kindt and Stephen Segovia’s depiction of an hour in the life of Superman as he saves four planets first thing in the morning without anyone noticing - while clumsy in its efforts at paralleling the main events with a literal subplot of a conversation between Lois and Lex - is one of the best takes I can recall on the scope on which he operates, and ultimately the purpose of Clark Kent.

7. Man and Superman

Seemingly geared on every front against me, built as it was on several ideas of how to handle Superman’s origin I legitimately hate, and by a writer whose work over the years has rarely been to my liking, Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini’s Man and Superman somehow came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite takes on Clark Kent’s early days. With a Metropolis and characters within it that feel not only alive but lived-in, it’s shocking that a story written and drawn over ten years before it was actually published prefigured so many future approaches to its subject, and felt so of-the-moment in its depiction of a 20-something scrambling to figure out how to squeeze into his niche in the world when it actually reached stores.

6. Brian Bendis’s run

Controversial in the extreme, and indeed heir to several of Brian Bendis’s longstanding weaknesses as a writer, his work on The Man of Steel, Superman, and Action Comics has nevertheless been defined at least as much by its ambition and intuitive grasp of its lead, as well as fistfuls of some of the best artistic accompaniment in the industry. At turns bombastic space action, disaster flick, spy-fi, oddball crime serial, and family drama, its assorted diversions and legitimate attempts at shaking up the formula - or driving it into new territory altogether, as in the latest, apparently more longterm-minded unmasking of Clark Kent in Truth - have remained anchored and made palatable by an understanding of Superman’s voice, insecurities, and convictions that go virtually unmatched.

5. Strange Visitor

The boldest, most out-of-left-field Superman comic of the past 10 years, Joe Keatinge took the logline of Adventures of Superman to do whatever creators wanted with the character and, rather than getting back to a classic take absent from the mainline titles at the time as most others did, used the opportunity for a wildly expansive exploration of the hero from his second year in action to his far-distant final adventure. Alongside a murderer’s row of artists, Keatinge pulled off one of the few comics purely about how great Superman is that rather than falling prey to hollow self-indulgence actually managed to capture the wonder of its subject.

4. Superman: Up In The Sky

And here’s the other big “Superman’s just the best” comic the decade had to offer that actually pulled it off. Sadly if reasonably best-known for its one true misfire of a chapter, with the increasing antipathy towards Tom King among fans in general likely not helping, what ended up overlooked is that this is a stone-cold classic on moment of arrival. Andy Kubert turns in work that stands alongside the best of his career, Tom King’s style is honed to its cleanest edge by the 12-pager format and subject matter, and the quest they set their lead out on ends up a perfect vehicle to explore Superman’s drive to save others from a multitude of angles. I don’t know what its reputation will end up being in the long-term - I was struck how prosaic and subdued the back cover description was when I got this in hardcover, without any of the fanfare or critic quotes you’d expect from the writer of Mister Miracle and Vision tackling Superman - but while its one big problem prevents me from ranking it higher, this is going to remain an all-timer for me.

3. Jeff Loveness’s stories Help and Glasses

Cheating shamelessly here, but Jeff Loveness’s Help with David Williams and Glasses with Tom Grummett are absolutely two halves of the same coin, a pair of theses on Superman’s enduring relevance as a figure of hope and the core of Lois and Clark’s relationship that end up covering both sides of Superman the icon and Superman the guy. While basically illustrated essays, any sense of detached lecturing is utterly forbidden by the raw emotion on display here that instantly made them some of the most acclaimed Superman stories of the last several years; they’re basically guaranteed to remain in ‘best-of’ collections from now until the end of time.

2. Superman Smashes The Klan

A bitter race for the top spot, but #2 is no shame here; while not quite my favorite Superman story of the past ten years, it’s probably the most perfectly executed. While I don’t think anyone could have quite expected just *how* relevant this would be at the top of the decade, Gene Yang and Gurihiru put together an adventure in the best tradition of the Fleischer shorts and the occasional bystander-centered episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to explore racism’s both overt and subtle infections of society’s norms and institutions, the immigrant experience, and both of its leads’ senses of alienation and justice. Exciting, stirring, and insightful, it’s debuted to largely universal acknowledgement as being the best Superman story in years, and hopefully it’ll be continued to be marketed as such long-term.

1. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics

When it came time to make the hard choice, it came in no small part down to that I don’t think we would have ever seen a major Golden Age Superman revival project like Smashes The Klan in the first place if not for this. Even hampering by that godawful Jim Lee armor, inconsistent (if still generally very good) art, and a fandom that largely misunderstood it on arrival can’t detract from that this is Grant Morrison’s run on a Superman ongoing, a journey through Superman’s development as a character reframed as a coherent arc that takes him from Metropolis’s most beaten-down neighborhoods to the edge of the fifth dimension and the monstrous outermost limits of ‘Superman’ as a concept. It launched discussions of Superman as a corporate icon and his place relative to authority structures that have never entirely vanished, introduced multiple all-time great new villains, and made ‘t-shirt Superman’ a distinct era and mode of operation for the character that I’m skeptical will ever entirely go away. No other work on the character this decade had the bombast, scope, complexity, or ambition of this run, with few able to match its charm or heart. And once again, it was, cannot stress this enough, Grant Morrison on an ongoing Superman book.

[garazza]

Action Comics #1023 Review

“The House of Kent: Part 2″

Action Comics #1022 “House of Kent: Part 1″ Review

Hoo-boy.

I actually appreciate this recap page, I really do, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I’m not sure if it’s the content of the recap that pisses me off or if it’s for the fact that they literally just took a page from the previous issue and slapped in some new dialogue (see Bendis’ Man of Steel mini for this to be taken to the extreme).

Most likely the latter, but there’s a good argument for the former because reading objective statements about what Bendis has done tends to do that. I guess what they could be going for is for something similar to when Svengoolie comes back from commercial break and it’s a still from the movie with Sven’s face superimposed somewhere and he makes a quip about the movie before it starts back up again.

But I digress. It fills me in on what’s been happening in the book and that’s what I needed it to do.

The art really goes down in quality since last issue. Romita, Jr.’s pencils aren’t as good, Janson’s inks are heavier and a lot more boring, and Anderson’s colors are bland and flat and not as lively. There are a few good spots and I’ll point them out, but they’re infrequent, and overall, the quality of the art is much more similar to the art in the Metropolis Doom arc than it is to last issue. This leads me to believe that editorial only gave the art team enough time over the pandemic-induced break in publishing to produce one good issue before forcing them back into a deadline where Romita, Jr.’s work is not as good and tends to suffer.

Red Cloud attacks and attempts to kill Jimmy Olsen instead of Lois Lane to send an even greater message to her and Clark.

For those of you that don’t know, the Invisible Mafia speak in code to avoid detection by Superman’s super-hearing and meet in areas surround by lead to hide from his supervision. In the beginning of this confrontation, no one says anything that Superman would respond to if he hasn’t already tuned it out, which is why Lois says out loud her nickname for her husband to get his attention.

It’s a sign of affection for them and could be utilized for such a scenario, but I don’t see why she had to say his nickname over anything else to get his attention. Maybe because since he revealed his identity to the world his real name is being said a lot more often in non-criminal ways, so he doesn’t respond to it as much as he has in the past. I’m not sure if I’m trying to come up with a rational excuse for what is actually a writer’s weird and out-of-character creative choice or if it’s what an actually competent writer intended for a discerning reader to infer and get joy from a successful analysis.

Regardless, it’s what got Superman’s attention at the end of Superman segment in the last issue. I don’t think what was supposed to be conveyed with those panels last issue was accurately conveyed by the art. Either Romita, Jr. didn’t sufficiently depict (but still beautifully rendered) what Bendis had directed him to draw, or Bendis had poorly directed Romita, Jr. in what he wanted him to draw. With this added context, however, these panels do make a lot more sense, but only with the added context. Without it, the scene is a little unclear.

You can clearly see the change in art with the two issues side by side like this. This issue, the art just doesn’t look as good. It’s just kinda blegh. It accomplishes what it needs to convey the story, but in a very boring and unspectacular way.

Also, this panel is very Harry Potter to me. Superman’s more subdued face is similar to that of book!Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire, but the almost hyperbolic dialogue is more akin to that of movie!Dumbledore. It’s very dissonant.

I really want to hate the humor of this panel, but it’s just so fun, so I won’t.

This is a really cool panel, one of the few standout moments, but I have issues.

First, I may have enjoyed the humor in the last panel, but Bendis’ attempt at humor with Jon here just makes me want to cringe. Whenever Bendis makes Jon talk, it just pisses me off and makes me want to stop reading.

Second, I see what they were going for with the glowing eyes, but this is some more of that dissonance between the art and the writing. It actually looks quite menacing, but the dialogue has a more humorous tone. Also, the actual effect for the glow is just two red circles, making their eyes look more like flashlights than radiating energy. I also want you to keep this moment in the back of your minds, I’ll refer back to it in a second.

I think the dissonance is the result of the Bendis-speak, where some of the characters are quippy, but other characters are playing the situation straight and are reacting accordingly to the incorrect behavior. There’s nothing wrong with a superhero comic being light-hearted, but it just doesn’t quite fit here. All the right ingredients are present, but they’re not all in the right proportions.

Another panel I really like. The smoke and its color are really well done, especially in contrast to the all black silhouettes except for their back logos of the Supers.

The eye glow effect looks much better here. It’s simple yet powerful.

I don’t know how important this revelation is actually supposed to be, so I’ll defer to the depiction of the comic instead of playing the fool and acting upset about something I’m ignorant about simply because I’m not a fan of the writer.

This moment is cool and all, but I don’t think Conner has super-breath. He doesn’t actually have the powers of Superman, he uses his tactile telekinesis to mimic some of the powers of Superman.

The “extreme high-velocity super-speed” was this issue’s first indication that Bendis might not know anything about this character he has stewardship over, but that can just be chalked up to Superman not remembering the powers of Conner. We don’t know the upper limit of Conner’s tactile telekinetic flight, nor should we care, it’s supposed to be a fun line.

The second indication is that Conner is shown to have heat vision when his eyes glow alongside Clark and Jon’s. He only has heat vision when he wears special goggles or a visor. Again, he doesn’t have all the powers of Superman. Tactile telekinesis only covers so much of Superman’s powers. But this can be forgiven because it is a pretty cool image.

“Once Is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third Time Is A Pattern.” This panel is the third instance of Bendis’ lack of understanding of Conner’s character. If this was the only instance, this would be fine, but it’s not. The moment is cool, but it’s a bridge too far.

Refer to my review of the first issue for more of Bendis not knowing anything about Conner.

EDIT: Thanks to @thebartallenblog​ for pointing out to me that Conner does in fact start developing more Kryptonian powers outside of his tactile telekinesis in the 2003 Teen Titans  book by Geoff Johns, so Bendis does in fact know more about the character than I give him credit for, which is more than I can say for myself in this instance.

Also, this moment goes on for way too long, almost two entire pages. Beautiful, the art of decompression and wasting reader’s time and money.

“Should I super-inhale?” Shut up, Bendis.

Also, why is Red Cloud is so fixated on Superman’s family instead of just Superman. Does the Invisible Mafia have something against his family as well? It was my understanding that they have it out for him specifically, anything that is ancillary to him is extraneous and not worth their time.

“Hey! It’s not my favorite super-move on a good day.” Then why the fuck did you even make him suggest it, Bendis?

I don’t know if loved ones referring to Lois as Ma is something Bendis has been trying to push as a character quirk or if it’s some sort of weird one-off. Either way, I don’t like it. It’s not bad in of itself, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my thing and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Again, I’m not sure how significant Jimmy figuring out Red Cloud's identity is supposed to be to the plot and the narrative, but this seems to be a bit of lampshading from a writer who literally has no right to be lampshading.

Couldn’t give a shit about the plot, I’m just here to nitpick. Next.

Feels a bit janky in the art department, but the dialogue is surprisingly in character. They all feel like they have their actual voices. It’s a nice little moment.

I would address all the instances of Bendis making Jon talk, but that would make this longer than it already is, so I’ll only do it when it’s particularly egregious.

Red Cloud comes back and attacks not!Jon and I couldn’t care less. Kill the bitch. Please.

The next two pages are a lot of nothing, just a boat load of Bendis-speak.

I’m pretty sure this played out a lot differently and more humorously in Bendis’ head when he wrote it down and Romita, Jr.’s art makes it all the more funny but for all the wrong reasons.

Who’s his partner? Officer Tomasi?

You know when I said that one panel with Lois, Clark, and Jimmy was written really in-character? This panel with Conner and Jon is the exact opposite of that.

Red Cloud and Ms. Leone have a fun back and forth for two pages. It’s a good example of Bendis-speak working well.

“Black Label Club?” One meta-reference is enough, but two is stupid. I actaully feel a little conflicted nitpicking this, but Black Label is in such a weird place right now, so why reference it?

But “Clark Kent walked into a bar...” is a pretty bad ass line, very John Wick.

A very cool sequence, but it’s full of Bendis-speak and very decompressed.

Why the fake-out of the Superfamily executing a gangland-style shooting with Jon being the one pulling the trigger? I get it’s a story beat the narrative is supposed to hit, but still.

The reveal is pretty funny, shrinking the club, so it’s a little forgivable, but the set up and the pay off don’t quite match. It’s just another example of that dissonance I’ve been mentioning.

I know that “supersons” line was put there by Bendis as a deliberate dig at his detractors, so I’m not going to take the bait and get pissed. Nice try, big guy.

All in all, this issue was not as bad as I initially thought. It’s series of some really big highs and lows.

[thelostnymphaeum]

I'm with you 'til the end of the line.

Entry: 004

// Cinema //

Marvel Cinematic Universe

MARVEL MANIA

Superhero movies were not my thing. The only superhero movie I have watched as a kid was Spiderman. I am not into sci-fi or superhero movies albeit being a huge fan of cinema. But during this quarantine, I decided to experiment with my taste and try to indulge in a new set of genre – the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These movies were a far cry from films that are to my liking, such as “Brooklyn” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”. I used to find superhero movies corny or cheesy, because they were not based on real people and I fancy movies that tackle the inner spectrum of humanity. Additionally, I used to think that actors who choose to be in these movies are not “real actors” because portraying a superhero does not really seem to me as a role where you have to internalize the character. I was probably the only person in my class who did not cry when someone said “I love you, 3000” after the Endgame came out, and the only one who did not get the “Wakanda forever” reference. That changed because yester night, I finally finished the entire MCU. I came in with a viewing guide from my friends and I came out feeling like I just had a whole cultural experience.

THE AVENGERS

I like all of them. Except maybe the Captains. I don’t like Captain America. I understand that he’s supposed to be the poster boy of “superheroes” where he’s all righteous, courageous, virtuous and kind to everyone – but that does not seem realistic at all. His character just seemed predictable and bland for me. Maybe that’s why I prefer Tony Stark, he is more dimensional. He is someone who is unapologetic, makes mistakes, smart, arrogant; but his heart will always come from a good place. During battles, it’s always Tony Stark who is thinking of ways to end them (like how to diffuse Ultron at Sokovia) so I feel as if it’s him that should be leading them. Captain America only lead them because he was born in 1918 (just kidding, don’t eat me Steve Rogers stans).  He also looks way too good. It’s unreal. What a knucklehead (Loki will agree with me on this). Jk. Anyways, he earned plus points from me when he returned the infinity stones successfully. As for Captain Marvel, I don’t think I need to explain why I find her insufferable. 

A little piece about Spiderman. I like this reboot of Spiderman, and Tom Holland deserves all the hype he got because he worked so hard for his movies. No one can beat Tobey Maguire of course, but we are all just glad that Tom did not ruin Spiderman for us. The only thing I did not like about his reboot was that he relied too much on Mr. Stark. Tobey’s Spiderman never relied on anyone, he was just his own superhero. But for the sake of integrating him into the MCU, I guess that they have make this fun and fresh Peter Parker juvenile in order to be able to develop his character more. So I think I’ll give it a pass.

I personally like the Thor films the best. Because it was based on Norse mythology. Because of Loki. Because Anthony Hopkins is in it. I dislike the Captain Marvel movie the most.

ENDGAME THOUGHTS. We did not need Captain Marvel. Thor did not deserve to become a drunkard and a greasehead – he’s a freaking Norse God! Why was Pepper Potts at the final battle against Thanos? Thank you, Doctor Strange. Tony was genuinely and undeniably- the heart of the Avengers.

SCORSESE, COPPOLA & PEWDIEPIE

Along with its colossal popularity, the MCU movies have also acquired prominent detractors. Prior to watching the entire MCU, I would have probably agreed with Scorsese, Coppola and Felix (here is his “controversial” video on “I don’t like Marvel movies”).

“Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” – Martin Scorsese

"Martin was kind when he said it's not cinema. He didn't say it's despicable, which I just say it is." – Francis Ford Coppola

Parts of it are true, on the basis where the entire plot lines are predictable and it’s not the kind of cinema I learned to love as well. Marvel movies usually follow the same backbone. This is a huge reason why some cinephiles don’t like them, because the mystery is gone and it’s all obvious. After watching all of them in a 3-week streak, I could pretty much sum up the Marvel movie plot line into this:

The protagonist is in a helpless or vulnerable position.

The protagonist meets someone who can help them.

The protagonist works hard to get to his pre-final form and along with it, learns to fight in the name of eradicating the bad guys. 

The protagonist finds out that her/his master is not all-good.

Chaos but then they forgive and understand the master.

2-3 battle fights, the last one is usually the peak battle where we see the protagonist in final form.

I like movies that tackle more about realism. I like seeing actors play roles that depict humanity as humans. I’m not a huge fan of special effects or super powers either. When Scorsese said that they are “not cinema”,  I understood it because there are no intricacies or space for a different form of expression when you’re doing mega franchise films that are meant to sell to the general public. Which brings me to another point, that MCU is largely a business profit. These movies are made by mega corporations in the film industry, and it might also hinder other smaller filmmakers from showing their films if a titanic franchise is showing on the same week as theirs. Comic book fans are enormous in numbers which is why there is such a huge following for these movies even if they use the same plot lines all throughout. Humans are slaves for nostalgia, and people like to see the characters they have read and admired during their childhood come to life. Because of that, these corporations will try to capitalize on that and make more movies for as long as they can, and in a sense, you can see that they might be doing it only for the sake of money and not of art any longer. This is what the disparagers would say; that there is very little artistic values to these films because they are made to be sold, not appreciated for its artistry. 

“Many of our grandfathers thought all gangster movies were the same, often calling them “despicable”. Some of our great grandfathers thought the same of westerns, and believed the films of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Sergio Leone were all exactly the same. I remember a great uncle to whom I was raving about Star Wars. He responded by saying, “I saw that when it was called 2001, and, boy, was it boring!” Superheroes are simply today’s gangsters/cowboys/outer space adventurers. Some superhero films are awful, some are beautiful. Like westerns and gangster movies (and before that, just MOVIES), not everyone will be able to appreciate them, even some geniuses. And that’s okay.” – James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy Director

Here’s my two cents on this whole hullabaloo. Art is expressed in different ways. Just because something is popular does not mean that you should hate it or feel as if it lacks creative value. For one, I think that if the Norsemen would see the Thor films, their jaws would drop. Art in these movies is seen through the elaborate special effects and costumes. A lot of people work behind the scenes to make this kind of art form. They are not any less of an artist. The effects are wonderful, amazing and beautiful. Sure, they don’t have meandering plot lines or mysteries that are meant to make you think. But they are able to show art in a way that is along with the times, showing the capabilities of what computer generated imagery could be. It gives us the fantasy that otherwise would not be achievable in real life (for all I care, my favorite scenes are seeing Spiderman glide across the buildings of New York).

These movies are intended for children and teenagers (adults are there for the sake of nostalgia or lighthearted entertainment, I guess?). For kids, it inspires them that they can be anything they want to be. For teenagers, it might be a good footing for their moral compasses. For me, it just inspired me to get fit (hehe). My point is, these movies are made to cater to a particular type of audience, and the others are there just for the spectacle. If all the movies were Scorsese or Coppola, what would the kids watch in the theaters? Kids would not understand “Taxi Driver” nor would be a good foundation for their morals. It was a classic and it deserves the reputation it has, but after only a certain age will you be able to appreciate it, and only if you had a particular knack for appreciating films. MCU movies are made for people who just want to have a good time; you don’t have to like high-brow or art-house movies to understand it, and that’s all there is to it. It’s made for entertainment, what’s so wrong with that?

And the actors – a lot of them played the characters so well which made me realize that taking on a superhero role does not lessen your credibility as an actor. My particular favorites are Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. (bonus points for Anthony Hopkins, his range, man, his range). They were able to bring their roles to life in such a distinct way that it would be hard to never associate them as superheroes, which of course, is a double-edged sword. As a starting actor, that could be a bubble that is hard to get out of. For example, Tom Holland as Spiderman; people will always associate him as that, and how many of you has actually seen the movies he has done aside from MCU? It might be hard for him to bridge his career from being a huge franchise film protagonist into doing films to his own preference. MCU movies make the popularity and the money; indie films – not as much. 

I don’t think that the existence of MCU is throwing away the spotlight from smaller filmmakers. Because back then, I simply chose not to see MCU movies because I was not interested. People will find ways to support art that they like, and just because MCU existed, it did not hinder me from looking for movies that I like. The cinema is made by individuals who like to create movies. There are different ways to express them. There are different subscribers to different genres. To each their own. But then again, I am not working in the film industry, so I can’t speak for them, I can only say what it’s like for a movie buff like me.

These are the movies that make up people’s childhood. These are characters that gives reason for people to bond together. When Tony died, the entire world felt like they lost a father. If it’s able to touch lives as much as any other film, why should we discriminate against it? Love is love, after all.

[digitalbounce-digitalsound]

My in-depth analysis of why I left the Kpop fandom.

Please be aware, this may touch on sensitive topics.

As most of my  followers may know, I have been in the Kpop fandom for many years (Since 2006 to be exact) which means I have seen a lot, A LOT, of shit. I have had nearly my entire life controlled by Kpop and by about 2010 I completely moved away from more normal music.

Since I started secondary school I was bullied for my taste in music, I never thought anything of it because as I still believe, music is music and nothing is wrong with safe creative influence and inspiration. But the thing was, this music, this fandom had me so deluded and so removed from myself that I didn't see it was destroying me, inside and out.

After I was in the fandom for around 4 years, I was getting more and more obsessed with kpop, keeping track of the idols, watching their MV's obsessively, hoarding albums and putting up high defences for when someone made fun of them. Up until 2019 when I dropped the fandom completely, I managed to spend over £4000 on Kpop merch, be it albums, clothing, food, concerts. It was bad and a huge waste of money.

The Kpop fandom is a toxic place to be with people constantly pushing you to like certain groups, with battles around which fandom is better, which group is better between fans. Fans will discriminate against you for the way you look, the way you dress. If you don’t meet their standards they will find a way to push you away. They are all entitled and many think that stalking and giving idols zero personal space is perfectly acceptable.

Kpop music has no real meaning to it and is completely lacking when it comes down to personal messages (Bar the ones that have been self-written by the idols themselves) Kpop is just as bland and emotionless as the people that listen to it as the fans attach meanings to the songs where there are none. They don’t see that all of the music is extremely generic about money, women, men, being in a relationship and looking perfect. It is extremely sexist, concreted in gender binaries that make quite literally no sense and don’t have any soul behind them.

I guarantee that many if not all the idols that don’t write their own material, hate their songs with a passion but have to put up a plastic perfect mask to hide it. There have been so many horrible things that happen inside the genre that fans just ignore. Pretend don’t happen and it is horrible.

Because of Kpop I ended up becoming disgusted with myself, Kpop made me see flaws that weren't there, it made me want to look "Just like my idols". The impossibly thin, obviously unhealthy idols, and I did, gaining body dysmorphia and an eating disorder to boot. It led to me becoming extremely unhealthy, I would barely eat and listen too much at the insults thrown my way which did nothing but make me more self-conscious.

The constant struggle between wanting to look pretty and not wanting to kill myself was extremely difficult to deal with. Kpop made me shy, it made me reserved and not want to talk. It made me aim for dreams in the wrong way. I wanted to become a translator since I was very small so that I could help governments converse with each other and maybe help countries understand each other. That dream was changed with a want to become a translator to "Translate for my oppas" and become a concert translator or a TV show translator. I want to do seamstress work on the side, originally I wanted to do it to make costumes for Broadway productions, maybe cosplay for characters as well. That dream too, was ruined by Kpop. Making me want to do seamstress work to make stage outfits for my "Oppas and Eonnies." 

All of my dreams have been ruined by Kpop, my body too. To this day I still get confused about why I am doing certain things or why I am eating this or that because it will make me fat.

Because of the constant barrage of hate coming from my own brain, my own friends (Who consequently ended up liking Kpop), from my own family and people who I thought was close to me. I ended up thinking that the only way to escape from all of the hate was to kill myself. I became suicidal, I hated myself, I have scarred my leg so badly that I am scared to wear shorts. I constantly wore long sleeves to cover the marks on my arms, I turned in on myself and became scared to talk to people incase they bullied me or shouted at me. I grew more dependant on Kpop and I'm not proud to admit it but I ended up fetishizing Asian people, it was not a good time in my life, I felt like I could change my life, marry someone who could give me child on the inside of Kpop, it was disgusting but at the time, I didn't see it.

I had no one to openly talk to about what I was going through, nowhere to go but down at the time. I ended up doing performing arts at college, hoping that I could be recruited by an agency and meet my idols, be my idols, I thought I could get somewhere with performance. It helped, but not in the way I would have expected. I became more confident and even though I was still being bullied for my likes, bullied for things that happened in school, I continued. I kept at performance. started liking more Japanese Pop/Rock, I listened to my struggling brain instead of my aching obsessed heart and it led me to become friends with C.

She is into Kpop like me, she understood what I wanted, she understood the Asian fever, we became close friends, close friends very quickly. She lived near to me at the time and would invite me over for Kpop sessions, to have fun making Korean food, singing along to Kpop songs, to learn Korean together. At the time, I thought it was brilliant to have someone like me around but low and behold, I didn't see what she was doing to me in the meantime. I didn't know that she was controlling me.

She kept me interested with stories of becoming a teacher, this would have been the perfect way into Korea. It made so much sense, if I became a teacher I could get into Korea and live in the same place as them. Now and then I would get a small spark of realisation that C was not listening, that she didn't care about anyone but herself but I still ignored it. After I finished my Dance BTEC I decided to work for a while, gain money before looking more into becoming a teacher.

Something that you should know about me is that I am a very dependant person. Due to years of being bullied and shouted at, being constantly told I'm wrong and stupid, I rely on other people to know when I have done good, to know when I can celebrate without it coming off as me getting excited over something insignificant. I rely a lot on other people for my happiness. Emotion isn't my strong-suit so I have to surround myself with happy people who can help me see that I am a good person, who can help me with how to display emotion in a normal way.

C did not seem to realise this throughout our whole friendship and would never try to help when my emotional state started dropping, she wouldn't help me understand what the correct amount of emotion is, what grade is good and what isn't. We started a higher education course together, C basically clinging to me but my dependant ass didn't notice and clung back since she was the only other person who liked Kpop that I knew. During the course I had time to think about what I actually wanted to do. Being part of the English literature course made me remember my dream of translation, in the psychology course I learned more about myself, about how my anxiety works, how my manic depression effects my state of mind. I learned about so many different and interesting things that my brain started to click, I started to realise that I didn't like Kpop, I was obsessed with it.

I was obsessed and infatuated, Kpop was my unhealthy coping method which I didn't see. Kpop was the thing that was hurting me the most. At this time, I was still unable to let go. I still couldn't stop myself. When we applied to Universities somewhere in the back of my head my brain was telling me to apply for another course, and I did. whilst C applied for teaching courses and Korean I applied for nearly entirely teaching and Korean courses but snuck in an application for Japanese and International Business.

I felt like I had to sneak at that point because of her becoming overbearing and controlling, making me feel like the only place I could be was right behind her, following her the whole time.

In some fucked twist of fate me and her got into the same university, her on a Korean and tesol course and me on Japanese and Int Business. The small light in the back of my head was still telling me that it was still twisted, that I should not be how I am. That obsessing over Kpop isn't right but I still didn't listen, thinking that Kpop was the right place to be.

I should have seen what she was doing to me when she came to my Bass Practice at one point and heard me play only to weeks later suggest I don’t bring my Bass to Uni as it would “Distract me” yet she brought her PlayStation. She also tried to deter me away from normal music both at the time and during my time around her at University.

Now, I would never try to fully get rid of that time in my life, I would much rather just ignore it as I made many great friends through Kpop (C not being one of them) and I had a lot of fun at the concerts I went to.

Funnily enough, it was religion that actually jogged me out of this freakstorm called Kpop. I always understood the idea of a higher power, of something more than chemicals but less than a "god" It ended up with me finding Satanism (Laveyan) I realised that Religion is only as powerful as you make it. Obsessions, whilst good, are bad in large quantities, you must indulge yourself but too much indulgence leads to greed which is exactly what happened to me. I got too greedy and neglected the rest of my life.

It started small, I would listen to more heavy metal (thinks like Rammstein and Slipknot) and would practice bass more, listen to Kpop less and work on my course and my grades. Of course this slightly strained my friendship with C, I still listened to Kpop, went to the events at the uni, had a fun time at most of them. It wasn't until mid-year that I started seeing the error of my ways.

We went to another Kpop club night that was part of the uni. Because I was getting more used to normal music I could see people staring more, glancing at us with disgust because we knew older songs, because I wouldn't dance for certain groups. It was a small wakeup call, the feeling of being judged and bullied yet again by people nearing on 3 years younger than me was just a pain.

C had pointed a guy out to us during first year, his name is David, he is Korean and was a little bit of an ass (which was understandable due to the amount of Koreaboos he has had to deal with) I did think he was cute, he was a nice guy, liked music I liked but I was not attracted to him (Like I would have been when I was under that disgusting influence) so I just wanted to be his friend.

It started kicking off one night when C got upset over a what David thought was a joke, they both argued and shouted, I ended up as a go between, figuring out what happened, defending C and stopping David from hurting anyone. C took this as me taking David's side, proceeded to not listen to me, make me upset and with my horrible control over emotions, I started having a panic attack whilst shouting at her. She hugged me during my panic attack (A big no no because she was restraining me and giving me physical contact which I hate. Which she should have known being friends with me for 6 years) that made me pass-out, hit my head and get sent to the hospital with a concussion.

I had to pretend it wasn't her fault even though it killed me to do so. During my night in the hospital she managed to make it about her which really upset me. I ended up hanging around with my classmate/friend M after that. M was nice, she listened to me, her and E helped me realise that Kpop isn't all it's set up to be.

After that it went down hill with argues popping up a lot and for me, no escape since we lived together. I started getting disgusted by the Kpop nights with how obsessive and OTT the Kpop fans were, how horrible they were too. It all snapped one day when I just got my results back for an essay which I got a 1st in, I was over the moon but yet again, didn't know if it was good or not. When I showed people for confirmation that I could be happy I was met with jealous but very happy responses apart from C. The one person who was basically my jailer, who told me when it was okay to be happy or not, she responded with "Oh that's alright then I guess." and brushed it off like it was nothing.

It was then that it hit me she has been manipulating me for years, not giving me any real emotions to show. We were friends for 6 years and at that moment, all of the times she brushed me off or never let me talk, talked over me to speak about herself, it all came back. I was so disgusted and upset that I just stopped talking to her, I was too angry to talk to her and was worried that I may hurt her if I do talk.

She took offence to my silence and called me names, tried to force me to talk to her (Which is also bad because I do not react well to forced confrontation and most of the time lash out both physically and verbally) so I kept ignoring her to the point I felt too threatened to leave my room. It was horrible. I wasn't until she sent me a message telling me to act like an adult that I flipped.

No one, and I mean no one, calls me childish and gets away with it. That is the number 1 way to piss me off and get me to immediately cut ties.

I put in an application to move with the Uni due to being under threat and feeling unsafe. They moved me the next day. Whilst She was still in the flat, she didn't even notice me moving out. I was so disgusted with that.

After that, I met my new flatmates, none of them liked Kpop, they introduced me to nice music, better music which actually made me feel good, not infatuated. Happy. I could talk to them more about normal things. because of the lack of the obsession, my grades went up, I started making friends easier, my confidence went up.

After getting back into normal music, i started to realise how low-quality Kpop actually is. How disgustingly gendered it is and how sexist it is. Kpop ruined me but normal music made me realise who I am and how to become that person I always wished I was.

The only music I strictly don't listen to now is Rap, Kpop and Top-Chart Pop music.

Currently, I am a university student working towards my dream of becoming a government translator. I have prospects to work in Japan after I graduate and I am absolutely ecstatic about that. I cut out so many bad friends and managed to make myself feel more human again just by getting rid of a single music taste from my life.

 -Killian.

(If you’re going to spam me with hate and try to whine about how “Not all Kpop fans are like that” or “Kpop isn’t bad, you’re just stupid” and shit like that then you are just proving my point. If you come at me with a valid argument and actual valid points, I will explain my opinions and my side of the argument.)

BASICALLY, TREAT ME HOW YOU WANT TO BE TREATED.

Don’t be an asshole because I will just be an asshole back.

[jimlingss]

pt.2 of yesterday

I don’t want to flood people’s dashes, so hopefully answering your messages here will suffice!

anonymous asked: Hi! I wanted to tell you how much I love your work and how you make me enjoy every Monday thanks to your regular updates ! I saw a previous anon telling you how your writings lacks of emotion and I totally disagree with them... obviously everybody won’t like it but your stories just DON’T lack of love or emotion this is madness I want to thank you for publishing your amazing stories freely here for everyone to read. (Sorry if my English is weird I’m french ejfjekfjd)

“this is madness” LOL

You’re hilarious, anon. And your english is perfectly fine!!!

anonymous asked: Hello! Im the culinary student anon who sent you an ask a while ago and i saw you received an ask about the lack of emotion from your stories. I read kitchen romance and i actually really really like it and don’t quite understand how it lacks in emotions as I interpreted the stories more like the beginning of the oc and jin’s love story and they are only starting to open up to each other so i guess thats why anon might feel like it lacks romantic vibe from both of the characters. (1)

Anonymous said: Just want to tell you that you’re one of the best writer and ive been following you for 2/3 years now, you never failed to amaze me with your writings!! All your stories are so well written that i sometimes wonder how do you come up with such an amazing plot every single time and your stories are always nice to re-read and the effort you pour into creating your stories is also admirable (2)

while i was reading kitchen romance and ive only started s&c (currently on chapter 4) i can say that its pretty similar with how it is irl (and the part where we find out jk is an iu fans reminded me of my ex-crush whose also a culinary student, i would like to tell you a story about it but ill just waste your time lol) , just want to send you a few encouragement and love for you and your writings *sending virtual hugs* (3) -👩🏻‍🍳anon

You’re too kind, thank you (and also, welcome back!). I’ll be frank, there was a hot second I was considering taking down Kitchen Romance but I didn’t cause I don’t want my efforts of editing it to go to waste asdfghjkl. I can’t believe you’ve been sticking around me for so long :’) it’s always nice to know some folks stay. Anyway, I’m glad that Sugar and Coffee is pretty similar to how it works irl since I tried my best to do research. I definitely love a good storytime as well so don’t worry about wasting my time :>

Anonymous said: a good majority of your fics display an unfathomable amount of DEPTH. regarding character development. plot. even the shortest lines of dialogue reveal so much more to the character and unveil their true emotions. i personally think the more REALISTIC side of love may be perceived as 'bland.' ‘emotionless.’ whatever you want to call it. nothing’s wrong with portraying a relationship that isn’t overboard with a whole lot of tooth aching fluff or lowkey annoying pda. +1

Anonymous said: there’s nothing wrong with taking out a bit of emotion to fit the PERSONALITIES of the characters. some people out there don’t necessarily feel a lot of emotions. so it’s honestly not really a mistake if a story lacks it (unless it was unintentional). subtlety is an art that is hard to master, but you’ve done it! and to respond to the anon, sometimes, if you skim through a fic without reading every word the author intended for you to read, +2

Anonymous said: then it’s quite common to not feel the full extent of the emotions you were supposed to feel. just a thought but no hate. we’re all entitled to our opinions. but besides that, kina, you write on a vast scale ranging from hardcore angst to diabetes-inducing fluff. and you do it beautifully. sure there are some stories that are better than others, but i believe a LOT of it comes down to personal preference and taste. +3

Anonymous said: even if you are feeling creatively limited, you work hard to continue writing for your readers, and your determination and diligence wILL NOT GO UNNOTICED. i just want you to know that you write amazingly. your syntax is practically immaculate, your characters feel real… the endings of your stories always wrap something up and the strings are tied—even if it isn’t necessarily a happy ending. you can convey hundreds of different characters through WORDS. +4

Anonymous said: i’ll have you know that it’s hard to write. it’s even harder to write about people who aren’t YOU. so as someone who looks up to you a lot, i want to commend you for your writing. some of your fics that i read on a monthly basis: tears of a villain, a piece of the moonlight, head over heels to hell, ghost in the machine, a mark of betrayal, a kiss of poison, until yesterday, the truth between us and arcadia. +5

Anonymous said: to be fair, there were way more fics but i didn’t want to make this message any longer than it already is LOL. i find these pieces wonderful. heart wrenching. and SO DAMN EMOTIONAL IT PLAGUES MY MIND FOR DAYS. also you’re literally one of the few fucking people who can use the em dash correctly. thank you so much for sharing your talent with us! +6

Oh my goodness. I don’t even know what to say, anon. This is a whole damn thesis and it’s about my fics :’> You know, it’s easy to brush off fanfiction as a ‘whatever’ thing and indeed, it isn’t that big of a deal compared to some things in the world. But I really do take all my stories seriously and put forth a lot of effort - so to see it recognized and appreciated it makes me beyond happy. It’s good to know that my efforts haven’t gone to waste at all and that there are people out there who will support me no matter the endeavours I take. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means to me.

((Also, honestly I picked up the em dash usage after I wrote The Truth Between Us with gukyi who used it. I’m pretty sure I’m not using it right but to hear that I am, god damn that’s a breath of relief right there))

backtobleuside submitted: Are you kidding me!? Your stories don’t lack love at all. They’re the kind of fics that you read, soak it all in and then come back for more. I’ve cried so much when I read Beyond reach, Boo-lieve in me, A piece of the moonlight, His name, Tell me lies etc. etc, and also laughed and felt the emotions of not just the OC, but also the other characters. Kitchen Romance was also so fluffy and sweet and personally, I don’t think that anything needs to be added to it. Anyway, your fics do not lack emotion—you’re probably the first author I send a message to because your stories impacted me a lot and left a strong impression on me. I even imagine your characters as real people who have real lives that continue on even after the story is done.

asdfghjkl thank you :’) I see you every week and sometimes several times at that. I really appreciate your consistent feedback and following. You never fail to send me a message too which I appreciate a lot. I’m glad you’re enjoying everything I’m producing!!

youngfleurever said: Would just like to say that your fics do in fact make me violently sob to the boy where my eyes are so swollen I have trouble opening them the next day and I wake up feeling like there’s sawdust in my mouth because I’m dehydrated.

oh my god. please keep yourself hydrated hahahahhaha more importantly, how do you know what sawdust in your mouth is like. WHAT have you been doing LOL

Anonymous said: I’ve felt emotions that I’ve never felt before when I read your fics.... so as a person that has read your entire masterlist, I DO NOT think that your fics lack emotion.... I hope you don’t feel disheartened because you’re one of my favourite writers, not just on tumblr but like, evER 💓💓💓💓💓💓

Please, even if I was disheartened, the overwhelming amount of feedback and praise has completely overridden it :’)

joonie-mono said: when tumblr deletes the first part of your ask 🙄😌✌️

LOOOOOOOL

haylo4ever said: Sorry had to add my 10 cents. You're such a talented writer,,, I WISH I could write a smol smol 1/1000000000 that you write,,, like I remember when I followed you bc I was in awe of your writing.... I mean?? Sure maybe not every fic hits it with someone but it's just ridic to name drop (a friend nonetheless) when you're all extremely talented writers.

Trust me, writing comes with practice!! I should honestly just tattoo that on me. God knows my first fanfic was absolutely GARBAGE. I didn’t know pacing, didn’t know that I should separate chunks of paragraphs, how to write dialogue or describe scenes properly. I went in blind. Even my second, third and fourth fanfic was garbage. You could definitely get to “my level” or even far surpass it with enough dedication and practice. I mean I’ve been writing for four years, so thank GOD there’s been improvement. I wouldn’t be natural if there wasn’t. But clearly the more you practice, the better you improve! That applies to anything.

The me in ten years will certainly be better now.

Anonymous said: Hi kina! I’m here in support of kitchen romance! I actually didn’t feel like it was missing a ton of fluffy moments (and I say that as a huGE LOVER OF FLUFF) but the story was just as entertaining in the whole chase of them getting closer to each other! It’s honestly one of my favorite one shots I’ve read lately and I’m not saying that lightly! Also, that anon that said your work lacks emotion has probably not read like half of your masterlist bc oO MAN QUEEN OF MAKING ME CRY- black heart anon🖤

Thank you :’]

Anonymous said: Ok I’m very offended wow the audacity!Specially coming for my baby kitchen romance like that story made me feel so much and it’s only one of the many fics you have written kina like I’m literally baffled like dynasty has made me cry scream happy and hot all at the same time and I was literally just thinking about it that whole weekend and this anon has the nerve to say your stories lack emotions?When you are literally the queen of show casing all types of emotions in your stories!You did it all

Anonymous said: Also 😭😭😭😂😂😩hoooooooow and whereeee did they see any lack of love and emotions like have you read jungle park???? Inside my mind??? FREAKING SUGAR AND COFFEE (like this fic is made with love and I- ) Actually you know what , just read the whole masterlist😩😩💗💗💗

LOL tbh I didn’t expect Dynasty to receive the love it has. I was actually kind of wary when posting it cause it’s kind of Wild. 

bangtans-peaceful-piegon said: just gotta say u handled that whole anon thing so well which not only makes me admire u as a writer but even more as a person :] (i mean i knew u were gr8 before the whole deal but yeah love ya 💛)

tbh, I’m not sure how well I handled it cause I was flooded with over 30 messages afterwards (evidently) ;_; which I love and appreciate but I’m not really as hurt as some people think hahaha criticism should be received well but it’s still hard not to take personally tbh. It’s gonna have to be something I work on or perhaps it’ll be one of those things that I’ll take better with age.

[thej13579]

Paper Mario Sticker Star: Really That Bad?

This will be the first in a series that I have made called Really That Bad? It's where I judge a negatively reviewed product to see if it's really as bad as people say it is.

If you have your own suggestions for Really That Bad? or you just want to give out your own opinions on either this critique or the game itself, comment down below.

Paper Mario is a series that I really liked growing up. From its humble roots as a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG to its generally considered superior sequel in The Thousand Year Door to even its weird diversion into platforming with Super Paper Mario, I considered these three games to be some of the best Mario games ever made.

But starting with the game that I’m discussing today, the Paper Mario subseries has gone in a different direction that has not been received all that well. Considering that Paper Mario: The Origami King just came out recently, I have been wondering if Paper Mario: Sticker Star deserves all the hate it gets, or is there something worthwhile in the direction that the subseries is undergoing. Let’s find out if I think Paper Mario: Sticker Star is Really That Bad.

Story and Characters

Let’s start with the story. A basic rundown is that Bowser has disrupted the beloved Sticker Fest by causing the Sticker Comet to explode. Now Royal Stickers and pieces of the comet have been flung far and wide, and it's up to Mario and his ally Kersti to set things right by recovering them. That’s basically the entire story. A basic Mario story with nothing aside from the paper theme making it stand out. 

Sadly, the characters don’t come out much better. Nearly all of them are basically bland and generic with very little in terms of personality or character design making them stand out from each other. (The Toads in of themselves have become a meme because they’re all the same exact character model) Even Kersti, an ally that follows you on your entire journey, stays static from beginning to end. Characters like Mizzter Blizzard, who actually does have a fairly sympathetic reason for what he does with him wanting to live longer and not melt, are very few and far between.

Overall, the story and characters lack any real charm from the other games and it comes across as a generic Mario story at the end of the day. While the first Paper Mario game had this exact same plot with the stars instead of the stickers, there were several things making that game stand out with its unique and memorable cast of characters and you also get to play as Peach every now and then to help Mario on his quest which was always rather nice. Not a particularly great start to this analysis.

Graphics

The graphics definitely are one of the highlights of the game. It’s fairly bright and colorful and the Nintendo 3DS takes good advantage of the fact that the world is paper. Some may dislike the extra emphasis on paper compared to the previous three games but I think it does add a little charm to the game that is sorely needed.

My main problem with the art direction essentially boils down to the locations; mainly, how generic they are. The designers fall back on various Mario locations that have been done to death by the time this game came out: Grasslands, deserts, jungles and finally Bowser’s castle. You take out the paper style, there will be nothing distinguishing it from most Mario platformers in the franchise and that’s a shame because the game actually looks pretty good on the Nintendo 3DS.

On a side note, I don’t really care that much for the 3D function of the Nintendo 3DS so I’m not taking that into account when evaluating the graphics.

Overall, the graphics, while good at taking advantage of the paper theme, suffered from a lack of originality when it comes to its locations (a flaw that later Paper Mario games did fix). It’s good but not great.

Sound

I’ll admit that the soundtrack is actually pretty good. It does have plenty of great tracks and the jazz motif throughout most of them really make it memorable in my eyes. Special mention goes to the main battle theme, Boo Night Fever, the Gooper Blooper battle themes, and the final boss themes.

I honestly don’t have much to say in this section. I just find this a very good soundtrack and I bet even most of the people who hate Sticker Star will agree with me on this.

Gameplay

Now, here’s the main part that many people have been criticizing this game for; the gameplay.

Let’s start with some positives. I liked the exploration aspect. I liked roaming around the areas, looking for stickers, solving puzzles. It really does feel like I’m accomplishing something whenever I found a secret passage that leads me to a different goal than when I was going down the beaten path.

There’s also the paperize power where you can reveal areas where you can place stickers down to enable certain events whether it is simply placing a sticker to make a ? box appear or a Thing that can really affect the environment, allowing you to progress further into the level..

That leads to the Things that you find by looking around the levels and I kind of like how they can affect the environment such as using the Faucet to fill up a dry oasis in the desert world and I especially like the animations that are played when you use them in battle. My personal favorites are the Goat, the Turkey and the Water Gun with how fun and bizarre they are. Sadly, they are not perfect for a major reason that I’ll get to in a bit.

Then we get to the battle system and here’s where most of my criticisms on the game design start to pour in. For the most part, it seems fairly similar to the RPG battle system from the first two games. You and your enemy take turns attacking each other and you have to get their health points down to zero to win the battle. Sounds exactly like the first two games... but that’s where the stickers come in.

Stickers come in a fair amount of variety with various forms of jumps, hammer attacks, and items. The main problem with them comes in the fact that all of them are consumables, even just the regular jump and hammer attacks. If you ran out of them, your only options are to either wait to die, or run away. Granted, you usually find enough stickers around the area just by looking around so it never really became a problem for me during my playthroughs. But the fact that it’s possible is not good game design.

The idea of your basic actions being entirely reliant on consumables would have been bad enough on its own, but then there’s the fact that, unlike nearly every other RPG ever, you get no experience from fighting enemies. What do you get from enemies? Coins and stickers. Two things that you can easily find on your own throughout the levels and you get plenty of the former the first time you actually complete a level. Not a very good incentive to battle if I say so myself. You are basically better off just avoiding enemies and saving your stickers for scripted encounters and boss fights.

And here’s where we get to what I consider the worst part of the game, the boss fights. The main issue can be boiled down to the fact that they are puzzle bosses with too much emphasis on the puzzle part. They are so powerful with their high health points ranging up to the hundreds and attack points they are all but guaranteed to wipe the floor with unless you have the proper Thing (and without a walkthrough, you probably don’t). If you do have the proper Thing, the boss quickly becomes a joke, hence the puzzle boss with too much emphasis on the puzzle. This is the flaw that I was referring to earlier when it comes to the Things. You have very little knowledge of what Thing you need for the fight until you’re already fighting the boss. Without a walkthrough, the only way to know is to die and possibly get a hint on what Thing you actually need.

To best describe what I’m talking about, let’s go with the very first boss, Megasparkle Goomba. To beat this boss, you have to fight the boss like normal until the sixteen Goombas that the boss is made out of reveal themselves and start to flip. From there you need one of two Things: Scissors or a Fan. Seems simple on paper (pun not intended). However, the main problem is that there is no indication that you need either of those Things to beat the boss. 

It’s far from the only example of this design issue at work and not the worst, the final boss takes that spot, but it’s a perfect example of how the Things work when it comes to bosses and how poorly designed the bosses in this game are. This is not helped by how the game actively discourages trial and error considering that, one; you only have a limited amount of space for stickers and Things take a huge chunk of space in your inventory. Two, they go away once they are used so you have to either buy them which costs quite a bit of coins, or you have to go to the place where you originally found them which can be long and tedious depending on the level.

Overall, the exploration aspect of the game is kind of fun with plenty of clever puzzles and platforming. But the battling system ranges from pointless at best to downright cryptic and poorly designed at worst. The gameplay is an extremely mixed bag ranging from pretty good to pretty bad.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

So, after all that, is Paper Mario: Sticker Star really that bad? Yeah… sort of.

I will admit that all the parts the game gets flack for do genuinely deserve all the criticism it gets and then some. The lack of emphasis on story and characters, the uncreative environments, and especially the battle system with its stupid reliance on consumable items to do anything in battle and lack of any good incentive to actually fight enemies along with the awful bosses. Aside from the art style, which I do like, the game lacks the charm that the first two Paper Mario games, and even Super Paper Mario, had. The fact that the very first Paper Mario did this exact same plot but did it better with more creative characters, environments and better game design just makes Sticker Star look that much worse by comparison.

But, I can’t find myself to really hate this game and that’s for several reasons. First, when I’m not battling any enemies and I’m just travelling the world, overcoming obstacles and solving puzzles, Sticker Star can actually be pretty fun. There may be some issues with that, mainly when Things are involved, but I’m still having a good time just exploring the levels, uncovering whatever secrets they may have.

There’s also the graphics and music which are still top notch with the extra emphasis on paper in the former and the excellent jazz motif throughout most of the tracks in the latter. The game overall, looks and sounds nice and it’s definitely a point in Sticker Star’s favor.

Overall, I wouldn’t call Paper Mario: Sticker Star a good game as it has too many flaws and inadequacies to push the overall product beyond okay. The game was rejected by most Paper Mario fans for fairly good reasons with its lower emphasis on writing and a poor battle system that gives the player very little reason to battle. But I think that the game does have some potential as an action-adventure sort of game. If the people at Nintendo are really that insistent on this direction for future games then I think that these are some of the things they should take into account if they really want to go in this direction. Perhaps The Origami King could take those criticisms into account?

[thattimdrakeguy]

I know I just literally posted a picture that Bendis posted on Instagram about Young Justice.

But it just bums me out how in general it seems like Young Justice is already the series Bendis cares the least about that he’s currently wrting. It’s now just that other thing he does, and all the hype has vanished from it already even just from the general fanbase.

No one even really cares that Tim’s getting a new name, if anything people are either heavily upset about the dumb decision, or simply “oh that’s neat, maybe, I suppose, I trust Bendis so I’ll see how it is” or at least from the general standpoints I’ve being seeing online, perhaps a pure “meh” in there, but I am sure there is at least one guy other than Bendis that is excited about it somewhere, because there’s always at least a few guys that’s excited about something no matter how the quality is for better or worse. However regardless, there was no build up towards the incredibly out of no where name change that has people scared, it’s a super sudden decision. The brand new costume for the apparent name change doesn’t fit his personalty because it’s gut wrenching-ly generic and absent of the personality the Gleason costume gave Tim again after years of costumes that never quite suited him. The hype is just missing, I mean I hate the decision to change Tim’s name in general, but even just for other peeps, in general a name change has typically implied importance, but no one seems to really give a crap about this besides the odd few I’ve seen. It’s mostly just pure disdain from those who’ve been paying attention and are aware of it.

People already probably forgot about Cassie’s interactions with Zeus in issue 2,  I mean heck, I have a feeling Bendis already forgot about it. Is that ever even gonna come back after being the biggest story in issue TWO of Young Justice? Or that just there because Bendis wanted to make Cassie important by putting her in issue 2, even if it goes no where and doesn’t do much of importance after the first arc (potentially anyways. I sure hope she’s important, she deserves it, and the second issue. Do not get me wrong). I’m so scared that it was only there for build up for a story that may never come into fruition.

Even though people were mad about it, I bet lots of people forgot Conner had a wife and a kid on Gemworld, because besides the first issue they appeared in they haven’t been important since and are already gone, probably to barely be brought up ever again, except maybe some possible flashbacks. Honestly I’d like flashbacks, I enjoyed them, but I have a feeling most people wouldn’t be excited about it because either they hated the random inclusion or they just forgot already and are instantaneously meh about it from lack of excitement.

When DC announced Young Justice was coming back the return was so hyped up by fans of the characters, the energy around the first revealed pieces of art for the series was insane, it was so exciting. It felt like it was going to entirely make up for the New 52 Teen Titans. All the character’s where back as they were, with modernized costumes that actually SUITED the characters instead of just bland “cool” costumes that I kept seeing and saw before.

Now it didn’t even take a full arc and people already don’t care anymore.

Gleason left, leaving an artist that doesn’t have an art style that feels like Young Justice to draw every new issue.

Story-lines are already being forgotten only a mighty 7 issues in.

No one’s excited for the new ones, people barely even react to hearing the new ones.

They’re already taking away the stuff that made people so hyped up to begin with.

and Bendis himself barely brings it up as much anymore. He’s already onto the next thing just to leave Young Justice behind besides for the fact he continues to write it for his job.

Those first few issues were amazing besides (mostly) insignificant problems to a large number of fans. Now even the fans are barely even talking about it anymore besides some casual “Oh I like Young Justice” and occasional fan art.

I’m not saying it can’t be better, and perhaps the stupid name change may still be a red herring. For all I know John Timms will get better at making the series feel like itself again and so forth, but it’s a heart crushing feeling about how it descended to such mediocre feelings this fast.

It’s not even really bad, just meh, and in the latest issue they were already struggling to give all the members something to say. We still don’t have a status quo. It just feels like something Bendis accepted to do because he liked the source and he knew that the fans would be excited, and he had a couple ideas for it, so he decided to do it and write his idea. Then stuff kept happening, and he didn’t put the most thought into his ideas and stuff just feels like it already dropped the ball.

Bendis is a writer I’m still a fan of, I still like the older stuff he’s written, and despite me hating his story choice for Tim, he’s still the guy who’s written Tim the best in the past decade. None of the other writers even come close. So I can’t complain there. I’m only complaining about the stuff I genuinely have a problem with. He isn’t Lobdell/Tynion levels of crappy Tim writing, but when it seemed like such a perfect match of writer and character to me after reading Ultimate Spider-Man, it feels having such a major decision that sucks so harshly, come so fast, is something that sucked a part of my soul out a bit.

It’s like there’s enough small problems that add up more than anything else for the majority of it.

There isn’t tons of giant problems all the time like there was in Super Sons (another series I was looking forward too, although not nearly as much) where things were going wrong from the beginning with logic issues, tone issues, out of character moments, and a contrived/forced nature. Like Super Sons let me down way harsher than Young Justice, and Young Justice had way more hype for me because of the characters involved with it. So it’s not exactly the same situation that way, even though they’re both series I’ve talked about how they’ve let me down before. It’s just different.

Young Justice besides a lot of plot convenience meet ups and Gleason struggling to draw Tim initially (which in issue 4, he drew Tim the best he’s looked in literal years), it was a pretty solid series straight from the beginning. The character’s felt in-character, the banter felt very Young Justice, the art-style was really well-fitted to the energy Young Justice has, it was pretty great besides the small things that were easily excusable given everything else involved with making it work.

It was one ball being dropped after another. Cassie’s currently irrelevant plot build up with Zeus, Conner’s already forgotten family (that people didn’t even want and hated), Bart has no plot going on at all, Tim’s getting a name change with no build up or logic behind it yet as of now with a single issue in no way gonna give a satisfying reason that doesn’t feel completely contrived, and I’m pretty sure they just plain forgot to tell us Keli Quintela’s name originally. I wouldn’t be shocked if people reading this didn’t even know who I was talking about by saying Keli Quintela because it wasn’t brought up and then suddenly it was. Not that I’m complaining about it being revealed, the name is absolutely lovely.

Personally, I’m honestly super hoping that there’s a big boom moment for the Young Justice creative team where they’re like “oh we really have to try harder, this is bombing more and more” and they work towards fixing up all the problems, but with Young Justice missing a month, I’m pretty sure the series has already been dumped into obscurity, and it’s breaking my heart.

But at least it’s selling moderately okay, maybe that’ll keep up. Maybe that’ll motivate more effort in the creative team’s side.

[squidshadow]

2, 4, 11, 12, 13?

this got long bc i hate myself, here

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

patchwork, hands down. what a shitshow lmao

4) favorite character you’ve written

mmmm even though patchwork Bad, boko and sunlight were two of my favs for very similar reasons. theyre fun to write imo. outside of the pw realm, maybe dana? or… dana as she appears in eight adapts, is a better way to say it. (patchwork Bad)

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

i guess grammar… maybe pacing? and characterization, to a lesser degree. 

12) your weaknesses as an author

i feel like my word choice is often kind of odd? not odd in a quirky cool way but odd in the way that optical illusion of obama is where his eyes are flipped upside down and you cant quite figure out whats wrong with it. i also notice my stuff is often incredibly dialogue-heavy and im bad at dealing with especially heavy scenes. or… i can write my way into a heavy scene but im emotional constipation squared so im really bad at digging my way out of it. again with word choice, its bland and i find myself reusing the same actions over and over again. im trying to fix that but…

im scared im also just recycling the same plotthreads over and over again, if that makes sense? or just reusing the same personality for all characters, leading to them seeming especially 1d. im sure they already seem one-dimensional but i doubt the lack of variety is really helping much.

im bad at thinking of beginnings and endings to a chapter due to my writing style of Chunks.  i think in a chapter those are my two weakest parts

im sure the plots of chapters ive written seem kinda flimsy or “saved by an ungodly amount of coincidence!” which again isnt great. anyone with more critical thinking skills than a box of crayons can probably tear apart works ive made to shreds in seconds.

and i think that my plots are sort of recycled a lot as well, only within the story. a character will develop and then cycle back to square one all over again.

i fear im not creative either and that im simply just stealing from more successful people. eight adapts is really just a glorified op24 knockoff tbqh, im surprised at the reception its gotten. i think its sort of undeserved.

grammar is another thing i struggle with despite being a native english speaker and a monolingual one at that. my grammar is good enough to get by but there are mistakes there that i shouldnt be making if i ever want to actually go anywhere with writing which, again, i doubt i will. you really just have to be the best at something to make it anywhere in an art field, you know? its a silly dream for me. ive never taken a writing class and i cant meet deadlines worth shit (which you all know). everything ive learned is just self-taught since i can count the amount of friends i have on my nipples and i dont want to annoy them more than i really do. its a hobby and a way for me to just fantasize and vent really.

OH ACTUALLY THAT LEADS ME TO A NEW POINT w similar chars. i just project super hard onto them. im sure they seem immature because of that. it doesnt matter how mature i THINK i am, im really still 16 and i dont know much about the world at all. another thing to add on the “horrible at dealing with emotions” list i guess. you should write off experience, i guess, which i do, kind of. but all of the romantic happy bits are just hopeless fantasy. i dont see them getting any better nor do i see myself ever dating anyone. im kind of a mess you see but at least ill have more time to write barely decent fics about homosexual squids.

i dont know. i dont think im a bad writer, but im nowhere near good. im just decent. thats all.

13) your strengths as an author

im scared of really saying anything here because no matter what i think im good at theres going to be someone better than me, you know? theres no point in claiming youre good at something unless youre the best, otherwise youll just be getting peoples hopes up.

if i had to choose, i think dialogue, but only about 55% of it. humor to a much lesser degree since im not really that funny but its one of the few parts of my writing i can sort of tolerate.

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

NEWSTATESMAN: “It’s cool that some people hate my show”: St Vincent on fan backlash and Chinese massages

The singer messages me on Twitter the next day. “Dude!” she says, “I’m sorry I was a cock.”

By Alexandra Pollard

9 November 2017

Maybe if St Vincent and I had got massages together, things would have been different. If we’d gone for a hike in the scorching midday sun of Burbank, California, or sat in a small pink box getting high off paint fumes, perhaps we’d have had a better time. She’s done those things with other journalists during this press cycle, in an effort to disrupt the stale dynamic of interviews  –  of which, she told BBC Music from inside that newly painted box, she’s done “a million”. As it is, we’re sitting in her room on the 12th floor of a London hotel, and things aren’t going well.

St Vincent, AKA Annie Clark, is in the early stages of a 37-date world tour in support of her new album, Masseduction. The shows –  which she’s doing without a band, opting instead to accompany her own fearsome guitar with rearranged backing tracks  – are fascinating, sometimes exhilarating affairs. She doesn’t throw herself around the stage in a self-flagellating fervour, as she did a few years ago on the Digital Witness tour, nor this time has she employed the shuffling, robotic choreography of Annie-B Parson.

Instead, Clark exposes herself in a different way –  by carrying the show alone. As a blue curtain gradually pulls back to reveal nothing in particular, she places herself in various positions across the stage. Sometimes she faces the audience, sometimes she stands side-on as if utterly unaware of their presence. At one point she curls up in the foetal position on the floor. The idea, she says, is to plot the trajectory from fear to freedom.

“Some people loved it and were brought to tears and thought it was the best thing they’d ever seen, and then some people were incensed by it,” Clark explains. She was in Manchester last night, London the night before. Now, she’s draped over a black chaise-longue, demonstrably exhausted, her feet spilling on to the armchair beside her (when I ask if she’s tired, she says flatly, “I don’t care, my emotions are irrelevant.”)

Does she mind that the shows, particularly her decision to play without a live band, have received such a polarised response? “Whatever,” she says. “I think it’s cool that some people hate it.” She rolls her neck around to glance at me –  the semi-horizontal position she’s taken has thus far meant minimal eye contact. “Did you hate the show?”

Not at all, I tell her. I really liked it. Then I add, in an effort to avoid bland effusiveness and because she’s still looking at me with a sceptical eyebrow raise, that perhaps I found it more intriguing than moving, and anyway it would have been hard to beat the experience I had seeing her at End Of The Road festival a few years ago. I realise too late that my words have landed with a leaden thud.

“Great,” Clark says. “It’s the third show. I mean, when I played End Of The Road, that was one of the last dates I did. Tours take a while to alchemise.” She pauses. “Also, if a rapper got up on stage and didn’t have a live band, which most of them don’t, no one would be bummed at all. Why is the assumption that I need to have a live band onstage for something to be authentic? It’s about the management of expectation, and I think it’s similar to people thinking that they have a glass of milk, and then they drink it and it’s Sprite. ‘I don’t like this.’ Actually you like Sprite too, you just weren’t expecting it.”

St. Vincent has made a career out of giving people something they weren’t quite expecting. Her music is bold and melodic  – but only if you catch it at certain angles, like a magic eye book that only makes sense if you squint the right way. With each album since her chamber pop debut Marry Me a decade ago, she’s pushed her sound further towards a place between beauty and ugliness, aggression and vulnerability, adding scuzzy synth layers, distorted guitar riffs so heavy they drag half a second behind the beat, and lyrics both profoundly moving and a little grotesque  –  images of severed fingers, for example, that anchor a tale of drunken heartbreak.

Masseduction, her fifth LP (or sixth, if you count her David Byrne collaboration Love This Giant), is a poignant, kinky masterpiece. It’s a work of staggering frankness, with anthemic pop melodies that float atop crunchy riffs and gasping synths, as Clark’s fingers wring out every peculiarly arresting sound a guitar can make. She has a pithy tagline for each of her albums. 2011’s Strange Mercy was housewife on pills; her self-titled record was near-future cult leader; this one is dominatrix at the mental institution.

She sings of loss and depression, of BDSM and pill popping, vacuous cities and self-destructive urges. Her voice is pure and resplendent, but it also creaks, stretches into a sigh or plummets to a growl. On “Hang On Me”, as she pleads with someone, “Please, oh please don’t hang up yet,” a million unsaid things pour into the cracks in her voice.

“If you want to know about my life,” she told fans in a statement when the album was announced – aware both of her historic inscrutability and of the increased thirst for personal revelations her relationship with supermodel Cara Delevingne had prompted – “listen to this record”.

Clark performing this Summer. Photo: Getty

In the past, Clark has recoiled at the suggestion that her songs are diaristic, saying that such an idea “presupposes –  in a kind of sexist way  –  this idea that women lack the imagination to write about anything other than their exact literal lives.” Still, this record is a little different to the others. “It’s very close to my heart. It’s not literal, because if it was literal it wouldn’t be art, but you know, it’s very heart on sleeve.”

Is there a particular way she hopes people interpret it? “No,” she says, exasperated. “There’s not. I’m happy to be misunderstood. It’s not even about being ‘misunderstood’, it’s just up for interpretation. Any interpretation is fine, as long as it’s not, ‘She’s a racist, sexist or homophobe’. I’d be bummed if someone thought that. I’m not the one writing the think pieces on it. That’s not my job. My job’s to make a thing, it’s not to do all the interpreting and explaining. That’s didactic, and shows a profound lack of respect for the audience’s intelligence.”

Hoping she might be open to at least a small amount of explaining, I put it to Clark that there’s a restless quality to the album. She’s quite often leaving, or being left, or wanting to leave. On “Slow Disco”, a plaintive orchestral waltz and one of the most beautiful songs she’s written, she asks, “Am I thinking what everybody’s thinking? I’m so glad I came, but I can’t wait to leave.” Did she notice that theme running through the album’s veins? “Yes.” I wait for more, but instead she pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing. “Keep asking away.”

I do as she says, but the air in the room is uncomfortable. I wonder if I should clarify what I said about the show, but I think the moment’s passed. I forge on instead. In a previous interview, Clark said that “Slow Disco” was about how “the life you’re living, and the life you should be living, are running parallel.” Is there a life she feels she should be living? “Yeah,” she says, phone still out. “I should be in Turks and Caicos with a fucking pina colada coming out of a coconut, just getting a sick tan.”

“I mean, I don’t even think I should be living,” she adds, before puffing air out of her lips. “Hilarious joke. No, I feel super lucky that I’m living the life I am. Everything I’ve ever done, every person I’ve ever met, every experience I’ve ever had, is because I got good enough at moving my fingers at micro-movements across a piece of wood and steel. That’s bonkers.”

That’s a fairly self-deprecating assessment of how St Vincent got to where she is. Her inimitable skill at moving her fingers at micro-movements across a piece of wood and steel  – more commonly known as playing the guitar  –  is part of it, but there’s an intrigue and charisma to her music, and the persona she presents, that goes far beyond technica​l skill. It’s an intangible talent, one that has steadily drawn her into the limelight – though it was her self-titled fourth album that really thrust her into the big leagues, topping a handful of Albums of 2014 lists, and earning her a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

Clark with ex-girlfriend Cara Delevingne. Photo: Getty.

Then she fell in love with someone unthinkably famous, and was thrust into a more insidious kind of limelight, the kind where paparazzi followed her around, where tabloid journalists tricked her relatives into revealing painful personal information, the kind that fuelled her anxiety and depression. Though being on the road for endless stretches of time didn’t help with that. In an appearance on the New Yorker’s podcast, she said that between her self-titled album and this one, she needed to do a “radical reorganising of my life in order to fulfil my destiny as a creative person”.

“Oh my god! Who am I, Jim Jones?” she says laughing, when I quote this back to her. “Wow. I said that? It’s like a Paulo Coelho meets Jim Jones inspirational talk. I think I meant that I was just in a monastic period, I just wasn’t drinking or having sex or really doing anything that you’d consider fun.” The only pleasure she allowed herself was getting Chinese massages in New York City. I’ve never had a massage, I tell her. Perhaps I have a lifetime of tension. She looks aghast. “You probably do. You carry it with you, you know?”

Did she find it helpful, this monastic period? “Oh it was so generative. I got so much done. Completely eschewing certain things that can otherwise take up a fair amount of time left so much time to be productive. I really loved that time. Being on tour is just a different kind of energy. It’s performance all the time. Obviously I’m not putting on my best performance for you today.” She laughs again. The icy atmosphere is starting to melt, but our time’s up.

I bid Clark goodbye. She would get up, she says, but she’s too tired. I’m glad we managed to drag the encounter towards conviviality, but  –  though I’m sure she won’t spend another second dwelling on it  –  I don’t think either of us had much fun.

The next morning, my phone buzzes. Clark’s messaged me on Twitter. “Dude!” she says, “I’m sorry I was a cock.” She explains that she was exhausted, “which is not an excuse”, but that she’d felt especially defensive because she’d been getting negative tweets about the show all day, and had thought my comments were an attempt to go for the jugular. “I really misread the interaction,” she says, “and have been feeling horribly guilty ever since. I thought you were just there to tell me my show sucked and I got real defensive and yeah, it went downhill from there.”

As it turns out then, her emotions aren’t irrelevant. She feels things deeply, all the time. You can hear it in her music, in every riff, every crack in her voice, every line about loss, or leaving, or wanting to leave. Those negative tweets were sprinkled amongst a litany of praise, but  –  though she wore an insouciant armour when we met  –  she clung to them anyway. “You carry it with you, you know?” I hope she carries the good things too. I hope she gets some sleep.

Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music-theatre/2017/11/it-s-cool-some-people-hate-my-show-st-vincent-fan-backlash-and-chinese?amp