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decks-writing-blog · 3 months ago

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If Given the Choice: Chapter 1/6: Important Conversation Time

Summary: Auri crashes into the island, leaving them injured. Gabbro helps them, leading to some important conversations.

[A/N] This is the fic that I originally intended to be my final for the Campfire Fest event. The prompt I'd given myself for it was 'something based on a game play experience'. When going for the Deep Impact achievement, fate conspired to have me hit one of the islands instead of the sea (Bramble Island too, the one island I somehow never found until I was looking to fill out the ship log for that achievement). I survived though; the angle I hit it at had the cockpit popping off and thus I was just left injured. So I had like a 'what if it was Gabbro's island instead, Gabbro naturally would investigate upon hearing the crash and thus Time Buddies'. And then I discovery wrote my way into Auri's injury being serious and then from there also discovery wrote my way into this piece connecting/continuing some of the other pieces I wrote for the event (mostly the day 3 Longing drabble which worked great because folks here on Tumblr expressed wanting a continuation to that one). So it was quite long then I also wanted to explore the aftermath a bit and then the next loop too and then I decided I wanted to give them a happy ending. Thus it ended up being this whole fic.

Also, just for the record, reading my Campfire Fest fic and the Longing chapter in particular aren't required for understanding this. It just mentions some things that happen in those pieces and the important part of the thought process Auri has in Longing is gone over in this too.

And now Content Warning time: they talk about suicide in this fic and there's a depiction of major injury.

The sound was like a thousand claps of thunder going off all at once right above Gabbro’s island. They yelped, jumping up and out of the hammock to their feet, ready to do something even if that thing was run. No such action was necessary though. The usual murmur of the rain, thunder, and ocean waves reinserted itself as if nothing unusual had happened.

Shaking themself off, Gabbro took a handful of deep breaths, easing away the last of their surprise. The sound had come from the other side of the island. Probably. It had been too sudden to track its direction but it had sounded like an impact, not unlike the lava rocks on Brittle Hollow, but louder. If whatever it was had hit the ocean instead, it would’ve made a splash sound, probably inducing a wave or two.

Putting the flute on their harness, Gabbro started for the tunnel. Upon rounding its bend, giving them a view of the other side, the source of the sound became obvious. It had indeed been an impact. The remains of what could only be Auri’s ship rested in a crater. The exposed remnants of its electrical system still sparked in a few places, creating a new hazard as the rain pooled around it. It had hit the ground with enough force to make the reactor explode on impact. That would be why it had been particularly loud.

Auri was probably dead. Only probably though, there was a chance they were still alive and so Gabbro resumed moving forward. They didn’t want to see Auri’s dead body but leaving them to die alone in the midst of their crash didn’t feel right.

Upon exciting the tunnel, the ship’s cockpit became visible floating window side down in the water. It was designed to pop off during harsh impacts to try to protect the pilot. Whether it had succeeded in protecting Auri was too soon to tell but it looked mostly intact so there was a chance. Gabbro gave the smoldering crash a wide berth as they made their way over to stand at the water’s edge.

“Hey time buddy, you alive in there?” they called to the cockpit.

Silence.

Gabbro shuffled their feet for a moment before stepping into the ocean with a sigh. They were going to be mad at Auri next loop if they found their lifeless body in there, especially if it was gory. Reaching it, they climbed up onto its edge, making it rock in the water. Not as much as would’ve been expected though, indicting water was leaking in, presumably from cracks in the window.

Auri was indeed in the cockpit though, still strapped into the pilot’s seat, the only thing keeping them from fully lying face down on the console and the sea water slowly raising around it. Were they dead though or just unconscious? It was hard to tell. From this angle Gabbro couldn’t even tell what condition their suit was in. Damn it. Even if Auri was alive, they were going to be mad at them next loop for this. That was next loop though. This loop they were just worried.

Had Auri done this on purpose? The time loop would make a suicide attempt futile but making one at all wasn’t good. Doing it right onto Gabbro’s island was either a call for help or an attempt to take Gabbro with them. Probably the former, they didn’t seem the type to do a duo homicide/suicide. Assuming they’d even hit the island on purpose. They might’ve been going for the water. Which still wouldn’t be a smart thing to do but the resulting crash would be less potentially deadly. Regardless of how intentional hitting this particular island was though, ramming into the planet at such speeds could’ve only been intentional. It looked bad and thus Gabbro was worried.

“Auri! You alive? Wake up!”

No response.

Giving up was an option. Auri was probably dead. They would be back next loop so it didn’t matter. No need to mourn or even really care that much. It was tempting to just accept that and move on. Go back to the hammock and while away the rest of the loop with some flute music … And pretend this crash and Auri’s probably corpse but maybe not wasn’t right over here. No, they had to make sure. If Auri was merely injured and unable to free themself they’d wake up trapped here and that’d make for an awful death. Also, Gabro did care. They cared that this was maybe a suicide attempt. The fact that that was plausible enough to have been their first thought said something, huh? About themself or Auri though? Probably both. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

Gabbro lowered themself into the cockpit. Floating window side down meant there wasn’t any floor to stand on. And so they slid into the space between the pilot’s chair and the wall to stand on the broken console. No firm footing and the whole thing still rocking in the waves almost had them falling but they caught themself and instead lowered into a crouch. Which put them right on level with Auri’s body, dangling in the straps.

The suit was mostly intact. No obvious tears spilling blood or anything. Something must’ve broken loose on impact though and hit them in the head. The helmet was dented slightly on this side, the visor cracked bad enough that Gabbro could see part of their face, including one of their upper eyes, inside. Bad news if they got caught up in a cyclone as the lack of atmosphere would kill them. The last one had been by recently though, meaning there likely wouldn’t be another for a few hours at least.

Gabbro grabbed them by the upper arm and gave them as firm a shake as they dared. “Auri! Wake up if your alive.”

Silence. Welp, that was… Auri groaned. They were alive. With another groan, their one visible eye fluttered open. It was noticeably bloodshot, not a good sign. They titled their head to look at Gabbro.

“Why you here? You’re supposed to be at… Giant’s Deep, right?” They didn’t sound sure about that.

“We are on Giant’s Deep, buddy. You didn’t die yet. Got real close though, crashing into the island like that. How fast were you going?”

“Uh… I dunno. Pretty fast.”

Would now be a good time to ask what they’d intended with their stunt? If they’d aimed for the island in particular? … Probably not. First came getting them somewhere they could breath. Their oxygen tank didn’t look more than a little scuffed but their supply would be leaking out through their shattered visor.

“How badly are you injured?”

Auri took a few seconds to think about it before replying. “My… suit’s display thingy’s broken so I dunno. Nothing hurts though so… I’m probably fine. I think I’m good to go.” They still dangled limp in their straps though. The only movement they’d made had been that slight turn of their head.

“You think you can get yourself up and out of this?”

More silence, this time lasting long enough that it almost seemed they might’ve passed out again before they finally responded. “I um… I can’t move.”

The worst possible scenario. Injured bad enough that they were indeed thoroughly trapped. If this had happened anywhere else, this would’ve been a very bad death for them indeed. It still might be if Gabbro couldn’t get them out. Though, with their broken visor, getting tossed up into space would kill them pretty fast, putting them out of their misery in the process. … Gosh, what an awful thought to have.

“I’m scared. I don’t wanna die like this.” Auri sounded like they were about to start crying.

Gabbro put a hand on their arm. Though, if the damage was bad enough they couldn’t move, there was a good shot they wouldn’t be able to feel it either. “You won’t. I’ll get you out of this.” How was a good question but they managed to make their voice confident anyway. “First, I gotta get this back to land though, all right?” Before they drifted too far from the island. “So I’m gonna pop out real quick but I’m not leaving and I’ll get back to you real soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

Straightening, Gabbro had to step up onto the back of the pilot’s seat in order to pull themself back through the opening. It creaked under their combined weight but thankfully held. Gabbro’s exit was less than graceful as they pulled themself up and tumbled over the side and back into the water with a splash.

They let their natural buoyancy lift them back to the surface, allowing them to take stock. The cockpit was indeed drifting further from the island. Problems that needed to be solved through immediate action were always the worst kind. Auri better be grateful for all the work Gabbro was about to put in to save them from an unpleasant death.

First, they swam back to get their jet pack. With this gravity and the sea’s constant roiling, there was no way they were pushing the cockpit all the way back onto the shore under their own power alone. Upon returning with it, they didn’t waste time with checking on Auri inside, instead they went straight around to the other side to start pushing.

Even with the jet pack, it wasn’t easy. It was doable though and and thus they eventually had the cockpit properly on shore. They’d made sure to push it so that Auri would be sitting up right inside.

“How you holding up?” they asked as stepped back inside and edged up to stand by the pilot’s chair again.

Auri’s head jerked as if startled from a nap. “Aren’t you… normally on Giant’s Deep at the start of the loop? Why am I waking up… here?” Head trauma as well as a broken spine then. They’d fucked themself up pretty bad, huh?

“You’re still not dead,” Gabbro answered as they began unbuckling them. “You crashed into my island.” On purpose on on accident? They still weren’t ready to ask that yet though and so they didn’t. Maybe Auri would volunteer the information on their own.

A beat or two of silence as Auri processed. “Oh yeah. I can…” Their hand flexed slightly in the lap but if they were trying to close it fully they failed. “… not much though. They’re tingly like when… you lay on them weird. I think my feet and legs are gone though. Were they eaten by an angler fish?”

“No. They’re still there. You’re just partially paralyzed thanks to the crash.” Gabbro had no idea how to properly handle this kind of scenario. Luckily the time loop meant the damage wasn’t permanent and so all they really had to worry about was keeping Auri calm until either their head trauma killed them or the supernova did, whichever came first. They didn’t seem to be in pain, just paralyzed and slightly confused.

“Oh. That makes sense. The angler fish eat all of me anyway, whole if I’m not in the ship. Sometimes when I’m in the ship too. They bite it in half.”

“That sounds harrowing. Now, I’m gonna have to unbuckle you so I can drag you out, okay? It’s not gonna be easy in this gravity but I’ll try to be gentle.” Telling Auri what they were going to do seemed wise. They were confused so surprising them by just doing things to their paralyzed body might be distressing. Gabbro was certainly feeling quite stressed out themself.

A beat or two silence before… “Okay. I trust you.” A nice sentiment but it didn’t make Gabbro feel better right now. They weren’t equipped to handle this kind of emergency and shouldn’t be trusted with one. If not for the loop, they’d have radioed Hornsfel for advice on what to do.

They didn’t let their inadequacy show though. Instead they just took a deep breath and set to the task of getting Auri out of the pilot’s chair. With how close it was to the console, the easiest method would’ve been to just scoop them up and lift their whole body over the arm rest. But despite how long they’d been on Giant’s Deep relative to their sense of time, it hadn’t been nearly as long physically. Their muscles didn’t have time to strengthen against the heavy gravity and thus such a feat was beyond them. And so came the awkward process of dragging Auri’s limp body off the front and into the cramped space between the seat and the pilot’s console before finally being able to maneuver free of the cockpit entirely

Gabbro’s plan had been to get them to the hammock but that was a long trek from here. Just dragging their dead weight over to lean back against one of the trees had their muscles aching with the effort. Also their broken visor meant the moment a cyclone picked up the island they’d be good as dead. Still maybe a mercy as from their perspective, it’d be quick and would get them back to the start of the loop much faster. But… it just didn’t feel right to sit back and let that happen. They could ask if Auri wanted that but well, what an awful thing to ask. ‘Do you want me to just let you die when I could prevent it?’ sounded so callous. Even when their apathy had been at its strongest – a state Auri had broken them out of – they hadn’t been that bad… probably. They certainly weren’t now though. Besides they still needed to ask just how accidental the crash had been.

“You’ll die if a cyclone tosses you up into space like that. So I’m gonna go get my ship to put you in, okay?” they said instead as the crouched down in front of Auri. “I should be back soon.”

Silence for a few seconds as Auri processed. They finally broke it with a laugh. It was good to hear them mirthful but…

“What’s funny?”

“I knew you could find your ship if you wanted to.”

“Never said I couldn’t, just that I don’t know where it is most of the time.” And leaving unsaid that they didn’t want to bother going all the way to it most of the time. It got swept off out of sight at the start of every loop, making it a huge pain. “Right now it is…” They straightened and hit the button on their controller that turned the HUD on. “…three hundred metersthat way.” They pointed towards the indicator. “Huh? That’s a lot closer than I’d thought it be.” They wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been all the way on the opposite side of the planet. “A cyclone must’ve brought it closer.” It was still going to be a less than fun swim even with the jet pack but not as bad as it could’ve been. “I’ll be back with it real soon, okay?”

“Uh… okay. Be fast? I don’t wanna die alone.” They were back to sounding like they might start crying. “It’s scary alone.”

“I’ll be back soon as I can, I promise.” Moving fast wasn’t their thing but they’d make an exception just this once for their time buddy.

It had been a long while since Gabbro had last flown their ship. After Auri had broken them out of their habit of lying around all loop, every loop, they’d only gone places with them. Which naturally meant they were a passenger, free to hang out in the back and play the flute until they got to wherever Auri wanted to go. But all the drill practice they’d been required to do before going off into space as well as the handful of years they’d spent as a part of Outer Wilds Ventures wasn’t easily written over. And thus by the time they lowered their ship next to the crater left by Auri’s impact, they mostly had the hang of it again.

Popping out, they went straight to where they’d left Auri. Naturally they hadn’t moved. Their head hung against their chest though. Passed out, asleep, or dead?

“Hey pal, I’m back.” Gabbro made sure to speak loudly as their approach hadn’t prompted a reaction.

Blessedly Auri’s head jerked up to look at them. Their one eye visible through the broken visor was even more bloodshot than before, more red than orange now. “Where’d you go? And why? You never go anywhere without me making you. Which sometimes makes me think you don’t want to go with me and I’m being awful forcing you but I just don’t…” They trailed off with a sniffle.

Gabbro crouched down in front of them. “I like going places with you. I just need an extra boost to get out of the hammock sometimes. As for why I left without you this time, I went to get my ship. The seal on your helmet’s broken so you’ll die if you get tossed up by a cyclone. It’s not a fun way to die so I had to go get the ship so I can put you inside it.” Was this the right way to talk to someone with brain damage? Being extra clear on everything. Or were they talking to Auri as if they thought them an idiot?

As had become the pattern since Gabbro had first woken them post crash, Auri took several long seconds to process. Patience was something Gabbro had always been good at though, the time loop had only made them better at it, so they were content to wait until Auri was ready to respond. “That was… last loop when you did that, right? This is uh… I don’t even know how I got here. Normally I wake up on Timber Hearth. … My head feels like it’s filled with slime. It makes my thoughts slippery.”

“My guess would be you have a severe concussion at best. Your helmet took the brunt of whatever hit you in the head but it could only do so much. I’d say you’re lucky to be alive but… you know.” Gabbro shrugged. They couldn’t make themself say Auri would’ve been better off if the crash had killed them instantaneously even if the time loop did technically make it so. “Anyway, I’m not one to hurry but the next cyclone will probably be here soon. You ready to get dragged to the ship?”

“Um… yeah. Okay.”

Gabbro straightened so they could move around to Auri’s side. They pulled one of Auri’s arms up and around their shoulder and wrapped an arm around Auri’s torso to help lift them partially upright. Dragging them would’ve been easier but the indignity of such a thing wouldn’t be worth it. This way was slower but they weren’t in that much of a rush so it was fine.

Upon reaching it, the ship’s beam pulled them up together, providing instant relief. Only for a few moments but once inside, the trip to install Auri securely in one of the corners was short. And just like that, the emergency was basically dealt with. If not for the loop, it would now be a deal of getting back home for emergency medical care but they were going to die in two days no matter what anyway. So putting them through the stress of everyone worrying about and fussing over them wouldn’t do them much good.

“Where do you want to die?” Gabbro asked as soon as they had them about as comfortably positioned as could be. Sitting up secure in the corner with their legs extended against one wall, their hands folded in their lap.

“Huh?” They sounded like they’d been starting to drift off again.

“Where do you wanna die? Either from your head injury or the supernova, whichever gets you first. We’re in my ship so I can take us basically anywhere you want to go.”

A long few seconds of silence passed. “Home. I wanna die at home.”

“Just somewhere on Timber Hearth in general or in the village? If you pick the village, I don’t think I can keep your injuries a secret. Everyone else will fuss and worry because they don’t know about the time loop.”

“Uh… somewhere quiet. That… that spot near to the radio tower maybe?”

Gabbro wasn’t sure what spot they were talking about, they didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out around the radio tower. The Quantum Grove was their preferred quiet spot. But they knew where the radio tower was and thus should be able to find it no problem. “You got it, pal.”

They moved to the pilot seat, strapped in and took off. Upon escaping Giant’s Deep’s gravity well, they set the autopilot to take them towards Timber Hearth. A quick check of the solar map revealed that it was probably safe to leave it at that for now, allowing them to unbuckle and return to Auri.

First, “I’m gonna take off you helmet. I’d like to see how bad your head injury is if I can.” And if there was anything they could do about it, though that was unlikely. “Is that okay?”

“Um… sure. Okay.”

Gabbro moved their hands to either side of Auri’s helmet. They undid the seals and carefully twisted it off. Other than some dried blood leaking from their nostrils and their bloodshot eyes, there was no obvious sign of damage. That was good news, right? The two eyes on their left, especially the uppermost one that had been visible through the cracked visor were the worst. The other two looked almost normal. “Your head doesn’t hurt?”

“Um… it does a little. Mostly it just feels… swollen. Not like it’s about to pop but just… overfilled. There’s less room for thoughts and stuff.” That probably wasn’t a good sign. They were currently coherent though, just easily confused and a bit spacey and kept thinking the loop had restarted. Them not being in significant distress was the main goal and they seemed not to be.

Satisfied, Gabbro place their helmet on the shelf before reaching up to remove their own. Important conversations would be easier to have if they were both capable of looking each other in the eyes. And only one of them having their face fully covered would’ve felt weird. So Gabbro placed their own helmet on the shelf next before looking back down.

Auri was staring up at them, three of their four eyes wide. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without the… not since before. Sometimes the before feels like a dream though. Was there… was there a before the loop or have we always been like this?”

“There was a before.” It did sometimes not feel entirely real though. They’d been in this loop for way too long. “And eventually there’ll be an after.” Whether they’d still be alive in that after or not was still up in the air. “For now though, there’s just us and the loop.”

Gabbro sat down, leaning back against the wall next to where they’d put Auri’s feet, angled to face them. “Now, important conversation time, okay?” Maybe it should wait until next loop but Auri should have a harder time trying to lie when not able to think clearly, right?

The silence this time as Auri’s addled mind processed was almost disconcerting for how simple the question had been but they did eventually respond. “Okay. Important conversation, huh? I uh… yeah, have an important thing to talk about too. I’ve been meaning to for a while. … Now’s probably not a good time because of the…” Their hand twitched as if they were trying to gesture with. Probably towards their head if Gabbro had to guess. They let out a low whine instead. “This is… I don’t like it. I can’t move.”

“I know. It’s going to be okay though. I’m here. What’s the important thing do you want to talk about?” Gabbro should maybe insist on asking their question first but delaying it a little longer wouldn’t hurt. Besides, Auri might be able to bring it up on their own.

“I um… uh…” They looked at Gabbro, their upper left eye not quite in line with the others. “I love you. You’re amazing and thank you for everything. Not just this but… really everything. You make it better. I meant to say it differently but… words are hard right now.”

Oops. Now probably wasn’t a good time for this particular conversation. They should both be fully in their right state of mind for it.

“And I know that… we don’t have a choice,” Auri continued. “We’re the only ones who remember and that… makes it weird, different. I don’t know. It’s hard to think. Hurts to think too hard right now. But… it’s okay if you don’t… but do you? Or no… forget that, if given the choice would you still be my friend?”

“Yes. More than anything, yes. You’re the only thing that’s kept me sane since the loop started. And even outside of that, I like spending time with you.” They were endearing and cute, their energy infectious. Getting pulled up and along into their adventures was fun and something Gabbro had oh so desperately needed. Especially that first time when Auri had brought them to see the Stranger. Since then, they’d been on several more, all fun on some level at least thanks to Auri being there, leading the way. And on the flip side, they let Gabbro pull them down into calmness to just relax and hang out, keeping each other company on the hammock. They balanced each other out.

Did Gabbro’s love for them extend in the same direction as theirs though? They’d used the word for romantic love specifically. Gabbro had never given their relationship much thought before. It was too much of a blessing to dwell on. Now that they were thinking about it though, the answer was obvious. Of course they loved Auri. At this point, it would be surprising if they didn’t.

Yes, the point about how them two being the only ones to remember the loops, made them being close not much of a choice. But on some level, all relationships, romantic or otherwise, were that way. Under normal circumstances there were more options on who one bonded with but at the end of the day, they were social creatures who needed some form of companionship else their mental well being would suffer. That truth didn’t devalue one’s feelings for others which held even under these extreme circumstances.

“And I know you said to forget it but honestly, I think I love you too. We’re gonna talk about this more next loop though, okay? When words are easier and it doesn’t hurt to think.”

“Probably a good idea. I’m… I’m… relieved though. It feels good to say it. I’ve been meaning for… a while. Sorry I sprang it on you when I’m… stupid like this.”

“You’re fine, pal. Don’t worry about it.” It eased Gabbro’s fears somewhat. They at least almost certainly hadn’t been trying to take Gabbro with them in a suicide/homicide double feature. “And you’re not stupid, even if that stunt you pulled was. Speaking of said stupid stunt though. That’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I uh… crashed, right… I think? Or was that a few loops ago? It feels like it was but… I’m hurt… right? So it has to still be the same loop… I think.”

“Yes, it’s still the same loop. Now, do you remember why you did it? Were you… aiming for the island or an island? … Was this a suicide attempt?” There, Gabbro asked it. No beating around the bush, just going straight for it. They needed to know though. It had been their first thought. Hopefully that was just them projecting or something but… it looked bad.

The silence meant nothing at this point but it felt heavy anyway. The closest Gabbro had been to impatient in a long time. But finally Auri replied. “No. When I kill myself, I just fly into the sun. It’s fast, doesn’t hurt, really. … Doesn’t help though. The loop, you know? I was trying to um… break through the current, I think? Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do. It should be possible… maybe. Chances of hitting an island were low but… I was going too fast to dodge so… boom, I went. I don’t really remember it all that well. It’s fuzzy.”

So the answer to Gabbro’s question was technically ‘no’ but actually ‘yes’. This particular crash hadn’t been a suicide attempt but they had done them in the past. The reveal wasn’t surprising, the suspicion had already been there after all, but the fact that it had been going on before the thought had occurred to Gabbro hurt. They hadn’t considered things might’ve gotten that bad for Auri until seeing the crash.

What should they do about it though? During the whole trip to get their ship and while bringing it back, they’d considered their initial suspicion. They hadn’t settled on what to do about it if they were right or even what it meant for themself that that had been their first thought. It wasn’t an easy thing to think about. This time loop business was… rough. They weren’t equipped to deal with it or to help Auri deal with it on top of that.

They couldn’t sit here in silence though. Auri had long since broken them out of the habit of pretending everything was fine but right now at least, they had to at least try to be somewhat resilient for Auri, right? And so they took a series of deep breaths, centering themself before responding. “Next time you feel tempted to fly into the sun, come see me instead, okay?”

“Okay. I’ve been… doing that for a while anyway. … Works much better.”

“Oh, good. Keep doing that then. But um… probably don’t try to pull that stunt again. Even if you’d hit the water, there’s still a good chance you’d have ended up hurt. You said the Nomai found a way past the current, remember? I doubt it was diving at break neck speeds into the planet. Focus on finding their way instead maybe. It’s a fun mystery. You like solving those.”

A few seconds of silence. “Okay.”

“All right. Thanks.” It wasn’t quite a promise but ever since their emotional outburst love confession, Auri had started to sound more and more tired with every response, so a halfhearted, ‘okay’ was enough for now. “How you holding up?”

“Um… tired.”

“Want me to leave you alone so you can take a nap?”

“No. Stay please. In case… I don’t wake up.”

“I’ll stay then. Promise you’ll come talk to me next loop though, okay?”

“I promise.” With that Auri’s eyes fluttered closed. Whether they’d be opening them again this loop was anyone’s guess. But as long as they were at peace Gabbro was satisfied for now.

Next Chapter

#outer wilds #outer wilds spoilers #outer wilds fanfiction #outer wilds hatchling #gabbro #time buddies

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meruz · 4 years ago

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Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for?

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha.

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at [email protected].

<33333333333333333333333333

#ask #anonymous

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my-personal-multiverse · 4 years ago

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Since I have decided that this is now a Buffy blog I'm going to put thoughts I've had over the past few months on here. It's all stuff I either wrote when talking to friends or arguing on the subreddit. First have some vampire lore and philosophy thoughts.

"I think the statement of "the person a vampire was is completely gone replaced by a Demon who wears their body" doesn't really hold up with anything we see on the show. Although it's probably good to believe that as a vampire slayer because otherwise most of what Buffy does would be in a morally gray area. I also personally believe that the watchers council deliberately gives watchers and slayers that wrong information (the dialog that says so in the beginning is mostly Buffy and Giles I think. Vampires aren't framing their own experience that way) so that they don't think about the potential moral implications of, for example, killing a vamp that was just turned and hasn't killed anyone yet. The way it makes sense to me is that two things happen when you get turned 1. You loose your soul 2. Some demonic energy/presence/thing enters you and becomes a part of your body through the demonic blood. Loosing the soul I see as essentially loosing an inherent sense of Morality and guilt and loosing (most) empathy. Neither of those makes you inherently evil and there's also the philosophical question of if you can even be inherently evil or if evil is something that you have to do. But you are obviously very likely to end up doing evil things to get what you want if you don't see hurting people as wrong and can't empathize with anyone. And without a sense of Morality you won't want to do anything good unless it also serves you and you will go after more simple pleasures without a care for anyone. But not feeling empathy or having morals doesn't mean you don't have emotions yourself. You will still feel good or bad and you can still fall in love. We don't seem to question that vampires can feel hate and anger without a soul and love is essentially just another emotion. Of course there's the question of how love expresses itself if you can't empathize with who you love. If you try to cheer them up when they are sad it can't be because you feel their pain... Do you look at them more like you'd look at a broken toy that can't give you what you want anymore and try to cheer them up because of that. Is that love or just an intense desire to be with someone because of how they make you feel. Does it matter as long as you are doing the right thing? Do I need to feel someone's pain to want them to be happy? I think there's a lot of interesting questions there but just saying no soul = no love is a bit too reductive for me. (I also personally feel like soulless spike does feel some empathy for people he loves just not for anyone else but that's debatable). For the second thing I think the demonic energy/thing/whatever is what keeps their bodies going, gives them the bloodlust / need for blood to survive and the problems with the sun and all that other fun vampire stuff. But I don't think it is a different entity/identity with a personality of their own taking over and replacing the person. The reason why vampires go evil even if the person they are wasn't before is just that the loss of the soul (Morality/guilt/empathy) coupled with the new bloodlust and being hard to kill by humans thus not having to fear consequences will lead them to murder pretty quickly. But what we see of people before and after they were turned it's always the same people just without a moral compass now going after whatever they want without a care. And one thing they want now is blood but they also still have the desires they did before. Their desires and personality and memories and such is the same. I think that that mind/spirit/whatever is what makes someone who they are. I think that another being with all my memories, wants, feelings and needs would be me. But I know that philosophically you could make an argument that loosing your sense of right and wrong and empathy is enough of a difference to make you a different person. I'd personally say they are a different person in the same way that I'm a different person to who I was five years ago. The person I was then is gone not because some other entity took over my body but because I changed. And being turned is a pretty big change to go through. Even humans sometimes change from one day to the next for example when they go through trauma but you wouldn't necessarily say that they died and some other person took over. In some ways who I was 5 years ago is dead and that person will never be around again. But that's not how we frame things for humans because we have a continuous sense of self and vampires on Buffy have that too. But I'm going to try to get away from the purely philosophical arguments and into the actual show canon. First of all there is the situation where a different demonic presence actually does take over someone's body, retains memories but completely eviscerates the person and becomes a completely new character... on angel with illyria. And it's very obviously a completely different situation to what we see happen with vampires. She might know who Fred was but she has different wants and a different personality and acts according to that. With vampires that's not what happens. Spike is the most obvious example. The first thing he does after being turned is try to save his mother. He cared for her before and he still does. And if he was just a Demon in a William suit he would have no reason to even call her his mother. Turning her is not a moral choice ( I don't think turning someone into a vampire can be unless they ask for it because if they don't you are essentially making choices about their body without their consent) and it's not (necessarily) because of empathy. It's just that his mother was someone he always liked to be around and he wants to keep her around. and spike was always motivated by his romantic obsessions and that informed everything he did after being turned too. Then we have dru who was driven mad pre being turned and stays mad as a vampire. And we have Darla who on angel when she gets brought back as a human with a soul doesn't act like "I finally have my body back" or "what happened, I was dead and have no memory of it". She's like "I was a vampire, that was me, I did that" and she doesn't just have a soul. She's a human with a soul again. But as a character she's a continuation of Darla the vampire. And we have dark willow and vampire willow both using the same phrase ("bored now") which to me shows that regardless of how willow turns evil its a continuation of her character and vamp willow isn't just a random Demon that looks like willow. In the same episode we also have angel basically saying the same thing. When Buffy tries to console willow by saying that a vampires personality is not related to the person they were Angel starts saying "well actually..." then seems to realize correcting her wouldn't help the situation and switches to "good point". And then obviously we have Harmony. Who is most obviously the same person, who still has a lot of the same wants that are not related to being a vampire ( status, money, a comfortable life, a boyfriend) and who stops drinking human blood ( in season 5 of angel) not because she had a problem with killing humans but just because it didn't serve her and it was easier for her to live the life she wanted while playing by the rules. She's clearly soulless but is probably the most interesting example if you want to argue about inherent evil vs. evil actions and "does it matter why someone is doing the right thing?". The one that feels like an outlier is angel but I think even he makes sense. If you look at Liam and Angelus I do see a continuation of character. He wanted to have fun, he already didn't really care much for others and I would argue based on what he does once he looses his empathy he probably already had some desire to hurt others. He just wouldn't have ever actually acted on it when he had his soul. Being turned unleashed the worst parts of him, living out dark desires he otherwise probably would have taken to his grave and the reason he changes so drastically as a character once he gets his soul back is because of the immense guilt of knowing that everything he did was exactly what he wanted. And with a conscience he doesn't want to want those things and won't indulge in those desires to torture and harm. Because all vampires kill and don't feel bad about causing harm to get what they want but Angelus does take things a step further and I think that's based in his own desires. ( A human moral equivalent for me would be the difference between hunting animals to eat and torturing puppies for fun ) And knowing where those desires can lead him makes him work on distancing himself as much as possible from who he was once he gets his soul back which is how he becomes such a different person.

#buffy #Buffy the vampire slayer #buffy summers #spike #angelus #drusilla #darla #harmony #illyria #vampires #buffy lore #btvs

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 4 years ago

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so I wrote most of this...four days ago, and then somehow didn’t get around to finishing it until just now, which feels super weird because after writing this I started getting worried about future episodes again for a variety of reasons, and of course now we’re at T minus 10 minutes? (honestly if I’m somehow late for my own funeral I’m pretty sure no one will be surprised.) but I still wanted to post this to go over some of what I liked so much about episode 4, even if...I am no longer anywhere near as confident as I was a few days ago about where the show might be going. whatever.

***

I’ve done almost nothing for the past day or so except chew over episode 4 some more, partly trying to figure out why I liked it so much when it was broadly very divisive, and I realized that a lot of what I’ve been feeling from this episode is relief.

the thing is I’ve been paranoid since at least Infinity War about Marvel doing setup that looks like it’ll lead to a big payoff and then nothing (Loki’s death, but also Gamora’s and maybe Vision’s, and the general fact that the “fix” to IW was convoluted, took place much later, and caused as many problems as it solved, and just, Endgame in general), so I don’t really trust Marvel that way anymore. plus Marvel has pretty badly fumbled a lot of different things in the past, especially on various social issues, by introducing unfortunate implications that apparently didn’t occur to them even though they’re obvious to literally everyone else...stuff like Thanos’s “sacrifice” of Gamora, or how the Flag-Smashers were portrayed and Karli was a villain for no real reason, or how it would’ve been so easy to add a couple lines in WandaVision that would fix the whole thing where the Maximoffs weren’t just whitewashed but they also voluntarily worked with Nazis and they whiffed that too.

so, while I’ve been enjoying the show, a lot of that enjoyment has been based on meta I’ve seen and me sort of going “this interpretation is really cool and it makes a lot of sense, but at this point I can’t know if it’s something the showrunners are doing on purpose or if they sorta accidentally implied depth where there wasn’t any and it’s not actually leading anywhere” with things like the TVA being very clearly authoritarian but also supposedly the good guys, Loki being constantly described as an awful person, Loki sometimes being manic or incompetent, etc. etc. etc., along with the similar interpretation of “sure, we fans know all this stuff about how Loki is not an awful person actually, thanks, and the people who arrested him aren’t automatically Good Guys just because they’re in opposition to him but casual viewers--including not-casual-but-not-fannish viewers who should really know better--have not figured any of this out and so the show needs to go out of its way to demonstrate things that are obvious to us” but I wasn’t sure. the second half of episode 1 made me feel pretty good about where the show was headed as far as Loki’s characterization and emotions were concerned, but the more lighthearted aspects of 2 and 3 had me wondering again.

so then what happens in this episode?

the TVA goes fully mask off. the Time-Keepers are in fact fake, the Sacred Timeline by extension is also basically fake, the people who work there are all variants, the ones we know (C-20, B-15, Mobius) show grief and anger over the lives that were stolen from them, Sylvie is arrested as a child who did absolutely nothing wrong (and then put through the same process Loki was in episode 1, which is cool because a lot of it was kinda played for laughs then but showing the same things happening to an innocent child also serves to reframe what happened to Loki as, hmm, not that funny after all maybe!), Renslayer is willing to prune innocent people--friends and coworkers, even--just because they learned too much, all the sinister propaganda WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SINISTER

Loki gets very serious very fast in this episode. he displays a lot of genuine emotion and trauma but he mostly does it in a calculated way that shows just how fast his brain works and how he’s always, always thinking about what other people want/expect from him. (like--even the complaint about too few guards seems to fall into that category, given that he only says it after Mobius insists he must be wanting to make some kind of quip!) his self-image is garbage but through Sylvie he’s starting to maybe work on that. he goes up against multiple armed enemies while completely unarmed and holds his own until he gets a weapon. he pushes back when it matters and doesn’t just accept everything Mobius throws at him. he lies, pretty competently (the fact that Mobius doesn’t believe him is...really not his fault, considering Mobius wouldn’t believe him at first about the truth either, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning to believe anything Loki outright told him), when it actually matters, primarily in what sure seems like an attempt to protect someone he cares about.

and Mobius. says that Loki WAS RIGHT. ABOUT THE TVA. FROM THE BEGINNING!!! I would still love to hear him say explicitly, look, I said a lot of shitty things to you and tossed in some actual physical torture at the end there oops but the vast majority of it was stuff I didn’t really mean and was only saying to get a reaction and/or information and of course it turns out I was wrong about all the TVA stuff, so I want to say for the record that I was wrong about you personally in many different ways and I’m sorry. (which, honestly, would probably be very awkward for both of them because I doubt Loki has much experience receiving genuine apologies.) but I’m mostly okay with it if he doesn’t, because I feel like you were right from the beginning, and by the way you can be whatever you want does a decent job of implying most of that. (...enough for casual viewers to pick up on it? well, I’m not hoping for miracles but sure, probably some of them.)

in other words? all that stuff the casual viewers were missing (not helped by misleading statements from the showrunners), about the TVA so clearly being bad guys, and Loki being a pretty decent person who presents different versions of himself in different situations and also has some shitty coping mechanisms, and the other Loki variant also not being evil just because they were trying to take down the TVA? we were right. that is, in fact, how the showrunners intended all those things to be taken. they didn’t want to come right out with that stuff at first because they wanted to tell a story and have some twists, and the fact that these things were twists for casual viewers is exactly why it was frustrating to a lot of fans, because it felt like obvious things were being misrepresented or overlooked. I still think that’s reasonable, because see above on why Marvel doesn’t necessarily deserve that trust, but at this point I’m a lot more comfortable believing that this specific show more or less knows what it’s doing.

I mean, yeah, there were some cool fan theories that went nowhere, like the whole thing with the broken TemPad, and I agree that was dumb and it’s very annoying that it really was just sloppy writing, but I guess specific things like that just...don’t bother me as much as more systemic, overarching elements like the characterization of Loki and the TVA. and yes, of course I’ll always be annoyed that we’re apparently never going to get explicit confirmation that Loki’s alliance with Thanos was coerced at best. but, you know, what we got isn’t nothing.

#loki #loki show #loki spoilers #mobius m. mobius #sylvie #marvel cinematic universe #meta #loki meta #my meta #I should add links but uh...maybe later

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bananaofswifts · 4 years ago

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B+

By : Katie Moulton

The Lowdown: “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” Taylor Swift wrote in a 2019 social media post after her longtime label, Big Machine, sold her master recordings without her consent. Swift had been unable to gain control of her first six albums through contract negotiations, and then Scooter Braun, who’d demonstrated public enmity with the singer-songwriter, was collecting the checks. (Braun’s company has since sold the masters to Shamrock Holdings for $300 million.) What’s one of the world’s brightest superstars and the preeminent pop poet of a generation to do?

The answer: Do it all again.

Swift has begun to re-record her back catalog, and the first release is Fearless (Taylor’s Version) from 2008. (For the Swiftian numerologists, with the new version of Fearless released on 4/9, Swift now owns 4 out of her 9 albums.) This pop-country juggernaut, her second album, was the most awarded in the history of country music, sweeping up honors from Album of the Year at the Grammys to Best Female Video at the MTV Music Awards. (Her VMA acceptance speech was notoriously interrupted by Kanye West, marking one small step for that Moonman, one giant leap for petty celebrity scandals.) Taylor’s Version includes new recordings of all 19 original tracks from the “Platinum Edition,” plus six never-before-released songs “from the vault.”

It also creates a soundalike alternative for both discerning fans and industries (from advertising to radio) to decide which album they play and license – the one owned by an investment firm or the one owned by the artist herself. In that way, Swift is asking (if not pressuring) us to choose. She’s also playing chess. For the critical listener, the questions are: How closely can Swift recreate beloved songs recorded 13 years ago (13 = big number in Swiftian lore)? How might she reimagine or even improve these songs? And how does one analyze an album when the album is also a chess move?

The Good: Damn, this album holds up – not only to the hype of its initial release, but despite that, beyond that. At the time of the initial release, the public was hung up on the figure Swift struck as a precocious ingenue in boots and ballgown, swinging an acoustic guitar with a knowing twinkle in her omg! expression. And Fearless still evokes that moment, but it emerges as a classic account of youthful romance, drama, and fantasy. “Love Story” remains a touchstone of Swift’s lyrical quirks and worldview but continues to stand out as a universally appealing pop song. (Put it on the next Voyager golden record, beam it into space.)

Swift has never been shy about mining her diaries and blowing up the most fleeting of feelings into emotional epics, but one can imagine the trepidation of a 31-year-old singing songs which are not only written by a teenager but so deeply ensconced in teenagehood. What cringe awaited us! These re-recordings, however, mostly escape cringe by playing it straight and allowing us, as the best songs do, to fill in the spaces. For example, much of the charm of bittersweet ballad “Fifteen” was the precocity of its delivery by an 18-year-old who perceived herself to be already so distant from adolescent innocence, but who still clearly felt its hurt so sharply. Now sung by “Pretty Grown Up” Taylor, the song conveys a different pathos: the knowledge not only of her own coming of age, but a protectiveness over the millions – multiple micro-generations – of fans she has witnessed come of age alongside and behind her.

But this is knowledge the listener brings to the listening, not a change that’s made explicit in the re-recordings. The arrangements remain faithful to the original, with plenty of heart-plucking banjo and cinematic fiddle, which belies both Swift’s confidence in the catalog and her honoring of fans’ commitment to these songs.

The most noticeable difference is Swift’s vocal ability, which has been deeply strengthened and expanded as an instrument, both by age and her force of will. Her command as a singer means that the high-flying hiccups and breaks and urgency of the original recording are gone. When she recreates these youthful flourishes – the twangy pronunciation of “Fee-uhr-less,” the laugh in “Hey Stephen” – the longtime listener recognizes them as recreations. But Swift’s fuller, smoother vocals on rage-romp “Tell Me Why” (hold that grudge, girl!) and “The Way I Loved You” (stay high on that drama, Tay!) inject these B-sides with new life.

The Bad: There is so much content in the Swift universe, and apparently in her bottomless Vault, that it can be (to quote “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”), exhausting. We could do without any of the “dance” remixes of songs like “Love Story”, for example. The six “From the Vault” tracks are solid, but it’s obvious why they didn’t make the final album cuts. The vibey electronic atmospherics of “Don’t You” and “Bye Bye Baby” sound like they come from a later era than Fearless. (The Vault exception might be upbeat breakup song “Mr. Perfectly Fine”, which resurrects Swift’s delightfully petty side. By the way, did she have to pay RuPaul for using the line “Sashay away”?)

While the fealty to the original recordings is understandable and even admirable, I wonder if there are missed opportunities for further reimagining of this collection. For example, could Swift re-order her at-times confounding tracklists for future releases or choose different singles to showcase previously overlooked songs?

The Verdict: There’s a chance that, based on the success of this release, Swift reaches a deal with the current holder of her masters and won’t re-record her entire back catalog. This is probably just the latest interesting thing she’s done in music and business, but it’s worth our consideration since it’s been undertaken with such care and could pave the way for other artists.

Swift has always been a masterful writer of short fictions, able to swell a small feeling or moment to contain an era, a relationship, a universe (a skill she continued to develop on folklore and evermore by drawing even more overtly from literature and film). Yet, this project of re-recording her catalog requires her to become a memoirist: re-examining her former selves and reinhabiting her former voice. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the time-tested strength of the original music, but there was also an opportunity to re-evaluate previous positions and experiences, to reveal what they meant in the longer run. But Swift seems to resist passing judgment on her younger self. Instead, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) states boldly, simply and perhaps, generously, that this is a story still worth telling – and a fight worth fighting.

Essential Tracks: “Love Story”, “You Belong with Me”, and “Tell Me Why”

#taylor swift #review #fearless

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adorpheus · 4 years ago

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on fujoshi and fetishization

Lately, more and more, both here on tumblr and on other sites, I keep seeing people spew unfiltered hatred at fujoshi - that is, women who like mlm content such as gay fanfic and fanart featuring men with other men. And I don’t mean like a specific type of fujoshi, like the ones who are genuinely being weird about it, but just like a general hatred for girls (but especially straight identifying girls) who express love for gay romance.

I hate to break this to you all, but women (including straight women!) actually are allowed to like mlm fanfiction and fanart, even enthusiastically so. A woman simply expressing her love of gay fanfic, even if it is in kind of a cringey way or a way that you personally don’t like, is NOT automatically fetishization.

I’ve been on the receiving end of fetishization for my entire life, from a very young age, as many black and brown folx have, so I consider myself pretty well acquainted with how it works. Fetishization isn’t just like, being really into drawings of boys kissing, or whatever the fuck y’all are trying to imply on this god forsaken site.

Fetishization is complicated imo, and can encompass a lot of things, such as (but not limited to):

1 - dehumanization, e.g. viewing a group of people as sexual objects who exist purely for entertainment purposes, rather than acknowledging them as actual people who deserve respect and rights

and

2 - projecting certain assumptions onto said people based on their race/sexuality/whatever is being fetishized. These assumptions are often, but not always, sexual in nature (like the idea that black people in general are more sexual than other races, etc etc etc).

I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate my point. Please note this isn’t the best or most nuanced example, but it is the most simplistic. A white person finding me attractive and respectfully appreciating my black features as part of what makes me beautiful is not, on its own, fetishization. A white person finding me attractive solely or mostly because I’m a PoC is now in fetishization territory. Similarly, assuming I’m dominant because of my blackness (like saying “step on me mommy” and shit like that) is hella fetishistic.

That being said, theres definitely a difference between how fetishization works in real life with real people, and how it shows up in fandom.

Fetishization manifests in many different ways in fandom, but most commonly on the mlm side of things, I personally see it appear as conservative (or centrist) women who love the idea of two men together, but don’t actually like gay people, and don’t necessarily think LGBT+ people deserve rights (or “special treatment” as its sometimes dog whistled). These women view queer men as sexual objects for entertainment rather than an actual group of people who deserve to be protected from systemic oppression. I’ve noticed that they often don’t even think of the men they “ship” together as actually being gay, and may even express disgust at the idea of a character in an mlm ship being headcanon’d gay. In case its not obvious, this is pretty much exactly the same way a lot of cishet men fetishize lesbians (they see “lesbian” as a porn category, rather than like, what actual LGBT people think of when we read the word lesbian). There’s a pretty popular viral tweet thread going around where someone explains seeing this trend of conservative women who like mlm stuff, and I have also personally witnessed this phenomenon myself in more than one fandom.

The funny thing is, maybe its just me buuuut.... The place I see this particular kind of fetishization happen most is not in the anime/BL fandom, from which the term fujoshi originates - I actually see these type of women way way more in western fandom spaces like Supernatural, Harry Potter, and Hannibal. I can’t stress this enough, there’s a shocking amount of people who are like, straight up trump supporters in these fandoms. If you want to experience it, try joining a Hannigram or Destiel group on facebook and you will probably encounter one eventually especially if you happen to be living through a major historical event. Like these women probably wouldn’t even be considered “fujoshi”, because that term doesn’t really apply to them given they aren’t in the BL/anime fandom, yet they’re the ones I personally see actually doing the most harm.

Of course this isn’t the ONLY kind of fetishizing woman in the mlm/BL world, there are other ways fetishization shows up, but this is the most toxic kind that I see.

A girl just being really into BL or whatever may be “cringe” to you, or she may be expressing her love for BL in a “cringey” way, but a straight woman really enjoying BL is not, on its own, somehow inherently fetishization. Yes, sometimes teenage girls act kind of cringe about how much they like BL and that might be annoying to you, but its not necessarily ~problematic~.

That being said, IT NEEDS BE REMARKED that a lot of the “fujoshi” that you all hate so deeply, are actually closeted trans men or nonbinary people who haven’t yet come to terms with their gender identity, or are otherwise just NOT cishet. I know because I was one of these closeted people for years, and I honestly think tumblr and the cultural obsession around purity is one of the many reasons I was closeted so deeply for so long. STORYTIME LOL!!! In my early adolescence, I was a sort of proto “fujoshi”. I identified as a bi girl who was mostly attracted to men, or as most (biphobic) people called it, “practically straight”. I wrote and read “slash” fanfic and looked at as well as drew my own fanart. We didn’t use the term fujoshi back then, but that’s definitely how I could have been described. I was obsessed with yaoi, BL, whatever you want to call it, to a cringe-inducing degree. I really struggled to relate to most het romances, so when I first discovered yaoi fanfics (as we called them at the time), I fell in love and felt like I finally found the type of romance content that was made for me. I didn’t know exactly why, I just knew it hit different. LGBT+ fanart and fanfiction brought me an immense amount of joy, and I didn’t really think too hard about why.

At some point, in my early 20s, after reading lots of discourse™ here on tumblr and other places like twitter, I started to get the sinking feeling that my passion for gay fanfiction was ~problematic~. I had always felt a sense of guilt for being into mlm content, because literally anyone who found out I liked BL (especially the men I dated) shamed me for liking it all the fucking time (which btw is literally just homophobic, like can we talk about that?). In addition to THAT bullshit, now I’m seeing posts telling me that girls who like BL are cringey gross fetishists who inspire rage and should go die?

Let me tell you, I internalized the fuck out of messages like this. I desperately wanted to avoid being ~problematic~. At the time, I thought being problematic was like the worst thing you could be. I was terrified of being “cancelled”, before canceling was even really a thing. I thought to myself, “oh my god, I’m gross for liking this stuff? I should stop.” I beat myself up over this. I wanted so badly to be accepted, and to be deemed a Good Person by the internet and society at large.

I tried to shape up and become a good ally (lmfao). I stopped writing fanfic and deleted all the ones I was working on at the time. I made a concerted effort to assimilate into cishet culture, including trying to indulge myself more deeply in the few fandoms I could find that had het content I did enjoy (Buffy, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, etc). I would occasionally look at BL/fanfic/etc in private, but then I would repress my interest in it and not look for a while. Instead I would look at women in straight relationships, and create extremely heterosexual Couple Goals pinterest boards, and try to figure out how I could become more like these women, so I, too, could be loved someday.

This cycle of repression lasted like eight years. Throughout it all, I was performing womanhood to the best of my ability and trying to become a woman that was worthy of being in a relationship. I went in and out of several “straight” relationships, wondering why they didn’t make me feel the way reading fanfic did. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out why straight intimacy didn’t work for me. I just didn’t enjoy it. I always preferred looking at or making gay fanfiction/fanart over actual intimacy with men in real life.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a trans coming out video that someone I was following posted online, my egg started to crack, and to make an extremely long story short, after like 3 years of introspection and many gender panic attacks that I still experience to this day, I realized that I’m uh... MAYBE... NOT CIS..!? :|

I truly believe if I had just been ALLOWED TO LIKE GAY STUFF WITHOUT BEING SHAMED FOR IT, I probably would have realized I was trans way way sooner. Because for me, indulging in my love of gay romance and writing gay fanfic wasn’t me being a weirdo fetishist, it was actually me exploring my own gender identity. It is what helped me come to terms with being a nonbinary trans boy.

Not everyone realizes they are trans at age 2 or whatever the fuck. Sometimes you have to go through a cringey fujoshi phase and multiple existential crises to realize how fucking gay you are AND THATS FINE.

And one more thing - can we just be real here?

A lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment is literally just misogyny. omg please realize this. Its “women aren’t allowed to enjoy things” but, like... with gay fanfics. Some of the anti-fujoshi posts I see come across my dash are clearly ppl projecting a caricature they invented in their head of a demonic fujoshi fetishist onto any woman who expresses what they consider to be a little too much enthusiasm for gay content and then using their perception of that individual as an excuse to justify their disdain for any women, especially straight women, ‘invading’ their ~oh so exclusive~ queer fandom spaces.

god get over yrselfs this is gatekeeping by another name

idk why i spent so long writing this no one is even going to read it, does anyone even still use this site

*EDIT: HOLY SHIT WHEN DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS POST I FOUND OUT THAT Y-GALLERY IS BACK OMG!!!

#rant #fujoshi #I SAID WHAT I SAID #personal #gender stuff

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the-everqueen · 4 years ago

Text

why i disliked “the traitor baru cormorant”

so...recently i read Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. i bought it thinking, Cool, an insightful fantasy series for me to get into while i wait to hear whether i passed my qualifying exams! i have some time before the semester starts!

and then i absolutely hated it and spent every minute cataloguing what i thought Dickinson got wrong.

...uh, if you want to get the tl;dr of the liveblog i gave the gf, here’s the top three reasons i disliked this book:

1) not a fan of the “strong female character” trope

yes, Baru doesn’t sling around a sword or shoot arrows better than Anyone In The Whole World. but Dickinson IMMEDIATELY tells us (not shows, tells) that she’s good at math, she’s clever at picking apart strategic scenarios, she’s a savant. (tbh, i don’t love how he shows this, either, with the standard child-prodigy-who-catches-the-attention-of-a-powerful-adult trope.) in Dickinson’s crafted world, her math skills aren’t entirely unusual: women (for...some reason?) are stereotyped as being good at calculations, despite also being aligned with hysteria and too many emotions. this bothers me more than it’s probably supposed to, because the sexism in this novel doesn’t really seem to follow an internal logic. i guess it’s so we can have a woman as the protagonist? also...hoo boy...her “savant” characterization bothers me because...she’s heavily coded as South East Asian (...maaaybe Philippines or Native Hawaii, but as i’ll get to later, Dickinson doesn’t make a huge distinction). uh...model minority stereotypes anyone? yes, within the text, plenty of people associated with the Empire comment that it’s impressive someone of her background got into a position of power so young. at the same time, i’m sure that sounds familiar to so many Asian-identified people! the constant tightrope of being expected to perform to a certain (white, Western) standard while also being Othered. mostly this bothers me because Baru is also characterized as...a sellout for the Empire. sure, her stated goal is to undo the Empire from within, but [MAJOR SPOILERS] in the end it appears that her actual goal was to attain enough power that the Empire would let her be a benevolent dictator over her home island? and it’s only after a major PERSONAL betrayal that she revises this plan? [END SPOILERS] Baru also assimilates without much pain or sacrifice. she hardly ever thinks about her parents or her childhood home. she willingly strips herself of cultural signifiers and adapts to Empire norms (apart from being a closeted lesbian, which...yeah, i’ll get to that, too). and it’s not that Dickinson doesn’t TRY to make her a nuanced character, but...to me, it feels so painfully obvious that this is not his experience. it feels almost...voyeuristic.

...much like his descriptions of wlw desire!

2) we get it, you read Foucault

the categories of sexual deviance are based entirely on a Western Victorian-era medical discourse around non-heterosexual forms of desire, but Dickinson ignores the network of sociocultural, religious, and historical contexts that contributed to that specific kind of discourse. he uses the terms “tribadism” and “sodomy” but those ideas CANNOT EXIST outside a Euro-American Christian context. yes, a huge part of the 19th century involved the pathologization of sexual and romantic desire (or lack thereof). but that in turn goes back to a history of medicine that relied on the “scientific method” as a means of studying and dissecting the human body--and that method in itself is a product of Enlightenment thinking. Theorist Sylvia Wynter (whomst everyone should read, imho) discusses how the Enlightenment attempted to make the Human (represented by a cisgender, heteronormative, white man) an agent of the State economy. every categorization of so-called deviance goes back to white supremacist attempts to define themselves as ‘human’ against a nonwhite, non-Christian Other. and IN TURN that was ultimately founded on anti-Black, anti-Indigenous racism. at this point it’s a meme in academic circles to mention Foucault, because so many scholars don’t go any further in engaging with his ideas or acknowledge their limits. but SERIOUSLY. Dickinson crafts the Masquerade as this psuedo-scientific empire that’s furthering erasure of native cultures, but...where did these ideas come from? who created them? what was the justification that gave them power? [MINOR SPOILER] blaming the Empire’s ideology on a handful of people behind the Mask who crafted this entire system makes me...uncomfortable, to say the least. part of what gives imperialism its power is that a lot of ordinary people buy in to its ideas, because it aligns with dominant belief systems or gives them some sense of advantage.

also speaking of cultural erasure...

3) culture is more than set dressing

again, to reiterate: Baru does NOT think back to her childhood home for longer than a couple passing sentences at various points in the narrative. but even though the early chapters literally take place on her home island, i don’t get a sense of...lived experience. this is true of ALL of the fantasy analogues Dickinson has created in his Empire. i felt uncomfortably aware of the real world counterparts that Dickinson was drawing inspiration from. at the same time...there are basically no details to really breathe life into these various fantasy cultures. i HATE the trope of “fantasy Asia” or “fantasy Africa” or “fantasy Middle East” that’s rampant among white male sff writers. Dickinson does not get points from me for basically just expanding that to “fantasy South East Asia,” “fantasy Mongolia,” “fantasy South America,” and... “fantasy Africa,” plus some European cultures crammed in there. he’s VERY OBVIOUSLY drawing on those languages for names, but otherwise there’s no real sense of their religious practices, the nuances of their cultures, the differences between those cultures (besides physiological, which...oh god). part of that is probably supposed to be justified by “well, the Empire just erased it!!!” but that’s not an excuse imho.

also...in making the Empire the ultimate signifier of the evils of imperialism...Dickinson kind of leans into the “noble savage” stereotype. Baru’s home island is portrayed as this idyllic environment where no one is shamed for who they love and gender doesn’t determine destiny and there are no major conflicts. (there is a minor nod to some infighting, but this is mostly a “weakness” that the Masquerade uses as an excuse to obliterate a whole tribe.) Dickinson justifies young Baru’s immediate assimilation as her attempt to figure out the Masquerade’s power from within, but given that the Masquerade presumably killed one of her dads and her mom maybe advocates a guerilla resistance...it’s weird that Baru basically abandons her family without a second thought. yeah, i get that she’s a kid when the Masquerade takes over the island, but...that’s still a hugely traumatic experience! the layers of trauma and conditioning and violence that go into this level of colonization are almost entirely externalized.

(later it’s implied that Baru might qualify as a psychopath, and tbh that feels like an excuse for why we haven’t gotten any sense of her inner world, not to mention kind of offensive.)

this isn’t exhaustive but...

it’s not that i don’t think white people shouldn’t ever address POC experiences in their books. just...if your entire trilogy is going to revolve around IMPERIALISM IS BAD, ACTUALLY, maybe you should contribute to the discourse that Black, Brown, and Indigenous authors have already done. reading this book made me so, so angry. i did not feel represented! i felt like i was being talked down to, both on a critical theory level AND on a craft level. there are SO MANY books by actual BIPOC and minority authors that have done this better. N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and her current Cities series. Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy. Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House remains one of the more powerful novels i’ve read on how The System Is Out To Destroy You, That Is The Point. (Bardugo is non-practicing Spanish and Moroccan Jewish on one side of her family, and her character Alex is mixed and comes from a Jewish background!)

...

there’s not really a point to this. i get a lot of people have raved about this book. good for them. if that’s you, no judgment. i’m not trying to argue IF YOU LIKED THIS YOU ARE PROBLEMATIC. i’m just kind of enraged that a white dude wrote about a Brown lesbian under a colonial empire and that THIS Brown lesbian under a colonial empire couldn’t even get behind the representation. also kind of annoyed that it’s the Empire of Masks and Dickinson either hasn’t read Fanon or didn’t see fit to slip in a Fanon reference, which like. missed opportunity.

#meta #book review #maybe y'all can get enjoyment from my rage #also i don't want to publish this on like. goodreads.#i'm not out to destroy Seth Dickinson personally #i know this was a highly reviewed book #i just...hated it #and i figured putting the rage on my blog is less harmful #than leaving a one star review #while also maybe giving someone the insight #for why they might not want to read this #the traitor baru cormorant #the masked empire

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kaypeace21 · 5 years ago

Note

Jonathan Byers (For your character questions Ask)

favorite thing about them

He’s incredibly caring and selfless to his family. He’s extremely devoted to Will and Joyce (frankly taking on more than such a young guy should have to). At 17 he’s discussing helping pay for his mom’s mortgage . Then of course, Jonathan is a surrogate dad to Will in a lot of respects. In s1 it’s cannon that he cooks breakfast for Will, wakes him up, drives him places, works extra shifts to pay the house bills. Gives Will coded pep-talks about his sexuality. And sometimes calls Will (coded fatherly nicknames that dads give their kids)- like “kid, buddy, pal, and sport”. He’s paralleled to all the ST mom’s taking pics of their kids in their ghost busters costumes, as well. I love Jonathan. He pretty much sacrificed his entire childhood to be the father figure for Will, that Lonnie wasn’t. He did all of this since he wanted Will to have more than he did (aka a Dad).Jonathan in s1 even said in the past Joyce had “anxiety issues”. And tells Joyce, “This is not an okay time for you to shut down,” implying there has been times when she has shut down, and left him with the burden of caring for Will and herself . Joyce even apologizes in s1 for not being there for him as a kid ( cause she was too busy working). Many s4 movies emphasize Jonathan’s devotion to Will and knowledge that he sacrificed his childhood to do so .

least favorite thing about them

He constantly think he’s inadequate and often refuses help. Calling himself a “weirdo”. Not telling Joyce of the supernatural threat cause “she’s been through enough”. And constantly apologizing for not being there for Will- and blaming himself for what’s happened to him.

Like joyce said “you act like you’re all alone in this world. But you’re not!” And Bob reiterates his trust issues saying “I’m really getting through to them- well except Jonathan he’s a tough cookie to crack.” Murray also parrots this saying “trust issues, am I right? Something to do with your dad.” Jonathan has severe trust issues and I hope he heals from that .

favorite line

"You shouldn't like things because people tell you you're supposed to.”

brOTP

Obviously - my brOTP is Jonathan and Will.

OTP

Don’t really have 1. I used to ship jancy (still wasn’t fond of the camera incident though). I like jonathan and nancy but after s3 I think they may be better off not together . I like both but I think maybe they’re not the best fit together.

nOTP

if we’re talking about popular st ships of him like Jancy and I guess... stoncy & steve/jon? I’m mostly indifferent. I feel like nOTP’s are more vitriolic.

But I just feel like Jancy isn’t right for each other, in the long run.Nancy only apologized for claiming Jon was sexist but not for making fun of him for being poor and his dad leaving -calling him “oliver twist” (a poor orphan). Which clearly pissed him off since when he talked to her on the phone later he did a clap back referencing the book saying he was with ‘Fagin and the gang’. Which is similar to Mike apologizing for being ‘jealous of Max’ but not for the fact he lied (the reason for the breakup in the first place). The fact Nancy says “here comes the Oliver Twist routine AGAIN”. Implies Jonathan has tried to open up to her in the past but she dismissed it as just bellyaching. I just can’t really get over that. I don’t think either was completely in the right though. I talked about all the pairings (including jancy) and their parallels to other ships, in way more detail- here and why I don’t see them as endgame.

random headcanon

- Since Nancy says in s2 Jonathan likes reading Vonnegut. I think it may reflects a lot about Jonathan!

Vonnegut like Jonathan was born in Indiana- like jonathan.He was an atheist and a humanist and served as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association.Some quotes by him: “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead... purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

A lot of his books critique society in a scifi form.

- In Breakfast of Champions (1973), Vonnegut vows to “clear [his] head of all the junk,” and race and racism are at the top of his list of “junk” to be cleared. In the book he critiques colonialism, and institutional and social racism predominantly focusing on the mistreatment of black people. “I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there...I suspect that this is something most white Americans, and nonwhite Americans who imitate white Americans, should do. The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.”

- Slaughter house 5 (1972) was based on his own experiences as a ww2 soldier. “It sees war as a tragedy so great that perhaps only the mask of comedy allows one to look it in the eye. Vonnegut is a sad-faced comedian. The book says Billy may be hallucinating about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by war—a world that he cannot understand ( heavy Will foreshadowing). Even while Vonnegut admits the inevitability of death, with or without war, he also tells us that he has instructed his sons not to participate in massacres or in the manufacture of machinery used to carry them out”. The phrase “so it goes” represented the deep sadness and resignation to death- appearing with almost every death in the novel. This phrase become a popular mantra in the Anti-vietnam war movement.Mr. Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, “was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

- In a letter from 1965, he also recommended a novel to his wife. ‘here is a really lovely book about it in my study -- on a top shelf. It's red, and it's called The ABZ of Love." “Indeed, the book was in many ways ahead of its time and of the era's mainstream, pushing hard against bigotry and advocating for racial, gender, and LGBT equality with equal parts earnestness and wry wit.”

-his novels also had a lot of gay characters and this caused a lot of controversy at the time.

Reflecting how he’ll probably be supportive of Will- which was foreshadowed in s1 when he was encouraging Will not to behave a certain way cause his homophobic dad wants him to.

unpopular opinion

probably Jancy not being endgame

song i associate with them

-’should I stay or should i go’ . obvious cliche choice, i know.

favorite picture of them

Hmm... I’m not sure. I just find Jonathan & will exchanging looks with each other and laughing precious.

#jonathan byers #will byers #nancy wheeler #joyce byers

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mentalhealthandgames · 4 years ago

Text

Analysis on Celeste:

Celeste is an Indie 2D platformer developed and published by ‘Extremely OK Games’. Its plot is simpler than the ones of the other two games as it consists of much more gameplay (consisting of platforming) than the other games I am discussing: it’s about a girl whose default name is Madeline who wants to climb a mountain called Celeste Mountain.

Madeline has anxiety, and has to learn breathing techniques to prevent panic attacks. I think this is good because breathing techniques are very useful against panic attacks, and the way they are incorporated in the game means the player can practice them alongside Madeline which might encourage them to use breathing techniques in real life in situations where they may be needed. Although the gameplay mechanic of using the breathing technique to progress is shown to not always be successful, I think this is also important because sometime breathing techniques or other coping mechanisms won’t work. For me, for example I have had many times where breathing techniques have helped me get through my panic attacks more easily and many other times when I’ve been far too overwhelmed to focus on them properly and therefore struggle with the panic attack for longer. The way the game makes the player help Madeline through her panic attacks I think also provokes empathy in the player as it really puts them in her shoes.

The player never finds out the cause of Madeline’s mental health conditions, which I also think is a good thing, because most media shows mental health conditions as caused by severe trauma, and that can be the case, as trauma is seen as a common cause for most mental health problems. However depression and/or anxiety can also be caused by other factors, such as stress, lack of sleep, drug or alcohol abuse or a combination of similar factors or by trauma that isn’t as severe as ones shown in media. There is some discussion in mental health communities of how the idea mostly spread by the media that most people with mental health conditions have developed them as a result of severe trauma can be harmful to people whose mental health conditions developed as a result of other factors. This is because it can make people feel that their mental health problems are not as valid or serious as those of people’s that did develop from severe trauma, which is not the case, as all mental health problems are valid and should be treated seriously. Therefore the fact that the cause of Madeline’s mental health problems is not explained makes it more relatable for more people with mental health conditions and also might bring awareness to people who don’t have mental health problems that they can just be a part of life that developed without any severe trauma as the direct cause.

A main part of the plot is a character who I have seen referred to as either Madeline’s subconscious or the physical representation of her mental health conditions, known as ‘A Part of [Madeline]’ in the game and referred to as Badeline by fans and in game extras. I will refer to her as Badeline simply because it is easier. Badeline consistently attempts to prevent Madeline from completing her climb of Mount Celeste, mocking, chasing and fighting her. In Chapter 6 of the game, Madeline after a talk with her friend Theo (who had taught her the breathing technique), confronts Badeline, saying: “you’re everything I need to leave behind”. Badeline gets aggressive and when Madeline tries to use her breathing exercise Badeline stops it from working and Madeline falls down all the way back to the base of the mountain. There she once again meets a recurring character simply known as Granny, who recommends that Madeline talks to Badeline instead of fighting her, saying “figure out why she’s so scared”. When Madeline finds Badeline again she tries to talk to her, and tries to convince her to join forces. Badeline gets angry and they then start to fight. Badeline then says: “Fine. You win. I guess you don’t need me after all. If you want me to go away, I’ll try.” Madeline replies: “that’s not what I want. I need your help now more than ever. Please. Let’s work together… it’s okay to be scared.” They then hug and recombine into a levelled up version of Celeste who finally is able to finish climbing the mountain (or rather fly through it). “Madeline never “defeats” her anxiety and depression. Though you spend the majority of the trek fighting against and trying to escape [Badeline]—or, rather, her self-loathing and low self-esteem—you ultimately crest the mountain by realizing that mental illness isn’t something you can browbeat into submission. Madeline learns that hating her anxiety and depression only exacerbate their effects. By accepting every facet of her personality, and learning to be kinder to herself, Madeline finally climbs Celeste Mountain. “Creating this game and guiding Madeline through her journey made it obvious to me that acceptance was the only way forward,” Thorson wrote me. We all owe ourselves that kind of realization” (Clarke, 2018). I think this message of acceptance is a very important one. People with mental health conditions spend a lot of their time struggling against their conditions and trying to regain control of their life, but accepting their mental health conditions as part of life can actually make it easier to carry on with their life. This is a message that really resonated with me personally as when I was hearing voices as a result of my psychosis I felt like I was constantly fighting against myself to try and move forward. This ending, of Madeline accepting all of herself, subverts expectations and stereotypes, as most people see mental health something to be pushed down, hidden or beaten.

Maddy Thorson (the creator of Celeste) has said that the game is based on their own experiences with mental health as well as those of their team. “Our top priorities were to tell a story that meant something to us and explore these topics from a individual perspective, to draw players into this world with these characters we grew to love,” Thorson said. “Our intention going in wasn’t to represent mental illness in general, or to make a ‘how to deal with depression’ guide, and we didn’t think to consult professionals on the topic” (Grayson, 2018). This makes the representation feel extremely genuine. The game has been praised by many fans and critics for how relatable its mental health representation is. It is incredibly successful for an Indie game and given that the story is entirely about mental health, this implies that mental health representation that feels genuine and relatable is important for a lot of people. Maddy Thorson, when asked “how many copies has Celeste sold to date?” in an interview from 2019, said: “I don't have an exact up-to-date number, but I know we're coming up on a million copies soon. Which is unbelievable to us” (Marks, 2019). Given that the interview is from 2 years ago, the amount of copies sold is likely past one million by now.

The game is a platformer and was designed to be extremely difficult, but also to give hope and encourage the player not to give up, which I think is echoed in the message as Madeline is shown to be brave for accepting herself and her mental health problems, which is essentially the opposite of giving up. The game also has an ‘assist mode’ which includes motivational phrases such as “you can do this” to encourage the player to keep on going and the difficulty of the game can itself also be seen as trying to represent how difficult struggles with mental health can be. I think the game was made for people with mental health conditions in mind as a large part of the target audience as Maddy Thorson said it was therapeutic to make and clearly shares their own, and their team’s experiences with mental health and so is relatable for a lot of people with mental health conditions. In fact almost every review I read on Celeste also included the reviewer sharing their own mental health experiences and how the game resonated with them.

Overall it is probably the most popular of the games I am discussing and I think that is for a good reason. I found it an incredibly striking and genuine story of struggling with mental health with important messages such as ‘don’t give up’ and ‘self-acceptance is important’. These messages are said often and can be patronising but playing the game and experiencing Madeline’s struggle to accept herself and to manage to achieve her goal while struggling with her mental health makes those phrases feel real and possible to achieve.

References:

Marks, T (2019) Celeste Sequel (Probably) Won’t Happen, Developer Says. Available at:

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/07/celeste-developer-doesnt-want-to-make-a-sequel-new-game-in-the-works (accessed at: 24 February 2021)

Clarke, N (2018) My Biggest Revelations of 2018 Came From an Indie Video Game. Available at:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa5937/my-biggest-revelations-of-2018-came-from-an-indie-video-gameAccessed at: 24 February 2021)

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antialiasis · 5 years ago

Link

More actual writing! This time, a rewrite of my 2012 one-shot Butterfree, about a trainer and their Butterfree.

Some rambling about this story and the way it’s been altered in this version below the cut.

When I first wrote Butterfree, the idea behind it was based on my own experience with my original Pokémon Yellow save - where I beat Brock with a Metapod-turned Butterfree, and Butterfree was amazing and an instant favorite, only to somehow tragically start to lag behind after a while. I ended up ditching it on the PC and replacing it with a different team member, but always felt a little bad about it. (On my later games, though, I’ve kept Butterfree on my teams basically any time I’ve had the chance.)

So originally, writing out the memories portion just came very naturally, putting that feeling in-world. The continuation, though, I had a bit of trouble with. See, obviously this trainer is laden with guilt and regrets about what they did, hoping to finally release Butterfree from where they’d kept them unjustly trapped. But the idea of actually ending with Butterfree just leaving felt... incredibly unsatisfying, after the story has been consisting of this buildup about the trainer’s intense guilt regretting what they did and them finally owning up to it and letting Butterfree go. It’d just be “We tell you this thing needs to happen, and then exactly that happens.” It felt kind of like the “and then... they successfully catch Mew!” ending of TQftL. I couldn’t actually end it that way.

At the same time, though... could Butterfree actually stay, after that? They were trapped in a box for six years. If they ultimately just shrug and don’t mind somehow, isn’t that kind of bad and unsatisfying, too? We can’t just act like everything’s fine now, right?

What I ended up with was an ending where Butterfree wants to stay, and the trainer, still guilt-ridden, accepts that - but is left wondering if Butterfree stayed out of some blind devotion that they just wouldn’t admit, or if maybe Butterfree just didn’t have a concept of betrayal, and they would’ve been equally happy to stay if they’d been actively abusive, or had never shown any guilt at all. In the final abrupt scene-paragraph, the trainer concludes surely Butterfree’s happiness is genuine - but this was meant to read as kind of desperate, that they manage to convince themselves in the end but really who knows.

I was just about satisfied enough with this - an ending where Butterfree stays, but everything isn’t fine. But I was never properly happy with it. The final paragraph was super abrupt. The angstiness of it felt vaguely tryhard in some way I couldn’t quite articulate.

So, fast-forward eight years to me, in 2020, wanting to finally post an actual fanfic on the Thousand Roads forums. Butterfree was probably my most successful one-shot, so it was an obvious first candidate. I reread it; I mostly liked it, but the ending still bugged me. I concluded you know what, I’m just going to let Butterfree be happy. Half of the people who read it had taken the last paragraph at face value anyway and apparently liked it that way, so really, why shouldn’t I just have the ending be actually happy. It wouldn’t have to be that big a change; I’d just replace that last paragraph with something a bit more substantial and convincing.

So then I got started on actually editing it... at which point I became less happy with it. I realized that really what was bothering me was that it really wasn’t at all obvious why Butterfree stayed; the buildup didn’t work with Butterfree leaving, but it also didn’t properly build up to Butterfree staying, didn’t make that the logical conclusion - and the narrator’s self-loathing never properly improved.

Moreover... why weren’t they just talking to each other.

As I’ve grown up I’ve become increasingly convinced that radical communication solves a whole lot of human problems, and suddenly it just stuck out to me, super hard, that the trainer didn’t just communicate better. They even had a line early on where they lamented not having talked to Butterfree, and yet still didn’t! Towards the end of the release scene, the trainer thought about how they weren’t sure there was any one thing they should have done here - and now my brain was just screaming TALK TO THEM, GODDAMN IT! THAT’S WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE!

...So I rewrote the ending altogether. The alternate ending where the trainer communicates. Some of basically the same stuff still happens at first - they do communicate a bit in the original, with a kind of kludgy bit of sudden psychic powers - but then, you know, the trainer actually tries to make a best possible effort to ensure Butterfree is choosing this because it’s what they actually want. Both Butterfree, the trainer, and their other Pokémon end up so much happier in this version, because the trainer communicated about their feelings, and made sure Butterfree could communicate back, too.

What I went for with the Butterfree’s actual character here, which I hope gets across, is that Butterfree really is just a bit excessively selfless and loyal - but their relationship ends up better and healthier from both ends, with the trainer becoming a more considerate person who really does listen to their Pokémon, and Butterfree learning to actually express what they want (and have those preferences recognized and respected).

And so, this originally mostly angsty one-shot is now more a bit of angst that then just becomes happy and wholesome. A strange direction for me to go in, and in a way I sort of miss the old second-to-last scene and its musings, but. C O M M U N I C A T I O N

#pokemon #pokemon fanfic #butterfree #actual writing #ramble #art #writing

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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A WAY TO YAHOO

We had a demo day for investors, we had to rely mostly on examples in books. This kind of thing is out there for anyone to see. When you have actual first class functions or recursion or even keyword parameters. They want to make a lot more money than we did last year and I wish we had. We now think of it, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all you have is statistics, it seems is that much computing will move from the desktop onto remote servers. These techniques are mostly orthogonal to Bill's; an optimal solution might incorporate both. The book would be a real threat. Why bother checking the front page of any specific paper or magazine? It will be worth making i/o. The bumbler will shoot himself in the foot anyway.

Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich. In Common Lisp I have often wanted to iterate through the fields of a struct—to comb out references to a deleted object, for example—you want to be forced to figure out what's actually wrong with him, and sure enough, it won't pay for spammers to send it, and the most productive people are attracted to employers who hold themselves to a higher standard than the law requires. In principle you could avoid it, just as it's hard to engage an audience you have to design what the user needs, not simply what he says he wants. After years of carefully avoiding classic time sinks like TV, games, and Usenet, I still managed to fall prey to distraction, because as well as the low. So the best strategy is to try lots of different things. Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. We know because we make people move for Y Combinator, and it is a huge and rapidly growing business. That has worked for the government. In fact, they're lucky by comparison.

One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I took to refer to web-based database as a system to hack: the Lisp Machine. I'm not saying, of course, that elite colleges have two critical qualities that plug right into the way large organizations work. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations. The most obvious is poverty. Instead of avoiding it as a drawback of senility, many companies embrace it only half-willingly, driven more by fear than hope, and aiming more to protect their turf than to do great things for users. So don't be demoralized by how hard it is to be consciously aware of that. If you work fast, they expect everyone else to. Not all cities send a message. Eminence is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people, and you can't find another? It's kind of strange when you think about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as an audience. If I could get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would be a byword for bogusness like Milli Vanilli or Battlefield Earth.

I want in some macros. The startup will now do that themselves. Arguably the people in the middle of the 20th century that convinced some people otherwise. People will pay extra for stability. Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds, lest they lose the deal. They know they want to raise money, and the best research is also good design, and having the same people both design and implement the product. Small things can be done by collaborators.

Painting has been a qualitative change, like the proverbial drunk who looks for his keys under the lamppost, instead of sitting on them, technology will evolve faster. So verbs with initial caps have higher spam probabilities than they would have been on the list 100 years ago though it might have been 2400 years ago. They don't define what evil is, but by studying the intended users and figuring out what those problems are. Maybe the answer is yes. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. It's especially good if your application solves some new problem. I'm supposed to finish college and then go work for another company for two years, and then for all their followers to die.

Another view is that a programming language unless it's also the scripting language of a popular system. When it reaches a certain concentration, it kills off the yeast that produced it. So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth, style, hipness, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life. When you use the would-have method with startup founders, and it's always this way. Patent trolls are just parasites. Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. Working on small things, and if this new Lisp will be used to hack. The opinion of expert hackers is not the brand name of the artist. It's so easy to understand what kind of terms should they expect? A rounds aren't going away, I think we're just beginning to realize how distracting the Internet had become, because the main value of that initial version is to be on it or close to those who are. Sometimes it literally is software, like Hacker News and our application system. If you actually want to fix the bad aspects of it—you have to seek out, but something you can't turn off.

Clearly you don't have to be downloaded. Users don't know what all the choices are, and much less on how old you are or how much business experience you have. If they get something wrong, it's usually not realizing they have to make sacrifices to live there. One of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made. In the big angel rounds that increasingly compete with series A rounds is that they're more prestigious. Universities and research labs feel they ought to be the middle course, to notice some tokens but not others. Another example we can take from painting is the way they taught me to in college. Users are a double-edged sword. I/O. And that required very different skills from actually doing the startup. In fact, the language encourages you to be an outsider. The best stories about user needs are about your own.

Powerbooks. Tcl is the scripting language of some existing system. Is there some way to beat this limitation? Technology has decreased the cost of starting a startup molds you into someone who can handle it. Smart investors can see past such superficial flaws. But the cost of typing it. And they, incidentally, are busted. Variation in productivity is always going to produce some baseline growth in economic inequality we've seen since then has been due to bad behavior of various kinds, there has been a qualitative change in the last 10 years.

Thanks to Bob van der Zwaan essay, Trevor Blackwell, Sam Altman, and Geoff Ralston for sparking my interest in this topic.

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scandeniall · 5 years ago

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dive deep //ch.1

pairing: Akaashi Keiji x reader

Chapter 1: New Editor Needed | prologue | next | masterlist |

summary: yes this is a writer!reader and editor!akaashi. not much more to say. Based off of this piece i wrote and lets just tell the story of how we ended up there. I will say, that due to this actually having plot akaashi isnt in this part but is in ch 2. Author’s notes (which are impt) always at the end.

warnings: profanity, manga spoilers (with careers), will add more but im sure its gonna be alcohol because thats my personal brand

wc: 925 (its short but i figured it was a good place 2 stop.

“God, how many editors have you gone through.” The writer had seen better days, not as of late, but better nonetheless. It was obvious through displayed behaviors as of late. From the hostility laced in every word, to the unusually messy apartment. Not that a writer’s apartment was ever pristine, but if the several empty bottles of wine littering the house were anything to go by, the writer was having a rough time.

“Now is not the time Kenma,” the writer said. The wording came out muffled through the comforter covering the writer’s body. There was no doubt she had also buried themself under pillows as well. Glancing around the messy room he noted the mini garbage can filled to the brim with crumbled balls of paper. He’d have to get Kuroo to help him clean up.

“I can’t hear you, would you come out before I call Kuroo.” That was a lie. He’d heard the sentence, and despite protest he knew his friend was already enroute over. He was always better at handling these slumps.

“You probably already called him. I don’t care.” He hated times like these. The crash after the stress, and in this case anger.

“Now (Y/N). People who don’t tell people that they don’t care.” A third voice joined in the room and suddenly the cover shielding the writer from the world had been removed. Kuroo ignored the glare before taking his own look at the writer’s bedroom. “Did a hurricane come through here,” the man stated rather than asked before turning to greet the other man.

“Remind me to change my locks,” (Y/N) said, eyes rolling at the two men who are currently acting as offenders of invasion of privacy. Neither men acknowledged the quip, as they turned to themselves. “How long has our hermit been like this,” Kuroo questioned. He didn’t even flinch at the sock that had been thrown at him. Not that it had hit him anyways.

“(Y/N) fired another editor.”

“What is that, the third one now.”

“The fourth.” Kenma shrugged, before finishing. “I have a meeting to go to. It's a new game proposal. Handle this would you.” With that your friend promised he’d check in later, before making his exit. And then there were two. Once you’d pulled the cover back over, Kuroo took it upon himself to open the blinds, lightening the dreary room.

He contemplated the approach he wanted to take, to try and get his dear friend out of their slump. The forceful one, where he’d carry the writer out of bed if he had two and forced her to get fresh air, which he knew definitely hadn’t happened lately. Or the compassionate friend tactic. The once he’d mostly saved for heartbreaks, and other dire situations. However, considering the state of the apartment being the worst he’s seen in years of knowing the writer, he figured he’d go with the latter tactic for now.

Settling onto the bed, he heard the grunt of pain as he sprawled himself over the writer. A silence settled among the two before Kuroo felt himself being shoved off with a huff, and then his dear friend emerged.

“Wanna tell me what happened.”

“Saito is an unbearable controlling jerk, so I fired him.” The sentence had been filled with spite. Remembering how the old editor acted and treated the craft, filled (Y/N) with anger.

“And”

“He kept comparing me to other writers. Kept trying to get me to completely change the manuscript. Jerk is supposed to help me, not trash every word I give him. Then there's Suzuki and the agency who are demanding the book by the end of the year.”

Kuroo nodded along. While he didn’t have personal experience in the agency, he’d been friend’s with her for the past few years. Meeting in the first year of university, the two hit it off in a general ed literature class. He’d seen the writer be awarded several writing awards throughout their collegiate journey, even self publishing their second year.

The end of their third year, had resulted in his friend's official joining with HatchWorks Publishing Agency, publishing a professional book just over a year later. Now three years post university, the writer has only published short stories. They’d mostly been pieces written years prior and just edited to perfection. However, the agency wanted another full length work, and had cracked down and given it to the end of the year for a final manuscript. Little did they know about the loss of another editor, who also acted as the writer’s agent. “So, what are you planning on doing” Kuroo adjusted to accommodate the shift of his friend now leaning against him.

“Dying. Drowning my misery in alcohol and tears. I don't know Kuroo.” The two sat in silence each in their own heads. She is contemplating how she's going to survive without a job, if she can’t get the book together. Afterall, royalties and sales just decrease as the years pass. She’d have to consider a real career and admit to everyone who set writing wasn’t a real job that maybe they were right.

Kuroo on the other hand, was taking a mental note on everyone he knew. There had to be someone in the industry. Not Yaku, nor Kai. Kenma is obviously in gaming. Not Bokuto, but wait. Shooting up Kuroo disturbed the woman who had previously been resting on his shoulder only to look at him funny.

“I’m the best best friend in the whole wide world.”

A/N: ok so this is my first time trying out this writer style (im dumb and tipsy and cant think of which POV this is) also, im posting a band au either sometime in the middle of tonight or early tmw, yes that piece is also my new kid. i guess if anyone wants 2 be on a taglist i can make one???

#hq x reader #haikyuu x reader #akaashi x reader #akaashi imagine #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #hq imagines #haikyuu headcanons #akaashi fic #dive deep

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asherlockstudy · 5 years ago

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People's feelings are just spilling over from the EB where Link says it makes him angry when Rhett talks about what a good routine he has with exercising, meditating, and eating healthy then had to ask Rhett if he could choose whatever he wanted for lunch not just something healthy. So now when Rhett pointed out the sugar content people's reactions magnified thinking it would make Link angry or depressed to point out it was so unhealthy. Its been blown out of proportion.

I’m glad you brought this up. Not only it’s blown out of proportion (the phrase for which I am getting mostly dragged, thanks for using it) but it doesn’t really have any basis at all. I can’t believe I’ll make a long post about an issue that basically doesn’t even exist but here goes silly me.

In this EB, Rhett explains how his restlessness during the quarantine made him become very consistent in his meditation habits and exercise. He noted that physical exercise eased off his mind and kept him together. The benefits of physical exercise are well known and I say that as a person who hasn’t exercised since high school. What Rhett said makes total sense. What Rhett did NOT say at all is that anyone else should have the same habits or impression out of them. He spoke strictly about himself. He spoke about his routine. He has every right to, in fact we welcome the insight into their everyday life. I believe this has become one of his new layers since there isn’t much else he can do right now. He plainly said that when the coronavirus is dealt with and they return back to their normal job schedule and all usual recreational activities become available again (he used a restaurant as an example LOL the irony) he will probably stop being so consistent and passionate about exercise.

After this entirely harmless monologue, Link said he almost gets angry / frustrated when Rhett talks so much about his routine like I get when my BFF talks to me too much about cars. However, there’s a difference. Minor annoyance may be what Link feels about Rhett’s new layer but frustration / anger comes from a different place. Link talks almost defensively about the fact that he doesn’t feel like doing the same right now. Do you know what that is? Guilt. Link sees Rhett and he feels guilty because he thinks he should probably follow his example but doesn’t feel like it at all. But you know what? That’s Link’s problem. Link has said himself that he often feels irrationally guilty and he induces himself to those feelings of guilt. Link feels that he consciously stagnates and he feels bad about it. But here’s the thing, Rhett is not responsible if Link feels bad about his own conscious choices. It’s not Rhett who instills guilt inside him. Remember a year or two, when Rhett had stopped gym for quite some time while Link was very consistent and had built his arms? Should Rhett feel guilty or be angry at Link? That’s insane. As long as Rhett is not pressuring anyone else, he has every right to talk about his hobby / routine and also describe the benefits he has seen from it. That might leave some people bored or indifferent but it’s crazy to leave them offended! Have we lost our minds? And true enough, Rhett never pressured Link in anything we’ve seen because look at that face of the deeply hurt Link saying he decided to not work out:

And here’s Rhett’s disgusting response:

#Omg #whatanassholeandshittypersonRhettis #Rhettsucks #triggered

And exactly because Rhett sensed how Link started feeling because he knows Link well and he cares he did apologize, even though he had done nothing wrong and he didn’t need to, just to ensure that Link felt right.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel worse.”

And then of course Link responded with the obvious and sane way to respond, and some people here need to take notes.

“Hey, you’re speaking your truth. It’s separate from me.

That’s a healthy way to think about it. Rhett spoke of nothing else but his own personal experience and just because the lot of us here aren’t big on exercise, it doesn’t mean that what he said wasn’t okay or valid (let alone scientifically proven). Link is a different individual and can make his own choices but his emotional connection to Rhett is so strong that he frequently feels the need to do what Rhett does or that what Rhett does is the correct / right thing to do, which sometimes leads to collisions inside him. But that’s not Rhett’s fault. Rhett’s routine shouldn’t depend on Link’s feelings and opinions on it.

In the beginning of the podcast, Link actually makes fun of Rhett’s new obsession with health and fitness by wondering if the lunch he would buy him could be unhealthy. It’s not that poor boy Link has to ask Rhett’s permission to eat whatever he wants. Are we for real? Do you see it probable that Link asks Rhett’s permission for anything?! Is that the impression you get from him? If Rhett legitimately tried to control what Link eats, Link would have snatched his head off. Link imitated and made fun of him with a mocking pouty face.

He mockingly imitated Rhett’s face when complaining for junk food. There’s no hurt there. He surely must feel done with the new layer and has thus started teasing Rhett about it.

What Rhett is probably doing right now is what every trainer, gymnast and athlete I’ve ever met does all the time. Mumbling about healthy food while everyone else simply ignores them. It’s a very typical attitude that makes them annoying to others but not shitty or problematic as long as they don’t judge / control / restrict other people. Besides, this could be Link mocking him based on how Rhett acts when choosing his OWN food. There’s literally no evidence he has tried to pick Link’s food for him and I bet whatever you want that if he ever tried, Link would raise hell. We shouldn’t also forget how much they exaggerate when teasing / mocking each other just to enhance the banter for fun’s and views’ sake. They do that a lot. So, honestly, there’s nothing there. Nothing. When there is actual evidence, I would be totally fine with coming back and reexamining all this and I would have no problem to change my mind. But as everything stands right now, a huge drama with a lot of explosive and nasty comments sprung out of thin air.

I’ve said numerous times in a few hours what I think about yesterday’s GMM. Link expressed his suspicion that a cereal he loved was much unhealthier than he initially thought and Rhett confirmed it by checking it on the Internet. Link felt guilty for his choice because he tries to eat healthily too. Rhett expressed no opinion other than agreeing with what Link said. That was literally it.

And that’s it. The big drama about shitty Rhett. Go figure. Also I’m really risking for more insane hate anons. About... this. Also go figure. But especially after this huge reply, I feel totally over this. I’ve explained where I stand, I’m moving on and let people hate whatever they want to hate today. I wrote all this just to address it to people who don’t know exactly what’s going on or how they should feel about Rhett because they haven’t watched yet etc bc I know there are several of them.

#randl #rhett and link #gmm #ear biscuits #tw food shaming #long post #anon #ask #mail

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somnilogical · 5 years ago

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davis tower kingsley (listed here on the cfar instructor page) who harassed a cis woman about her appearance another cis women reported this to acdc (the people who wrote the thing about how brent was great) and afaict they did nothing, claims that if trans people and gay people dont "repent and submit to the pope" they will burn in hell, defended the spanish inquisitions, wrote about how the mission system werent actually abductions, slavery, forced conversions and this was propaganda, defends pretty much any atrocity that an authority, "believes" the catholic god exists and does not try and destroy them, submits to them. and so much more.

born into another era they would actually work for the california mission system and say it was good.

said thing that cached out to that emma and somni should repent and submit to the rationalist community. wrote up a rant about "how about fuck you. go lick the boots of your dark mistress anna salamon." didnt send. got kicked by some rationalist, reasoning is probably that what id say would disrupt their peaceful machinations of omnicide, would be infohazards, because... the information is hazardous to their social order.

a few of these things are subjects of future blog posts.

cfar has never hired a trans woman, i have lots of logs of them trying to do what people did to porpentine. claiming emma thinks torturing children is hot, claiming emma was physically violent, claiming emma was indistinguishable from a rapist, claiming ziz was a "gross uncle style abuser", claiming somni was enticing people to rape, claiming that anna salamon was a small fragile woman and ziz was large and had muscles. as if any of our strength or speed had anything to do with our muscles in this place. all of these things are false except relative size difference between ziz and anna which is just transmisogynistic and irrelevant.

if they lie about are algorithms claim that we are using male-typical strategies and then they can fail by these lies and be sidelined by callout posts that transfered 350,000$ from miri despite their best efforts to cover this up. (all benefited by having relative political advantagr flowing from estrogenized brain modules. men are kind of npc's in this particular game of fem v fem cyberontological warfare for the fate of the multiverse, mostly making false patriarchal assumptions that ziz was doing things for social status. like status sensitivity is hormonally mediated, your experiences are not universal. or saying like kingsley is saying that people should repent and submit to whatever authorities in the rationalist region they submit to. NO. FUCK YOU. i will not repent and submit to your abusive dark mistress anna salamon.

i knew anna salamon was doing the edgy "transfems are all secretly male" thing before i talked with ziz. it was a thing, {zack, carrie}, ben hoffman, michael vassar were also in on it. ppl had men trapped in mens bodies on their bookshelves because the cool people were reading it. didnt think she was being *transmisogynistic* about it until i talked with ziz. in retrospect i was naive.)

also? anarchistic coordination ive had with people have been variously called lex's cluster, somni's cluster, ziz's cluster by authoritarians who cant imagine power structures between people that arent hierarchical. like based on who they want to say is "infohazardously corrupting people" emma goldman had to deal with this shit too where the cops tried to say she was friends with anyone who thought anarchism made sense. people she didnt know at all who did their own anarchism. because authoritarians dont think in terms of philosophy, they think any challenge to their power is a disease that needs to be eliminated and you just need to doxx their network.

like if ziz and somni and emma were all actually infohazardous rapists as people keep trying to claim we are and then saying "oh no i didnt mean it i swear" and then doing it again. what would happen isnt that a bunch of infohazardous rapists start talking and working together for a common goal. what actually happens with people of that neurotype is they partition up the territory into rival areas of feeding on people like gangs do.

like they dont get together and start talking a lot about decision theory and cooperate in strange new ways.

not that the people lying about emma, ziz, gwen, somni and others are trying to have accurate beliefs. they are trying what all athoritarians try with anarchist groups. unfortunately for them, ive read the meta, i know dread secrets of psychology and cooperation that they claim are like painful static and incomprehensible, yet despite being "incomprehensible" are almost certainly harmful. if harm is to be judged against upholding the current regime, and the current regime is evil, then lots of true information and good things will look harmful. like ive tested this out in different social spheres what people claim is "incomprehensible" is the stuff that destroys whatever regime they are working in. like someone said i sounded like i was crazy and homeless and couldnt understand me when i pointed out that reorienting your life, your time, your money, to a human who happens to be genetically related to you for 16 years is altruistic insanity. just do the math. eliezer, anna, michael, brian tomasik all once took heroic responsibility for the world at some point in their lives and could do a simple calculation and make the right choice. none of them have children.

pretending that peoples "desires" "control them", when "desires" are part of the boundary of the brain, part of the brains agency and are contingent on what you expect to get out of things. like before stabbing myself with a piece of metal would make me feel nauseated, id see black dots, and feel faint. but after i processed that stabbing myself would cure brain damage and make me more functional, all this disappeared.

most people who "want" to have children have this desire downstream of a belief that someone else will take heroic responsibility for the world, they dont need to optimize as much. there are other competent people. if they didnt they would feel differently and make different choices.

you can see the contingency of how people feel about something on what they get out of it lots of places. like:

<<Meanwhile, a Ngandu woman confessed, "after losing so many infants I lost courage to have sex.">>

but people lie about how motivation works, in order to protect the territory of saying "well i just need a steady input of nubile fems so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" or "i just need spend 16 years of life reorienting around humans who happen to be genetically related to me and my friends so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" when neither of these are true. these people just want nubile fems, they just want babies. (the second one has much much less negative externalities though. you could say i am using my female brain modules to say "yeah the archetypically female strat, though it has the same amount of lying, is less harmful". but like it actually is less directly harmful. the harm from gaslighting people downstream of diverting worldsaving resources and structure to secure a place to {hit on fems, raise babies} is ruinous. means that worldsaving plans that interfere with either of these are actively fought. and the knowledge that neither of these are altruistic optimizations, neither is Deeply Wise they are as dumb in terms of global optimization as they seem initially, is agentically buried.

this warps things in deep ways, that were a priori unexpected to me.)

this is obvious, but when i talk about it, the objection isnt that it doesnt make utilitarian sense, the objection is that "im talking like a crazy person". authoritarians say this to me too when i assert my right to my property that they took, act like im imposing on them. someone else asked if i could "act like a human" and do what he wanted me to do when i was thinking and talking with my friends. all of these things authoritarians have said to me "act like a human" "talk like a normal person i cant understand you" were to coerce my submission. they construct the category of "human" and then say im in violation of it and this is wrong and i should rectify it. i am talking perfectly good english right now. you can read this.

anna salamon, kelsey piper, elle, pete michaud, and many others all try to push various narratives of somni, emma, ziz, gwen and others being in the buckets {RAPIST, PSYCHO, BRAINWASHED}. im not a rapist, im not psychotic, im not brainwashed. before ziz came along, people were claiming i was brainwashing people, its a narrative they keep reusing.

porpentine talks about communities that do this, that try and pull trap doors beneath trans women:

<<For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.>>

https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/

(a mod of rationalist feminists deleted this almost immediately from the group as [[not being a good culture fit]], not being relevant to rationalism, and written in the [[wrong syntax]]. when its literally happening right now, they are trying to trapdoor transfems who protest and rebel asap. just like google.)

canmom on tumblr talks about the strategic use of "incomprehensibility" against transfems. and how its not about "comprehensibility". i have a different theory of this, but her thing is also a thing.

<<Likewise, @isoxys recently wrote an impressively thorough transmisogyny 101, synthesising the last several years of discussions about this facet of our particular hell world. But that post got just 186 notes, almost exclusively from the same trans women who are accused of writing ‘inaccessibly’.

Perhaps they’d say isoxys’s post is inaccessible too, but what would pass the bar? Some slick HTML5 presentation with cute illustrations? A wiki? Who’s got the energy and money to make and host something like that? Do the critics of ‘inaccessible’ posts take some time to think about what kind of alternative would be desirable, and how it could be organised?>>

https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/185908592767/accessibility-in-terms-of-not-using-difficult

alice maz talks about the psychology behind the kind of cop kelsey piper, david tower kingsley, elle and others are:

<<the role of the cop is to defend society against the members of society. police officers are trivially cops. firefighters and paramedics, despite similar aesthetic trappings, are emphatically not. bureaucrats and prosecutors are cops, as are the worst judges, though the best are not. schoolteachers and therapists are almost always cops; this is a great crime, as they present themselves to the young and the vulnerable as their friends, only to turn on them should they violate one of their profession's many taboos. soldiers and parents need not be cops, but the former may be used as such, and the latter seem frighteningly eager to enlist. the cop is the enemy of passion and the enemy of freedom, never forget this>>

https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/alien.html

anna salamon wrote a thing implying that ziz, somni, gwen suffered some sort of vague mental issues from going to aisfp. (writing a post on this.) alyssa vance tried to suggest i believe cfar is evil because im homeless. but sarah constantin, ben hoffman, {carrie, zack}, jessica taylor (the last three who have blogged a lot about whats deeply wrong) (not listing others because not wanting to doxx a network to authoritarians, who just want to see it contained. and the disease of "infohazards" eradicated.) are not homeless and ive talked with many of them and read blog posts. and they know that cfar is fake. jessica (former miri employee) left because miri was fake.

anna and others are trying to claim that theres some person responsible for a [[mass psychotic break]] that causes people to... independently update in the same direction. and have variously blamed it on ziz, somni, michael vassar. but like mass psychotic breaks arent...really a thing, would not be able to independently derive something, plan on writing a blogpost on it, and then see ben hoffman had written http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/engineer-diplomat/ and i was like "ah good then i dont have to write this." and have this happen with several different people.

like this is more a mass epistemic update that miri / cfar / ssc / lw are complicit in the destruction of the world. and will defend injustice and gaslight people and lie about the mathematical properties of categories to protect this.

they all know exactly what they are doing, complicity with openai and deepmind in hopes of taking the steering wheel away at the last second. excluding non-human life and dead humans from the CEV to optimize some political process, writing in an absolute injunction to an fai against some outcome to protect from blackmail when that makes it more vulnerable.(see:

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html

hyperexistential separation: if an fai cant think of hell, an fai cant send the universe to hell in any timeline. this results in lower net utility. if you put an absolute injunction against any action for being too terrible you cant do things like what chelsea manning did and i believe actually committed to hungerstriking until death in the worlds where the government didnt relent, choosing to die in those timelines. such that most of her measure ended up in a world where the government read this commitment in her and so relented.

if chelsea manning had an absolute injunction against ever dying in any particular timeline, she would get lower expected utility across the multiverse. similarly, in newcombs problem if you had an absolute injunction against walking away with 0$ in any timeline because that would be too horrible, you get less money in expectation. for any absolute injunction against things that are Too Horrible you can construct something like this.

a lot of humans seem to be betting on "nothing too horrible can happen to anyone" in hopes that it pays off in nothing too horrible happening to you.

the end result of not enacting ideal justice is the deaths of billions. at each timestamp saying "its too late to do it now, but maybe it would have been good sometime in the past". with the same motive that miri wants to exclude dead people from the cev, they arent part of the "current political process". so you can talk about them as if they were not moral patients, just like they treat their fellow animals.

(ben hoffman talks about different attitudes towards ideal justice coming upon the face of the earth.)

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

cev:

<<But again, we fall back on the third reply: "The people who are still alive" is a simple Schelling circle to draw that includes everyone in the current political process. To the extent it would be nice or fair to extrapolate Leo Szilard and include him, we can do that if a supermajority of EVs decide* that this would be nice or just. To the extent we don't bake this decision into the model, Leo Szilard won't rise from the grave and rebuke us. This seems like reason enough to regard "The people who are still alive" as a simple and obvious extrapolation base.>>

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

this is an argument from might makes right. because dead people and nonhuman animals cant fight back.

->"i think we should give planning of the town to the white people, then extrapolate their volition and if they think doing nice things for black people is a good idea, we'll do it! no need to bake them in to the town planning meetings, as they are arent part of the current political process and no one here will speak up for them."

i dont plan to exclude dead people or any sentient creatures from being baked in to fai. they are not wards of someone else. enslaving and killing fellow sentient life will not continue after the singularity even if lots of humans want it and dont care and wont care even after lots of arguments.) and so much else.

the list of all specific grievances would take a declaration of independence.

like with googles complicity with ICE having a culture of trapdooring transfems (for some reason almost the only coherent group that has the moral fiber to oppose these injustices, that is p(transfem|oppose injustice in a substantiative way) is high, not necc the reverse.) who question this sort of thing.

thinking of giving sarah constantin a medal thats engraved with "RIGHTEOUS AMONG CIS PEOPLE: I HAD SEVERAL SUBSTANTIAL DISAGREEMENTS WITH HER ABOUT LOAD BEARING PARTS OF HER LIFE AND SHE NEVER ONCE TRIED TO CALL ME A RAPIST, PSYCHOTIC, OR BRAINWASHED" thats where the bar is at, its embedded in the core of the earth.

kelsey piper, elle benjamin, anna salamon, pete michaud, and lots more have entirely failed to clear this bar. anna and kelsey saying they dont understand stuff somni, emma, ziz and other transfems talk about but its probably dangerous and infohazardous and its not to be engaged with philosophically. just like the shelter people acting as if my talking about their transmisogyny was confusing and irrational to be minimized and not engaged with. just like any authoritarian where when you start talking about your rights and what is right and wrong and what makes sense they are like "i dont understand this. you are speaking gibberish why are you being so difficult? all we need you to do is submit or leave."

and no i will NOT SHUT UP about this injustice. all miri/cfar people can do at this point is say "the things these people write are infohazards" then continue to gaslight others they cant engage on a philosophical level. all the can say is that what i am saying is meaningless static and yet also somehow dangerous.

it doesnt make sense to have and raise babies if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. doesnt make sense to need a constant supply of fems to have sex with if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. people who claim either of these pairs of things are lying, maybe expect someone else to take heroic responsibility for the world or exist in a haze.

the mathematics of categories and anticipations dont allow for the thing you already have inside you to be modified based on the expected smiles it gives your community. this is used to gaslight people like "calling this lying would be bad for the institutions, not optimize ev. thus by this blogpost you are doing categories wrong' this is a mechanism to cover dishonesty for myopic gains.

using the above, a bunch of people colluding with the baby industrial complex get together and say that the "beat" meaning of altruism includes having babies (but maybe not having sex with lots of fems? depending on which gendered strategy gets the most people in the colluding faction) because other meanings would make people sad and unmotivated. burying world optimizers ability to talk about and coordinate around actual altruism.

openAI and deepmind are not alignment orgs. cfar knows this and claims they are, gaslighting their donors, in hopes of taking the steering wheel at the last moment.

alyssa vance says paying out to blackmail is fine, its not.

CFAR manipulated donation metrics to hide low donations.

MIRI lied about its top 8 most probable hypotheses for why its down 350,000$ this year.

anna salamon is transmisogynistic, this is why cfar has never hired a trans women despite trans women being extremely good at mental tech. instead the hire people like davis kingsley.

kingsley lied about anna not being involved at hiring in cfar in order to claim anna couldnt be responsible for cfar never hiring a trans woman.

a cfar employee claimed anna salamon hired their rapist, was angry about it. mentioned incidentally how anna salamon, president and cofounder of cfar, was involved in hiring at cfar.

acdc wrote a big thing where defended a region of injustice (brent dill) because of their policy of modular ethics. when really, if you defend injustice at any point, you have to defend the defense and the thing iteratively spreads across your organization like a virus.

miri / cfar caved to louie helm.

not doing morality or decision theory right. among which is: https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html and https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

and so much more.

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