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siryouarebeingmocked · 1 year

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: I may have activated my own trap card

Spoilers for a movie that's two months old and also out on home release.

So, Miles, Gwen, Pavitr (Spider-India), and Hobie (Spider-Punk) all seem to have modern left-wing politics, though Gwen's got edited out. Hobie's introduction specifically says he hates "fascists", which carries over from the original comics.

By the time Hobie came around, I assumed he was just another poser, cooler than the hero rival character, expressing generic leftie politics, and his punk ethos wasn't sincere.

Which is exactly what the writers wanted me to think.

Not only is Hobie perfectly sincere about being anti-authoritarian, but he's been helping Miles since before they even met. He's been blatantly stealing junk from the Spider Society to build his own universe-jumping watch, and disguising it as petty vandalism.

He even tries to talk Miles out of trying to join the Spider-Society before the reveal that Miles himself is an anomaly, and the SS (geddit?) tries to detain Miles.

When Hobie says he's against authoritarianism, he really means it.

Speaking of the left-wing politics, Miles has a "#BLM" pin on his bag. It's very visible while he sits next to his dad.

Who's a cop.

(TANGENT: A few years ago, someone drew a stupid, very bad comic where Spider-Man (Peter Parker) was a) black, b) hated cops, and c) assaulted and subdued riot cops when they asked him for help.

That the comic didn't even show the riot cops were wrong. We were just supposed to assume they deserve to be left to the mercy of an angry mob.

Also, in this comic, Uncle Ben was killed by a cop, not a random thug who Spidey could've stopped but chose not to. Which makes me wonder how that would shake out.

It's kind of weird for someone to look at a character who's about personal responsibility to an unhealthy degree, and use him to express their collectivist anti-cop terrorism fantasies. That, or they didn't think through their fantasies.)

During Spider-India's opening, Miles says "I love Chai Tea!" And Pavitr goes on a rant about how "Chai" means "tea". Later on, The Spot says he's been on a "journey of self-discovery", and Pavitr basically says he's racist.

Which is a tad ironic, because Spot is literally white. And also because Pavitr is the one making the racist assumptions.

And I personally go to a church - in England - that has a lot of non-white non-British people. Mostly Africans. And me, of course. I wonder if any Asians ever went on a journey of self discovery to South London.

And I don't just mean as a cab driver.

"Wait, SYABM, didn't you move to the UK for self-discovery?"

W-well, yes, partially.

Aside: I made the mistake of watching a Youtube video with the Chai Tea joke, and then I looked at the comments.

One guy said "tfw when Twitter users write a movie". An idiot (with much more upvotes) said "bro out here wanting blatant racism in movies".

...When the whole point of the joke is that the racism is not blatant.

It's only "blatant" if you're insufferably Twitterized. There are loads of redundant phrasings in English, like "ATM machine", and words often shift when they're adopted from other languages.

Also, "I dislike this joke" is not the same as "I want racism in this movie", when the "racism" in the movie is only there so it could be mocked.

One of the issues with putting real world movements in worlds that are drastically different - it's one of the main selling points of the franchise - is that it may seem odd that those movements exist in very similar form to the IRL version.

For example, Miles supports BLM in both his video game, and this. Which makes me think "did Trayvon Martin get shot in Florida? How about Mike Brown? Wouldn't the existence of supervillains throw things into a new perspective?"

Did I mention the giant George Floyd-style "REST IN POWER" mural to Miles' dead uncle? I cringed at that in the Wakanda Forever trailer, and I rolled my eyes at it here.

Floyd wasn't a saintly martyr, he was an unlucky violent thug.

Also, Aaron was a supervillain killed by another bad guy who nearly destroyed the city, not a cop.

Also, this is at a party to celebrate how Miles' dad is about to be promoted. Assuming Floyd died and the 2020 protests/riots also happened in Miles' universe, then it seems a tad tasteless to have a mural inspired by an anti-cop movement overlooking it, even if the party is not full of cops.

Spider-India lives in "Mumbattan".

The people who settled the Manhattan area were originally Indian. But the other type of Indian. The Indians we're not supposed to call Indians anymore.

The name "Manhattan" is even Native American.

The first permanent settlement was Dutch. Then the English got it. I guess the English could've shipped Indians to the other side of the world and eventually ceded the area to them, or maybe in this world India was a world-conquering superpower and Mumbattan is the result of...importing Native Americans?

Which would make Pavitr's complaint that "the British stole all of our stuff and put it in their museums" seem a tad hypocritical.

Of course, since I wrote all that, someone reminded me that Pavitr explicitly says the joint is in India.

"SYABM," you say, "you're overthinking this."

Yes, I am. Because the filmmakers didn't think it through. If you want to use ha-ha-funny to make a serious point, you invite examination of that point.

Miles (as Spidey) now works with his dad, though he disguises his voice. At one point, Miles tells his father that men bottle up mental health issues.

This is true (and ironic, considering Miles is hiding who he is from Jeff), but it's not the first time I've seen some progressive work try to address men's issues in an very awkward way. At least here, it's played for comedy.

Also, seems a tad hypocritical coming from a guy who wears a "#BLM" pin in the presence of his cop father.

Also, if you work the timeline, that would mean Miles was about 7 or 6 when BLM started. Which means he's gone most of his life knowing nothing else.

There was a controversy over a "protect trans kids" trans flag in Gwen's room, which was apparently edited out.

IMO, it seems a tad strange for a girl who feels estranged from everyone in her world to join a social movement, but what do I know? Maybe it was there before then.

Some people came to the extremely logical conclusion that Gwen herself is trans. Even though she's distinctly physically feminine and possibly too young for puberty blockers depending on Earth 65′s laws.

Like the "oh great, it's Liv" shippers, people are reaching really hard to see what they want to see.

Some people have said that Gwen's issues with her dad and herself seem awfully similar to the issues LGBTQIA2S+ kids go through.

Gee, it's not like, y'know, feeling estranged from one's family is a common theme in fiction about teenagers and superhero, and the whole "superpowers = minority" thing has been done to death for most of the past century.

Perhaps most notably - and clumsily - in X-Men.

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I'm not saying this wasn't the intended subtext. I'm saying if it was, it would just be really, really cliche.

There's this recurring theme of people telling miles "how [his] story is supposed to go".

When he's at a meeting with his parents and his guidance counselor, the lady says his story of being a black-Latino son of an immigrant would sound great in the college application letters. His mom is a tad miffed, given that they're a) solidly middle class, and b) as a Puerto Rican, she considers herself American.

Miguel (Spider-Man 2099) doesn't want Miles in the multiversal council of Spiders, because Miles was bitten by the radioactive spider from a different universe. Which is why his local Spider-Man died, and the spider's home dimension has no Spider-Man.

Also, Miguel is fixated on "canon events". The idea that there are certain things, especially tragedies, that have to happen to Spiders, or their entire universe falls apart.

And he knows this, because he tried to take over for a version of him that got shot dead by a thug. Tried to raise his daughter.

And he watched as the universe collapsed in front of him.

So he's projecting his own guilt onto Miles, a tad.

According to TVtropes and other sources, this was actually about the people who didn't accept Miles as a replacement Spidey, possibly out of racism.

Yeah, that's real hard-hitting topical meta-commentary about a character who debuted 12 years ago. 8 years when the first movie came out.

I'd also like to point out that despite stereotypes of comic book fans, certain minority successors to banner superheros have been fairly well-received. Like Jaime Reyes, or Cassandra Cain.

(Note: I wrote that before the Blue Beetle movie came out. And flopped.)

And, of course, loads of people like Miles specifically because he's a minority Spidey, which is also racist, just from the other direction. In fact, a lot of his fans seem to forget the "Latino" part of "Afro-Latino". From what little I've seen of Miles early comics, they did actually put strong emphasis on his race.

I also suspect the filmmakers may be misinterpreting the usual successor knee-jerk reactions

as racism. If you're using an established brand name for your new hero, you're creating some expectations.

Also, you know the most popular meme about regular Spidey that I see? That Marvel's writers just keep making him suffer and don't want him to actually develop. Which would kinda make Marvel closer to Team Miguel than Team Miles.

Miles also gripes that Miguel is letting "some algorithm" tell him what to do. While I agree with the sentiment, I'd like to point out that, again, Miles supports BLM.

A movement popularized by an algorithm.

A movement made up of narratives and assumptions.

A movement which has never proven a single incident was because of racism.

During the big chase scene, we see a Spider girl in a wheelchair, aka Sun-Spider. She's from the comics. Same initiative that gave us "Web-Weaver".

Who is, of course, an extremely effete gay fashion designer Spidey. I kinda like his outfit, though the Spider-eyes with eyelashes is a little too far.

And Sun-Spider seems exactly like a character a stereotypical 90s executive and focus group would come up with. Down to the backward baseball cap.

(Turns out she's Dayn Broder's actual Spider-Sona.)

Also, while I was looking up that one black and white Spider who said "nowhere to run" (Metro-Spider, played by record producer Metro Boomin [/sic]), I found out that Aunt May's full name is "Maybelle", not just "May". TIL.

There's a bit of a double standard with this version of Spider-Woman, who's black and pregnant. -People in the movie - including Peter B - regularly point out how Peter B endangering his infant daughter Mayday by taking her along with him. But for some reason, nobody says a word about Jessica, who's an active-duty stunt-biking superhero.

Even regular motorbiking can be dangerous for pregnant women.

In fact, the movie portrays this as heroic and impressive. When Gwen sees Jess is preggos, she asks if Jess can adopt her.

Not to mention the whole "afro and hoop earrings" thing, which seem like a bad idea for a type of hero who often gets into melee combat, even with Spider-Sense.

Yes, I'm aware that female heroes, including the Spider-Ladies, often have exposed hair. It's a genre convention. Incidentally, it was nice to see Batwoman wore a detachable decoy wig in the comics. Some bad guy tries to grab it in a fight? It comes right off.

Also, Jess doesn't have much actual character.

Being pregnant is not a character trait. In fact, her only real traits are basically "cool but stern sassy mentor", to contrast with Peter B. -Incidentally, someone on TVtropes pointed out the double standard. And when I saw the page again, a page-camper had deleted it, with no explanation.

Guess they couldn't stand someone pointing out the flaws of their waifu.

(One) Spider-UK in this movie is Muslim. I know she's Muslim because she wears a Spider-themed headdress. Note that regular Marvel 616 has a muslim lady Spider-UK, but her name is Zarina Zahari and she doesn't wear a hijabi.

(Also, she could be mistaken for Ms. Marvel.)

ms marvel.jpg

You might be thinking "wait, isn't a headdress impractical in a melee fight? Doesn't it give your enemy something to grab?" Yes, it is.

But so are Jess's earrings, afro, and being pregnant, so clearly there's a lot of artistic license going on.

Maybe it's partially tearaway, like Batman's cape.

I gotta wonder about the religious rules of wearing a head covering over a mask that *already* covers your entire head. Did she go see her imam and go "Okay, I have a really weird question..."

Come to think, Spidey is usually slim, but a lot of lady Spideys in this movie seemed to have wide hips. Including muscular ladies. Kris Anka's concept art goes really hard on wide hips. I don't know why. Stronger, faster character reads during the big chase?

I guess Spiders could be expected to have strong legs.

BOTTOM LINE:

I liked the movie overall, though the progressive bits made me roll my eyes a little. I...want to see the third one, with reservations.

#tvtropes #spiderman #character design #movies

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checkoutmybookshelf · 3 months

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You Have My Attention: Dangerous Damsels First Lines

India Holton's Dangerous Damsels books were a DELIGHTFUL discovery for me, and she's one of those authors whose writing style I genuinely adore so much that I caught myself reading for the writing. I would read a paragraph, luxuriate in the way this author constructs a sentence, then realize I got to read that paragraph AGAIN because I was so wrapped up in the technical aspects of the writing that I'd missed the plot. I adore the way these books are written, and they had me at hello. So how did these books catch me? Let's look at their first lines.

There was no possibility of walking to the library that day. Morning rain had blanched the air, and Miss Darlington feared that if Cecilia ventured out she would develop a cough and be dead within the week. Therefore Cecilia was at home, sitting with her aunt in a room ten degrees colder than the streets of London, and reading aloud The Song of Hiawatha by "that American rogue, Mr. Longfellow," when the strange gentleman knocked at their door.

-- The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels

Charlotte could listen no more in silence. For several minutes now a young man at the teahouse counter had been abusing a waiter with language that pierced her soul. She tried to behave as the other customers and look away--after all, who did not understand the pain of being disappointed in one's hopes for a warm current scone? But finally her patience broke, and she simple had to speak by such means as were within her reach--namely a volume of Dickens she had been reading over tea and sandwiches.

-- The League of Gentlewomen Witches

It was the best of dress shops, it was the worst of dress shops. It sold the most beautiful garments, it sold the ugliest scraps, and Miss Primula Tewkes fell in love and despair as she walked amongst its displays. Her maid, Alice Dearlove, followed like a shadow, black-garbed and silent, arms full of hatboxes. Primula declared herself to be in Heaven, but Alice privately wished the lady would go direct the other way.

-- The Secret Service of Tea and Treason

#india holton #the wisteria society of lady scoundrels #the league of gentlewomen witches #the secret service of tea and treason #period romance #victorian romance #romance novels #romance books #book quotes #book quotations

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atom-writings · 1 year

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hi! could i have general relationship + crushing hcs of america, australia, india and canada w/ a tropical country! reader?

(America, Canada, Australia, and India X Reader) Tropical Country S/O!

(Gender Neutral) Headcanons ~ A/N india doesnt have a canon name so i looked at ones ppl have suggested n used that?? If its . offensive let me know i am not . educated on indian culture ): anyway cool req!!!!

Trigger Warning: It's not fluffy but there's no real trigger warnings i think, so...

Surprisingly, Alfred would be pretty resistant to dating another nation… at least, before he met you. He’s never had real good relations with any country, and he wouldn’t want to mess up another relationship because of politics. It’s just business anyway, right? At least, that’s what he thought before you took his breath away.

Unfortunately, he does have a pretty American attitude about your country. He absolutely loves visiting, but he never stays for too long. During the summer months, you’ll see him a couple of times a month, but during the winter, he practically lives in your home. Like a street cat who wanders in whenever he needs an escape from the rest of the world.

But if you ever need an escape too, he’s perfectly happy to be that for you. You two, despite both being nations, have had very different lives. He knows he’ll never be able to truly understand the struggles you face. But he is always willing to run to your aid, holding your hand tightly while you sit on the beach, venting about your struggles.

But being able to run to you is one of his favourite things about dating you. When he’s with you, he’s got a perfect excuse to cut off everything around him, just basking in how much he loves being with you. But then he gets bored. And he wants to go on hikes to see all your pretty scenery. Hope you like sweating!

Matthew was… nervous to start dating another nation. Anytime he spends any time with another nation, it always turns sour. Whether that be subtle insults, an argument, or him being talked over. But, when he realises you’re a little nation, he feels a lot better. You’ve been talked over a lot too, haven’t you? Yeah, well, no more of that for either of you. He’ll make sure.

You may have a shared history of being dismissed, but he is still pretty different from you. Reason number one, he hates tropical environments. If it gets any hotter than like… 26 degrees, he’s on the verge of passing out. But then he doesn’t even tell you about it! So you end up having to practically drag him back into the air-conditioned car. All while he’s blubbering like, “I’M SORRY! I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!”

He does absolutely adore your country, though. One of his favourite things to do is just lay his head in your lap while you tell him stories about your long life, and he can’t stop thinking about how different your lives have gone. But it just makes him fall more in love. Fate shouldn’t have brought the two of you together, but it did! And now he can’t let go… even if you might melt him.

You bring out a very different side to him, too. While he normally can’t even get a single word out against other nations, he’s always standing up for you. You’re hot and he’s cold, you’re small and he’s big, it means you have to take care of each other! He takes that duty very seriously.

Unlike a lot of other nations, Liam is pretty happy you’re a nation too. Most people find him a little bit too… much… but if you work together, you’ll get to know that he’s not always so overwhelming! Plus, no awkward conversation about the fact that he’s like, 200 years old and was never born.

He loves your nation too! It’s a lot like his, hot, full of bugs, and most of it is not easily inhabitable. The only difference is that your place is a lot prettier. At least, on average. Either way, he’s over the moon about getting to know your country. And even more excited to share his with you! It’s like you’re naturally matching.

That’s for sure one of his favourite things about you. Both being island nations (for the most part,) you surely have a lot of similar skills and hobbies. That means he doesn’t have to teach you anything, you two just get to improve together, no struggle along the way. And when he sees your pretty skin, set in the perfect light of the sunset, he always thinks to himself about how much he appreciates you; how you make him better, just by your presence.

Aditya is always surprised by how much he loves you. For a long time, he’s done everything he could to keep away from the other nations. Hard to trust, you know? But with you… he doesn’t mind. Somehow, both of your statuses have become a benefit rather than their usual liability. After all, no one could understand the struggle of immortality quite like another immortal. You make him feel very… safe.

Usually being classified as a tropical country himself, he really doesn’t mind your climate either. Your home feels just like his home (like it was meant to be!) So he can’t help getting a little nosy when it comes to learning about your culture. I mean, you two are similar in a lot of ways, so he’s got to figure out how you’re different, right? Otherwise, you might be related… what?! He’s just being careful!

No, but seriously, he adores how alike you two are. On a global scale, he struggles to keep up with his nation’s changing identity. He’s never really known his place. But you can relate, can’t you? Your thoughts and feelings always being seen as secondary, he’s sick of it. But being able to talk about it with you, makes it a little better. In fact, you end up making a lot of things better. It’s hard for him to think of you as anything other than perfect, and he couldn’t be happier.

#heta tag #hetalia imagines #hetalia x reader #alfred tag #matthew tag #liam tag #aditya tag #aph america x reader #hws america x reader #aph canada x reader #hws canada x reader #aph australia x reader #hws australia x reader #aph india x reader #hws india x reader

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hezuart · 2 years

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Why did you switch from animation to reviews? Also, do you still plan on doing CGI like you mentioned multiple times?

oH BOY..... you may need to sit down for this one

So it all started back in 2012. I was around 14 years old and just saw Rise of the Guardians and Wreck it Ralph. The stories, the characters, the world-building, the animation... now I never really went to movie theaters as a kid, but as a teen I started going and I instantly fell in love.

I went to community college for a few years and made some amazing friends. Loved some of my teachers and we participated in fun events like the 24-hour challenge and Campus Movie Fest. I had gotten in the top picks for Campus Movie Fest at some point and was supposed to go to the Cannes Film Festival in France to showcase my short film, but then the pandemic hit and it got canceled indefinitely.

So get this, for community college, I got a certification in 3D Animation and Video Game development. It's basically an AA degree but without general ed. (Why do you need general ed to get a degree in something? Math and PE have nothing to do with Animation. College is ridiculous. People have to pay you more simply because you were forced to spend more money in college. Wild.) Out of the 20 classes I had taken to get this certification, only 3 of those courses were hands-on 3D animation. And only one of those courses was hands-on video game development and I dropped out of that class because it was PC only and I only had a Mac at the time. I applied to the class without realizing it was accommodating only to PCs. So even my certification is barely reaching the basics for the title of it, but I did take another online course or two for 3D animation which I have a different certification for.

Now even with my 3D animation, I was never taught the physics engine. I was never taught hair or cloth simulation, but I do have modeling, rigging, animating, and texturing experience. For gaming, I have very little experience. I've only modeled things and found my way around Unity, but otherwise, I suck at coding. I hate coding with a passion. Making a video game without coding isn't really possible.

Now, when the pandemic hit, a lot of things were shutting down. I had no idea where I wanted to go next. People kept asking me where I was going for my higher education, but I kept getting warned not to waste money on college if you're trying to become an artist, especially at University. It's a money pit, and competition is so high, you're not guaranteed a job, you're just gonna be in debt. Even colleges like Cal Arts, who charge over $1K per class, I've been told are a "Pay to get in" kind of place. Where the money is used to nab professionals from their work to teach students or talk about their company or programs, and through that, you get a bigger chance to get your foot in the door because you know someone. I've unfortunately been told that's the more realistic way to get into animation: networking. If you're a shy introvert who doesn't know any famous people, you need to be extremely talented and unique to stand out to get the chance of being noticed. I don't really want to suck up to people nor do I want to waste thousands of dollars and 5 more years on college that I may not even need (let alone be able to afford) especially if there are online classes that may be even more valuable.

Now after I got out of college and started applying a few places, I discovered a LOT of unfortunate information.

Most animation these days is done overseas. South Korea, India, Japan, and Canada are the big ones.

Invader Zim, Steven Universe, Miraculous Ladybug, The Simpsons, OK KO, Star vs the Forces of Evil, Kipo and the Age of the Wonder Beasts, Adventure Time, Twelve Forever, and the Powerpuff Girls Reboot were animated in South Korea. The Ghost and Molly Mcgee is animated in Canada.

(The first four seasons of the Simpsons were animated in America until it switched to South Korea and India.)

2D traditional animation is no longer viable. Puppetry is the industry standard because it's the cheapest. Luckily, Toon Boom Harmony has allowed us to push the boundaries of 2D puppetry. Puppetry these days, if done well, can look really great, like Tangled the Series, but if you don't have Toon Boom Harmony, you're probably not gonna be hired.

Not even all 3D is made in the USA. If it's Disney, Dreamworks, or Pixar, then it's usually USA. But streaming service movies, like Sea Beast, Kid Cosmic, The Willoughbys, and Klaus, while they claim to be a "Netflix Original" that "Netflix Animation" animated, that's a lie. Klaus was animated by Yowza! Animation in Canada. The Willoughbys: Bron Animation, Canada. Kid Cosmic: Mercury Filmworks, Canada. Sea Beast: Sony Pictures Image Works, Canada. (X)

Go Go Cory Carson is written and storyboarded in America, but the animation is shipped out to be done in France. Sonic Boom is also French Animated.

Even Sony Pictures? Open Season, Surf's Up, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, SMurfs, Hotel Transylvania, Over the Moon, The Angry Birds Movie, Sea Beast? Sony Pictures Imageworks is based in Canada. They're doing all the animation for them. It's not animated in America, it's merely funded by them.

I should also clarify: I only want to participate in stylized animated media. I don't want to do CGI for hyper-realistic films, which eliminates most of the animation jobs out there these days. It's just not my thing. The insane amount of details and uncanny valley are just so unappealing, I can't do it.

The closest animation studios are still far away. Most companies are located in LA. I'm over 7+ hours away from there. LA also has a high poverty rate, terrible air quality, is overcrowded, and is just generally not a good place to live, especially if you're low middle class. You're not gonna survive there.

Pixar is located in Emeryville, a few minutes north of San Fransisco city. Emeryville is the most crime-ridden city in that area. They tell you not to walk home alone at night. You're more likely to get robbed there than anywhere else according to the population ratio there. There are a lot of gangs that hide up there, and there's a lot of poverty there, even outside of San Fransisco. It's basically a trash pit. Not an ideal place to live, and commuting through 3-hour SF city traffic is also not gonna work. (X)

I have also been informed some people who work at Pixar are petty that the interns use their facility. Pixar has a heated pool, soccer field, gymnasium, and a few other nice things on their property. I was informed there was a person or two who got mad that an intern was using their basketball court.... when the intern was on break. As though they weren't part of Pixar, as though they had no right to touch the property. Apparently, they also used to make the interns push around little tea carts to serve refreshments as a way to "talk to the fellow animators" to probably get them interacting, but hearing that the interns were basically chored with butler duty to bother the animators hard at work seems like such a forced thing. That makes me uncomfortable. Of course, the person who told me these stories has been working with Pixar for over a decade or two now, so things could be very different as the years went on. Pixar itself on the inside of the animator building is gorgeous. They all decorate their office spaces in crazy ways, it looks like a movie set. But they have a bar and "whiskey club". They're apparently allowed to drink at work and have often had parties that got a little out of hand. There's also an old chain smoker room where the founders used to play poker and spy on people outside of their room with hidden cameras; I've even been inside. I don't think they use it anymore, though I'm not totally sure. Some of this info was fascinating, but the drinking made me uncomfortable. I kinda want to work with sober people here.

The sex ratio in the animation industry is also interesting and unfavorable. 70% of the animation and art school ratio is women, but only 34% of the actual animation workforce is women. 34% female to 66% male. More women study animation than men, but more men get hired and hold positions than women. Animation, ironically, has always been a male-dominated workplace. This unfortunately contributes to the "you have to know someone" or "be rich" to get-in situation. Men know a lot more men and not as many women. So the 30 to 40-year-old guys hire the other guys they know rather than a young poor girl with a passion. This makes it even more difficult for me to get in. (X)

20th Century, Netflix Animation, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Bento Box, Vanguard Animation, Universal Studios, Titmouse, 6 Point Harness, ShadowMachine- all LA / South California.

There are a few places I could apply to, but what they do, I just don't care for. Niantic(Pokemon Go), Lucasfilm(Effects), Whiteboard Animation(Marketing), Sharpeyeanimation (Marketing), EA games (Mass Effect, Battlefield, Dragon Age 2, all those hyper-realistic war, sports, or fantasy games.)

So whether it's outside of the USA or within the USA, I need to move. I don't have the money for that yet.

Just find a company that does remote work, right? It should be easy, especially in pandemic times! Wrong. Most animation companies don't permit remote work. It's probably a security issue. But I've done research on this. The only big animation company I've found (so far) that allows remote work (or is HIRING for remote work) is Mainframe Studios in Canada. They have a 3D animation job list, and I guess they focus on animating Barbie movies(???). (X) But that's about it. And even if you're a remote worker, there's a high likely hood you still need a Visa to be allowed to work for a company belonging to another country. So that's a whole other legal process to deal with.

Disney is becoming a huge corporate monopoly over American animation. They bought Blue Sky only to kill them off. (Disney also just recently laid off 7,000 people due to their stock price drop and failed movies they released the past year with deliberately bad marketing for political reasons. (X) Disney also bought Pixar and is pushing for sequels because weird or bad, sequels and terrible live actions make them a LOT of money. Did you know Disney's terrible Lion King CGI remake is amongst the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever made? It's criminal. (X)

Because Disney is such a big name in the USA, there's a huge association of animation = children's media, which is not true. Animation at the Oscars also has its own category, when it's not a genre, is a medium. Disney often wins at the Oscars too because no one sees the other animations. Granted, Disney has an insane marketing budget in comparison, but it's clear no one cares to seek out animation outside of heavy CGI live-action these days. No small-time studios, no limited releases, no anime. The fact that Disney also now OWNS the Oscars is SUS as hell. (The fact that Disney-owned ABC threatened the Oscars, forcing them to cut 8 categories or else there wouldn't be a show that year is wild. There isn't even an oscar for stuntmen. What the fuck, Hollywood?) (X)

Dreamworks nearly went bankrupt and sold itself to Comcast back in 2013. Comcast also owns Illumination. Dreamworks has been focusing on making bad tv show adaptions of their IPs. So yes people, Jack would sooner meet the Minions than meet Elsa. Disney is the biggest corporate monopoly, but it's definitely not the only one. The animation industry in America is snuffing out its competition by buying it out for itself. It's insane the kind of power they have.

Competition is HIGH. Because of this, the only ways to get in? If you're rich or you know someone. Pixar gets over 3,000 intern applications every summer. Less than 100 are seen by actual hiring managers. The most interns Pixar has ever taken in a single year were 12. The least they ever took in a single year was two. A 12 to 3,000 ratio is not favorable. That's a 3% chance to get into a big-shot animation company.

And again, because remote work isn't permissible to new hires, you need to live in the area to commute to the campuses. This is one of the reasons why LA is so crowded.

If you get into an animation company purely remote and maybe even for a different country? You are the luckiest person alive.

Programs are expensive. The animation industry is very strict on what programs they use. The industry standard for 2D puppetry is Toon Boom Harmony; the industry standard for 3D animation is Maya, and the industry standard for video game development isn't as clear but Unity is one of them.

Some of these programs are free, as long as you are a student. If you are attending college or a certain online program, you can use your school-issued email through them to apply to get the program for free for about a year. Otherwise, if you're using it to make your own animations solo?

Autodesk Maya: $225 a month or $1,785 a year (X)

and guess what? Maya removed its free render service. Arnold is now built in by default, however, if you want to BATCH render (Meaning render a full scene or several slides) it will slap it's ugly watermark over it.

Fun fact, this very rendered watermark can be seen accidentally in a single frame for the Kingdom Hearts Frozen cutscene

Well, you need to batch render if you're trying to animate so let's see what Arnold costs- $50 monthly to $380 annually.... are you kidding me?! The rendering PLUG-IN BUNDLED TO MAYA COSTS MORE TO USE THAN THE OWN PROGRAM?! (X)

Now, there are other rendering plug-ins you can probably use with Maya. But they all have their ups and downs and their own costs as well. (X) Pixar's Renderman is $595 per license. I can't seem to get info on Octane. V-ray solo is $39 monthly while premium is around $60 monthly.

Now there IS Blender, an alternative to Maya. It is free and I have it. That is ideal to work in for people like me. I tried it a while back, but I hated the interface windows. It was hard to work on it when you can't close them properly. It's possible they've fixed this in an update, but I haven't touched the program in over three years so I wouldn't know. It's different from Maya a little, so it has ups and downs in comparison too. But Blender is a savior to 3D artists everywhere.

Toon Boom Harmony isn't as bad but still high: Lowest price is $27 monthly / $220 annual and the highest is $124 monthly / $1,100 annual (X)

Unity has a basic version that is free, but Unity Plus is $399 yearly while Unity Pro is $2,040 (X)

So some programs are clearly more viable than others. But imagine you're trying to model, texture, rig, animate, simulate, and render a short film all by yourself in Maya. That's gonna take you over a year or two, and you'll have several thousand dollars out of your pocket by the time your free trial ends. And might I say, for an industry-standard program, Maya sucks. It's almost unusable without those plug-ins for not only rendering but also for the models to even be able to SELECT their BONE rigs.

Do you want to practice on your own when school is out of session? Fuck you! Fuck subscription services! Welcome to capitalist hell, baby!

Again, using Blender is more viable, but you're still going to be basically doing everything yourself. That's gonna take years. Do you have the patience for that? Do I?

Because of the pandemic, movies aren't even hitting theaters anymore. They're going straight to streaming services. Streaming services of which, gain sole rights to and can take media off their platforms at any time without warning. Thanks, Discovery+ ! Does everyone remember the HBO Max Animation & DC purge? It could happen to other streaming services too. Piracy will save the future of animation at this point. (X)

And again, Streaming services like Netflix will purchase films and claim they made them by slapping their logo over it; but no, they either bought the distribution rights or produced them through funding and maybe storyboarding. Often times from a Canadian film studio. (Link again X)

Even stop motion companies like LAIKA are losing money and may have to shut down or be bought out in the future, especially considering how much work and money they put into their films vs. how much money they actually make. (X)

All of this? Naturally made me fall into a depression. My god, the layers of hopelessness. My animation and modeling is pretty average too. I'm decent. I can maybe make a good shot. But I can't blow people away like James Baxter can. I mean, I shouldn't compare myself to people. If I worked really hard, maybe I could get into a good company. But again, I have to move! A part of me gave up. I don't really do 3D animation anymore, though part of me misses it.

I still 2D animate. I'm trying to make a short film and though my college friends who were working on it with me have given up, I have done my best to keep going. Even if it has been produced at a snail's pace for the past three years, I still intend to finish this animation. It's gonna be beautiful when it comes out, and it will be a wonderful portfolio piece regardless.

So with nothing else to do and no other kind of job experience really under my belt(plus my family is prone to covid so getting a job in the pandemic was just kind of out of the question) I decided to go to youtube. I heard some people can make a little money on there, but the truth is I had actually wanted to become a youtuber for a few years prior. I've always looked up to animators and reviewers on youtube, I've loved the stories they tell and their incredibly detailed analysis essays on movies, tv series, books, etc. I wanted to be one of them. I wasn't sure exactly what I'd do, so I just followed the Youtube Partnership program set up which took a few months, and then jumped in! I found I only had the time to upload once every month or two. I had a ton of audio issues and I'm not outputting at the proper 1920 x 1080 quality that I should be doing either. It's a huge learning process that I still haven't perfected, but I'm taking notes to try and get better.

Even though Youtube is fun, I only make $300 a month, and that isn't even consistent. With patreon, I make maybe another $80 or $100 on top of that, so overall $400 a month average. That's really nice and pretty cool! But it's not enough to survive.

Now I work part-time at a coffee shop. My mental health is a lot better and I love my coworkers. I make roughly $400 a week in comparison to the $400 a month. It's still not enough to live off of (the cheapest rent around is over $1,000 a month, not ) and it's still a temporary job in the long run. I intend to work here for maybe another two years to save up money.

But what do I do now?

Am I welcome in animation spaces anymore?

As a critic of popular media, it could be likely that they could fire me or deny my application because of my critique of their past films or tv series. They could see my youtube persona and assume I'm a raging untrustworthy nitpick instead of a passionate, kind person.

Vivziepop's Spindlehorse company? What Viv was doing was a dream. I was so inspired by her. She made her own company, made a super successful pilot, and was even creating more jobs for traditional, high-quality animation. However, for Hazbin Hotel, she required more funding, which is why she sold it off to A24, who now has corporate say in the show. A24 is known for letting creators be more lenient, but otherwise, Viv won't have full control over it anymore unless she managed to get them to sign something over to her; but with the rumors of her being kicked off season 1? I don't know anymore.

Her own company Spindlehorse; they rely on youtube revenue and/or merch sales to fund Helluva Boss. That's a tricky business practice, but it's kept them afloat so far.

However, Spindlehorse is hiring a lot of people as of late. This could be a bad sign; that people might be leaving the company due to potential mistreatment or unhappiness. With the way the show is going, I don't really want to be part of that company regardless, but maybe before season 2 of Helluva Boss, I would have considered applying. Had I made any critique videos prior, there's no way they'd accept me. "Aren't you that one YouTuber that said my writing is bad for season 2 episode 2?" And you expect me to hire you?" Like yeah, that application process would go down well. Not. By critiquing artists' work, some of them are very sensitive. I'd be kicked out for a lot of things, when really, we artists should be critiquing each other all the time, trying to improve. That's how the writer's room always is, ahaha... hours of fighting goes down in those meetings. It's intense, but fun.

But yeah, it's such a shame. Even small companies need to sell out to corporate to survive. Either that or be HEAVILY crowd-funded, which again, can be a slippery slope.

I see a ton of small projects on Twitter looking to hire people, or looking to become a big studio to release a pilot or game. I've joined a few of them, but most are unpaid because of COURSE they are, and then these projects?? Just don't go anywhere. Because it's unpaid. Because we can't afford to work on a project for free. IRL comes first. Some of these projects seem so great but they don't go anywhere, and it's hard to have faith in start-up studios anymore. (Game creators might have a chance, but tv series or films? Good luck, folks.)

At that point, should I just make my own company? I don't have the money or knowledge for such a thing! It's insanely expensive to start a business and get licensing. So much paperwork, so much everything! And the USA Government is so behind in understanding technology. If you want to create a remote business and/or copyright something, you're still required to put an advertisement in a local newspaper about it, even if your business isn't selling to locals. 💀 The number of fees and ridiculous legal hoops you need to jump through... it's a ridiculous waste of time and money. But you need to do it. The question is, am I willing to do it? Am I willing to tackle such an insane thing by myself?

I want to keep my internet persona and IRL persona separate, but can I? I value having a private, quieter life away from the screen. I worry about getting doxxed one day because of the nature of the internet. I worry about people finding my IRL resumes or profiles for work I want to do outside of youtube for security's sake. My art style is unique and very recognizable. I don't have a lot of private art that is worthy of being in a portfolio. But for absolute safety, I'd need to password-protect my websites or portfolios so the public doesn't have free access to them; only companies I'm applying to. But at that point, does password-protecting my resume and portfolio make it less likely I'd be hired due to the inconvenience? Due to the private, hard-to-find nature of my work? Being a YouTuber with great story skills and art skills with a fanbase could be a big plus to getting hired somewhere, but it could also be a horrible disadvantage that would get me fired. It's a double-edged sword that I cannot work around and I don't know what to do.

I've considered the video game industry, but even that isn't ideal. A lot of the indie ones I adore aren't made in the USA. Gris and Monster Camp were made in Spain. Ori and the Blind Forest: Austria. Hollow Knight: Australia. Little Nightmares and Raft: Sweden. LIMBO & INSIDE: Denmark. Outlast, Don't Starve, Spirit Farer, Bendy and the Ink Machine: Canada.

SuperGiant Games did Hades, Transistor and Bastion and is located in SF, but they're not hiring. Janimation, a multi-media company located in Texas isn't hiring. Frederator in New York isn't hiring.

I don't want to work for a studio that does nothing but first-person shooters or sports games. If I want to get into the gaming industry, I probably need to crowdfund and make a company to make a game myself.

If I make my own game, which I've wanted to do for a long time now and still want to... I can't code. I guess I could try to hire someone that could? But a game to the extent I want... I'd need to start small. I'd need to practice. It's several years of work. Will it even be worth it? I don't think I can do it alone. I'd need crowdfunding and workers; which again, here comes the "make my own studio" issue...

Do I even want to animate anymore? I prefer traditional animation in comparison to puppetry. I prefer 2D animation to 3D animation simply because it is more accessible. But even then, I'm finding myself drawn more and more to writing, storyboarding, and character design. If I were a 3D animator, this is mostly what I'd be working with all day: Naked models in an empty room. I'd do none of the physics simulation or texturing or lighting.

Animating naked & bald people all day... I don't know... 3D Animation kind of lost its appeal. You only work on such a small portion of a film, you almost never have the bigger picture. You won't see the final result until the film is done. As an animator, you're almost kept in the dark. Maybe that's how they want it anyway, since leaks are a huge issue they keep quiet under strict NDA.

But yeah, anyway... I'm an artistic digital generalist. I can do almost anything. 3D animation, storyboarding, writing, photo editing, illustration, rendering, modeling and so much more. It's hard to choose what you really want to be in this industry. I feel like Barry Benson dfklgjdflkjg

I don't know what I'm gonna do anymore. There's gotta be a solution to this but I just can't figure it out. I don't want to give up my youtube channel so I can be an animator. I don't want to give up a safer, quiet countryside house to be able to survive financially. Am I even willing or able to move countries? Is my career more important than friends and family?

I think I'm thinking too much about everything. I should start small. Move less than an hour away first and move in with roommates to get a feel for independence instead of jumping into it immediately. Get a job at a small time company, maybe not for what I want at first, but it'll get me some experience and maybe I'll learn some things along the way to understand where I can go next. Take it slow and don't panic too much over trying to be a young big shot. Take things one day at a time? That's my current goal, I suppose.

So you know... to answer your question... why did I switch to youtube for a current career? Because of a classic existential & career crisis in my 20s. Will I ever go back to 3D animation? Maybe. Maybe one day.

#ask #personal #3D animation #career #youtube #long post #i should also say because im a fan artist #i dont have a lot of original work to add to a portfolio which is a HUGE issue #Pixar doesnt even want to look at a portfolio if it has copyrighted material #they want to avoid lawsuits if they see material owned by a different company #you need to be so careful what you put in a portfolio #i mean especially if i use my 2D stuff or illustrations #my illustrations especially #animation #the animation industry #CGI #rant

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ivettel · 1 year

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RARELY DOES WANDERING ON TWITTER send me into a more reflective mood. but, you know, with all the people saying one needs to be part of a certain country to be angry about racism against the people of that country (and wow, that's a mouthful), together with some thoughts already swirling in my head from reading r.f. kuang's yellowface, i'm thinking: in such a globalized world where asian people can lead completely different cultural lives, who gets to be the representative voices to other people?

gets to, mind--not has the right, or deserves. i think there's a very important distinction between all the terms you could possibly use. some of them imply an inherent possession, like a kind of exclusive club that one can be a member of just by being born the right (or wrong) way. some imply a forceful taking of power, a (re)claiming of sorts, with almost a tyrannical nature to the words.

MY CANADIAN-ASIAN FRIENDS AND I are a mix of first and second gen immigrants from east asia, south-east asia, india, etc. we frequently find ourselves talking about diversity and the like, real nerd ass shit (quote unquote) you get from mashing people in the media literacy publication together to talk about media literacy and publications. think socratic seminar, except peppered in with gen-z cringe and (un?)ironic r/im14andthisisdeep.

but for the last four or so years, a more serious thread of convo has always been picked up, that being: are we even allowed to position ourselves as voices of authority on racial matters? are we allowed to, when our particular lived experiences in this country of privilege mean we've lost touch with part of the homeland? after all, points out a vietnamese friend, i never had to live in fear for my life on a boat. then, being a conversation we've rehashed time and time again, we talk in circles.

of course you have a right to speak on the lived vietnamese experience. sure you do, you just don't have an all-encompassing viewpoint. don't act like you know everything, which you're already doing.

and it's so easy among immigrants like us to say shit like that. to say, yeah, i'm from here, but my family's from there. to say, no, i don't speak my people's tongue and be met with understanding. it's like asian-canadianness is its own culture, further alienating us from the cultures back overseas. and that's not necessarily a bad thing: it means it's okay to leave a conversation among us at that intersection of nuance, where yeah, you have an experience, and it might not be The Experience, but it's still something valuable.

when it comes to other people, however, things get messy. they always want to box you in beyond the boxes you sit yourself in.

"I'M SO SORRY FOR EVERYTHING my country has done to yours," says a son of parents from mainland china who didn't immigrate over, but instead sent their child to canada in the hopes that he could obtain a special-looking, foreign degree, and come back home.

he's a doe-eyed, earnest looking guy, well-meaning in his tone and the way he wrings his hands, like he's really very sorry. he's all but accosted me at a film event i'm hosting for the union. i'm decked out in CUPE colours, trying to handle talking to two other people at once, feeling frazzled and more machine than human, the way i'm running this event tightly, no wiggle room for big errors.

he's happened to overhear me offhandedly telling someone that my mom is from hong kong, and he looks like he's two seconds away from crying unless i tell him on the spot that i forgive him.

i don't forgive him. i don't know how. i don't know if i'm allowed to.

it's an incredibly strange feeling, to be looked at like you could be somebody's salvation. not even anyone in my string of exes ever looked at me like that, like if i said, don't worry about it, he could go home to china and say, the hongkongers understand. like anybody outside could understand the magnitude of violence that shook hong kong in 2019 and 2020.

i tell him, "i don't blame the people, i blame the government and greed." because it's true, i don't think the everyday working man in shanghai wanted to bring hong kong to its knees. i don't think the high schooler in beijing trying to make it past their big national exams wanted to make it rain blood over tsim sha tsui. i tell him, "besides, my dad is from taiwan, so i'm not even fully hongkonger."

which is the wrong move, because he goes ashen, and shoves his stupid doe-eyes in my face again, and insists: i'm so, so sorry.

i can't forgive him. i can't not.

what has he ever done except understand that the mainland holds my two home countries at bombpoint?

what have i ever done except grow up white?

MAYBE IT'S ONLY SPRING, BUT it feels like summer, and a family friend from hong kong is sitting across from me in a restaurant with her eyes downcast while she picks at the hem of her thick hoodie.

i haven't seen her in ages. i've only barely kept up with her through social media. her mom and my mom were in nursing school together, roommates and best friends. her mom was the kind of girl to get all the guys, to date all the time and fool around and be the top of the class, while my mom studied her ass off and stayed average. (and mom always says that she never resented her best friend, but i know. oh, i know.)

it's her first time out of hong kong for the last six or seven years. she's changed so drastically, i think i only recognize her face.

put yourself in my sixteen year-old shoes for a second. when i was in high school, she was one of the coolest people i knew: a female percussionist fresh out of some prestigious music conservatory in england, a basketball lover, a confident and self-assured kind of woman, worlds away from the people in my little home city of halifax.

now, when i look at her, her body language is distinctly withdrawn and uncomfortable, and her eyes keep flicking over at the myriad of pretty white people around us, who unnerve the rest of our table as well. i want to say, girl, you chose this restaurant. we could be eating good food right now. i keep my mouth shut. the only thing she does with determination is order a steak and some trendy cocktail. she doesn't ask me about my life. she doesn't open up about anything. it feels like an interview more than a conversation.

we're not even fifteen minutes into seeing each other when the revolution is brought up, and her whole demeanour changes. her mom's whole demeanour changes too. i know secondhand that they've lost almost everything in the ensuing fallout, that they've had to scrape by to find menial work they're far too outqualified for. the country should still be fine for tourists if you ever want to visit, she offers. lots of sightseeing.

i pretend not to read into it too much, but i know exactly what she's saying, and so does my mom, if the look i get is any indication.

you're not really one of us.

"CAN I ASK YOUR OPINION," says my mom, interrupting me while i'm slurping away at my udon like a fucking pro. this is possibly the cleanest i've ever consumed the noodles, barely spilling a drop of broth. (probably because i'm not blogging with one hand while i blindly grab at everything with my chopsticks in the other, but whatever.) beside me, my sister is scrolling through some webtoon, her bowl empty.

i bear the interruption and make a sound, something like an inelegant, "ah?"

mom has her eyes closed, her head bowed like she's seriously thinking. at this point, i'm pretty sure she's going to ask me about some social etiquette faux pas she thinks she's in the right about, again, and god, sometimes, she's so pretentious, it makes me want to give her attitude like i'm the teenager in the room.

but she surprises me and asks: "do you look down on mainland china?"

i'm half joking when i say, "fobs or real mainlanders?"

fresh off the boat, if you're not aware of the slang. refers to new immigrants from the mainland. usually sweating money, can be found noisily revving their custom sports cars, or walking around in groups like some pantomime of an italian mafia, outwardly radiating regina george mean girls vibes like they're paid to do it.

at least, that's how they're usually thought of. i've always seen them more as schools of fish trying to navigate together, almost as though they're establishing a bit of connection in a place that seems to abhor it.

i don't begrudge them for the things they do. white people are fucking terrifying, especially when you don't speak english very well, and they treat you like you're subhuman. the way they're visibly stifling an eye-roll, the way their voices get that particular edge to it, like you're testing their patience, like you're wasting their time. like they're thinking, just learn the goddamn language we use, it's not that hard. like people learning english aren't already trying.

luckily, mom is still deep in contemplation. her best friend, she explains, looks down on the mainlanders. thinks they're filthy pigs for being china chinese, thinks that knowing mandarin means you're not sticking it to the man, that everybody there is a mindless drone, and it's just not true.

(and never mind that taiwanese people speak mandarin. it's really frustrating that taiwan is always just another pawn in a larger chess game, a convenient argument to use or put away as necessary, by china or by the usa or by our own allies in hong kong.)

"it's not true," my mom repeats. "a new immigrant works in my lab, and she's very open-minded."

i don't bother pointing out that there's probably some sampling bias going on.

the real truth is, i get it: when your identity has been taken away from you, when there's a conflict between who you are and what people assign to you, you'll do anything to establish some sort of authority, change the story for yourself.

china used to be a partner. now it's an oppressor. (it's always been an oppressor for people like my dad, my grandparents, my uncle and aunt and extended family who fled with the gmd and never turned back.) chinese used to be an ethnicity thing. now it's a dirty word.

I'M GETTING ON THE PLANE back to nova scotia, and the white, middle-aged lady in the middle seat of my row looks nervously at me.

"will you be sitting here?" she gestures timidly at the window seat. i don't think i'm particularly scary, but maybe the mercedes jacket adds a bit of drama to my otherwise basic outfit.

everybody around me is white too, as per. c'mon, it's nova fucking scotia. they're also looking at me, because i'm holding up the last bit of the line, and what else is there to do while you wait for people to get settled.

i pitch my voice up, lean into my inner white girl private school character real fucking good as i move and smile and explain that no, sorry! i'm in the aisle seat, so i s'pose we'll just plant ourselves here until whoever sitting there comes along.

and it's like there's a collective, invisible release of tension from the people around me, but especially from my seatmate, who immediately brightens. i strike up some bullshit convo about the weather, typical complaints about the airport, y'know. window seat arrives and gets settled. we don't speak for the rest of the flight. thankfully, in front of me is a karen kind of woman with a kid around my sister's age. she's a talkative one, and it's her voice and gerard way's that keep me from being bored for the next couple hours.

when we land, it's immediate emergency alerts, and the entire plane blares to life with shocking, disjointed alarm sounds. chatter erupts after, people discussing their ties to the place in the alert with their neighbourly strangers. i've always kind of loved how wholesome nova scotians can be, or the energy they can bring to non nova scotians--everybody knows everybody by a maximum of 4 degrees of separation around these parts.

middle seat is here for a business conference, so she doesn't actually know anything about the province when we all turn to talk. window seat and karen and i make suggestions on places to visit. karen teasingly calls me a haligonian.

i walk around the city i grew up in and make note of all the changes. i break my own heart, when i can't remember what buildings stood in the place of new condos, or pits of construction. i take photos of places i used to frequent and pray that they'll still be standing when i come back again. i'm starting to think i'm not haligonian anymore, either.

MARTIN BESTIE BRUNDLE SAYS AN ethnic slur on live television for one of the most popular sports in the world, in front of millions and millions of viewers.

i am not one of those millions, but it doesn't matter, because the news reaches me anyway. and i scroll and i scroll and by god, i've gotta go soon, but all i can think about is hong kong, and taiwan, and china, and of course, old white people have to step in and further complicate things.

it's not that i'm not chinese. i'm chinese like i was born with a cunt like i came into this world screaming despair in the early hours of veterans day, because the universe has a twisted sense of humour and said to me, just as i left the womb: baby, war is going to define the rest of your life.

but i'm not china chinese, and honestly, i don't know what i am. my experiences are enough to give me permission to be hurt. i don't know if they're enough to give me a voice.

despite this, i have a soapbox, and i use it anyway, and i use it liberally. i get to be mad on here. whether i'm deserving of this self-righteousness, whether i'm deserving of this voice that i've borrowed, is a different matter altogether.

#long post

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vijethaacademy · 2 months

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yamayuandadu · 1 year

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Megumu Iizunamaru

How I feel about this character: I have mixed feelings, honestly. Expanding the tengu society via the introduction of a new character from a different social stratum is very welcome. We’ve been sitting on heaps of tengu background from the print works since the early Windows days and it felt like it’s just going to be a way to make it easier for fans to come up with ocs. I’m pleasantly surprised that was not the case. I think her personality is fun and it was refreshing to have an antagonist with multiple actual minions again after WBaWC and HSiFS where almost every character operates on her own. However, I can’t help but think she was sort of robbed of the grandeur she could’ve had if she had more spotlight in the game instead of sharing it with Chimata. Especially since the latter is… hardly thrilling, probably a candidate for one of my least favorite Windows final bosses, with a design which looks like that old meme poking fun at ZUN’s art. That’s beside the point, though. I also think Megumu's own design is missing something. More than once I’ve seen fanart giving her a more pronounced night sky theme, which works well. Same with leaning more into her namesake’s highly distinctive iconography. All around, from my perspective Megumu is a promising character who however for now failed to quite reach the standard for modern Touhou big names, despite having the potential for that.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: I already covered this topic in the Tsukasa and Momoyo asks.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: there is evidently great potential in her ending interactions with Kanako. A funny thing to note that's tangentially related is that in the middle ages both Suwa Daimyojin and Izuna Gongen developed origin myths which inolved them arriving from India in the distant past.

My unpopular opinion about this character: the story in UM would be better off without Chimata and with Megumu getting the bump to stage 6 and a more elaborate design to match (Tsukasa is functionally the spiritual equivalent of the typical stage 5 boss anyway). Granted, not sure to what degree this is an unpopular opinion because frankly through the past two years the only time when I’ve seen Chimata brought up on my social media feed it boiled down to some variety of high caliber “horny on main” incident, while I do see Megumu and Momoyo, let alone Tsukasa, semi-regularly.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: honestly would like to see her interact with Okina, she's probably the best character we have atm to use to go further with what is already implied in Aya's route in HSiFS.

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deluxewhump · 6 months

Text

Erik's Journals pt 11 (2024)

21. Fait Accompli

January 2024

With any luck, this will be among my last entries.

Carlo. Where do I begin with you? And more importantly, where does it end?

I fully intended to leave without telling him exactly when I was going to the airport. I didn’t want a goodbye, didn’t want to see his tears, or his anger. But this was another of my proud, silly sentiments, because he left me first.

Though it stung my pride, this is how I can be sure I am right. That I did a good job with him.

He fought with me in the study the second to last time I saw him. He picked the fight, though he’d say it was my leaving that started it. I am retiring, selling my property in the Valley and possibly the lake house in Virginia. I’m going to spend some time in Stockholm, and then to warmer climes. I’d told him earlier that day.

He could wrap his head around my going to Europe, I had been to Europe and South America many times since he’d known me, and I think if that’s all it was he’d assume I’d be back. But when I told him I’d sold the house and the land, it became too real.

The weak winter sun had set an hour ago, and with the early night he became restless. He came into my well-lit office and sat down, bouncing one leg on the ball of his foot, then stood up again.

“So, all of it,” he said, looking around. “What about your stuff?”

“Much of it will come with me. I’ll sell the rest. Take anything you want.”

He huffed. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, Carlo. Books, records, any of the plants. Anything you considered yours.”

“The piano?” he asked

“You want it?”

“I have nowhere to put it. I mean are you selling it?”

“Yes. Far too much trouble to ship overseas. I don’t play anymore, anyway. Do you still play?”

“No,” he answered absently, like one would respond to the comment ‘it hasn’t rained in a while, has it?’

After that he was quiet. I stopped separating and organizing the contents of my desk drawer and looked up at him. He was contemplating the amber paperweight that used to sit on my desk, collecting dust on a shelf now. There was a rare Eastern beetle in the center, preserved and crystallized in the resin. He picked it up, let the weight of it bend his wrist back, and let it fall to the floor. It dented the soft pine floorboard and chipped, a shiv of amber skittering over the floor and onto the faded Persian carpet.

“Carlo,” I hissed at the deliberate act.

He turned his head to look at me. “Were you gonna bring that?”

“That belonged to my grandfather. Pick it up.”

“Oh? Did he steal it while colonizing some province in India?”

“Don’t be childish.”

“Why not?”

“Breaking things in anger? I raised you better. Did you ever see me throwing things around when things didn’t go my way?”

“My way,” he echoed mildly. “I don’t know what ‘my way’ is.”

“Well I suggest you figure it out.”

“How?” he asked, a little louder. “How am I supposed to do that? You made sure I’d never have anything of my own. Not really. Just like you don’t.”

I rounded my desk to pick up the glittering chip of amber from the carpet. One edge was soft, the outside of the globe. The other was broken and sharp. I pressed the pad of my finger to the point to see if it drew blood easily.

“I have everything I want. Trust me. I saved your life that night I took you with me. You know this as well as I. And now I have given you not just your life, but your manumission. I gave you everything. If you’re unhappy now, it’s your own doing.

“Nothing is my own doing. That’s the problem.”

“Who told you that?” I asked in a tone I knew was venomous. “Max? Your liberal arts degree? Take some responsibility, Carlo. You traded a comfortable life with me for a comfortable life with someone else who feeds you, clothes you, sent you to college and bought you a new car. Aside from your stint in that state home you have always been wanted, and loved, and amply provided for. And you come back to me willingly with what, self pity? Self pity is the worst thing in the world. It’s beneath you, and it’s certainly beneath me to give you an audience.”

This only fueled him. I was giving him what he wanted— something to brush up against. “I didn’t trade my life with you. You did. When you gave me away.”

“That again?” I tossed the amber shard into the wastebasket. The whole it had chipped from still lay on the floor near his feet. “Pick that thing up, Carlo.”

He ignored my request. “That is the axis my entire existence has rotated on ever since that night! It’s not nothing! It’s not trivial. Stop fucking trying to gaslight me that it is!”

“Now I’m gaslighting you? Always the villain with you, though I went to great lengths to never harm a hair on your head."

“Yeah. As you love to remind me. You act like I did this. But I didn’t leave. I never betrayed you.”

“What do you want? Not on paper. In that bleak little heart of yours— what do you want?”

“Bleak,” he laughed sharply. “You’re fucking bleak. You’re a fucking… two-way mirror. Can’t see in, not really. Just yelling at my own reflection.” He kicked the dense amber globe so it jumped across four feet of floor and landed with a sound like a bowling ball. It glanced off the coffee table and rolled under my desk. He stared after where it had disappeared and then back at me, dark eyes burning like jasper.

“What. You want me to react?” I asked cooly. “To throw something across the room? Do you want me to pin you down and force myself on you, begging for forgiveness into your ear while I prove myself to be the monster you so desperately need me to be?"

“I don’t want that.”

“Sure you do. You have for some time.”

I could see the gears turning, rending through my accusation with mechanic industriousness. “But you won’t,” he said with a bitter confidence. “You’re not a good person, but by your standards you’ve been good to me. And now I’m a sunk cost. You need me to like everything you do to me. That’s your thing.”

”You would twist even my respect for your consent against me?”

He shook his head. “That’s not what it really is. It’s respect for your own ego. But it still might be better than this."

I decided to switch tactics. Affection was always the sharper instrument with this one. “Better than what, angel?”

He closed his eyes. “Don’t call me that.” When he opened them, the fire was doused. “Better than this. Your apathy.”

“I have been many things toward you, Carlo Svenson, but never apathetic.”

“Then take me with you. Want me with you. Don’t just tolerate me. I can’t take any more of your tolerance.”

“What about your Masters program? Max? That boy you’re seeing? What about the life my influence supposedly kept you from?”

“I can drop out and study abroad,” he said, like he halfway meant it. He said nothing of his lover or of Max.

“Mm,” I doubted. I took a step forward. He took one back. I tilted my head at him, and he stopped. He let me come closer, and I took his shoulders in my hands. “Think about it. Really think about it. Then come back and tell me, Lo.”

He blinked away a threat of tears, unwilling to let them show in my presence, perhaps afraid I’d thumb them away and he’d be a boy again, afraid and in awe of the master of his known universe, the closest thing to God he’d ever been exposed to.

“Fine,” he said defeatedly. Arguing with me always took something vital out of him. “Okay.”

I called Tatiana over when he left. Because Carlo was everything I had once hoped he’d be. And I wanted a simpler creature.

22. A Far Sea

March 2024

What is there to say? These records are an account of events having to do with my pet, Carlo, though he has not been my pet since 2018 and he has not been anyone's pet since 2019. Still, I keep a record. It's for myself, I realize.

I sent the pre-2018 originals to Max Svenson, but I scanned them first, so I still have them in a file in my desk drawer. The Baltimore house has a buyer, and that process is being expedited. It's strange, the things we allow to become part of our identity without meaning to. That estate, for one. Seeing it empty and bare felt like a shock, like I had lanced off a large swath of my own skin. My job felt that way once, but no longer.

Prison never felt like a part of me, thankfully. Perhaps because my tenure was relatively brief, I always felt like a visitor. Now it seems like it happened ten years ago instead of only a few, like an expedition I’d been on as a much younger man.

Losing Carlo will haunt me, I think, once I leave for Europe with no intention of returning. He has been at my side for so long, even now, with such different circumstances. It will be a deeper lance than my house. I am at peace with being haunted by the loss of my only pet. I’ve learned there is no such thing as sin, or karma, but losing the only joy that remains to me feels like both. Love is such a liability.

He came over only once more.

It was terrible timing, but it was probably for the best, as I will explain here. I had to leave my guests to talk to him in private. He offered to leave and come back. I wouldn’t let him. I could tell he didn’t want to be in their company, which didn’t surprise me. He knew their ilk all too well from his days in my warehouse. I pulled him away and into my study, shut the door.

“Don’t worry about them,” I told him.

“Those aren’t O&H execs, are they?” he asked knowingly.

“No.”

“What’re they, the mob?”

“Not exactly, no. Does it matter? I’m much more interested in what you have to say than I am in them.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m not leaving.”

I admit part of me had been expecting this. Had Max gotten to him? Had it been my own words about leaving behind so much? Still, another part of me was sharply disappointed. I had started to think of him when I looked at real estate outside Madrid, making sure he’d have a spacious room with a balcony. I had started to factor him in when I thought of how long I should stay in Stockholm, places I wanted to show him in my family’s ancestral city.

“I see.”

For a moment I wished I was sick of him. I wished I resented him and I wished he hated me. It would have been easier that way— I never would have offered to free him from the legal bonds of pethood, I would’ve left Max Svenson to his own devices. I’d never think of him, and he’d think of me all the time. But he didn’t hate me. He loved me, and I had always found him loveable despite myself. And so I went on loving him.

“It’s hard enough as it is,” he whispered, not quite daring to look at me. “Please don’t be mad at me. Please. I can’t stand it.”

As he has a way of doing, this deflated any sense of irritation or any lingering desire to change his mind that might have been in the back of mine. I went to him, pulling him into my arms before he had a chance to stiffen or doubt me. “No, Lo. I’m not.”

After a moment, he returned the embrace, laying his cheek on my shoulder. I could feel his heart pounding against my chest, hear the distant din of the men down the hall, voices punctuated by bursts of laughter.

”Are you going to ask me to reconsider?” “I will miss you bitterly,” I told him, feeling the hot nape of his neck in my palm for the last time. “But I understand why you need to stay here. I care for you too much to try and dissuade you.”

“Please stop,” he whimpered. “I’ll change my mind.”

I pulled back and held his face in my hands, smiling though I felt a profound loss opening in my chest, a new chasm in a valley of canyons and craters. “Don’t.”

“I can’t leave them,” he explained desperately, as if trying to convince me, or perhaps himself. “My program, or Max, or Jude. Max's fiancé is eight months pregnant now. They keep… Max keeps calling him my little brother. If I leave I'll never know if... If I could've belonged here. If I could've had a life here.”

“Shh. I know. I’m not angry with you.”

”I guess that’s good news for me. Coz if you were, you could just hand me over to the mafia guys hanging out in your living room.”

“I’ll miss your perverse sense of humor.”

”Would it help my case if I tell them I’m probably Italian?”

”They're not the mafia, Lo.”

When joking could no longer hold his distress at bay, he wanted to be held a little longer. I indulged him, and myself. I shushed him and kissed his hair. I felt the familiar shape and weight of him in my arms, the boy pet I’d grown to love and ultimately fail, betray, mistreat. Was it all bad?

I rocked him side to side and called him all my old pet names for him into his ear. He muffled a few razor sharp sobs into my shoulder, and clung to the back of my shirt.

”I’m sorry I broke your paperweight,” he choked. “The amber one.”

I laughed into his hair.

Eventually, I knew I had to get back to my guests. I had called them here to settle affairs, to shake hands, to leave with goodwill. And I think Carlo knew if he didn’t leave now, he never would. He’d let himself slip back into my influence, into the drugged, complicit fairy tale of pethood.

He ducked into the bathroom in the hallway to compose himself, and when he was satisfied he didn’t look like he’d been crying minutes before, I walked him through the living room towards the foyer, my hand pressed into his back.

“Hey Erik, is this a loose end?” Shep Bailey half-joked about Carlo, drunk and bright-eyed.“Business or personal?”

His drunker compatriot added that if anything needed tying up for me, they were the ones to do it.

Any of the more serious men in the room who would actually do something like these two were suggesting would never joke of it out loud. I noticed Carlo was unfazed, barely even bothered to look at them.

He retrieved his jacket from a hook by the door. I took his keys from the next hook and followed him out to his car. It was a late spring evening, balmy and smelling of jasmine and wet earth. The deepening blue sky was not quite dark. Sparrows chirruped and flitted from tree to tree. The crushed white rock of the driveway seemed loud beneath our feet, like the crystalline evening had sharpened the acoustics of the world.

I remembered the first time I brought him here, in 2011, after a long quiet ride from BWI airport in the Mercedes I drove at the time. The sun was setting and there were crickets and cicadas singing in the hedges. The sky was the color of split grapefruit, and soon there would be fireflies in the dark grass. He’d been reluctant to get out of the passenger seat and step foot on the grounds of his new home. His new masters home, that is, which for every pet is part prison.

I’d come around to his side and stood patiently. I still had hounds, then. You could hear them barking and baying from the kennels out by the warehouse.

I’d held out my hand and waited for him to take it. He hadn’t moved. I was aware he was small, alone, on the opposite end of the country with a stranger who held his entire world in his hand like a toy.

I think I was less sentimental, then, and certainly about the feelings of little pets, but this one’s big dark eyes and stiff new backpack I’d bought him to carry his meager belongings on the plane (so far a change of clothes and a toothbrush) was too much for me to be impatient with even then. He was correct, the other night when he told me I was not a good man, but that I’d tried to be good to him. Had I always thought of him as my penance?

“Welcome to your Baltimore manor, Prince Carlo,” I’d said, affecting a stuffy Jeeves accent and pretending to take off a hat and hold it at my chest. “Would you like to dine or tour your new rooms first?”

That got him to look at me. An uncertain smile tugged at his mouth and I smiled back. He took my hand and let me lead him out of the car.

Tonight, in the same drive, we stopped at Carlo’s car. It was much too early in spring for fireflies.

“Why do I have the feeling this is goodbye?” he asked.

I tucked a cinnamon curl behind his ear. He blinked sharply, dropping his eyes to the ground. He reminded me so much then of the frightened boy I had seen being pulled up to the card room in Palo Alto. I reached under his chin and tilted it upward. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, as I’d said the first night I’d taken him to my hotel room. “Everything’s going to be alright now.”

He tried to smile, but it only made it harder for him not to cry. He laughed in a sharp exhale, eyes welling up. I knew he remembered.

“Drive safely, Lo.”

He nodded wordlessly, taking the keys I handed to him and lowering into the drivers seat. The car revved quietly to life, halogen lights spilling over the driveway.

I watched him go, a slow circle around the fountain and out to the gate. His brake lights glowed red and then released, and then he was gone.

#pet whump

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gifseafins · 2 years

Text

Just like the first fic I posted here on Tumblr, the VVR one.

The moment I regain access to AO3, this fic will receive a "deluxe version", with the addition of poetry, images and gifs, as well as its respective Portuguese version !

Fanfic: The Master of the Casino Chapter 1: Tarak Rama Rao

Chapter 2: Ram Konidela

If there was one certainty the Ram had in life, it's that he definitely shouldn't have come on this trip.

But his friends eventually convinced him. Saying it would be the perfect celebration. And in a way they were right.

As Bokkala Kumar, one of Ram's best friends, who ended up being the organizer of the whole trip, said…

-Las Vegas is an amazing destination. -Far enough from home. -And perfect for having fun without the constant supervision of the family. -And with an almost endless variety of fun, even the Ram can have fun !

And everyone laughed at that statement. Ram's personality was a constant joke between them. They knew he really didn't want to go. That Ram was never given to travel, parties or large gatherings.

But Ram agreed with his friends this time. They were definitely right ! Everyone deserved a rest after so many college assignments and exams.

Las Vegas was the place to be. And Las Vegas turned out to be an amazing place for everyone. The lights were almost blinding they were so strong and bright. The sounds, the smells, everything was wonderful. And the limousine that Bokkala rented so that everyone could tour the city, just completed the spectacle that trip had become.

Then the limousine stops in front of an extremely luxurious building with an incredible 60 floors. But Ram couldn't help but laugh when he saw the name of the casino his friend chose.

-Casino Hyderabad ? -Serious ?

Trust Bokkala Kumar to cross the ocean, for the sole purpose of gambling, drinking, running away from home and having fun, and yet choosing a place that references India itself.

And Ram knew that whoever decorated that place was definitely a fan of S.S. Rajamouli. It was like being inside Baahubali's palace. In fact, if Ram wasn't miscalculating, and he never was ! That casino had the same layout as the throne room in the movie.

Gigantic columns divided the space into three rooms, with a central corridor flanked by a row of slot machines.

In the space where princes and generals would sit, luxurious Poker, Baccarat and Three Card Poker tables.

The left and right sides of the columns were true mirrors of each other.

Roulette, Blackjack, and many other tables mingled harmoniously with electronic games of all kinds, as well as several arcade machines.

And on both sides, at the end of the casino's side spaces, bars built in the same architecture as the flying boat shown in the film, making the whole place something grand and magnificent.

The central corridor, which in the film would serve to take people to the throne, in the casino, performed the same function.

The corridor directs you to several replicas of all the thrones shown in the film, in an area free for photographs, where people could feel part of that history.

Behind the thrones was a grand staircase, and on either side of it, luxurious elevators, all of which had the same function, taking them to the upper floors where the nightclub was located, as well as the rooms available for rent.

But the most impressive thing about it all was a kind of box made of mirrors that projected over the thrones, and that seemed to be supported only by steel cables that came from the ceiling.

And Ram was willing to bet anything that the casino's security center worked inside that mirrored box, because if those mirrors were like the mirrors found in police stations, whoever was in that room would have a 180 degree view of the entire casino.

While Ram was gaping, admiring the place. He noticed Bokkala looking at him expectantly.

-Okay, you did well, good choice. -Happy now ?

-The introverted genius praising me ? -Of course ! -And now the best part, LET'S ENJOY !!!!

And at first they were having a lot of fun together. Betting on slot machines. Acting like kids in the arcade hall. And taking pictures like real pre-teens.

But in a short time each one ended up going to one side. Seeking amidst that spectacle, his own entertainment.

And that's when things started to go wrong for the Ram. When he found himself alone and started wandering the halls of the casino… When he found himself alone and in front of Black Jack's table… When he found himself alone and with no one to stop his mathematical mind from working…

There were no secrets in Black Jack for Ram. At least, not for a mind like his. And hand after hand, the Ram always won !

He'd seen enough movies about casinos to know this could go terribly wrong. But Ram just couldn't stop.

The emotion of every bet… The ecstasy felt with each victory… Everything acted like drugs on Ram's system. He quickly became addicted to these feelings. And the ecstasy those emotions gave her.

And because of this euphoria, Ram did not realize when a security guard declared in a loud voice:

-This table is closed !

Nor the danger that phrase represented for him, until two security guards grabbed him by the arms and took him into an elevator.

On the way, Ram tried to reason with the guards. Explain what was going on. Looking around in an attempt to find his friends. But all actions were in vain.

And the moment the elevator doors closed, Ram knew he was likely to be killed. And he just hoped the casino would tell his friends where his body would be dumped…

The moment the elevator doors opened he was pushed with such violence that Ram ended up losing his balance.

And Ram found himself lying at someone's feet. Slowly he raised his eyes. Gradually bringing to mind the image of the most handsome man Ram had ever seen in his life.

And before he could realize it, his face was covered in an intense shade of red.

-Hello boy !

And that man's voice, awakening in Ram all kinds of desire…

End of Chapter 2

And no, I haven't started chapter 3 yet. I said I was going to hold this one off for a while until I started the third one, but my curiosity to know what you would think of this chapter spoke louder.

I overreacted with the description of the casino, so sorry !

For those who don't remember, the throne room in Baahubali that served as a model was this one 👇

#Ram Charan #Eu Fiz

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spurious · 1 year

Note

⭐️⭐️!

(fic writer commentary asks)

me: getting this ask and going back and forth for three hours about whether it's too much to just go off on a fucking dissertation about O I Think We Should Be Brethren

actually, you know what, fuck it, we ball!!!! i'm extremely proud of this story and i can allow myself to talk about it.

For the moment I'm just going to talk about chapter one, because I started writing my thoughts and it got.........................................long, but if anyone's actually interested in the following two chapters I am fully willing to get into those as well.

ALRIGHT BUCKLE UP.

Walt Whitman's Live Oak, With Moss #4 reads, in its entirety, as follows:

This moment as I sit alone, yearning and pensive, it seems to me there are other men, in other lands, yearning and pensive. It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, France, Spain—Or far away in China, India, in Russia—talking other dialects, And it seems to me if I could know those men I should love them as I love men in my own lands; It seems to me they are as wise, beautiful, benevolent, as any in my own lands; O I think we should be brethren—I think I should be happy with them.

So my initial notes for this were the sort of vague idea of exploring my headcanon of John being gay, and wanting to sort of chart some of his experiences with finding/looking for/failing to achieve a queer community? And how that would intersect with his having, you know. Joined the military, traveled to exotic locations, met interesting people, and killed them (as they used to say). This is also how I ended up starting to read that fascinating book about gay us military history, because I really just had no frame of reference for what John's experiences might've been like.

Anyway, I wrote the first paragraph or so one night when I couldn't sleep and was just laying in bed mentally writing lines (honestly good job to me for not thinking I'd remember in the morning and then...not lmao).

Initially I just started writing, thinking about this kind of...handful of formative queer experiences that John might've had, and then after a while it became evident that this was gonna be...kind of long...so I made a separate note attempting to diagram out the different biographical beats I wanted to hit (thanks stargate wiki and also so many information websites about the US air force). So I just sort of ending up writing my way through these different points of John's life, through the twin lenses of loving flying and loving men, and all of his understanding of the tension that existed there; all of which leads him to learn that his feelings need to be sort of ruthlessly compartmentalized for, essentially, his own safety.

Also while writing the first chapter of this fic I had a week or so where I just vivid-dreamed about airplanes and flying? Literally never happened to me before but ok

I think one of my favorite bits in the early section of the first chapter is John driving down to Edwards just hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the test flights. There’s something just really pure and sweet about it to me, and it sticks out as an impactful moment even though nothing really happens.

The section beginning with In Asia, John learns a few more things. is where I really think I started to hit a stride in terms of the overall voice of the story, the sort of barren sadness of it all, mixed with that quiet desperate little spark of hope.

Writing directly about John's relationship with Nancy in a story where he's explicitly, textually gay was an interesting exercise. My read on the whole situation is that he did care for her, and that he thought, to some degree or another, that he could make it work--that maybe friendship would be enough, that he could give her what she needed, and anyway, what the hell else was he going to do? Live his truth?

So the bit with Nancy is where I ended up getting into the sort of recurring motif of marriage vows (the playlist for this fic being called "till death" and all that). In terms of writing the breakup, I tried to use the small amount of screentime we get of Nancy, where she just seems sort of...sad, for John, like that he's like this? And idk, she probably could've, would've been angry, but she strikes me as this very in-control woman who would have planned out this conversation beforehand, not really wanting it to devolve into a whole..."scene", or whatever (since I tend to imagine Nancy is of a similar WASPy stock to John, iykwim). And John, I think, would just go along, because like, that's how he ended up in the marriage in the first place, for one thing, but again, I believe he cared for her and he'd, like. Want her to be happy?

The divorce is fast, and John finds out that, for all that the brass loves a family man, there's plenty of room in the chain of command for an unattached loner who doesn't care if he dies.

This is just a line I like. Like, John knows exactly what his value to the military is, I think.

So anyway, then I proceeded to give myself several million feelings about John and Holland? Honestly from Phantoms I immediately read the relationship as a romantic one, at least on John's end. Like yes it's a showing of his usual Sheppardian recklessness when someone important to him is in danger, but...I just think he's in love, it makes sense to me that he would've had this just absolutely fucking devastating experience? That he would've fallen in love with this sort-of-mostly-straight guy and convinced himself he could live on these little scraps of affection, and then it ends with the person he loves just fucking. Dying? That's how you end up depressed in Antarctica!!!

I spent a lot of time reading transcripts and rewatching snatches of episodes while writing this (mostly ch2, but) and when I got to this bit of Phantoms I just fucking lost it:

HOLLAND (weakly): Sheppard, when we get out of here, I'll make sure I say something really nice at your court martial. SHEPPARD (smiling): Yeah. Come visit me in Leavenworth, huh? HOLLAND: No. It's way too depressing. SHEPPARD: Yeah.

And it's EVEN FUCKING WORSE in the actual episode than it is in text. Like it seems as though Holland's trying to make a joke when he says no, but John just...takes it? Like yeah, of course, you wouldn't want to do that for me. About this guy he's sacrificing his career and his life for? He just goes, yep sure wouldn't expect you to put yourself out even a little bit? IT IS JUST DEVASTATING. AWFUL. Fucking horrible and absolutely perfect angst content for me and my fic lmao. god. I cannot believe how sad that exchange is.

Soooooo you know. I think John went into that rescue thinking he would either save Holland and get a court martial, or he would die. And I think for quite a while afterward, he believes that he should've died in that desert, and everything afterward is extra innings he didn't really deserve.

#ask meme #fic rambles

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veronika-tserber · 2 years

Note

Hey, I just saw your post and I wanna know what you feel about my natal chart too!

Here's my info : 7 nov 1997 @Bhilai, India.

Thank you!

May the rest of your day goes the way you want it to.

Hey lovely ❤

The data:

2nd house in Capricorn

Saturn retrograde in Aries, 5H

Saturn quincunx Sun

Venus conjunct the cusp of the 2H

Ascendant conjunct the cusp of the 2H

Venus conjunct Mars

Neptune conjunct 2H cusp

Neptune sextile Mercury

I use the Whole Signs system! :)

Firstly, if you don’t know what Sabian Symbols are, please check my post HERE. ❤

Your 2nd house in Capricorn tells me that you are quite smart when it comes to money. Capricorn knows how to wisely allocate resources, as well as how and when to save them, so perhaps, your approach to resources is wise and sober. You might be ambitious and driven to make money and achieve greater material stability in life, as well. Counter-intuitively, you could find work and taking on responsibilities to be relaxing and recharging activities for you, and definitely, ones that boost your sense of self-worth and inner stability.

The ruler, Saturn, is your only retrograde planet, and it sits on the lucky (and potentially, wealthy!) 14th degree, in your 5th house. The ruler of the 2nd in the 5th does speak of using pleasure, fun, art, and creativity as a way to earn an income. The Sabian Symbol is called “A Serpent Coiling Near a Man and a Woman”. This symbol actually links back to the story of Adam & Eve, and some of the keywords for it include: temptations, jealousy, individuation, feeling guilty, sexual shame or using sexuality as a control device, some sort of a “snake” that comes between you and another person or your “Eden”. It sits in your 5th house of dating, romance, sexuality, and children, so perhaps up until your Saturn return at 29, you could feel limited when it comes to your sexuality, and might need to release shame around expressing it, as well as your anger, masculine energy, and ambition. Saturn in Aries can also cause issues with self-esteem, jealousy, and body image.

If you have children and this placement operates on a low level, you may try to dominate them by setting restrictions and rules in a Martian, aggressive way. You could have been oppressed by your father as a child or by other Saturnian, authority figures - perhaps even by the prejudices of the society you grew up in. Resolving these issues is key to achieving a greater sense of self-worth and stability in life. Saturn does make an exact quincunx to your 12th house Sun, so I definitely feel like your father might've been conservative, and perhaps tried to control and dominate you in an immature, forceful way. Of course, this is only a guess, so let's move along.

Saturn sextiles your chart ruler, Jupiter, so let’s look at Jupiter’s state. It’s in Aquarius, which is a highly idealistic placement, in the 3rd house of your close environment, siblings, and education, and it sits on an Aries degree with a Sabian that’s simply called “A Barometer”. You might be quite sensitive (or had to be) to the moods of the people around you and had to be able to predict changes in the "weather" ahead of time. This symbol asks you to learn how to wait before jumping into action, as well as to strengthen your inner barometer, a.k.a your intuition. Especially with Saturn in Aries, you are definitely asked to master your willpower, desire nature, and how you take action in the world. Saturn + this Jupiter definitely will teach you how to manage any impulsivity and become wise and strategic in your goals and actions. You will likely learn when to act and exactly how much pressure/force to apply.

Mars, the ruler of your Saturn conjuncts your Rising exactly at 28 degrees, and they both conjunct the 2nd house cusp, so it’s safe to say that you might be quite Martian, impulsive, and quick to act before you think, but you can use your personal drive, charisma, and masculine energy to earn money and stability in life. The Sabian is called “A Splendidly Built Bridge, a Heritage of Unknown Ages, Still Spans the Beautiful and Wildly Primitive Stream”. Whew, a long name! :D So, essentially, with your Sagittarius energy, you might be full of aspirations, ideas, and fresh visions for your life and the world, but you are also being asked to become their embodiment, and to live your truth! The “heritage” also could mean that a lot of these beliefs and philosophies have been passed down to you by your family and ancestors (the 28th is also a Cancer degree!), and you will need to do the hard work of deciding which ones you are going to keep and act upon, and which ones are outdated and need to be cut off.

Let’s look at that fresh Venus at an Aries degree that conjuncts your 2H cusp. The Sabian is called “An Indian Chief Claims Recognition and Power from the Assembled Tribe”. This symbol is Biblical, as well! It has to do with Jesus’ task on Earth to rise above the hate and ignorance of the crowd and to accept the consequences of being "chosen". Definitely, the challenge here is to find your inner authority and claim your personal power, regardless of what people will say or think of you. Of course, that is easier said than done, but I see that you also have Pluto in your 1H, so I am sure that you’ve already experienced many tough lessons of self-actualization and empowerment in your life!

This comes after the “sorting” process you’ve done with your Mars on the 28th - some of that family or societal conditioning will definitely have to be chopped off, and surely, not everyone is going to be happy. Also, it’s Venus at this degree, the planet that rules your femininity, sexuality, pleasure, and beauty. The theme of reclaiming your sexuality and pleasure, and going in a new direction (Aries degree) is definitely key to your financial, physical, and material wealth. I can’t help but also notice the repetition of religious themes - perhaps, your religious background is precisely the reason why you might’ve faced rejection and lack of understanding when it comes to expressing sexuality or ambition in life.

Now, let’s look at Neptune. It’s your traditional chart ruler, and it’s at a Gemini degree. The Sabian Symbol is called “A Mountain Pilgrimage”. Okay, so this speaks of ambition! With your Capricorn 2nd house + having Pluto and Mars in your 1H, I feel like you are quite ambitious, and want to climb many mountain tops in your life. Perhaps, Saturn in Aries speaks of society or your father figure trying to suppress your drive or independence. On the other hand, it could mean that your soul wishes to transcend materialism and reach a higher understanding of the role of money and the material world, in general.

You could, for example, achieve many of your goals, and reach the success you seek in the material world until one day, you get bored of it and decide to give your possessions to charity, for example. In general, having Neptune in the 2nd can help you make money through art - especially visual arts and/or music. It can also indicate major ups and downs when it comes to money and the possibility of being deceived, so be careful.

Of course, Neptune is a higher planet, and it affects the collective, so we should pay attention to the aspects it makes to our personal planets. I am intrigued by its sextile to your Mercury - especially because your Mercury, a.k.a your communication and thinking skills, is at the potent 29th degree! The 29th is a Leo degree, and the planet that holds it can make someone famous for their mastery and understanding of that planet!

Your Mercury is coming out of the closet of the 12th house, and the Sabian for 29 degrees Scorpio is called “An Indian Woman Pleading to The Chief for the Lives of her Children”. Okay, there we go - the theme of being oppressed, having to ask for permission, and keeping your head down is coming up again. The “children” here are actually your thoughts and opinions! It feels like you’ve been denied the opportunity to speak up your truth or have a different worldview than your "tribe" in past lives and perhaps in this one, as well, and you are now fed up with it. The sextile to Neptune gives you the strength and ambition to reach for the top, as well as the spiritual gifts and power to literally “melt” any outdated values and traditions that have been keeping you and previous generations silent and disempowered.

Neptune also makes a quintile to your Sun in the 12th that’s at the lucky 14th degree, and the Sabian is called “Telephone Linemen at Work Installing New Connections”. You will benefit greatly from connecting to your spirituality and Soul! Absolutely. This will help you rise above any judgments, insecurities, and rejections as you walk the path of freeing yourself from conditioning. On a physical level, this symbol is related to the meridians of the body and “acupuncture”, and since it sits in the 2nd house and relates to your Sun, which also has to do with our physicality in a sense, you could literally have a talent in healing the body with energy or through special body massages/acupuncture, etc. The quintile is a unique major aspect that points to potential talent, so it’s interesting to analyze it.

I wish you great luck and empowerment on your healing journey! I know you can do it! :) Please, let me know how this resonates for you, and have a great day/night!

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