#is the account name. It's a mashup of my first second and last name

[yumichikah]

-- Allrighty. Here's the artblog! I'll probably mass post stuff there during the weekend and try to delete my art from my rp blogs so I can repost them there.

[scarlet--wiccan]

(1/?) The MCU is going on a specific direction and might touch Wanda's history of mental illness. Maybe talk about that when you have the time? Wanda was going on a nice direction before all that happened.

Whew! Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this— I have several super-long message chains like this one in my inbox and they’re hard to parse through and harder still to write a real answer for. I’m gonna try through a couple of these today.

Well, I think you hit all the important points here-- the optics of a mixed-raced family of first- and second- gen Holocaust survivors committing mass acts of terrorism, becoming rulers of a fascist, supremacist regime, and then, finally, committing pseudo-genocide, are, you know, not great. These are complicated characters whose representation can easily swing in either really positive or really, really negative directions, but this goes beyond the pale for me, especially given the proximity to 9/11.

The portrayal of Wanda's mental illness during this time, while not wholly unsympathetic, is wildly inaccurate and generally played as a horror motif. I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I think we can all agree that it's high time we moved past exploiting sick and disabled people's experiences for cheap scares. It's especially frustrating because Wanda, as a character, does have ground for poignant stories about mental illness-- she's had numerous traumatic experiences, starting with generational trauma and a lifetime of violent discrimination, and ending, at that point, with the deaths of her young children and the abrupt dissolution of her marriage. Her mental health should be addressed, but not in a way that demonizes illness or characterizes sick people as villains. One thing I appreciate about Robinson's Scarlet Witch is that it represents her mental illness in a very human, matter of fact manner and gives her the power to take control of her own wellness. She has realistic symptoms and pursues realistic treatments, instead of, you know, making hallucination constructs and getting mind-probed by Charles fucking Xavier.

Wanda is simultaneously infantilized and vilified in these stories-- she's denied agency at every turn, and yet, Wolverine and the other "heroes" of this saga view her with unbridled contempt, and most of them are immediately ready to murder her in the name of justice, even before the "no more mutants" spell was cast. You wondered how Bendis was able to inspire such a long lasting hatred of Wanda, and I think the simple answer is that almost every character in House of M hates Wanda. The characters you root for, the characters whose perspectives dictate the tone of the story, direct palpable fury towards her, and even those who aren't out for her blood don't extend any actual empathy towards her-- most are ambivalent to her wellbeing, while Xavier and Strange are incredibly paternalistic.

The final spell, "no more mutants", has baffled me for years. You're spot-on in saying that Wanda here represents a self-hating minority, but it's really hard for me to understand how she could have reached that point. It's not consistent with her previous characterization, nor is it thematically connected to the factors which led to her breakdown. Bendis places the onus of her condition on Erik, alleging that he abandoned and abused his children in his fanatic commitment to the mutant cause, which, besides being a willful misinterpretation of canon, has nothing to do with Wanda's current circumstance-- she's like this because Agatha Harkness altered her memories, because the Avengers continuously gaslit her, and becaue Mephisto killed her kids in the first place. It has nothing to do with Magneto, and Wanda's breakdown has nothing to do with mutant politics. She and Pietro were raised in a loving family until their adoptive parents were killed by racists. Erik didn't knowingly abandon them, and while he did mistreat them during the Brotherhood days, it wasn't parental abuse because he wasn't a father figure to them-- neither party had any idea they were related. Bendis is evoking specific forms of trauma that never actually happened, while ignoring the ones that did, and the effects of the spell itself are vague and seemingly random.

~~~~~

Young Avengers does call back to Wanda's circumstances in Disassembled and HoM, but it doesn't execute the concept of reality-warping in the same way. The driving force in YA is the spell which Billy casts, and Loki tampers with, in the first issue. It is a spell which distorts reality, but it has specific parameters, and neither party is characterized as "crazy" the way Wanda was. The spell was intended to bend space and time so that Billy could pull Teddy's mom from the past, before she was killed, into the present-- it's not dissimilar from how Wanda "retroactively reincarnated" her kids. Due to Loki's interference, however, the spell was hijacked by an interdimensional parasite called Mother. The Mother virus appears primarily as a construct of Teddy's mom, but as her influence over the Earth-616 dimension grows, she's able to create constructs of other dead parents, and even mind-control living adults. All of the ways in which reality is being warped hinge on the specific conditions under which Mother was summoned, and while it is Billy's magic that's fueling these constructs and distortions, they aren't symptoms of psychosis-- Billy doesn't lose control of his magic because he's losing his mind, he loses control because he's too young and inexperienced to protect himself from predatory forces. Those forces do take advantage of his depression and anxiety, but his condition is never the cause.

Loki's magic is wrapped up in the spell, too, but rather than conjuring dead parents, it emerges as a construct of their former best friend, Leah. Loki, in Young Avengers, is a mashup of two personae-- the reincarnated child Loki, and Ikol, a phantom of their past life who is carrying out the previous Loki's evil will even though their heart isn't in it. Ikol has mostly overshadowed Loki, who has been reduced to a ghost that torments Ikol by acting as a constant reminder of their guilt. Ikol is haunted by their past, but it's important that this haunting is a nuanced metaphor and not literal hallucination, as Wanda's condition was in HoM. Because Loki's power is part of the spell, Kid Loki's ghost is able to hijack the reality distortions to summon the construct of Leah, who, in turn, is able to summon the Young Avengers' other exes, the same way that Mother, in the form of Teddy's dead mom, can summon other dead parents.

Loki does raise the question of whether or not Billy might be subconsciously influencing Teddy with his powers, but this is clearly illustrated as a manipulation tactic and disproven several times. Loki's original goal in summoning Mother was to draw out Billy's full magical potential so that they could steal his power for themselves. Driving a wedge between Billy and Teddy, and causing Billy to question his own sanity, were devices to make Billy more susceptible to having his power stolen, and they worked-- Billy is not able to divest his magic from the spell and banish Mother from Earth-616 until he overcomes his self-doubt and start exercising mindfulness. Loki, in turn, is not able to divest their power from the spell and banish Leah and the other exes until they own up to their guilt and admit everything they've done. Both characters are experiencing symptoms of exacerbated mental illness-- Billy's depression and suicidal ideation, Loki's disassociation-- but their mental illness is not the source of their magic, but a challenge which makes it harder for them to live as their fully realized selves... just as it would be for any normal person.

I know that was a long-winded explanation, but I wanted to illustrate what sets Gillen's take on "reality warping" apart from Bendis's. It's based on clearly though-out ideas of how magic works and what defines "reality" in a world populated by parallel universes and living myth-forms. Gillen affords Loki and Billy a degree of sympathy without denying them agency, and Loki is held accountable for their decisions without being painted as a total monster. Bendis, meanwhile, characterizes Wanda's magic as delusion made real, and completely vilifies her for her illness in spite of the fact that she's given no control over her actions.

[artemisa97]

Okaaaay, for the tropes mashup. Detective/Criminal x the big damn kiss. Petopher, please

Well, I was supposed to post another one first, but this idea really inspired me and I just had to write it. I’m actually going to post this one in ao3, so if you have an account I can gift it to you. Hope you like it!

Thanks to @rhysiana for being my beta, this fic would have been way worst without her, xD

WARNING: There is several references to an abusive relationship, but it doesn’t go in deep and it’s not Petopher.

00

Detective/Criminal + The Big Damn Kiss

Peter Hale is a criminal, and Chris hates him. He’s been hunting the man his whole career, and had been close to taking him down a number of times, only for everything to go to Hell at the last minute. Hale is too cunning, too resourceful, too well-connected. Trapping him is like grabbing a handful of sand: possible, but, at the end of the day, futile.

Today, he has finally taken him down.

And now, talking to his superior, he can feel the sand slipping between his fingers, trickling down his closed fist.

“With all due respect,” he says. “I’ve been hunting Peter Hale for two decades, I know him. He’s a con artist and a thief, he commits several crimes a day, and there is no chance of him ever reforming. We can’t allow him to go free.”

“Maybe,” says Stilinski, tired. “But he has information on the Benefactor, information he won’t share unless we give him a full pardon.”

Chris wants to scream. He doesn’t. The Benefactor, who may not even be one person, runs a powerful network, mercenaries and hitmen ready to murder anyone on their way. It is, of course, a far more important target than a man that steals diamonds and pretty paintings, no matter how infuriating that particular man is. It’s the right thing to do, an amazing deal to make, but Chris is still frustrated. He’ll have to see Peter’s smug face while taking off his handcuffs, silently pointing out that, even in defeat, he has still won.

―

Peter Hale is a criminal, and Chris is in love with him. He would love to say that he doesn’t know when or why he fell, but it would be a lie. It happened at a party where Chris was undercover, working on another case. Peter had been there by virtue of his criminal connections and general charm, and most eyes in the room were focused on him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt under the suit jacket and his chest glistened with sweat and alcohol.

Peter had come around and started to talk to him, hands on his arm, eyes shining with mischief, flirtations blatant. He was smart, charming, fascinating, and could make Chris laugh against his will. They only spoke for half an hour or so, but when Chris was about to go do his actual job, Peter had taken a pen out of his pocket and written his number down on Chris’s arm. From his elbow to his wrist, following the vein.

“I won’t leave for hours, come find me when you’re done,” he had said, beautiful smile on his full lips, before kissing his cheek.

Chris’ team had arrested their target an hour later, ruining the party. When he got out of the building, ready to go home, Peter was there, waiting against the wall.

“You have to know I’m a cop now,” he had said, because he had felt Peter’s eyes on him during the arrest, seeing through his cover.

“Now?” Peter had asked, arching an eyebrow. “This is why you’ll never catch me, Christopher, you keep underestimating me.”

Peter knew who he was. He knew Chris was the one chasing him.

“Were you taunting me, then? Laughing at me?”

“No, but I couldn’t miss the chance of actually talking to you,” he had said, smiling and getting closer to him. “It’s not every day you get to flirt with the possibility of your own downfall.”

“It’s not just a possibility. I’ll catch you soon.”

“Perhaps.” And his eyes were shiny and amused, an invigorating challenge. “In the meantime, you have my number. Don’t hesitate to use it.”

Peter Hale was a criminal, and yet he had kissed Chris’s cheek again, close to the corner of his lips, before turning around and disappearing in the streets of New York. He had stolen his heart in the process, but well. He was just that good of a thief.

―

Peter Hale is a criminal, but there are worse monsters out there. That’s why Chris has to pretend to be his partner in crime while meeting with his contact with the Benefactor, as protection. They need him alive for trial and Chris knows he will take a bullet for the thief, as much as it pains him.

“Who’s your friend?” asks the woman. The Desert Wolf, one of the most wanted people in the country, maybe even the world. Peter calls her Corinne.

“My partner in this heist. He’s the one that knows how to break through the security of the museum. You’ll need him to get in and kill the security guard.”

The woman looks at Chris and she’s clearly derisive, huffing and making a gesture he would translate as “really?” She hates him, for some reason. Chris hates her too, for several.

“I thought you would be smart enough not to bring your boy toy to this meeting, darling.”

“I see no boys here,” Peter says, arching an eyebrow. “And don’t jump to conclusions, we’re here on business.”

“Please, I know your type,” she snaps, showing her teeth like a feral animal. Then she turns to Chris, venom dripping from her mouth and eyes, toxic as Chernobyl. “He does love people who can hurt him, so don’t be afraid to make him scream. It’s always so sweet when he does.”

Chris is about to shoot that woman in the face when Peter’s hand closes around his wrist, soft but present.

“Well, what’s the fun in being with people who can’t take you down? I like to be on equal footing, not that you would understand that.”

“We’ve never been on equal footing,” she laughs.

“Your legs made up for your stupidity,” snaps Peter. “Now stop playing around.”

“Come on, Peter,” she says, smile sweet and even more terrifying. “You knew from the beginning I won’t work with you, not after you ran away with my half of the loot.”

“I like to think of that as repayment.”

“I like to think of that as your death sentence,” she says, and shoots Peter in the chest.

Chris isn’t fast enough to do anything about it and his heart is breaking into pieces while he lifts his gun and shoots her. She’s good, fast enough to take cover under the desk, but he hits her in the shoulder and reinforcements are kicking the door down.

Leaving her to them, he drags Peter’s body behind a column and opens his jacket to check the wound.

“You should buy me dinner first,” says Peter, groaning.

Chris doesn’t answer, he’s too relieved at seeing the bulletproof vest.

“Smart,” he says.

“Always,” smiles Peter, letting his head hit the ground. “It still hurts like a bitch, in case you want to kiss it better.”

Chris wants to kiss Peter more than he wants to breathe, but he doesn’t.

“I’m on the clock,” he says, and goes to help the team take down Corinne.

He gets to shoot her in the hip next right before one of his colleagues tackles her to the ground and handcuffs her. It’s very satisfying.

―

Peter Hale is a free man, but Chris knows he’s still a criminal at heart. When he opens the door of his apartment and sees him standing there with a bottle of wine, he shouldn’t be happy.

“You are not on the clock anymore,” says Peter, and his smile is the most beautiful thing Chris has ever seen. He lets him in.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, the trial is finally over,” he says, shamelessly going through Chris’s kitchen cabinets until he finds appropriate wine glasses. “I thought we should toast Corinne’s new short-term address.”

It’s been almost a year since they arrested her, but justice moves slow. Chris hasn’t seen Peter outside of court since that day, and he has missed him like a limb.

“Do you think she’s going to escape?”

“They’ll kill her in prison,” he says, handing him a glass. “She has too many enemies to survive in there.”

“You seem happy about it.”

“Well, she did shoot me twice.”

“Twice?” he asks, and has to stop himself from going after her and shooting her again. In the head.

“If you’re really, really good, I’ll let you see the scar,” says Peter, eyes shining with mischief.

Chris has no answer for that; he has no answer for anything at all, since his throat has dried like an old bone. He sips the wine. It’s excellent. Peter wouldn’t buy anything but the best.

“So what’s in your future now? Going back to a life of crime?”

Peter laughs at that, shaking his head fondly.

“Come on, Christopher. I publicly went up against the Benefactor and collaborated with the police, no one in the criminal world will want anything to do with me. No, I’m going straight. As much as I could ever be straight, naturally,” he smirks, touching Chris’s shoulder with intent. “I already have offers from several insurance companies that know how good I am at what I do. And a book deal, of course.”

“A book deal?” askes Chris, and he doesn’t know why on Earth he’s surprised. God, Peter is just… so fucking Peter.

“Don’t worry, I’ll change your name. I was thinking of Alistair Cross.”

“Don’t dare you.”

“I mean, you could always convince me otherwise,” he says, lips brushing the shell of Chris’s ear.

“Could I?

“If you want to… and I’m pretty sure you do.”

“You’re a criminal,” he says, but without fighting Peter’s soft touch.

“And you’re a cop. It’s a bit kinky, but then again, so am I.”

“You are?” he asks, drinking more wine. His ears are blushing, he can feel them radiating heat.

“Of course. And you, Christopher, play my competence kink like a fiddle.”

He coughs. The apartment is too hot, all of the sudden.

“It took me decades to catch you.”

“I know,” moans Peter, lips brushing against the heated skin, voice a whisper. “And every second of it was thrilling.”

“Was it, now?” he asks, from very far away. Chris doesn’t know how it is possible, because he’s pretty sure his brain just shut down indefinitely.

“I told you, I like to be on equal footing. And you, Christopher, kept me on my toes at every turn. You don’t know how hot it is, knowing that you’re good enough to bring me down.”

“That is kinky.”

Peter laughs. Chris melts against him, because he’s only human.

“I like to look at it this way: you can bring me down and I can bring you down; but if we don’t, if we have the power to do so and choose not to just because being together is more fun…” He trails off, biting Chris’ earlobe. “Well, you can’t tell me that it isn’t hot as fuck.”

Chris kisses him. Grabs him by the neck and kisses him like it’s a battle, like he’s starving. Chris has spent years dreaming about how good it would be and yet his imagination pales in comparison with real deal, with the ambrosia that is Peter’s smart mouth.

They’re breathless when they separate, and Peter has a look between shocked and blissed out that immediately becomes Chris favorite thing in the world. He wants to dedicate every second of the rest of his life to making that expression appear.

“Stealing kisses, Christopher?” Peter asks, laughing against his throat, nibbling at his jaw.

“You must be rubbing off on me,” jokes Chris, his hand pulling Peter’s hair to get their mouths close again.

“Sounds like a plan,” Peter smirks, and kisses him.

Peter Hale will always be criminal, in a way, as he is a lot of things. But to Chris, Peter is more than that: he’s everything.

[aspl1tl1fe]

As mentioned on the page for this series, I heavily applied the Banished Challenge rules (on Modthesims.info) by @danjaley to my Isolation sim game play. The game is kind of a mashup of the Banished Challenge and Midnight Sun. I would like to say it has the legacy aspect but, I spend way more time with my sims than legacies tend to allow. Basically, I am playing a household of four adults on an isolated cluster of islands, who have to create and/or collect everything that didn’t wash up with them from scratch. 

As all of the sims in this game are from previous games (A Farming Town, Resistance, and New Resistance) their inventories had a few items in them. I kept the few jars of food from the canning station, some custom food/harvestables that don’t show in buydebug, and possibly one or two books. I got rid of anything they could find on the island.

This series begins with: 

My self sim, FroAnhke, who is wearing the glasses. 

First husband, Shocc (From the original Resistance series) who is behind FroAnhke, with the ponytail. 

First Husband’s husband, Ru (an edit of a sim meant for the third phase of Resistance) in the back to the right of Shocc . 

And finally, my self sim’s Second husband, Trovinte, (this is actually his forth form, he was originally created for the original Resistance series, then he was edited for A Farming Town as Conquer, then again for New Resistance (again named Conquer but as Trovinte’s younger brother), and now again here with his original name) the sim with the tattoos.

In this story, my self sim is a witch specializing in herbalism. Shocc is a crafter/blacksmith, Ru is a farmer/gatherer, and Trovinte is a fisherman/diver/hunter. 

All the guys started at mid level (or close) in martial arts, and I kept their old traits because I don’t think adult sims should start with zero skills.

The first image is actually a couple of sim days into game play (hence the line of fish) but the earliest I have of them all together like that. The pictures that follow were taken days before when all my sims had were sails from the ship they capsized (used for clothing and sleeping bags) and a single crate of goods they found in another wreckage. Although the Banished Challenge let’s you start out with more, I had my sims gather stones and wood for the fire and structures that follow. 

Finally, those silver bars in the last two pics. Initially I used piles of bricks from Cyclonesue’s construction set (over on TheSimsResource) to represent the amount of collected stones, but I later switched to the toy bricks that come with, I think, the Titanic Toy Machine. I did this because they can be dragged into inventories and chests/trunks making them easier to move and add and subtract as needed. I later use a lot of buydebug items this way to represent aspects the challenge doesn’t specifically cover/account for, like yarn. 

[purplesurveys]

603

Have you ever hated a song, and then later on found that you liked it? Yep. Recently this was me with both I Feel Love (Sam Smith’s cover) and everything i wanted by Billie Eilish. Start-of-2019-me would be so surprised. What is a song that's overplayed on local radio stations? That godawful 2002 song or whatever its title is. Some k-pop songs also tend to be overplayed, meh. Did you have a good childhood? It was good in the sense that my parents made sure I never missed out on fun kid stuff, like trips to Enchanted Kingdom, water parks, and buying us all the trendy toys and even getting my first phone when I turned 7 lmao. It wasn’t very good in that I lived in a very dysfunctional household with my extended family and all the men except my dad had bad drinking and smoking habits; also, my parents were mostly absent because they were still at that point where they were building up their careers, so my dad still had longer contracts abroad and my mom would have the graveyard shift. They did a good job raising us, though. It helps that I’ve always been a bit materialistic so I had no problem that their love language was mostly buying us toys and books and other cool stuff. If you wrote a book, what would you write about? I’d probably write a historical account of an event that I really like. I like non-fiction and I like history, so it’s the perfect mashup. Have you ever taken classes, ie Pottery, Swimming Lessons etc? I took ballet lessons when I was 5 and swimming lessons when I was 9.

What's your middle name? I’ll only give you my second name – Isabelle. Do you play games on your PC? No. My laptop can’t handle games; I downloaded Sims 4 but it drained my battery soooo bad and the laptop’s fan turned on almost instantly hahaha. Do you care about your friends more than yourself? Usually. But whenever I need a mental health break, I don’t hesitate to cut off contact and start caring for myself. If you could have any animal for a pet, what would it be? I just want to keep having dogs. Do you have a formspring? I used to. Do you know anyone that is racist? I have a couple of relatives who had a negative reaction to when my cousin Joelle got engaged to an Africa-American guy, but I’m not sure if they still hold such sentiments. Have you ever been in a quiz show? Nope. Are you going to watch the Super Bowl this year? I don’t care for American football, so no. Have you ever dyed your hair an outragous color? I have not. Are you a fool with your pants on the ground? No. That audition is legendary, though. Do you want to get married? Yesssssss. How many surveys do you post a day? It depends on how busy I am. I skip days sometimes because of school, but when I have a lot of time on my hands I can post 4-6 a day. Do you have an active sex life? It’s not very active lately but it’s not like a bad sign or anything. We’re great, we just don’t have the time to most days and we mostly just wanna spend time together. If you could change any law, what would you change? Why? This doesn’t quite answer the question but a bunch of conservative and Catholic politicians in my country have always lobbied AGAINST the passing of the anti-discrimination law because they think it favors LGBT people and that it will oppress heterosexuality. It breaks my heart everyday to see a bill literally called ‘Anti-Discrimination’ get rejected in its every other reading. I can’t wait to move out of this disgusting country. What would be your VERY last meal? I’d want it to be unhealthy as fuck. If I’m going out, I may as well spoil myself. Would you shave your head for 100$? That’s not enough money lmao What language would you like to become fluent in? Spanish. 

Are you defensive about anything? I’d defend same-sex love to the death, and it doesn’t matter who I’m fighting. Would you rather have the lights on or off? This is vague, but I have the lights on for most stuff I do. Have you ever driven 80+ mph? Yes, but I usually reserve that speed for national expressways. Have you ever changed a lightbulb? I haven’t. Is your house energy effecient? I don’t know...my dad buys all the appliances and I dunno if he considers that. Do you have AIM? Nope. Have you ever gotten a bullseye in darts/archery? I’ve never even played either in real life, so no. Do you have a Wii? We used to. I don’t know if it’s still kept somewhere in the house but it’s definitely not out in the open and/or being used anymore.

[askaceattorney]

Dear Sinless,

I have no idea where that came from, for one thing.  I’m neither almighty nor all-knowing, but I appreciate the praise (even if it’s supposed to be sarcastic -- I can’t really tell).

Dear sinyove,

You look familiar...

Anyway, that’s a good question.  Sweating isn’t something you just forget how to do, so I imagine AJ Phoenix still sweats in nervous situations, just not as often since he isn’t involved in courtroom proceedings.  Plus he works at a cold restaurant, so that’s probably helped to cool him down a little.

Dear sinyove again,

Sorry, but there’s no way for us to do that without answering it right away, so we’ll probably have to leave it as it was.  We’ll change it if we remember, though.

(Song in Letter)

Dear CreatorOfSinyove,

That’s a pretty cool mashup, but I’m a little confused as to why you wanted me to call you by a different name.  You can always send letters with whatever name you want if you log out of your account first.  (Please forgive me if I’m missing something obvious here.)

Dear Ethan Starbright,

Cute!  Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the play, so sorry for not getting the references.

Dear Ethan Starbright, 

I'm not sure how I feel about Dahlia being Eliza... But a more important question, does that make Miles Burr? Or maybe Godot? 

(Previous Letter)

Dear Anonymous,

I wasn’t sure if this was meant for Phoenix or for us, so I’ll go ahead and answer it.  He’s saying he wouldn’t hire Shelly de Killer because he himself would end Kristoph.  You’d better hope and pray we never have to see that timeline.

Dear skibot99,

It’s hard to say since I enjoy just about all of them, but my least favorite case is probably Turnabout Big Top.  The characters were charming, but the story was slow-going, and the contradictions were way too hard to figure out sometimes.

Incidentally, my favorite case is Turnabout Time Traveler.  It delighted me to see that the writers at Capcom still had it in them to make such a fun and imaginative legal adventure for Phoenix and Maya after all these years, and that neither of them had last their edge as clever and quirky crime-solvers.  I also happen to be a homeless hopeless romantic, and the idea of a man rescuing his bride from certain death (and the two of them continuing to love each other despite his anterograde amnesia) was incredibly touching for me.  In the words of Huey Lewis, “The power of love is a curious thing.”

Dear skibot99,

I honestly don't think I have a least favorite case, because maybe in one case I dislike how the story is proceeding (very slow or confusing), but I may find the characters very interesting, and vice versa.

However, my favorite case would have to be Rise from the ashes or any case from AAI2.

Dear skibot99 again,

I haven’t really seen enough of the anime to judge it as a whole, but from what I’ve seen of it, it’s definitely worth watching.  I'd have to say that I prefer the games overall -- though, to be fair, I’d probably say that about any cartoon based on a game -- but the music, voice-acting, and animation are all pretty spectacular, and I love how many extra details it includes that would’ve been practically impossible to fit into the original trilogy games.  The adaptation from game to anime is fantastic as well, but I definitely prefer the English dubs over the Japanese ones.  Japanese is a lovely language, but hearing the characters speak English, rather than only seeing it, opens the series up to a much wider audience, and you’ve gotta love that.

Speaking of Japan, I’d say the best change to the storyline is having Phoenix and company actually live there instead of America, so we no longer have to wonder where all the Japanese culture is coming from or call it “Japanifornia” -- true, that inconsistency has made for some hilarious jokes, but at least now things make a little more sense.

As for the worst storyline change, it was sort of disappointing for me that Phoenix and Maya’s first encounter was so short -- they didn’t even say anything to each other until he visited her in prison.  It was still pretty sweet, but Maya’s introduction of herself to Phoenix was one of my favorite parts of the game, so I was sad to see that cut out of the anime.  I’ve never attempted to turn a video game into an anime, though, so I can let it go.

I do have to wonder why they thought they needed more than ten policemen to arrest Frank Sahwit, though...

Dear Bruce Goodman,

Aw, crud...  I accidentally smudged an important part of this letter.  And it was sent to us over a year ago, wasn’t it?  Sheesh, I’m getting clumsy...

In all serious, I prefer not to show the names of real-life politicians on this blog, but I hope you can put that information to good use.

Dear Anonymous,

Let’s see...

Yep, that’s a pretty uncanny resemblance, but I think it’s just coincidence.  I can’t imagine his mom letting him take on that sort of role, even if he had a stunt double.

(Picture in the Final Letter)

Dear Anonymous,

I hate to spoil all your hard work, but I’m afraid I don���t know which image link you’re referring to (unless you meant this one).  Could you please clarify?

(Previous Letter)

Dear M,

Thanks a bunch, first of all.  There’s a lot to be said about the Royal Family of Khura’in (plus I tend to ramble anyway), so I did my best to keep it short.

Secondly, you’ve raised some good points.  I sort of snuck in the comparison to the Hawthorne twins at the last minute, so I didn’t give it as much thought as I probably should have.  It’d be more accurate for me to say that I thought she was that she was too meek to disobey her sister (in fact, I went ahead and rewrote it that way in the essay).

I'm a huge fan of Iris, by the way, and I agree that she can be strong when the need arises, but there are at least a few things that led me to believe she still has a bad habit of caving in to pressure from others.  First, while she never actually obeyed Dahlia, she chose to do whatever was necessary to keep her crimes a secret, rather than making the harder but wiser decision of turning her in to the police.  Second, she was willing to cooperate with someone she barely knew (Godot), even to the point of taking a dead body and impaling it with a statue’s sword -- that took some guts, I’ll admit, but it also landed her in prison.  And third, she was willing to take the fall for everyone involved in the plan to stop Dahlia in case something went wrong.  Whether she decided to do that out of guilt for her past sins, or for some other reason, it was still highly questionable at best.  Take the blame for a murder I didn’t commit and let Godot have his way?  Sure, why not?

All that being said, I also believe that she managed to forgive herself after everything was out in the open.  Most of Iris’s responses were written by someone else (the ones with lowercase tags were written by the Mod), but I guess I have sort of portrayed her as still feeling guilty about her masquerade, and that does seem a bit out of character now that you mention it, so I’ll try to keep that in mind for future letters to her.  Thanks for bringing it up.

Also, while we’re on this subject, this comparison reminded me of this letter that I sent back before I was a moderator.  It’s sort of heartwarming, isn’t it?

(You were so sweet sometimes, Mod...  *sniffle*)

-Co-Mod and Mod Paups

[architectuul]

FOMA 17: A Modernist Holiday

Yerevan is a hot tourist destination for anyone with a penchant for Soviet modernism. It was robbed of its centrepiece when its Youth Palace – an ear of corn tower with a flying saucer on top for good measure – was demolished in 2006, but the city still has a great deal to offer. Much of it, however, is probably living on borrowed time. 

This is an account of a brief trip to Armenia in May 2015. As is my habit, I went armed with a handful of printed Google maps covered in informative scribbles. Modernist civic architecture of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was generally smaller in scale and lighter of hand than that in colder areas of the Soviet Union. 

Bucking this trend is Yerevan’s aptly-named Cinema Rossiya, a gigantic and mildly sinister cantilever edifice. Its lower story now serves as a market, its rear enlarged by a mashup of UPVC conservatories and its front by a similarly distasteful modern extension. 

The cavernous cathedral-like hall between the two auditoria is unadulterated but borderline derelict. Our attempts to access the the auditoria were thwarted by paunchy security guards.

Cinema Rossiya marks the lower end of a semi-circular park that encases Yerevan’s compact centre. The park houses a handful of Soviet-era stalls and pavilions in various states of decay, some with fetching neon signage. 

Walk around to the three ‘o clock position and you’ll find the House of Chess Players, a pretty building inside and out that’s an equilateral triangle in plan. It still supported a healthy population of chess players.

At the half-past-one position is the monolithic Komitas Chamber Music Hall, clad in deep red local tuff. It was firmly closed when we visited, posters touting upcoming events providing the only evidence that it was still in use. 

On the next ring-road out on the same tangent is a particularly grandiose example of a cable car station of the sort found throughout the Caucasus. It’s derelict, but its flying saucer shell remains intact and a solitary cable car still hangs at the rear.

At the park’s one ‘o clock position is Yeritasardakan Metro Station, a bizarre construction with a circular light shaft above its entrance hall that sprouts from the ground at a 30° angle like the barrel of a giant mortar. 

The Metro is a handsome but nondescript stock Soviet system. From the escalator downward, you could be anywhere between here and St Petersburg.

At twelve ‘o clock is the much-photographed Yerevan Cascade, an impressive limestone stairway punctuated by ornate fountains, monuments and some quite weird sculptures. Climbing to the top is vaguely anticlimactic. 

The view is reasonable, but it’s nothing compared to that from the mammoth Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex, a giant sci-fi bunker perched on a hilltop a few kilometers west of the city centre. Despite the addition of tasteless steel cladding and low-grade glazing, the scale and sweeping form of the building remain striking.

The centre of Yerevan boasts a number of other modernist buildings of note – and there are various others in the vicinity that I didn’t have time to visit. It’s definitely worth scheduling a few days if you can. It’s generally a nice place to spend time. Ararat brandy is excellent and Kilikia beer adequate.

Leaving the city in a northeasterly direction, you’ll pass the former Institute of Stones and Silicates – a shapely three-pronged office block adorned with tilework that showcases Armenia’s colourful palette of volcanic stone. A little further on is the Northern Bus Station. 

On the outside it’s a confusion of crumbling red tiles and unkept foliage. In the inside, however, it’s an airy and elegant palace of sweeping staircases and balconies clad in polished stone. Beautiful as it is, its purpose is a puzzle. 

It now houses a solitary ticket booth and a terminally closed café, but it’s hard to imagine that much else has ever happened there. The second floor sports a solitary RAF Latvia minibus perched above a treacherous spiral staircase that’s either had its balustrade stolen, or it never had one in the first place.

Nearby, incidentally, is the remarkable Levon’s Divine Underground (5th street, 9th house Arinj, Kotayk to be exact). Local builder Levon Arakelyan started digging a cellar beneath his small suburban house in 1985. 

Two decades later, he’d excavated a 300-square metre labyrinth. It’s a work of solitary human obsession that a rivals any Werner Herzog film. Levon sadly passed away in 2008, but his wife, Tosya, will give an enthusiastic tour for a small fee if you knock on the door and she’s not busy.

We hired a Lada and drove to Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-declared and much-disputed autonomous republic within the borders of Azerbaijan. Its Ruritanian and mafia-rich capital Stepanakert was culturally fascinating, but we found little of architectural note. There are a few grand Soviet monuments dotted around the countryside. 

The ghost town of Agdam – raised during the Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s – houses a solitary stone mosque. Once a fine example of 19th Century Karabakh architecture, it’s now in a very sad state and filled with cattle.

On the way back to Yerevan we visited Alaverdi, a grim copper-mining town that sustains one of the few Caucasian cable cars that’s still in working order. The ride was picturesque, if a little terrifying. 

Next, we swung by Sevan to inspect the canteen of the Armenian Writers' Union – best known as the cover shot of the excellent book Soviet Modernism 1955-1991: An Unknown History (find the review here).

It was as striking and otherworldly as anticipated. Photographs don’t do justice to its location. It hovers high and lonely on a rocky hillside, its 180° window offering a bleak panoramic view of Lake Sevan.

The best came last. Unless you travel overland from Georgia, it’s more-or-less impossible to visit Armenia without passing through Zvartnots International Airport. 

The new Terminal 2 (2006) is pleasant enough, but forgettably generic. The old Terminal 1 (1971), closed since 2011, is enormously exciting. It’s a space-age concrete fantasia. 

A flying saucer control tower sprouts from a rotund central check-in area, orbited by a ring of departure lounges connected by flying walkways. It was totally abandoned when I visited in the early hours of the morning, save for a few security guards who did a fine job of pretending I was invisible. 

I spent two very happy hours wandering around unhindered and admiring its many thoughtful intricacies. Few buildings demonstrate so spectacularly what a disappointment the future has turned out to be. 

I suspect that security has now been heightened. If it hasn’t, I’d urge anyone that finds themselves in the vicinity to go and have a poke around. Like most modernist architecture in Armenia, I fear its days are numbered.

___

#FOMA 17: Sam Glover

Sam Glover is a writer and engineer from the United Kingdom with a penchant for exploring remote parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In his project Soviet Modernism, he aims to visit and document as much socialist modernist and constructivist architecture as he can before it’s defaced, demolished or improved. He is technical editor of Practical Classics magazine and specialises in the restoration of unusual classic cars. He has a First Class Honours degree in Design from the University of Sunderland.

[callmenateybird]

Depression Never Drove Me To Attempt Suicide; Being Bullied While Depressed Did

I don’t wanna relive my bullying hellscape today but I can’t shake the feeling that people still just continue to blame the brains of suicidal people for any and all suicidal acts.

I’ve experienced depression for a long time. I was lucky that depression alone never led me to a suicide attempt. Being bullied along with being depressed, however, did. I need to use my own experience as an example to get through to people about this today.

Spring 2016: I dated a person I met on The List App (just what it sounds like - a list-making app created by BJ Novak). I went out to CA to be with her for 2 months. She felt it was moving too fast, but didn’t tell me for awhile. Eventually she did, we broke up, I was crushed, I went back to OH to be with family. I whined, I pitied myself, I spoke about the breakup on List.

Eventually, friends of my ex decided this was too much & brought my ex & others into a FB group chat, where they shit talked & mused that I had been manipulative & that I’d threatened self harm.

This was the first in two instances now of upping the ante of false accusation. First, from whining & taking a breakup hard -> manipulation & threats of self harm, then, a year ago right around this time, upping the ante again to “abuser.” More on that in a bit.

Back to 2016 — August, as the group chat began. I had been listing about the upcoming 2 year anniversary of my dad’s passing — Aug 10. On the night of the 9th, my ex’s close friend did what I guess was an accidental like of an old list of mine. At the time, it seemed odd because she wasn’t following me and we’d had conflict with each other on Twitter about a week before.

The next day, it made sense why she’d been far back in my old lists. As I listed about the anniversary of my dad’s passing, parody accounts began to go public.

The first was called Predator. My screen shots here were taken later (I was too upset to screenshot anything the day it all happened) after the name was changed to “Chris, Kay?” to target one List guy these people hated. The original name on the account was “Chrislie K. Veshester” — a mashup of the names of 3 of us from List.

In the second and third screenshots, you’ll see parts of a list. This list has direct excerpts from lists the 3 of us guys had previously posted (gathering lines from old lists the night before…yes, bullies go to great efforts to bully). The writing and recording line, the bravery line, the baggage line, the body is your friend line, the quote of Coyote Hours (an album about the death of my father) — all from me & gleefully twisted into being somehow creepy or wrong.

The line “I try to get others to take care of me” didn’t seem to come from any of us, but seems more to be a line from my ex’s friend’s imagination that reflects how those people saw me in the wake of that breakup.

Also launched that day, in tandem, was the Flounce account (to flounce means to announce that you’re leaving a community, which I had done the night before my dad anniversary, because of what I was going through at the time). I later was told this was created by Jack Waz, an employee of List. The first few followers on the account — my bullies, “Jo-Ann Fabrics” (another parody account by Jack), & even List creator BJ Novak.

Also popping up that day was this dormant “imacreep” account where luckily no new vitriol was added — but you can see, based on the few lists that account had “liked,” that it came from the same group of people.

You can also see, from the few likes on the predator account, that it came from the same group of people.

On Aug 10, I had a nervous breakdown after seeing all of this. The passing of a parent is a deep trauma and, only 2 years out, was obviously very fresh for me. It is an event that is almost sacred in a way, & part of the unhealable scarring of my bullying experience is that this sacred date was snatched away from me, and tainted by this awful social media experience. I now forever associate the day my dad died with being bullied.

On September 1st, an older guy from the group chat sent me an unsolicited harassing email, after being given my contact info by my ex. I had just called her to ask if she would be completing some album artwork she’d promised to do for me around the time of our breakup. I hadn’t heard from her in ages (this was before I knew she was involved in the group chat), so I took one last chance at reaching out about it. In the email from this guy, I was summarily smacked down for “not respecting her boundaries” and told very cruelly by him that she didn’t want to do my art, or hear from me ever again.

In mid September 2016, a former friend told me everything about the group chat. She had been brought into it and pressured/intimidated (by, among others, men in their late 30s — she was in her early 20s, as were a few other women in the group chat) to “provide receipts” of me talking about my breakup. She was forced to “denounce” me and swear she’d never talk to me again.

She named names to me in September and let me know who was involved. I learned that my ex — who had been silent through all the stuff in August — was in the group chat, participated, and watched it all go down. A couple days later, I began a suicide attempt.

The ordeal led to both myself and my mom being hospitalized (she has a heart condition). Thankfully, we both came out of the ordeal ok.

Plenty more vitriol was unleashed on List after August 10th. I was lucky that much of it didn’t involve me (another guy from List got it worse than I did). One older guy from the group chat did a particularly nasty “sublist” and a few other remarks came out here and there, but it seemed to be dying down finally.

Through the fall, I began to find balance again. I returned to List with a new account, and took small steps in standing up for myself.

In November, I confronted my ex about what I knew, in an attempt to make peace. She expressed some regret, but never really apologized in a way that felt adequate to me, nor would she concede that her friends had bullied me and that she had condoned it.

In December, I returned to CA to resume the life I’d begun building when I was dating my ex. I had been dreaming of living in Southern California since the trip to scatter my dad’s ashes there in fall of 2014, and I was using the last chunk of inheritance money I’d gotten to get myself re-established in Orange County.

In January of 2017, I finally realized that my ex was never going to apologize to me for everything, so I launched a text tirade of criticisms her way and stopped speaking to her.

But in the next few months, I faltered in that commitment and sent her three harassing emails. Since the previous fall, I had begun an agonizing habit of digital cutting (creeping on social media that you know is bad for your mental health) and snooped on her accounts, plus those of her friends and family. It is a habit that I have yet to fully shake, even all this time later. The three emails I sent all involved seeing things she’d liked on social media and being angry or jealous about them. I finally stooped to the level of the people who harassed me, and I harassed her. After the final of those three emails, in April of 2017, she wrote back and said she’d file a harassment order if I contacted her again, and I never contacted her again.

But I continued to grow more and more emboldened in standing up for myself publicly, and over the course of 2017 it became a huge part of my social media (especially on Twitter) to speak openly about my experience being bullied, harassed, and ganged up on.

In June of 2017, I was walking in a park in my ex’s town and saw her. A few days later, many of the ladies from List were tagged in a massive Twitter thread. For some reason, a few of us guys from the app were tagged as well. Later that day, my ex’s friend from the group chat - the one who had made the “Predator” account - subtweeted that these List ladies in the mass tagging had “an abuser among [them].” The ante of false accusation had been upped again, from whining and self pity and taking a breakup hard -> manipulation and threats of self harm -> abuse.

This subtweet alone, which I’d only discovered because of my continuing struggle with digital cutting (creeping online), sent me reeling on the verge of another breakdown. I knew that things were heating up culturally, that the imperative to believe women was more important than ever. And now, for the first time, I had to face that dissenting argument from the trolls who don’t like the prioritization of believing women no matter what — “what if somebody falsely accuses someone just to fuck up their life?” But even then, I brought myself back from the brink (with much help from my therapy sessions, my support system of family and friends, my writing, and the good-for-the-soul environment of southern California).

I even had a phone call later that summer with the friend who’d told me about the group chat, where I explained to her that I still acknowledged the importance of believing women, even if I was experiencing a false accusation. I told her that I was trying to hold onto the understanding that the cultural prioritization of listening to and believing women was bigger than me, more important than me.

But I also continued to speak openly about being bullied, and now included the mention of being implied to be an emotional abuser, all through 2017 until finally standing up for myself on social media impacted my real life once more. A few days before Christmas, after a really good period of no digital cutting for the entire month of December so far, I had a weak moment one evening and looked at the social media of my ex and her family. On her mom’s Instagram, I saw a repost from my ex’s private account where she’d said she had gone to the police station to file a report about “a year and a half of harassment, stalking, and general creepiness.” (A year and a half would be going back to right when we broke up - we were still on good terms then - and six months before our friendly if flawed semi-clearing of the air in late 2016). In her mom’s repost, she said “if we see this guy in our neighborhood again, we are coming after him!” I saw this — and hope you will understand my seeing it this way — as a threat of physical harm. If “our neighborhood” meant seeing me on their street, well that was never going to happen. But if it meant seeing me in their whole entire town — like I’d seen her in a park last June — well, what was I supposed to do about being seen in an entire town??

I was terrified, and made a hasty decision two days later (Christmas Eve) to leave my Orange County long term Airbnb about two months before the end of my lease. I struggled for about a month to stay afloat in LA, looking for a new space. But my savings was too low to handle the temporary added expenses of new Airbnbs and hotels, and by early February of 2018 I decided I had to throw in the towel and go back to Ohio to regroup with family until I could afford to be out west again.

And that is my ordeal, to date.

I took a breakup badly, and cried and cried and said “I can’t take it anymore” (the closest I came to “threats of self harm,” as were the initial accusations from the group chat). And all because of taking a breakup badly —

I was ganged up on, parodied, mocked, and bullied on the two year anniversary of the death of my father.

The actual creators/employees of the app where I was bullied - including BJ Novak himself - celebrated and *participated in* bullying me.

I suffered a nervous breakdown.

I attempted suicide.

My mom was sent into the hospital with a heart scare, from watching what I was going through and reacting emotionally as most mothers would.

I drained thousands of dollars from my savings for additional therapy, spiritual counseling, and cross country travel (twice).

I literally left my home because I felt unwelcome and physically unsafe in Orange County, after being threatened with violence by my ex’s mother. 

And now I exist in this particular moment on social media, where the valiant and important efforts of the #metoo movement are still sometimes misrepresented by cold statements like “don’t ever fucking tell me that a false accusation ruins a man’s life.”

Even if you set aside my experience of being ganged up on and bullied, of being called a creep for being friends with women who were younger than me in a social media community, of being accused of manipulation and emotional abuse, it should be understandable as a general isolated statement — When we talk about someone’s life being ruined, we have to look at more than just their external life. We have to also look at their internal life.

And rest assured — beyond all the external stuff I just listed, my internal life has been forever impacted by being bullied and by being called “abuser.”

I can no longer say I have never attempted suicide. After years of living with depression and being proud of myself for never giving into the darkest of places, I now have experienced a suicide attempt. I now have experienced being called an abuser. And who knows what else I may experience as repercussions for posting this essay with screenshots and names, since the past two years of interacting with bullies has shown me very clearly that bullies always — ALWAYS — win.

We now live in an age where bullies are empowered by important cultural movements. They sneak in through weak spots, they use amped up language and terms that they know will attract attention. They are stronger than ever.

But the part of the narrative that my bullies and threateners will always leave out of their callouts - their own screenshot exposés of past and possibly future - is the part where they bullied and harassed first. My own instances of email harassment of my ex, my own flawed and self destructive habit of creeping online — these are personal flaws that arose AFTER being bullied. That part of their narrative will always be conveniently scrapped from the record. Bullying proves the age old saying — hurt people hurt people.

And so now, two years after my ordeal began, I try to be mindful that angry statements can verge on harassment, I do less and less digital cutting, I try to be a good person and to value the people who value me.

But when famous people are lost to suicide, and the conversation zeroes in squarely on mental illness and mental health, I just cannot abide the ignoring of so many other cultural factors that lead people to no longer want to live on this planet.

Whether the factors are due to marginalization, systemic oppression, economic hopelessness, ageism, a broken health care system, disease and physical pain, or a bullying ordeal like mine — there are an endless number of external environmental forces that drive people to suicide besides their own pure brain chemistry. And remember, environmental doesn’t just mean places and things — it means people. Many of those external forces that drive people to suicide involve how the people are treated by the others in their environment.

I have experienced depression for much of my life. But it was only being bullied that finally pushed me to the brink. This screenshot below shows the folks from the group chat. Some of them were silent bystanders, but they all watched it go down and did nothing to stop it. They are all complicit.

These are my bullies.

And if I have to live forever with being bullied the day my dad died, with having attempted suicide, with watching my mom go into the hospital, with being called an abuser and whatever else I’ll be called between two years ago and the end of my life, then they will have to live with being called bullies. And even if this post is removed, even if this account is suspended or deleted, I will continue to speak up and speak out when I am bullied or when I see others being bullied. I will not stand for it ever again.

Because all the things those people took away from me left a gaping hole inside me. And, so far, I have only found a couple things with which to sufficiently fill that hole — the understanding of my very loving and supportive family and friends, and love and respect for myself. Standing up for myself is just one of the ways I have learned to love and respect myself, ever since the ordeal that scarred my life forever.

June 12: I decided to add an afterword to this essay, a sort of “FAQ” to address a question I’ve been asked a few times in one form or another. 

The question: Do you talk about your bullying experience so much because you want your bullies to feel bullied?

No.

First, "bullying bullies" isn't a thing much like how reverse racism isn't a thing. To be a broken record - to continually expose the bullying act & “Scarlet Letter” the perpetrators - is the only power a bullying victim has, since the act of bullying unfortunately isn't treated like a punishable crime, especially when it’s done online (even though being bullied has robbed me financially and wounded me - and my family - both physically and emotionally).

Second, I talk about this as much as I do because I want the people who bullied me to feel haunted by the consequences of their actions (and inactions, in the case of those who watched and condoned) - actions they probably felt, at the time, were not a big deal. To have spoken about it publicly for almost three years is an effort at making them feel so haunted by their behavior that they not only never bully another person again, but that they *themselves* become dedicated anti-bullying crusaders. It sounds almost laughable - and certainly would to them, as cynical as they are - but I am trying to make a difference in these few peoples’ lives. You can label it crudely as “badgering,” which I feel does a disservice to me by downplaying the severity of what happened to me, but whatever you call my continued persistence in talking about this experience - it is persistence that aims to make a few people more decent and mindful of their past and future behavior.

[rain-drop-sky]

As a prompt could Sid and Geno do a reality show

It’s a brand new reality/celebrity/travel/game show mashup where contestants are assigned into random pairs and are forced to learn and work together as a team over the course of 3 weeks while completing various tasks around the world, all while being filmed 24/7. All the contestants are celebrities of some sort and they’re each competing for a 3 million dollar prize to go to a charity of their choice.

Geno is the beloved captain of the two time Stanley Cup Champions Pittsburgh Penguins. He has smashed hockey records left and right and together with his close friend Alexander Ovechkin, led Russia to gold at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Sid first started out as a self-taught cooking channel on Youtube and endeared himself to the public with his earnest instructions and series on cooking with a tight budget and limited equipment. His dream was to go to culinary school and when his fans found out, they donated money to help with his tuition costs. Combined with his ad revenue and sponsorship deals, he’s able to attend and graduates at the top of his class from the International Culinary Centre. He now owns and runs a Michelin Star farm-to-table restaurant located in NYC

As a teaser, the show releases snippets of each celebrity’s audition tape to join the show. Some are the standard polite “Hi, my name is ___ and I’m signing up to raise money for ____.” staged puff pieces with stylish clothing, bright natural light, and minimalist sets. Some, usually younger indie celebrities, film their audition tapes while doing something extreme. One teenaged singer filmed himself shrieking his audition lines while bungee jumping.

But there are two that go viral. The first is of Evgeni Malkin laughing as he squirms on a barstool wearing a bright Pens jersey. “Why I need do this, you already bought me dinner yesterday and I say yes Ilya,” Geno says to someone off-camera. A muffled voice tells Geno exasperatedly to just do the intro, they need it for the show. Geno sighs dramatically and looks to the camera. “Hi, my name is Geno Malkin. I play a little hockey. My friend run this show and is very sad–” “Hey!” an outraged voice cuts in while sounds of laughter can be heard off-camera. “–very sad, so he beg and promise me fancy dinner if I join the team. This isn’t an audition Ilya if I’m guaranteed a spot! Fake!” Geno shouts, sticking his tongue out cheekily. He’s still laughing as he’s pelted with wadded up paper and the camera cuts off as a short dark haired man walks into the frame, “screw you Zhenya, this is my show and you will stop being a pest–” The second looks like a real tv show trailer - there are elegant shots of of New York City and the interior of a rustic restaurant along sharp crisp shots of cooking and food prep. Interspersed are candid clips of a smiling man. “My name is Sidney Crosby.” “I’m the owner-chef of Alexandre here in New York City.” “Supporting youth outreach programs and homeless youth shelters is very important to me.” The official audition tape ends with a shot of Sidney’s hand sliding a beautiful entree into frame but a clip is attached to end where a much more rumpled looking Sidney Crosby is in the kitchen and frowning at the camera as he wipes his hands with a dish towel. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember signing up for a reality tv show. Are you sure you have the right person?” A hand holds out an ipad and he watches the tape shown earlier. “Wait, I remember this shot. And this one. Wait, where’s Tanger?” He twists around. “Tanger? TANGER. DID YOU SIGN ME UP FOR REALITY TV YOU *BEEP*” He looks over his shoulder apologetically. “Sorry, kitchens don’t really have clean language. KRISTOPHER.” The camera cuts to a new scene where a pretty man in chef whites and long shiny hair gives a very Gallic shrug. “I have a talent for editing along with cooking I suppose.” He smiles slyly. “You’re dying to get him on though aren’t you?”

Geno and Sid are paired up and awkwardly introduce themselves to each other. Sid hasn’t really followed any sports aside from his sister’s gymnastic meets since he quit hockey as a kid after having his leg broken twice by other vengeful kids in the local leagues. Geno doesn’t care or have much opinion on food aside that Russian food is best and steak is mandatory before games. He’s confused and wonders how on earth Sid runs a farm with a fully functioning restaurant in the middle of Manhattan until Sid explains what farm-to-table means. “I’m no clotheshorse like you but even I know Eurotrash is never in style and Jesus, he was wearing a shirt made up of 3 different shirts poorly stitched together,” Sid hisses into the phone to Tanger. “Does it make him or me look more like an ass when he can’t keep up with me during physical activities?” Geno muses to Sasha. “He’s a chef, I highly doubt he walks more than a couple kilometres a day.”

All the show pairings are a bit lopsided to be fair. Some pairs start off being overly polite and not wanting to step on any toes while some are instantaneously comfortable and ooze charisma. Some fail at everything spectacularly, aiming for comedic relief, and even a few agree to be the (comparatively mild) villains that all reality shows need for ratings. Sid and Geno start off as one of the polite teams until Geno forgets himself and screams “DRIVE FASTER SID, WHAT ARE YOU, BLIND GRANDPA? DON’T LET *BEEP* TONY AND ELEANOR BEAT US *BEEP*” while Sid first drives a Zamboni in the relay race. “WHO’S A SLOW *BEEP* NOW, YOU’RE PAID TO BE FAST. SOME *BEEP BEEP* HOME ADVANTAGE YOU’RE PROVING TO BE” Sid yells back when Geno tries to gun it on his turn. “I’m so happy you competitive too,” Geno says as afterwards when they’re the first and only team to make it onto a flight to Alaska. “I’m a chef, we’re all hypercompetitive control freaks.” Sid replies. The ice is broken from then on. “I’m impress with how much swear,” Geno comments as they’re setting up a tent in Costa Rica. “Have you never seen a cooking show?” Sid snorts. “We’re not PG at all. There’s a reason why studios don’t do live shows in real kitchens.” He looks directly into the camera and grins sunnily. “*Beep beep beep* and *beep beeeep* you *beeeeeeeep*” Geno looks at him with admiration. “Need to use that on team,” he declares.

Sid and Geno quickly become fan favourites. The show has some pacing issues and a few pairs never end up with any appealing chemistry but Sid and Geno make the show rocket to the top of viewership ratings and become meme lords on their own. “No Geno, don’t pet!” “But it’s cute!” becomes one of the show’s taglines. The internet delights in making memes and gifs of Geno cradling any kind of animal declaring “It’s cute so I pet!” while Sid facepalms to the side. Viewers comment online how much chemistry the two have and how adorable they are together. Fans lose their mind when Geno cries on camera when they get to meet real emperor penguins. “I’m sorry Ilya for make fun of you,” he sniffles as he carefully pets a patient penguin. “You best friend. Best.”

They unfortunately don’t win and exit the show as the third to last team. They lost their original 4 hour lead due to a freak storm that grounded all flights from their terminal. Fans are devastated and the producers try to cushion the blow by including an extra clip of Geno and Sid parting ways before returning to their regular lives. “Keep in touch, okay Sid? Have to come watch and cheer on Pens when we come crush Rangers at Madison Square Gardens.” Geno says seriously as he holds onto Sid’s shoulders. “I’ll feed you steak before your games,” Sid promises. They hug tightly and the episode ends there before they step apart.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Ask various prominent news outlets. Accounts are set up to track where Sid and Geno are spotted and whether or not they’re still in touch. Nothing seems to go on between the two of them although Geno puts out a press release after pledging 3 million dollars to support research at Children’s Hospital of UPMC and assisting families of sick children. When asked, he shrugs and answers “joined show to raise money for hospital. Didn’t win but I’m still hockey player. Pittsburgh always support me so I’m want to give back.” Sid is featured in New York Times when he does a feature on a new week-long limited menu that will be featured at Alexandre’s come November. “All profits will be donated and split between Big Brothers Big Sisters and local homeless youth shelters,” Sid states. “Although I didn’t win, I still want to donate and support youth in our city.” Fans are disappointed when it appears the “It’s Cute!” ship has sunk until a picture appears on Geno’s instagram account. Best Friends )))) is the caption under a shadowed picture of Geno and Sid grinning in Moscow. An investigative frenzy launches but it turns out that Geno did a late post and Sid is long gone from Russia. There’s a buzz night of the first Rangers/Pens game in New York and dedicated fans capture Evgeni Malkin stepping into Alexandre’s and getting the pre-game steak he was promised. He leads the Pens to a 5-1 victory while Sid watches by the glass, netting himself a natural hat trick along the way.

Two years later, Sid announces he’ll be opening a new restaurant, Sophia, in Pittsburgh. When asked, he responds that his restaurants are named after his sous-chef and business partner Kris Letang’s children. When further pressed, he smiles and says he has friends in Pittsburgh who made a convincing case for opening his new restaurant here. No official comments are made though Geno and the rest of the Pens are seen often frequenting Sophia and Sid can always be spotted at home games and Pens events. Nine months later, an eagle-eyed fan spots and tweets a picture of a silver band topped with a sizeable diamond glittering on Sid’s left hand as he cheers at Geno’s game winning overtime goal.

Send me an anonymous (or not) summary of the fic you wish I would write starting off with ‘I wish you would write a fic where…’. (maybe I will write a tidbit)

[dterrero]

My Night With Official Outcome

(From April 2015)

I decided to spend my Friday night at Weekend Willie’s in Naples. I’ve eaten there a few times before and I love it. I wish I could spend more nights eating there than at home.

I walk in, grabbed a seat and waited for a server to get me a drink. The band onstage is preparing to open up the night. They are playing as a quintet, but at the core of the band are Zac Sperry, 21, of Naples and Julia DeTomaso, 15, also of Naples. They are Official Outcome.

Weekend Willie’s was modestly busy that night given the time of year They started out the night with acoustic pop covers, including Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”, Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”, Luke Bryan’s “Play It Again” and “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias.

At the end of these songs, DeTomaso switched from acoustic guitar and sat behind the drum kit.

Their drummer Ryan Cathey takes up a djembe onstage as their keyboardist Garrett Cutler plays the Jeopardy song. They also make note that the Truth Custom drum set is brand new. Julia wasted no time making it sing. She hit that thing hard. I can’t even remember the song they played. I could only focus on that ferocious drumming.

Again, Julia and Ryan rotated instruments with the Jeopardy song playing. When they feel like the joke isn’t funny anymore, Zac starts playing a blues shuffle in E. I think to myself, “OK where is this going?” Once they got a groove going, Zac does the sliding Chuck Berry riff intro to “Johnny B. Goode”. Not kidding. It got livelier as more people trickle in. From there they go into “Rock Around the Clock” and blink-182’s “All the Small Things” before taking their first break. ______________________________________________________________________________ I remember when I got the invite to like their Facebook page. It said Official Outcome formed in December of 2012 at Center Point Community Church in Naples and listed their style as “Americana pop”. Right off the bat they started playing shows all across Southwest Florida and got recognition. Indie Artist Magazine even named them the 2013 Artist of the Year. Their original vocalist Sarajane Sullivan rounded them out as a trio, but left before a year had even passed.

Zac Sperry (left) and Julia DeTomaso (right) of Official Outcome performing at Weekend Willie’s Bar and Grill in Naples on April 24, 2015. Their debut album Never Take It Slow is in the post-production phase. Photo Credit: Daniel Terrero

During the first break, I got to sit and chat with Julia and Zac about what they had been up to. For the past year or so, they have been promoting their debut release Never Take It Slow through their Facebook and ReverbNation accounts. I started off by telling them what a great performance they put on. They responded with awkward silence and some awkward thanks.

“‘Official Outcome is rude, they don’t say thanks,’” Zac said jokingly.

“You guys have a new LP coming out soon, is that right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Julia replied.

“When does it drop?”

“That’s a good question,” Julia said.

“When you find out, let me know,” Zac said. “Um . . . I don’t know. That’s the only information I can tell you at this time.”

The record, titled Never Take It Slow, was set to be released earlier this year on Valentine’s Day.

Zac said that recording was finished, but there were some decisions being made over a song being featured on their release.

“How do you feel about this being your first LP?”

“I’m excited. I think Zac is too. It’s exciting to be able to get our music out.’

“But this is your first album too, so . . .”

“Wait, wait,” Zac said. “I have to clarify this. It’s only four or five songs, so it’s like a demo. It’s not full LP.”

“It’s not a full LP?”

“It’s an EP.”

At that moment, I was slightly disappointed. I was anticipating a long player at this point in the band’s history, or least for them to have enough material written for one. Everything sort of pointed in that direction. After all, they had put out a music video for their original piece “Tell Me That You Love Me” in 2013, when Official Outcome was still a trio. ______________________________________________________________________________ After the break, Official Outcome reconvened to the stage. Again, they returned with the mellow covers like “Secrets” by OneRepublic. They followed up with a tasteful rendition “Cruise’ by Florida Georgia Line and the more upbeat “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors.

They turn up the artificial reverb effects through the vocal mics and through the guitar amps.

Julia jokingly says, “Welcome to Earth.” They take their time making sure everything is set just right.

The spacey noise is so present at this point, Austin yells from the crowd, “Are we at Woodstock?” After Julia gets all the giggles out, she sings “Royals” by Lorde.

Near the end of the song, Zac hopped back behind the drum kit to drag the song out a little longer. I got distracted by two very awkward conversations between an elderly Minnesota man and some tipsy woman. Before I knew it, the second set was over and Official Outcome was on break. ______________________________________________________________________________ I’ve known Zac since the spring of 2009 during our sophomore year of high school. He was a home-school student who ran track and field with me for First Baptist Academy. We both signed up for spring football later that year. I figured he would go to Naples High School like told me he would, but his parents decided to enroll him as a full-time student at FBA. Since then, we’ve been friends. We had common interests in music and sports, and we shared a bizarre, offbeat sense of humor. Interestingly enough, our birthdays sit right next to each other.

Zac is also one of the few friends that stayed in Naples after high school. After two semesters at Florida Gulf Coast University, he decided college wasn’t for him. I, on the other hand, dedicated myself to just schoolwork.

I wasn’t too disappointed about the record or the release date. I asked Zac and Julia about the recording process. The recording took place at the Mix Factory studios in Bonita Springs, with production work from local artists Ray Nesbitt, Darrell Nutt and Doug Tracy, whom both refer to as “just Doug.”

“What was the recording process like? Did you already have songs going into the studio?”

“We had songs that were written before,” Zac said.

“Did you improve upon them or were they good to go?”

“No, we definitely improved upon them.”

“What have the guys at The Mix Factory taught you on the production side?”

My First Baptist buddies right before our high school graduation ceremony in 2011. Zac Sperry (pictured third from left) and I (far left) have known each other since we were 10th graders. (Photo Credits: Virginia Ruiz)

“I think they taught us about arrangement,” Zac said. “Arrangement is the biggest thing that I learned about writing songs.”

“What about aesthetics? What’s their production philosophy versus your production philosophy?”

“Something that’s going to stick in your head,” Julia said, “in a good way obviously.”

“They really like catchy hooks,” Zac said. “Julia has a knack for writing catchy hooks, so they don’t have to change a lot about that.” ______________________________________________________________________________ Official Outcome jumped back onstage once more and begin with a mashup of Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” and Jessie J’s “Price Tag”. The muted instrumentation provides a great foil to Zac and Julia’s soulful delivery. As they drag out the song, Zac starts twerking onstage. Julia jokingly suggests photo editing Kim Kardashian’s butt onto Zac’s backside, which earns them a few laughs from the audience.

They can sense their limits coming on as 10 p.m. approaches, but they take it in stride. They throw an original and a hilariously censored version of Cee Lo Green’s “F**K You.” They end the set doing an extended jam on Sublime’s “What I Got”. They give credit to all the musicians onstage and opens up the musical space to let each of them solo. ______________________________________________________________________________ As far as future is concerned, Official Outcome’s plans are to keep playing shows like this in local bars and public spaces, and to seek more independence and a sense of adventure in their songwriting and production. It may sound modest, but Julia is still only a sophomore at Naples High School. She says she and has plans for dual enrollment at Florida SouthWestern College.

In Zac’s case, he’s recently completed his EMT training. Still, they have come this far since losing one member with lots of support from friends and family, and they aren’t too worried about the future. Their manager, Sheri Austin, isn’t worried either.

“As long as they are having fun and have the right attitude and remain humble and follow their dreams, that’s what’s important,” Austin said. “The minute it’s not fun anymore, it stops.”

Of course, in our shared sense of humor, I could not resist asking the very last question.

“Alright, very last question,” I said.

Zac laughs and asks “Is it like a ‘Dan Terrero-back-in-high-school’ question?” I do the best I can to tell him no.

“Do you have any guilty pleasures in music?”

“Brittney Spears,” Zac says. “Just kidding, just kidding.”

“He’s not kidding,” Julia says straight-faced. “He has that song ‘Circus’ on his phone. He knows every single word. I’m not even joking.”

“Ok,” Zac goes, “Circus’ is my guilty pleasure.”

“I’m trying to think, “I don’t know,” Julia says.

“’One Time’ by Justin Bieber.”

We all had a good laugh on that question, promised each other to stay in touch, said our goodbyes and headed home.

[jkfortunekookies]

92 TRUTHS TAG

THE LAST 1.Drink: water

2.Phone call: My faculty  #I still have shit to do with that school #free me from prisonpls

3.Text message: My brother <3

4.Song you listened to: Scream HSM3

5.Time you cried: I don’t even recall.

6.Dated someone twice: .I don’t date haha

7. Been Cheated on: never ,but some guy wanted to date me even if he had feelings for someone else #Just had to put it in that category

8.Kissed someone and regretted it: Too many times

9.Lost someone special:  Yes

10.Been depressed: Yeah...

11.Gotten drunk and thrown up: I’m 20...what can you expect lol

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS:

White

Turquoise

Red

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU…

15.Made new friends: Yes 

16.Fallen out of love: Nope. It’s a miracle to make me fall for someone in the first place 

17.Laughed until you cried: Yes

18.Found out someone was talking about you: Way too many times haha #I’m apparently a great topic to talk about

19.Met someone who changed you: my followers made me happier <3

20.Found out who your true friends are: Yes

21.Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Who even has facebook? I deactivated a while ago. 

GENERAL…

22.How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: In my old account, they all knew me

23.Do you have any pets: Nope but I wish I had a bunny 

24.Do you want to change your name: Never 

25.What did you do for your last birthday: I ate an amazing cake and spent  time with my family 

26.What time did you wake up: around 9-10 AM if I don’t have school

27.What were you doing at midnight last night: Watching High School Musical 2 and crying cause freaking Troy Bolton is such a hottie 

28.Name something you cannot wait for: The day I see BTS irl

29.When was the last time you saw your mother: Like 2 seconds ago when I went downstairs to drink water

30.What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: I wish I had more confidence and be less broke haha 

31.What are you listening to right now: Why try the weight - Ariana&Shawn Mendes Mashup 

32.Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yes

33.Something that is getting on your nerves: Being too tired to do what I want to do

34.Most visited website: Youtube /Tumblr 

35.Elementary: Done, like 8 years ago 

36, High School: Done, 2 and half  years ago 

37.College: Currently dying to get tf out of there 

38.Hair color: Dark brown but red/light brown in the sun

39.Long or short hair: I wish it was longer. It reaches my boobs halfway lol

40.Do you have a crush on someone: That son of a fetus could be a great candidate to this title since I run a blog about him

41.What do you like about yourself: The fact that I’m genuine no matter what # staying true to yourself is what makes you beautiful

42.Piercings: I have lobe piercings but I want a helix piercing 

43.Blood type: A

44.Nickname: Hana Banana ( sounds longer than my name alone tbh lol)

45.Relationship status: Eating chicken wings as I drool over hot actors and Jungkook

46.Zodiac sign: Capricorn

47.Pronouns: Banana ( It’s not a pronoun, but shhhh...In my world , it’s a pronoun)

48.Favorite tv show: I don’t watch TV anymore # sorry

49.Tattoos: None

50.Right or left hand: right

FIRST…

51.Surgery: Never had any

52.Piercing: I was 2 years old and I apparently cried for an hour

54.Sport: Soccer ,when I was five 

55.Vacation: I was too smol to remember 

56.Pair of trainers: When I was 6-7. I remember choosing converse shoes for the first time in my life when I was five tho #Just had to add it here

MORE GENERAL…

57.Eating: Cereals,Sweets,Salty stuff,Rice,Vegetables,Meat,Chipotle. I eat everything but I hate tofu tho (fruits are good but I don’t dig some of them.) 

58.Drinking: Water. Water.Water. My parents’ healthy lifestyle rubbed off on me , so I don’t drink unhealthy/colorful drinks as much lmao. Coffee is good but only at times. I mostly drink tea but especially milk.

59.I’m about to: go eat supper 

61.Waiting for: the day I will finally post my updates 

62.Want: to finish updating my fics

63.Get married: Someday when I decide to give chance to relationships haha

64.Career: I need a job rn

WHICH IS BETTER…

65.Hugs or kisses: Both

66.Lips or eyes: eyes

67.Shorter or taller: Taller , cause my 1m65 dosen’t seem to satisfy me

68.Older or younger:  Older. it doesn’t matter as long as we connect on a deeper level.

70.Nice arms or nice stomach: Nice arms , because My stomach remains flat no matter what,but my arms don’t T_T

71.Sensitive or loud: . Loud # be happy and shout your feels

72.Hook up or relationship: None of them # I prefer stanning jungkook instead

73.Troublemaker or hesitant: Troublemaker ALL THE WAY!!!

HAVE YOU EVER…

74.Kissed a stranger?: WHAT IF HE HAS SOME CRAZY ASS CONTAGIOUS DEADLY DISEASE ? WHAT DO YOU DO THEN #life is too short for me to die from kissing a random dude

75.Drank hard liquor? : probably 

76.Lost glasses contact/lenses? : no

77.Turned someone down?: Yeah... #cue awkward memories 

78.Sex on first date?: Good luck kissing me on the first date lol #who tf gets laid on the first date unless it’s like someone you’ve known FOR A WHILE

79.Broken someone’s heart?: Yes :/ 

80.Had your heart broken?: Yes

81.Been arrested?: Never. But I’d be down to get handcuffed by Officer Jeon any day

82.Cried when someone died?: Yes

83.Fallen for a friend?: Once you’re friendzoned, you are a friend for life.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN…

84.Yourself?: NEVER LOL

85.Miracles?: Always

86.Love at first sight?: Kind of...a bit too much 

87.Santa Claus?: IF HE BRINGS ME JUNGKOOK ,THEN F*CK YES 

88.Kiss on the first date?: only if It was love at first sight.

89.Angels?: OF course :3 My followers are angels tbh ;)

  OTHER….

90.Current best friend’s name: I can’T give their names because they’re not on tumblr and they might not like seeing their names here. but my bffs from tumblr are @jinssmile Madelyn, @jeylovestoblog Jey, @kookiewithak Maddison, @fetus-jungkook Haneul, @bangtannoon Alison, @polarstar17 Paula, @philophobia999 Jailene

91.Eye color: Brown

92. Favorite movie: Back to the future

I tag whoever wants to do this :) @Jungkook , I bet that son of a fetus will do the challenge as well if you ask him

[crack-ary-blog]

There’s really someone out there with the name “Abcde”, smh...

     “CurrierMartin Zacha” …that’s usually how my name reads on most Scantron answer sheets or boarding passes. The curse of the hyphenated last name has haunted me since my name became relevant in kindergarten. I have a love—hate relationship with my name. It’s never bothered me on its own, in fact, I’ve always been fond of the way it sounds and its length. Zachary David Currier-Martin, behold the glory of many syllables! Throughout my childhood people have always called me Zac (That’s how I spell it for me, not that it matters.), unless I was in trouble of course; then it’s always the drawn out formal four second time waster. The only part of my name that seems to be mispronounced, more often that you would think, is “Currier”. My mother’s maiden name takes the number one spot before my dad’s, because ladies first obviously. I guess my parents liked the uniqueness and equality of the combined last names. Both of them existing simultaneously, there is comfort in that. But it sure does create an issue when creating accounts for different subscriptions or websites. Sometimes the hyphen is not an acceptable symbol, so I just have to choose one or run the two together like some kind of Anglo-Saxon mashup. Whenever I do get the occasional comment on my name, it’s always positive and usually there is a reference to it sounding French, despite my mother being a Hispanic-Slavic-Jew and my father being straight outta the U.K. On the topic of background and history, my name is of biblical origin. Derived from Zacharias which is the Latin form of the Hebrew “Zekharyahu”, meaning “Yahweh has remembered” or “remembered by God”. The Hebrew elements being “yahu” (Yahweh, God) and “zarkar” (he remembered). My father is credited with bestowing my name to me. I was named after my uncle, my father’s brother. My Uncle David died before I was born, in his twenties. At some point in his life he told my dad that when he had a son, he was going to name him Zachary. When I was born, I was given the name that my uncle had intended to give his son and my middle name was also a tribute to him, hence “Zachary David”.

     To my future children, the names I give y’all will be awesome! Mainly because they’re going to sound fantastic and because there’s nothing that can be done about them for eighteen years. Margo and Marie for girls, because they’re cute and I love croissants and flowers. Santiago, Elliot, and Jamie for the boys because they’re edgy and don’t convey any specific type of personality before they actually meet someone. No prejudgment here!

     My name hasn’t done much to shape who I am as a person, but I believe it adds a nice touch to who I am now. Name’s serve as the place holder for our faces. Whenever we aren’t physically there, it’s our names that remain. After all, it’s nice to feel remembered.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Letters on Frieze London: Paul Chan and Zachary Small Respond

Frieze London (photo by Mark Blower, courtesy Mark Blower/Frieze)

A Letter to the Editors from Paul Chan

I’m writing to respond to your recent post, “At Frieze London, Feminism Sells, Paul Chan Slumps, and Nothing Ever Changes.”

In the post the author, Zachary Small, calls my work “Pillowsophie.” The correct title is “Pillowsophia (after Trinity).” “Pillowsophia” is a wordplay on the ancient Greek word philosophia. So the title is a kind of mashup: call it immigrant Greek. Sophia means “wisdom” in Greek, so the correct title expresses something like “the wisdom of the pillow” or “the wisdom of sleep.” If Mr. Small’s piece is left to stand, your readers may wonder who “Sophie” is and why her pillow or sleep matters so much to me. I don’t know anyone named Sophie.

Correcting the title (Ed.: This correction has since been made) will help your readers who agree with Mr. Small’s characterization of my work, since they would be more emboldened to share his critique with the correct title in mind without the fear of being undercut by inaccuracies in the basic facts about the piece. Good facts make for better criticism, it seems to me.

Something else. Mr. Small writes, “Ironically, the fan powering Chan’s work did not have the correct voltage. Instead of flapping around wildly, ‘[the work] drooped limply…” He goes on to use this as a metaphor for the “thoughtless inclusion of the piece and the broader apathy of the art world for others’ suffering.” Although it is true that there were issues with the electrical load (according to the gallery), it is incorrect to state that it “drooped limply.” In fact, the picture of the work that accompanies the post, taken by the author himself, shows plainly that this is not true.

The work does droop at times. But this is the nature of what it is: a physical animation that changes over time. The fabric body is constructed so that it influences how the air moves inside that body, essentially harnessing air pressure to “animate” the work in certain, specific ways. If Mr. Small had the correct title in mind when considering the piece, perhaps he would have understood the “drooping” differently: as a choreographic expression of the kind of “sleep” that the title announces.

But this seems unlikely. What Mr. Small is practicing in his post is what I would call idealist criticism. He has a certain idea, or set of ideas, already in mind — about the 2017 Frieze Art Fair, for instance. And he goes to the fair to find the “material” that justifies the worthiness of his idea or set of ideas.

I believe Mr. Small’s ideas are generally on the mark. Art fairs are horrible. The commercialism that art fairs make manifest confirms our worst instincts about contemporary art being merely an asset for a certain class rather than the property of a wider culture. And given the enormity of the structural defects that have arisen as a result of the empowerment of fear, resentment, and ignorance at all levels of civil society, the art at fairs can feel like the orchestra performing as the Titanic was sinking.

But what happens when our ideas are so true — to us — that we see nothing else, despite what is right in front of us? One consequence tends to be that we become blind to what is evident. Another consequence may be that we become willing to ignore or distort what is evident in order to justify those ideas.

It seems to me that this is the case with Mr. Small’s post. This is why I think it’s unlikely he will see my work any differently even with the inaccuracies about “Pillowsophia…” corrected: the material is only worth being right about if it justifies what he already believes is true.

This is not the only evidence. Mr. Small says the fair is “strikingly apolitical.” I can’t say for myself because I wasn’t there. But Mr. Small then goes on to describe a striking number of works that in fact were — in his estimation — political, whether in intent, form, or content. He may have thought them “cringeworthy” (like mine), or “vapid” (like Andrea Bower’s work).  But he also noted many works in the fair that lived up to his expectations of what art practicing politics rightly ought to look and feel like. Billie Zangewa. Regina José Galindo. Maryam Jafri. And so on.

I don’t know if my work is political. It’s not for me to say. But Mr. Small seems to have no problem calling it so, and finding it wanting. I can’t say I blame him: I’m a questionable artist, at best. But he then he goes on to write about a great number of works that form relationships with the world that can be construed as political, and finds them agreeable, even though the title and general outlook of the post reflects his insistence that the fair was “conspicuously absent” of political art and “strikingly apolitical.”

What to make of this? What do you call an online post where the headlines intentionally mislead readers from what is actually in the content?  What do you call content that uses a loose affiliation with facts to be salient? I call it clickbait.

Art is what I make on nights and weekends. My day job is a publisher at the press Badlands Unlimited. I believe strongly in independent publishing. Platforms like Hyperallergic are important alternatives to corporate and commercial sectors of contemporary art. I value what you do and the writers you publish, including Mr. Small. But an alternative is only truly that if the standards by which it operates are higher than what is expected and produced in conventional quarters of art publishing and writing. If that alternative does not meet or exceed what is conventionally accepted or tolerated, is it an alternative at all?

Paul Chan, New York, October 7, 2017

  A Letter to Paul Chan From Zachary Small

Hello Paul,

Thank you for the letter concerning my review of Frieze London. Since receiving it on Friday, I’ve spent the weekend meditating on your concerns large and small.

Typically, corrections are made expeditiously fast once we’ve verified that a problem actually exists, so that’s what we did for the title of your work, changing the misspelled “Pillowsophie” to the correct “Pillowsophia (after Trinity).” We even included a note at the bottom of the review noting this change, and your comment about the how the work intentionally droops, as you say, “at times.”

But let’s not overdramatize things. The difference between sophie and sophia is negligible; both come from the same Greek word meaning “wisdom,” sophie just happens to get there through the French. And as for your second request, I can assure you — as someone that actually attended Frieze London on preview day — that your piece was drooping more than “at times.” Promptly see our accompanying photo of the titular “slump,” (Ed.: please see another image here) which, as you pointed out, would have made clearer to our readers that something was amiss.

Your letter also implies a host of contradictions that might obfuscate the written reality of my Frieze London review. The article claims that virtually no artist addressed contemporary political issues. (Regina José Galindo examines Germany’s historic weapons connection with Guatamela while Maryam Jafri exposes the strange yoga techniques of the US military. The article doesn’t even remotely describe Billie Zangewa’s art in a political context, by the way.)

The rest of your letter orbits around some rather nebulous lines of specious thinking that have serious implications about the ethics of art making and art critiquing. Let’s account for those pieces of your argument. You allege that I practice an “idealist criticism” that will justify my supposed belief that art must be political. From there, you subtly accuse me of having a will “to ignore or distort what is evident in order to justify those ideas.” Seeing as you did not attend Frieze London, I can only assume we are still talking about “Pillowsophia (after Trinity).” Your letter spends the next 100 words equivocating about the political content of your art while lambasting my review for what is essentially a spelling mistake.

While we’re on the topic, what’s your position on political art? Certainly, you have no problem using politically-charged iconography. “Pillowsophia (after Trinity)” features a black hoodie waving in the air like a balloon man you might see outside a carwash. As you should well know, the black hoodie is a potent symbol of Trayvon Martin’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement. At Frieze London, no less, your work stands in front of a gravestone-shaped wall. Do you think it’s ethically sound for an artist to appropriate such a potent symbol of black suffering, sensationalize its morbidity, and later shrug off its political context? (But we’ve all had this conversation before, ask Dana Schutz.)

Where does politics stop for you, Paul? Where is it allowed to stop?

But perhaps you’re right: maybe there’s one last remaining shred of hope in my soul that believes that even the art world one day might grasp basic concepts of respect, privilege, and power. Perhaps I believe that art — all art — has the ability to emanate a political influence upon the world. Perhaps I even believe that Frieze London is the perfect place to start demanding more from our cultural and financial leaders. I must be crazy.

We agree on one thing, Paul. Standards are important.

Respectfully, Zachary Small

The post Letters on Frieze London: Paul Chan and Zachary Small Respond appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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