#it’s weird like why are u acting like this even in a literary medium!!

[ruskayas]

above all things, yelena is strictly malleable & easily influenced by most things/people/events. if you think she is set on herself and strong-willed, or unchangeable by the environment and its influences, your guess would be faulty. her self-image is incredibly distorted and unstable & her paranoia ubiquitous. i cannot stress enough how her condition drives every aspect of her life & how wrong you’d be in assuming how she’s going to act in threads. it is her experience, and she does not need to fit your own patriarchal standards.

[floggingink]

OH HERE WE GO LADIES IT’S RIVERDALE, CHAPTER EIGHTY: “Purgatorio”

I’m tuning in to be VERY entertained on the grounds that I missed almost the entirety of S4 and will not understand anything

we open with an incredible analogue comparing the football team to the Army, as men do construct rituals: football players get blown into the sky, etc., in a heartrending mash-up of Archie’s innocence + the American ideal/expectations/pipeline of masculinity

Archie Company is decked out appropriately to storm Hürtgen Forest

that art direction trope where a character’s hearing goes EEEEEEEEEEEEEE after an explosion……...delightful

the Vixens and friends cheering him on from the sidelines as if Archie can only process his unprocessable present through the lens of his past………...hits the spot

distressingly wood-based rifles for our purposes

Archie > Dawson: I don’t mind telling you I felt emotion upon Archie hoisting his war buddy over his shoulders to that quadruple-toned “Chivalric Archie Using His Strength for Good” tune, like when he broke his whole hand busting Cheryl out of Sweetwater River

WHEN HE SAW HIRAM LODGE, I’M TELLING YOU! 

Hiram’s dragon-scale gloves? absolutely savory; he would

“Yonkers” is one of those New York place names I don’t totally buy is real (Poughkeepsie is another)

the sepia-toned light in this hospital room rings true judging by all the Captain America fanfiction I’ve read; I also like the mint-colored hand towels draped on Archie’s bedframe bought, one assumes, using the Department of Defense’s Kohl’s Cash

Archie made Sergeant, which is the best ranking for a fictional character: important enough that they can be a leader, get into trouble; low-profile enough that you don’t have to write them in the room making terrible decisions; probably won’t die immediately, as a Captain or Private might be

Fifth period is AP English: Archie reads A Farewell to Arms to Corporal Jackson, a WWI novel by Hemingway that Jug definitely turned him onto

Christ, Archie looks good in that on-leave jacket thing

I like Jackson’s subtle graph paper-print hospital gown

Gay?!: was Jackson in love with Archie? is he gonna bus to Riverdale once he’s off his pain meds? RAS, is that you in there?

God you know I love that haunted-ass Exorcist wooden bench bus light lighting

how long has the WW been relocated under Pop’s??? I do NOT know what happened to La Bonne Nuit

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: Fangs’ hair? his Tony Stark glasses? the girls’ “I’m a Slave 4 U” Burmese pythons? Toni’s headdress and immaculate glossed lip? 

Sixth period is Intro to Film: the only part of From Dusk till Dawn I’ve seen is Salma Hayek putting her toe in Quentin Tarantino’s mouth but judging from that I figure I’d like the rest 

The female gaze: Jesus Sweet Pea still looks good

Toni’s stage is flanked by twin pillars of melting candles and I would like someone to track those down for my bathroom

if they lay one hand on Pop Tate…

Betty appears to be, on her own, running the FBI training course. Betty is such a freak

Betty’s FBI-appointed psychologist is “Dr. Starling,” wears a great yellow blouse; Betty eats what appears to be a mini-sized Milky Way

her blond FBI trainer-boyfriend (uh) Glen appears to be an unholy fusion of Jimmi Simpson and that one actor with brown hair and really sharp light eyes whose acting credits I can’t think of right now, you know who I’m talking about (not the guy from Vampire Diaries)

I quite like her patterned blouse and I hate his yellow (gold?!) and blue tie

Please protect Betty: obviously we stan the Silence of the Lambs shit even as it remains infuriating Bryan Fuller couldn’t get his hands in it

Betty’s cat’s crying was so disturbingly baby-like that I had to leave the room once I realized it was in fact a cat

I’ve watched the Elisa Lam tape too many times in recent hours to handle this hallway shot

REALLY GROSS LICKING NOISES

the Trash Bag Killer coming at her was scary :(

Betty’s lovely blue knit cardi with the puffed sleeves!

50 Shades of Betty: clearing her throat before the doctor quite finishes her sentence—Lili Reinhart continues to be great at conveying “slightly perturbing subterranean tension”

was Charles a serial killer too??? oh damn!

Betty has been successfully holding off giving Glen a key to her place until now, an era that must come to a close

fellas, “Do I at least get a kiss?” is a bad move

Veronica was rich: Veronica’s new digs: exposed brick, bougiely avant-garde chandelier; possibly an elevator door right there behind the dude?

Veronica has married Hiram, to no one’s surprise

Chadwick looks like Jimmi Simpson and brunet Evan Peters plus a jaw

Veronica’s single-puffled-sleeved gown…..madamn (she has absolutely been taking secret birth control pills)

Summer + Blair = Veronica: of course Veronica would be great at Howard Ratner’s job; I MUST know what “specialty showcase haute couture offense” Vinnie has committed

T-Dubbs’ green jacket

Veronica pretended she was working at like, a department store? but she MISSED the EDGE post-day-trading

their apartment is so expensive that their bedroom is totally exposed

oh my god, Hermione

Best costume bit: please get me these satiny green high-waisted slacks?! and ugh her blouse has shoulder tassels……..she’s flourishing

“That’s threatening to an alpha like Chad.”

yes, they have a private elevator. fine.

Glen and Chad get their ties from the same Men’s Warehouse

“When that helicopter went down on the way to Martha’s Vineyard…”

you know kissing is 4-real when one person cups their hand to the back of the other person’s neck all close

I don’t understand the drop of the Glamergé egg but I appreciate that there is one and that Veronica is like, get this the fuck out of my house

Veronica’s shiny cropped tweed two-piece, Yvonne’s weird feathery coat that matches her bf’s shirt (you know she’s supposed to be “too much” because she’s got big hoop earrings)

God, Jughead is next and I’m not gonna be able to handle it

OH GOD IT’S SO MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT

Alphabet City?! the piano?? the fucking East Coast Beat typewriter shit—the day robe? I’m—READING CLUBMASTERS? FORSYTHE???

OH GOD HE’S DATING ANOTHER WRITER (she has nice pants)

Jughead eats: “that place you like” is a HOT DOG STAND in the middle of SOME GRASS

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Jughead wears high-ankle light blue jeans, grey socks, and spectators that blend to create the illusion of wading boots. I’m going to commit a crime

Jughead doubts it: “So did Kerouac. And Hemingway. And Fitzgerald.” 

fuck yes I love Floundering Jughead, and his Pushy Agent who pronounces “career” like “Korea,” and the continuing tradition of Jughead getting kicked out of his house

I like Literary Grifter’s sweater

the Brat Pack, and most of the Rat Pack for that matter, were actors, but I assume RAS couldn’t resist the rhyme 

I was 100% afraid we were about to learn Cora was an uncomfortably-young undergrad

the musical cue as she reaches into her bag is absolutely as if she’s taking out a gun, and it might as well be! it’s the scariest thing in NYC: an unpublished manuscript

showrunners doing a classic I Love Lucy job partially concealing Vanessa Morgan’s pregnancy via medium close-ups, draping black clothes

Cheryl slowly turning to ask if doesn’t she look okay 10/10 icon

Cheryl’s pins: she has either a tiny spider or maybe a tick

Cheryl’s sheaths: the lacy red thing, amazing

why is Cheryl’s left hand gloved?

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: Cheryl’s going to forge a Rembrandt, which unfortunately means she’s my favorite person on the planet (she does not look happy about doing this)

btw is Nana Rose an Immortal?

please tell me about Toni’s eyelashes

EXTREMELY HAUNTED DOLL?!

“Damn good coffee”: Archie’s earnest “Where are people gonna sit for the bus?” slayed me

fuck YEAH Ghoulies party house! terrible music but really good skull spray paint art

Jug looks LOW lol

Veronica’s blouse + buttons, impeccable

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: Tabitha/Squeaky

the hellscape semi’s red backlighting and its skeleton’s red eyes

I like Linette’s glossy bomber!

the trucker who’s about to kill her can’t also be the Trash Bag Killer….truckers have to stick to too much of a schedule….but he could be Betty’s meandering serial

I loved this episode

NEXT WEEK: Archie brings the FBI down on some people paying their rent :(

[span-time]

06.01.2017

I was pretty excited to read Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art (2016) by Virginia Heffernan, as my Wikipedia search of the woman told me that she was basically a more wholesome and successful version of everything I aspire to be, but hey, the book sucks!! This is one of the two key texts for the class––the other, naturally, being Kenneth Goldsmith’s ‘Wasting Time On The Internet’ (2016). Both books were published in 2016 (so like thematic relevance and current case studies would have been nice.) 

She writes in the preface:

the Internet is a massive and collaborative work of realist art [...] Digital forms are best illuminated by cultural criticism, which uses the tools of art and literary theory to make sense of the Internet’s glorious illusion: that the Internet is life. 

Because of course the Internet is not life. In fact it is a highly artificial regime, with tight rules and rituals that organize its text, music, and images. That’s why the Internet becomes more deeply meaningful when “read” as an aesthetic object rather than lived or reported on as firsthand human experience. 

I have so many issues with this blanket aestheticization of Internet practices by people over the age of thirty who so clearly gives no fucks about the lived fabric of Internet communities and the Real, incredible people making Real Lived Experience a much kinder/warmer/more fascinating/understanding place for their URL friends. I get that the forefathers of (sub)cultural theory (see Hebdige 1979) may have premised subculture and community on physical proximity, which may have led them to see online communities as simply an aesthetic abstraction, or an inferior, digitized ‘copy’ of the more ‘real’ IRL communities they represent. 

When early cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote that the "content of any medium is always another medium,” he was referring to the written word as speech, film as a collection of pictures, recorded music as a collection of notes written on paper, but was he talking about people? Of course not, and understandably––things like selfies, hyperreality, social media ‘presence’ were barely a spec on the horizon. The lines between self, medium, and reality were distinct (in the academy, at least). 

To frame the Internet and social media as an abstraction (in 2016 FFS) and ignore the porous, fluid relationship between what goes on URL/IRL is outdated and out of touch. I wanna be like “hey Virginia have you heard of ‘weird facebook’ and all the amazingly honest, fucked up, socially conscious, generous people who live on there and say challenging things that every day make me rethink the way I carry myself in real life? Have you ever met up IRL with someone you met online and just like hung out and made cool art and then gone back to URL friendship and it all just feels like a continuation of the same thing? Have you ever relied on your online friends for emotional support and advice to help you get through really stupid, self-destructive periods when your ‘real’ friends and family were physically present but emotionally on another planet?” 

So yeah. This whole ‘the Internet is a mysterious and artificial place that speaks no volumes on how we are as real people’ is bullshit. I was talking with a fb friend yesterday evening and he put it really nicely:

Oh God i can't do that internet shit like idk how ppl act like this shit exists within a vacuum like they didn't IRL acquire a crippling porn addiction almost ironically

N yea ppl def think I'm bugging for what I do but if they aren't tryna step up what I'm doing isn't for them

!!! Off rip like yo a good 2/3rds of the memes are self deprecating cries for help and no1 helps they laugh n be like same bro :)

Like I really be jumping in ppls messages tryna talk to them cause some shit u can't scroll past n just be chill

Like Idk so many super self destructive things got normalized in some of the most creative pockets of the internet and with so much going on ppl are just numbing themselves

The class itself is taking turns, this message I sent my former professor/mentor yesterday is all that really needs to be said:

...

RIP x