#pay for essay writing

[starcurtain]

Fact Checking Some Myths About Aventurine and the IPC

Especially in light of Jade's new myriad celestia trailer and the reveal of the other Stonehearts, I've seen a ton of wild claims about Aventurine--particularly how he's an unwilling member of the Stonehearts and needs to be saved from the IPC--that just aren't sitting right with me because they're based significantly more on the fanon take that Aventurine is an "innocent victim" than any actual evidence displayed in the game. So I wanted to take the time to collect some in-game evidence to see if we can sort out what Aventurine's actual relationship to the IPC is. Time to do some fact checking--this is a long one, buckle up!

Claim #1: Aventurine was sentenced to die by the IPC.

Verdict: There's no actual evidence that Aventurine was ever sentenced to anything.

This entire idea that Aventurine was actually successfully sentenced to die by the IPC comes from two pieces of "evidence" in the game. First, the scene with Dr. Ratio where those words are stated:

Leaving aside whether the IPC legally has the right to sentence anyone to anything by themselves (they're a corporation, not an actual governing body), this is the exact line that Dr. Ratio fans have been bending over backward to prove is "just an act" and that Ratio would never actually mean this (because if he actually meant this, it would make him pretty racist). So if we've already busted our asses to prove this line isn't true and was just Ratio and Aventurine acting... why would we be using this line as evidence that Aventurine was actually sentenced to anything?

We can't say "This entire scene was an act because Sunday/the Family was listening in!" and then go "Okay, but this one part is definitely true (despite there not being any other evidence in game to corroborate the statement)." Either this scene is acting, and this line isn't true--or the line is true, and Ratio's kind of a racist. Make up your minds, people. 😂

Actually, I can help make up your mind. We can prove that this line is likely a strong part of Aventurine and Ratio's deliberate act because Ratio's comment (which took place in 2.0) doesn't actually make any sense once Aventurine's story is fully revealed (in 2.1).

Ratio relates Aventurine's slave brand to the IPC, suggesting that the brand is proof that Aventurine is "doomed" and "sentenced to die by the IPC." Ratio even goes so far to say "Or was it from the Amber Lord himself?"

But from 2.1, we know that Aventurine's brand had nothing to do with the IPC, and his former slave owner was definitely not an IPC employee (as he refers to the IPC the same as Aventurine's sister did, "the guys in black").

Aventurine's brand came from being owned by a non-IPC-affiliated slaver--it had nothing to do with the Stonehearts or even Oswaldo Schneider.

So Ratio's entire comment linking the brand to the IPC makes no sense, and therefore his statement that the brand marks Aventurine as a "doomed Sigonian thrall sentenced to die by the IPC" also makes no sense.

Instead, I would argue that this line is a perfect example of the kind of exaggerated acting that Ratio and Aventurine were doing specifically to make the eavesdropping Family see Aventurine as an easy target. With this line, Ratio is emphasizing that Aventurine is a sitting duck without his Cornerstone, that he'll be weak and helpless--and that no one in the IPC will come help him, because they've already sentenced him to die. This is Ratio deliberately baiting Sunday into thinking that Aventurine will be easy, isolated prey without his Cornerstone--which is exactly what Aventurine wanted Sunday to think.

This line, which comes from a scene that we've already established is a deliberate act to mislead someone, cannot be used as evidence of Aventurine's real situation within the IPC.

"But then what about the trial scene with Jade?!" I already hear people saying. "Aventurine was definitely going to be sentenced to death!"

I'm not arguing that death wasn't a possible option for Kakavasha initially; it's clear that committing severe enough crimes can earn you the death penalty in Star Rail's universe. But I think we need to take another good look at this scene and see what really happened here.

First, we need to clarify that this scene with Jade was not an actual trial. The scene begins with a broadcast which clarifies that the suspect in the "Egyhazo-Aventurine Fraud Case" was just caught, and the IPC are conducting investigations into the "motive of the suspect."

So Jade's scene with Aventurine is not an actual trial (I mean... Jade's not even legally a judge!); it's an investigation with the goal of determining why Kakavasha would have tried to scam the Intelligentsia Guild and IPC at Egyhazo.

We can confirm that this scene with Jade is not an actual trial because she is even says "We haven't been able to find you any defense [lawyer], so you perhaps will have to defend yourself."

To which Aventurine responds that he easily could defend himself from the charges--but that it's pointless to do so. Why? Because he never intends to get to a trial in the first place.

He's there to gamble with Diamond (who he asks to see right on the spot, indicating that he's done his research in advance and knows who the head honcho he needs to talk to is). Instead, Jade says that he'll have to gamble with her, to which he agrees, and lays down his terms.

(He even says "I bet you won't send me to the gallows." We know that Kakavasha always wins his bets--he bet she won't send him off to a trial to be executed, and he once again won his bet!)

Jade, known for picking out "unpolished stones with great potential" and promoting them into positions of power to extract their value, agrees immediately, and literally tells Kakavasha to go change his clothes right then and there. She really said "I like your confidence; you're hired on the spot."

So... This was not a trial, Kakavasha never went on trial, and because he never went on trial, we have zero evidence in-game that he was ever sentenced to anything.

The IPC doesn't give a shit about the murder of some no-name slaver (I mean come on, think of how many other murders they've covered up at this point--do you really think they're holding one past murder of a no-name NPC over Aventurine's head years later?).

They might give a shit about the money they lost on Kakavasha's schemes, but Jade's entire schtick is one of equivalence--having Kakavasha join the IPC as a Stoneheart means he will ultimately generate infinitely more wealth for them than his schemes ever cost them in the first place, and that's the central piece of Jade's statement in this scene:

Is Aventurine's whole role in the Stonehearts exploitative, focused on his endless ability to win bets and generate profit? YUP. But that's ALL the Stonehearts' goal at this point--he's not unique in being "exploited" for his value. One look at Topaz confirms that.

So, ultimately, we have no evidence that Kakavasha was ever sentenced for his crimes, let alone that he was sentenced to die specifically by the IPC.

Claim #2: The Stonehearts will execute Aventurine if he tries to leave or fails his mission(s).

Verdict: There's no actual evidence for this either, beyond the obvious that most people in a powerful enough position in an evil corporation probably can't just up and quit their jobs without consequences.

I've seen this idea that the Stonehearts are planning to execute Aventurine--either for his past crimes, for failing a mission, or for trying to leave the IPC--many, many places, and unfortunately, I really think people are reaching this conclusion strictly on "The IPC is evil" vibes alone.

The IPC is evil; they coerce nice people like Topaz to buying into lifelong contracts; they're colonizers and exploitative capitalists, so of course they would threaten to execute poor innocent Aventurine!

Look, I won't defend the IPC. They are evil. But post hoc, ergo proctor hoc--just because one thing is true, doesn't mean the other statement naturally follows.

Just because the IPC is evil and exploitative (and probably does kill people to shut them up) does not automatically mean they're out to execute Aventurine for the slightest mishap.

I've seen many people say "He was going to be executed for his past crimes, so what do you think will happen if he tries to leave the Stonehearts?" But A) We just established he never went to trial for those past crimes in the first place, so we have no idea if he would have actually been sentenced to death anyway, and B) We have no evidence in-game that any of Kakavasha's past crimes would be back on the table if he were to try to quit the IPC. This is literally just fanon, based on the vibes of the IPC being evil alone. Probably informed by Topaz's "lifelong contract" situation giving people the impression that everyone who works for the IPC has to have a lifelong contract.

What evidence do we have that Aventurine is not at-risk of being executed for screwing up a mission? I mean, Aventurine himself says it. When Jade first states that Aventurine might be punished for destroying a Cornerstone, the only two possible punishments he states are:

If execution was on the table, wouldn't that have been the first punishment Aventurine listed?

And Jade's myriad celestia trailer also states that the only punishment on the table is whether Aventurine will be expelled from the Stonehearts:

And the biggest proof that execution isn't on the table?

The fact that Diamond himself agrees that Aventurine should not be punished even for the serious act of willingly breaking a Cornerstone. If Aventurine can do something as serious as breaking part of Qlipoth's will and body, something he was told to treasure more than his own life, and still get away with it... You can bet the IPC really does not give a shit about his old schemes anymore. Aventurine is way too valuable alive for them to be constantly threatening to kill him.

(But then what about Obsidian's statement that she wants a "bloodbath"? Surely that's evidence that he would have died if they voted against him?

First of all, "bloodbath" is a pretty common metaphorical term. I don't know about you, but any time people get into big drama at my work, this term comes up ["They were all talking shit; it was a total bloodbath"]. "Bloodbath" can mean any intense struggle; it's often not literal death.

However, I'm inclined in this case to say that the real reason Hoyo threw in this "bloodbath" line was just to double down on Obsidian's obvious vampire aesthetic. She's a "vampire." Duh, of course she needs to say something about blood. I think this line speaks more to establishing Obsidian's character as a violent, self-centered person than anything to do with Aventurine's actual situation.)

So, there is no actual evidence in the game that Aventurine is still being held accountable for his past crimes, or that the IPC is planning to execute him for messing up on a mission.

In fact, there are several pieces of evidence in the story suggesting the opposite, that multiple people, including the other Stonehearts, think he's kind of crazy for trying to get himself killed every mission he goes on.

When Aventurine was affected by the Harmony's power, the "future" Aventurine asks him this directly.

"Why does every one of your schemes put your own life at risk?" And players are told the answer to that isn't because of the IPC--it's not because the Stonehearts are out here forcing Aventurine to gamble with his life. When the "Future" Aventurine suggests Aventurine might be taking these risks because of the IPC, real Aventurine flat out says "You don't know me at all." He's not taking the risks for the IPC--he's taking them for himself.

Later, "Future" Aventurine even says that if Aventurine just used tactics like Opal's--which he claims Aventurine could easily do--then he would have been able to claim Penacony for the IPC without putting himself at risk at all. But Aventurine chose not to do that; he chose "death."

Because Aventurine is actually, at least slightly, suicidal. I don't personally think Aventurine would ever have turned a fully-loaded gun on himself and pulled the trigger, but he was actively seeking opportunities to die. Before Penacony ended, he was deliberately putting himself into situations where his life was at risk, taking unnecessary gambles with his life on the line--because then he would win either way. If he won the gamble, he would get whatever prize was promised, and if he lost the gamble, then he would have the "freedom" of death, to be reunited with his family. (It's important to note that the only time the word "freedom" is used in Aventurine's story through 2.1 is in direct reference to death--it is never used in reference to getting "free" from the IPC.)

Aventurine's plans were not self-destructive because of the IPC. They were self-destructive because he was self-destructive. And, in fact, multiple other members of the Stonehearts call out this behavior as a bad thing.

Jade describes Aventurine's ploy in Penacony as "overplaying his hand."

Topaz describes Aventurine's work habits as:

Then there's even Sugilite, who clocks Aventurine's suicidal tendency directly by stating that Aventurine's "death" scheme in Penacony wasn't for the IPC at all--it was entirely for himself.

If the Stonehearts were holding execution over Aventurine's head at all times, why would death be an "unnecessary [personal] extravagance"?

The takeaway from all the other Stonehearts' dialogue about Aventurine is that they actually think he goes too far and that his methods are more risky with his own life than they need to be.

Does that sound like a group of people who are planning to kill him on the drop of the hat?

Okay, okay, I can hear you saying "But that still doesn't mean he can leave the Stonehearts without consequences. They would kill him if he tried to leave."

To that I say: A) There's no actual in-game evidence for that statement; it's literally just "IPC is evil so they definitely would do this" vibes, but B) Is that statement really unique to Aventurine? Do you think Topaz could leave the Stonehearts without consequences? Do you think Jade could just fuck off and leave the IPC if she got the desire to?

It's pretty typical, I would think, that anyone who achieves a high-ranking in a stereotypical "evil capitalist mega-corporation" is not free to just abandon their high up position without consequences. The phrase "You know too much" comes to mind.

I'd argue that people are probably right--Aventurine probably could not leave the Stonehearts without something severe happening, at the very least a memory wipe--but that this is probably true of all the Stonehearts. They're too far up the chain. They know too much about the inner-workings of the literal planet-destroying world-domination company. They've had too much access to insider info to easily leave their positions.

Not being able to easily leave the position has nothing to do with Aventurine personally or his past crimes. It's just (at least likely) a basic fact of being too high up in the morally-grey-at-best super organization. (Well, then again, apparently no one even knows if Agate is dead or not, so maybe they actually don't even care lol.)

Claim #3: Aventurine didn't want to join the IPC; he's working with the IPC only because he's forced to.

Verdict: The game suggests in several places that Aventurine joined the IPC of his own free will. Whether he's still loyal to them is not 100% clear.

I think this is the biggest question mark I'm left with when reading other people's posts about Aventurine--this enduring idea that Aventurine never wanted to join the IPC and was only forced to do so because he was captured and death was his only other option.

But that is literally not what the game is telling us at all. The game tells us--in multiple places--that Aventurine orchestrated his own circumstances so that he could gain an audience with Diamond and win a position within the Stonehearts by his own gambles.

First, let's re-examine that scene with Jade. One of the first things Jade says is "What kind of person would come up with a scheme [the Egyhazo fraud] that doesn't benefit them in any way?"

The takeaway from this is that Kakavasha did not actually stand to gain anything from scamming the Intelligentsia Guild into digging for Tayzzyronth's remains in the desert at Egyhazo. All he achieved with this fraud was putting himself at risk of being caught by the IPC.

Does that sound like Aventurine to you? The guy whose mantra is literally:

So obviously, Aventurine stood to gain something from scamming the IPC at Egyhazo. What could he possibly have wanted to achieve by creating a scheme that seemingly didn't directly benefit him? Well, he says it himself:

Aventurine wanted to be brought before the IPC. He got caught on purpose. He once again gambled with his own life, betting that, instead of being put on trial for all his past crimes, he could convince Diamond (though it ended up being Jade) to invest in him. The game literally tells you, in multiple places, that Aventurine was taking another one of his stereotypically crazy, potentially self-destructive gambles to try to achieve something:

Aventurine wanted the IPC to invest in him. He wanted in on their power and wealth. No one in the IPC forced him to target their organization not once but twice with his "desert-digging schemes" when it is clear that Aventurine could easily make money elsewhere. No one forced him to suggest this gamble with Jade to convince the IPC to invest in him. No one forced him to, in the words of the game itself, "seek a Cornerstone."

Aventurine's character stories are the only indications we have (for now) about what his motivations for joining the IPC might have been:

They suggest he joined with the intention of gaining wealth and power to help his people and others who aided him in the past--only to find out that that was no longer possible, invalidating his original reason for joining and likely leaving him without motivation or will to really even stay in the powerful position he had worked to get into. Part of his suicidality is likely linked to this--that he set himself a massive, unbelievable goal in an attempt to gain power and wealth to finally help his people--only to be entirely too late. But in any case, these character stories make it clear that he did personally seek to join the IPC of his own free will.

(And I mean, hello? The whole point of Jade as a character is being the one who sees people's desires and then grants them--ergo, Aventurine's desire was, in fact, to join the IPC himself.)

If we needed any more corroborating evidence for this, just consider everything post-Penacony, when Aventurine has decided that he does actually value his life now and wants to live. Aventurine would have had so many chances to "escape" the IPC if he so chose. First, he could easily have pretended to actually die within the Nihility. He could have entirely fucked off with Argenti's help, created a new identity, and made himself a pile of independent wealth from gambles, all without the IPC ever knowing where he went. But he didn't.

Then, he had a second chance to betray the IPC and fuck off again with Boothill's help. Boothill had already knocked out Aventurine's bodyguards at the door--there was literally no one else around. A little blood on the floor and no one would have doubted that the IPC-hating, wanted vigilante Boothill had done away with Aventurine.

Hell, Aventurine knows the Trailblazer. One word to the Trailblazer, and Aventurine could board the Astral Express and be whisked off to the other side of the universe.

But none of those things happened. Aventurine made no effort to remove himself from the IPC--even though he knew he had broken a Cornerstone and would be facing possible punishment. He didn't even make a single mention of trying to "escape" the IPC at all.

Because he isn't trying to.

(And edit, an addendum, because I kept seeing this on Twitter too: A bunch of people were claiming that because Aventurine wasn't smiling when he got his Cornerstone back, that was evidence that he hates the IPC and doesn't want to be there:

Like... did they forget that every single time Aventurine makes his major gambles, he has such anxiety that he can never convince himself to believe he'll actually win, to the point that the "Future" Aventurine accuses him of clenching his trembling hand beneath the table? Is it really that surprising that someone who never actually believes he's going to win would have a shocked face when he does win here, especially after witnessing the literal power of an aeon restore something he thought was broken forever? Come on now...)

Would the guy who always wins his gambles bet that he would get a promotion if he absolutely didn't want his job?

People really, really seem to struggle with this aspect of Aventurine's character, going out of their way to ignore the game's text and suggest that he definitely absolutely would never, ever have joined the IPC of his own free will. People really hate the idea that Aventurine is a morally-grey character who makes choices that are actively harmful to himself, like willingly joining an organization that is exploiting him.

Knowing that the IPC played a part in the Avgin extinction, people literally cannot fathom that Aventurine would willingly join them.

But I think that denying this part of Aventurine's character is bad. There's no need to reduce Aventurine to an innocent, helpless victim who is being exploited against his will and who would never do a single evil thing himself. That's not who the game is telling us he is.

The game tells us, repeatedly, that Aventurine is a survivor who will do whatever it takes to succeed at whatever he sets his mind to--even up to murdering innocent people to survive himself. Up to willingly joining the IPC to seek wealth and power. He's not a 100% good person who is still being forced through an existence he has no control over.

He's a self-destructive gambler who makes terrible choices with his own life, and willingly joining the IPC to let the Stonehearts exploit his abilities is one of the most obvious indications of that in the game.

Please stop denying Aventurine his complex, three-dimensional character writing to make him your pure, innocent trauma woobie. I'm begging people.

Claim #4: Aventurine wants revenge on Oswaldo Schneider.

Verdict: There's no evidence in the game (yet) that Aventurine is even aware of Oswaldo Schneider's role in the Avgin extinction, let alone actively trying to seek revenge for it.

Personally, this one hurts me the most, because this is where I'd like to see the story going. I want it to be that Aventurine was partially motivated to join the IPC specifically to orchestrate an inside job and get the Avgins' revenge on Oswaldo Schneider.

But even I have to admit that there's currently no evidence for this at all in the story.

For one, we have no confirmation in-game that Aventurine actually knows Schneider's direct role in the Avgin extinction. Aventurine clearly knows that the IPC could have intervened (he was there; he saw they didn't do anything), but we have no actual confirmation in the game's text that Aventurine knows Schneider told his people not to get involved, leading to the massacre. The only reason we players know of this is relic text, which isn't available canonically to characters in the game.

It is very likely that Aventurine is smart enough to figure this out or do the research to learn it, but as of right now, we don't have that confirmation in game.

Similarly, we players are given no access to Aventurine's actual conversations with Boothill. We have no idea what they talked about other than this one statement:

It seems likely, based on this, that Aventurine did say something to Boothill about being willing to go after Oswaldo Schneider, but we won't know for sure until the game reveals more.

What we do know is that even if Aventurine does give Boothill information on Oswaldo, it might not really be because Aventurine wants personal revenge.

Oswaldo's Marketing Development Department is basically the sworn enemy of the Stonehearts' Strategic Investment Department. The two groups are in an internal cold war, vying for "votes" from the seven board members who are actually leading the IPC.

So even if we see Aventurine taking actions against Oswaldo, it might not be because of a personal grudge, but because literally Aventurine's entire department hates Oswaldo Schneider's guts on principle in the first place.

So it's very difficult to say what is going on with Aventurine and Oswaldo Schneider at this point, and in the end, we just need to wait for more information.

Phew, all right! That was definitely long enough. I've gotten it all off my chest. I hope I've managed to give people some more canon material to chew on for another look at Aventurine's character, which is rich and complex and definitely cannot be reduced to simply "pure innocent victim babygirl."

Maybe now I'll be a little less salty when I see misinformation spreading like a wildfire again on Twitter.

Maybe.

Ha ha, who am I kidding.

[iluvylalevu]

A (Hopefully Coherent) Ramble About What Mal Du Pays Represents

So this might be a little over the place cuz I don’t really do analysis, but the battle with Mal Du Pays has really stuck with me, hear me out (and take this doodle)

So as we know, Mal Du Pays is essentially the embodiment of Siffrin’s self-hatred and intrusive thoughts, but what I find interesting is that it also represents the part of Siffrin that suffers because of it. Mal Du Pays is basically the embodiment of self-destructing thoughts; It spends the battle emotionally torturing Siffrin, but it also spends the battle silently screaming and crying.

And the name meaning “homesickness” is also a detail I find fascinating because most of the things Mal Du Pays says have little to do with the forgotten country, with the exception being Odile’s remarks about the lack of a home equating to a lack of identity. Homesickness is characterized by longing; yearning for the warmth and familiarity of home while being away from it, yet most of what Mal Du Pays says has to do with the party. To Siffrin, his party is home. While it pains them greatly that their country and entire childhood are gone, the thought of losing his new family terrifies and pains him more. He spent so long belonging nowhere, they’re terrified of losing the one place he feels like he belongs to now. He wants to be with them really badly, to the point he was subconsciously willing to hold them hostage.

Siffrin is a person made for loving. He loves strongly and wants to be loved back, but paradoxically this is also the reason he hates himself. They think it’s selfish to want that love back, they think their happiness shouldn’t come first or even come second, it shouldn’t be important at all; it’s their family who is lovable, it’s them who deserve happiness, not him, because he isn't like them, he's a nobody who belongs nowhere. Siffrin is a person who loves strongly but doesn’t lend that love to himself.

Unfortunately, this self-hatred also manifests in paranoia. Because they think themself unworthy of love they also project this onto their friends, thinking they’ll hate him if he reveals the “real” him, that they’ll turn heel as soon as they can because he’s so deplorable.

The party, in reality, loves Siffrin, but that love gets filtered through Siffrin’s self-hatred and comes back out as a mess of self-imposed conditions, “they’ll hate me if I do this” “They’ll hate me if I say that”, none of which is true, but they wholeheartedly believe it is, and it hurts him

Mal Du Pays also being unable to be harmed by Siffrin is something I feel is so important. Beating this part of himself into submission is essentially what he’s been trying to do the whole game and it doesn’t work, you can’t beat yourself up and expect that to make you feel better. Mal Du Pays, as aggressive as it is, isn’t a battle that needs to be won it’s a wound that needs to be healed

[fluffydice]

Lolol the thing about Saiki is that it's not even just about hiding his powers. If it was then he would have been more open about caring when it became very, very apparent that his friends were not going to leave, regardless of how distant he acted. The distance and apathy were supposed to keep people from sticking around, which doesn't work on people who refuse to fucking leave. But it's like. If Saiki shows the extent of how much he cares, which at the end of the day is what is truly at his core as a person, then he'd have to accept the fact that them leaving him is because they didn't like who he was, not just the persona he puts on. And like, to a kid who's spent his entire life running away before he can get hurt, being forced to face the fact that your loved ones had been right when they said your very existence was enough to make you rejectable would be devastating lmao

[lorephobic]

literally nobody asked for it, but here's my list of saltburn essays that i've slowly been drafting over the course of the last week which WILL be required reading for anybody trying to engage with me about this movie. my very personal saltburn 101 syllabus just dropped

A Wolf in Deer's Clothing: Saltburn's Attempt at Innocence

an examination of party costumes and our character's last attempts to masquerade as something they're not: felix—an angel, all-forgiving and all-knowing, something to be worshiped; and oliver—a prey animal, prey to class-divide, prey to saltburn, prey to felix.

thoughts about oliver specifically are loosely organized in my #bambi tag

A Midsummer Night's Mare: Farleigh Start as the Ultimate Victim of Saltburn

a farleigh character study, about the ways he was mistreated and manipulated at saltburn, about fighting to stay alive and the scars left behind by knowing when to give in

alternatively titled "QuickStart", may be adapted into a conclusive essay specifically focusing on oliver and farleigh's relationship

The Eye of the Beholder: On Saltburn's Voyeurism & Violence [working title]

how wealth and class pushes the catton's toward the volatile reality of being able to look, but not touch. on desire and the lack thereof, and portraying yourself as an object to be desired

may end up as two separate essays on wealth and aestheticism but i'm pushing toward a conclusive essay about the intersection of the two, which i feel is at the heart of saltburn

alternatively titled "Poor Man's Pudding: A Melvillian Approach to Saltburn's Class", again, may be adapted into it's own essay

Gender-Fluid: A Study in Sexuality and Saltburn's Desire to be Dry

a deep dive into the bodily fluids of saltburn and how oliver upsets the standard of men who are just so lovely and dry. on the creative choice to lean into the messy wetness of sex and desire and the audience's instinct toward repulsion

a celebration of the grotesque and an examination of why we would label it as such

least developed of the four, heavily inspired by @charnelpit's lovely post about the fluids in saltburn

if anybody is actually interested in any of these, i can work toward something closer to a finished piece instead of just bullet points and quotes in a google doc, but mostly this is so i can share my very brief takes on a multitude of themes in saltburn that have been haunting me

edit for people seeing this in the future: all posts about my essays are being organized into my #saltburn 101 tag if you’re interested in following these through to development!

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[mintytrifecta]

[santacoppelia]

Of fandom, age, and David Tennant being our own personal Time Lord

I read the fantastic post that @davidtennantgenderenvy wrote about David Tennant and aging (if you haven’t yet read it, go for it!) and, as a fan who is closer to DT's age range than to what seems to be the rest of the fan base's age (yeah, being well over 40 is A THING), I had an interesting mix of ideas and emotions. I was going to just reblog her post with some of these musings, but when this started getting longer (and I started searching for bibliography, ha), I decided that I was not going to hijack her post, but rather cite it (and reblog it on its own right, really, read it). I should say that this is a long essay, and it comes peppered with references to one of my preferred fields of study (but I make it light and fun, promise).

Becoming an “old geek”

The first time I came into the idea was when I found a thirst TikTok with that very nice audio that goes “I think I need someone older…” and clearly, the thirst was there, but also… David is 8 years older than me, and when you are 45, thirsting over someone who is 53 doesn’t feel as “edgy” (and thinking about “needing someone older” starts verging on thirsting over people well over 65, which is absolutely fine, but a very different category over all for the rest of TikTok). So yeah, it was weird. You see someone who you feel is "in your range" and everyone is calling them "old"… And you start thinking about aging, inevitably.

Of course, I "don't feel old", but most of my friends are younger than me, and I'm the oldest person in many of my "fun activities". Take, for example, my lightsaber combat team, where every sponsorship is pitched to people under 30, and you should be training at least twice a week and following a strict diet to reach the expected “competitive or exhibition” level (enter the “old lady” who is taking this training just for fun, who needs to take care of her joints and who is not going to be invested in becoming Jedi Master General or anything of the sorts in the near future). Or we can talk about the expectation about fandom in general being a “teenage phase”, and thinking about everyone who still is into it actively after certain age as “immature” or “quirky” at best (hi, mom! Hi, work colleagues! Hi, students!).

Society, aging and social constructs

Of course, this has a lot to do with societal expectations. For almost 80 years, popular culture has been built around "youth" and "young people": before rock & roll, most things (music, clothes, movies, art in general) were targeted to “adults”, and you were expected to be “a functional adult” since a younger age. There was a seismic shift in the way popular culture was built when consumer culture decided to see and cater young people: trends became shorter, being “hip” was desirable, staying younger for a longer period was a nice aspiration (a good, light reading to get a deeper view around this is “Hit Makers” by Derek Thompson. It is written for marketers, but that makes it an easy historic overview and I like that). This has a lot to do with the change of our view about old people, too: while being old 100 years ago (yup, 1924 still fits the bill) made you “a respected elder” and you were expected to be wise, to know best, to be the voice of reason and an expert, nowadays not even us older people like being seen as “old” or “older”.

Frequently, culture becomes entrenched in binary oppositions. The binary opposition between “young” and “old” is… well, old! And while the opposition is sustained, the meanings around it change over time (that’s what the past paragraph was about, really). If in the 1940’s being old meant “mature, respectable, wise, responsible” and being young meant “inexperienced, immature, foolish”, after the 1950’s those meanings shifted a lot: being young became “fun, interesting, in the now and in the know, attractive”, while being old was about being “boring, dusty, passé, uninteresting, dull”.

In reality, being young can be a mix of all of these things (inexperienced and fun and foolish and attractive), and being old can be, at the same time, being responsible and wise and a little dusty and dull, because that’s life *shrugs*, and the wonder of lived experience is that, even if we simplify it, it is complex and rich and sometimes contradictory in itself: we can be old and foolish and interesting and boring, or young and dull and inexperienced and attractive. But, as we need to make “social sense” of things, simplifying them is… easier. That’s why we build stereotypes, and why we use them! We need to have a “base” of signifiers to build upon, so we usually take what we have on our environment and run with it. If you find this idea interesting, welcome to the world of cultural semiotics! *takes her Iuri Lotman picture out of her pocket and puts it on the desk*

(Iuri Lotman, people. He is my "patron saint").

Pop culture versus “real culture”

Another cultural opposition that piques my interest in this area is the notion of “pop culture”, of course. It is opposed to “real, serious culture”, the sort of thing that everyone expects "older, mature people" to enjoy. In the sixties and seventies, there were a lot of studies and writing about "high brow" and "low brow" culture, trying to keep this distinction between "things that make you familiar with the now, but have no intrinsic value" and "eternal things that cultivate your mind, soul and spirit".

Evidently, if you ask me, this is a whole load of horse manure: probably useful to fertilize other things, but with little intrinsic value on its own. My main point is not dolphins, but the idea of culture: historically, it has used to mean a lot of things; from the notion of (exactly) fertilizing something and making it grow to make it come to fruition, to the hodgepodge of practices that a social group creates when they are together and are trying to make common sense of things.

I like the latter better (that is the one I’d ascribe to if this was The Academia TM, but this is tumblr!), but another popular definition, which comes from the Illustration and has been quite prevalent, is the notion of culture as the set of cultural practices that make you a better, more intelligent, far more educated person. For example: if you want to have real culture, you have to read Shakespeare and know what a iambic pentameter is, rather than watching “10 Things I Hate About You”. You must read real books, not listen to audiobooks, and “real books” should be written by “serious authors” like (insert old white Western European or American cis men, preferably born before 1960).

Here comes the notion of “cultural canon”, grinning widely. Yup, that set of practices becomes an expectation of what and how you should experience any area of the human experience, and they become a sort of “nucleus” of the whole experience, with people playing “defense” around them and culture shifting all around and sometimes across them. This is not exclusive to “high culture”: Have you ever heard about “gatekeeping”? Yeah, same fenomenomenon (Shadwell, of course). Whenever something gets this “shape”, it becomes a “norm”, the “common” thing, the “rule” if you participate in that set of cultural practices.

As every cultural set of practices tends to generate its own “canon”, they also have a lot of practices surrounding it, which are ever changing, shifting, learning from new and old practices, and redefining what everything means in their common/shared space. For example: Neil Gaiman, my beloved, was part of the “comics” frontier when Sandman first appeared, but as he and Alan Moore (yeah, I know he did it first, but Gaiman is my study focus right now, so let me be) and other very talented and interesting people started creating fascinating stuff that hadn’t been done, and they found people who loved it, they not only redefined the world of comics, but became part of the new canon themselves. And then, Neil’s presence in the world of literature and fantasy became widespread and recognized and then revered… And then he is doing it again by adapting his own work to a streaming platform in a serialized way… I hope this explains why I’m growing an obsession with studying Neil Gaiman as an author who crosses through different media: a transmedial auteur, an anomaly in his own right. But that is not an essay for tumblr, but a thesis, one that I don’t know if I’d ever have the time or mental resources to write (being a runaway ex academic with ADHD who works on their own is hard, people). Besides, this was about aging and David Tennant, so let’s cut this tangent short and start talking about our Time Lord and Savior: David Tennant, the king of frontiers.

David Tennant as a Frontier Lord

David Tennant is another fascinating case in this sense, mostly because he is an actor who has been able to build a whole very impressive career through crossing symbolic frontiers. Through his massive filmography (161 roles just for screens, as registered in IMDb) and his stage career (I love this gifset for this exact reason), he has acted his way through almost everything, from classical Shakespeare to improvisational comedy, from procedural police drama to wacky fantasy sci-fi. This has a lot to do with his personality (he loves acting, he decided to pursue acting as a career thanks to his love for Doctor Who, but he is also smart and inquisitive) but, as it happens with a lot of “frontier figures”, it also has a lot to do with “unpredictable” circumstances: less of a strategy, more of an instinct.

David has talked many times about how his impostor syndrome made him feel, for the longest time, that he had to keep accepting roles, because you never know if there is going to be another one after. He is talented and open and curious (this is quite a good interview about his perspective), but this… anxiety? meant that he had also lower quandaries about saying “yes” to roles and projects that were “less consistent” with a typecast (which has been, for the longest time, one of the main strategies to build an acting career). Yeah, he has some defining characteristics that make a role “tennantish” (I’m not starting that tirade here, but yeah, you know that almost fixed set of quirks and bits), but he has also worked his way through many different genres, budgets, styles and complexities. And he has usually been as committed and as professional in a big budget-high stakes-great script sort of situation, as he has been in a highly chaotic-let’s see what sticks-small scale project.

That can be correlated by the way he talks about “acting advice”. “Be on time, learn your lines, treat everyone the same, never skip the lunch queue”… Acting is a job, and he treats it as such. Yeah, he looks for interesting projects anytime he can, but the “down to earth” attitude about it is, once again, not-usual, not-common: pure frontier. Then, when David talks about his own self (specially at a young age), he is pretty clear about his “outsider” or “uncool” status (this interview is fantastic), and how strangely disruptive it was to become not only recognizable, but cool and sexy and… everything else, thanks to Doctor Who. He went from living in the frontier to being put in the canon, but he is still, at heart, a person who is more comfortable not defining himself by that “expected” set of rules.

Him being a very private person, who insists on having a family life that seems, form this distance, stable, loving and absolutely un-showbiz just makes the deal (and the parasocial love and respect) easier to sustain; as does his openness to talk about social and political issues that interest him (passionately, again; against the norm for “well liked celebrity”, again). His colleagues also talk wonders about him, mostly because he is this sort of down-to-earth but also passionate about his craft and easy to work with. Again: not the “norm”, not the “rule” of being such a celebrity.

Many of his fans (should I say that I’m one? Or is it obvious at this point?) find this not only endearing, but comforting: he is a massive star, who has acted in a lot of terrific roles in huge productions… But he feels, at heart, as “one of us”. But he is, also, a well-respected thespian, a Shakespearian powerhouse, an international talent. He lives in a very authentic, but very unstereotipical frontier. And he seems happy about that and has made a career from it. Extensive kudos and all the parasocial love and the amateur-actress mad respect for that.

I should mention, just in passing, that a “natural” archetype for this characters that traverse frontiers… are tricksters. Think again about the “tennantish” characteristics. Here goes another essay I’m not writing right now.

Aging: The Next Frontier

This takes me to the original post that inspired the essay: living in a culture where the “norm” is “being young and famous is a desirable aspiration”, we have a fantastic actor, at peak of his craft, who is in the heart of middle age (past 50, nearing 55). Not only that, but he is an actor with whom at least a couple of generations have grown older: from the ones who feel him as “our contemporary” to the ones who grew up looking at him (like Ncuti Gatwa!).

David, being the frontier person he is, has been navigating this transition in a very “unconventional” way: he came back to the role that made him iconic (The Doctor, now with more trauma!), is starring in another fantasy series about middle-aged looking ethereal beings that at times is an adventure thriller, at times is a comedy of errors and at times is a romcom (having another beautiful trickster of a man as his co-star… There goes another tangent that is an essay); he is playing one of the quintessential Shakespeare roles for middle-aged men (Macbeth), and is, seemingly, having a lot of fun doing a lot of voice acting for animation roles (if you haven’t watched Duck Tales, you’re missing a whole lot of fun, really).

Traditionally, middle aged actors navigate that period of their career trying to reinforce their “still young, thus a celebrity” status (for example, doing a lot of action-packed movies and keep doing their own stunts while seducing women 20-30 years younger than them), or strengthening their “prestige thespian, so now a real culture person” position (fighting for more serious roles, going from comedy to drama, or working their way into The Classics©). Sometimes, they face the internalized societal expectation by also becoming a shipwreck in their personal life (yeah… the stereotype of “getting divorced, having an affair with someone half their age, getting another red convertible, getting in trouble…”) because we don’t have a good “map for aging responsibly” yet as a society. We have been so focused on youth, that we have forgotten how to age.

Again, switching to the personal experience. I was raised as a female-shaped person (yeah, being queer is fun), so part of the experience of growing (and then growing old) has been closely related with that concept from the female point of view. I decided, pretty early on (but not so much, probably 25 years ago), that I wasn’t going to conform to the norm… And that included aging naturally. When I found my first white hair, it was a shock (I was 21 or 22), but I had already seen my father fighting his own hair being white since forever. I decided it was a loss of time, money and effort… And the judgement from people in my generation and in the one that preceded me (my mother, my aunts) was stern and strict: “it will age you, and it will date us. You shouldn’t do that”. Men could do it, given the right age (being over 50) but women must not. Same with wrinkles and sagging and gaining weight and getting “pudgy”. But when men grew older, they needed to make a “show off” of their ability to seduce, to “still be a man”. Aging, then, was undesirable by any standard.

As me and my peers have grown older, and my hair has gotten increasingly silver, there have been women that come to me saying that “I look great” and “they wish they were as brave as me”. I would like to state in front of this jury of my peers (hi, tumblr!) that the only bravery it took was deciding, somewhere between my twenties and my thirties, that I wanted to be as myself as I possibly could, so no bravery at all, just the same lack of understanding of social rules that took me to become interested in… you guessed it, cultural semiotics. We’ve come full circle with this. Now, let’s finish talking about what it means for an aging fan to have an aging star to look up to, shall we?

David Tennant as a cultural Time Lord

I am pretty sure that he wouldn’t have chosen this role for himself (as he wouldn’t have chosen being a massive star just by playing his favorite character and being so talented and charming), but he is, as Loki would say, burdened by glorious purpose. Being “the actor of his generation”, and him crossing so many frontiers with such ease and grace, without even thinking about it too hard, just because he is a hard worker and likes to try new things and is just so good at what he does put him in the exact cultural crossroad for it.

He is not in a sudden need to “resignify himself” as anything: he has already shown his very flexible acting muscles through his very long career. He is not bounded to “keep his public image relevant”: he likes to have his personal life clearly separated from the spotlight, and being married to the brilliant and funny Georgia, who herself grew up with a famous father, so she is no stranger to staying sane and in control in the eye of media, and who manages their social media presence with a good mix of humor and well-set boundaries.

Therefore, he is in a moment where he can (and probably will) chose to do whatever he likes. And he has the public support to do so: he is prestigious and respected, but likes to make fun of himself and is not self-important; he has a lot of awards, but he is also a very likable person with whom most people in the industry enjoy working. And he is up to do a lot of things: heroes, villains, morally grey characters; romance, drama, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, procedurals, historical fiction, classic plays, silly parts, voice acting… We are going to see him aging on screen and stage, with no playbook: the playbooks were written for people that certainly are not him. And I have some evidence to prove it.

He is starring in a groundbreaking series (yeah, Good Omens) where the protagonists are two middle-aged looking entities, full of queer relationships, written by another trickster. This series, in an on itself, is a showcase for characters that are rule breaking in many ways: in the narrative, by being hereditary enemies who are inevitably linked to one another by a loving bond that may or may not be romantic, but that has been in the making for 6,000 years; in representation, by having the protagonists being represented by a couple of middle aged actors who are “not serious” and “not action” coded, in a role where they are delivering romance, banter, intrigue, joy and a whole other range of emotions that are “not your stereotypical” middle-aged male-lead coded.

He also delivered the baton on a relay race with Doctor Who: he came back after almost 20 years, to bring back the generation who grew up watching him in the role, and deliver us into the arms of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, with the promise of taking a rest and working on getting better from all the trauma The Doctor has endured in 20 years Earth-time (which, as any Doctor Who fan knows, account for centuries of trauma in Doctor’s time). Not your usual Doctor Who Anniversary cameo, but one built to deliver some zeitgeisty emotional health promises that made the specials feel… healing. At least, for some of us.

Even when it wasn’t the hit series it deserved to be, his Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” is also a great delivery of an unconventional middle-aged protagonist, who goes from meek and scared and too worried about societal norms, to a lovely, tender, slightly awkward and daring person, with friends half his age who look at him but are also his peers (another kind of relationship that is not very frequent in media).

And, with all fearlessness, he has played a lively old duck in Duck Tales! Scrooge McDuck has never been a middle-aged character: he is, quite openly, an old gentleman. An adventurer, quirky, with a lot of spunk… but also quite clearly an elder to Huey, Dewey and Louie, and obviously older than Donald Duck (who is also not a young adult himself!). When you watch that series, and if you have the opportunity to catch any glimpse of him behind the scenes while recording the part, you can feel the joy he got from playing the part (and he has said time and again that he IS Scrooge McDuck, so it will become his “recurring bit” for the future).

Hopefully, David (and some other actors and actresses, for sure) will dare to build that new “aging publicly without making an arse of myself” playbook, and I (and I can imagine, many other fans in our middle age, but also fans that are right now leaving behind the “young adult” stage and becoming “adults” fair and square, and others who will arrive to this place at a future time in their lives, so I hope) will be there to bear witness, support, cheer… and learn from the model. Because that’s what fandom is about, but also because that’s how culture itself gets shaped and changes, continuously. And that is exciting and a little scary, and that’s why it is better if we do this together.

And I'd love to imagine diverse (in the full sense of the word) role models for this process and this playbook, too!!!

If you read all the way through this, I'm very grateful, take a cookie, have a gold star and suggest names for our aging interestingly role models on the "non-white-male" side of things!

Class dismissed!!

[genericpuff]

On today's episode of "Rachel exaggerates things to make herself sound cooler-"

Soooo this is a lie.

No seriously, this has to be a lie. I don't make these kinds of accusations willy-nilly. This has to be a lie.

First of all, if her file sizes are truly 11GB for each episode, that would mean her file resolutions would have to be stupid high, and I just ain't buying that when so much of her art comes out looking like fried chicken.

But again, look at the backgrounds. Crystal clear. Which supports my theory that Rachel has her assistants draw the characters flat and exports them as PNG's so that she (or another one of her assistants) can slap the backgrounds in afterwards which is why when they pinch and zoom, the backgrounds look fine (as they're added in afterwards) and the characters look like they've been drawn with chalk. The shading itself isn't deep fried though, which is, again, because Rachel adds in the shading in post after her assistants have sent her all the flats.

Anyways, moving on from that, if her file sizes are actually 11GB per episode, that would mean her resolution would have to be STUPID high and that would mean there's no excuse for panels to look like this. This is not a Webtoons compression problem, Webtoons does compress images for you if you don't do it yourself but they don't result in specifically deep fried textures like this, that's ALL happening on Rachel's side. If it were a Webtoons' problem, the entire comic would look like that, not just select panels.

This is also what the panels tend to look like in book form. The book art is clearly very compressed and blurred from being too low of a resolution for print, which means either the editor is not being provided the root files, or the root files weren't ever that crisp to begin with. Either one is plausible and either one isn't good.

But of course, I'm not going to make these claims without my own proof. So here's the file sizes for Episode 12 of Rekindled, the longest episode in the series so far by panel count and page length, clocking in at 42 panels and an average of 25 layers per page (and that's including the text layers which adds a good chunk on its own, the actual art layers are like, half of that).

Also, here's what a pinch and zoom panel in Rekindled comes out looking like:

You can still pick up on some fuzziness, but the lineart doesn't look straight up chunky like it does in LO.

Meanwhile, one of my longest episodes of TIME GATE: [AFTERBIRTH] has a file size that honestly shocked me with how small it was.

Guess how many panels that episode had?

Go on, guess. Take a second. Compare it to the file size of Episode 12 of Rekindled, take your best educated guess. Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] is also a full color webtoon with full shading and rendering that I used to upload once a week. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Ninety-seven.

Ninety. Seven.

Not only is that more panels than what LO dishes out on a weekly basis, but its overall file size doesn't even come out to be 10% of what Rachel is claiming LO's file sizes to be.

This is what Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] looks like, by the way:

(don't mind the blurriness that's working against my point, that's Tumblr, not me LMAO)

But, let's face it, I didn't want to just use my own examples as a comparison, because that seems unfair. I'm not an Originals creator, I just put myself under similar pressures as one because I'm an idiot who tries too hard.

So I asked one of my Originals pals. I will not disclose their name, but they are someone who works for Webtoons Originals and has similar panel requirements and deadlines. They also work with a similar flatting + shade workflow as LO, they have cel-shaded colors and bold flat coloring.

When I asked them how big their file sizes were, they said that at 2500px width - similar to what I draw at, 2400px width - and 200-300k pixel length (again, they're drawing an entire episode on one canvas) their episode file sizes come out to roughly one gigabyte, very rarely much bigger than that.

Rachel is full of shit. This is some Tommy Tallarico level shit, exaggerating stupid things that don't matter to try and make herself seem impressive. It isn't impressive. It makes her look like an unorganized dunderhead at best, and at worst, makes her look like a flat out liar who needs to prop herself up on the dumbest shit to make herself look good. File gigabyte size isn't impressive or indicative of anything, you can achieve high quality art without your file size amounting to 11 GB, and let's face it, Lore Olympus is not high quality art. You're telling me art like this:

amounts to 11 GB?

Now the only way I can see this happening is if maybe, maybe she had like, a bajillion layers full of garbage-

Oh. Oh no. Lore Olympus. Is a sprite comic.*

(*edit for clarification: I've had people confused over what I mean by sprite comic because LO clearly isn't made with 16/8 bit sprites. Sprite comic was a term universally used back in the day for comics that reused the same body parts, heads, expressions, etc. much like how sprites are designed, often keeping an entire file full of different layers made up of these assets to make for easier development. This technique was utilized in comics like CTRL + ALT + DEL. LO is definitely not literally a sprite comic but the way its layers are designed feel very much like something that's being cobbled together like 'sprite' comics were. I'm old.)

Even with these pics for proof, with 600+ layers on one canvas, if there's barely anything on those layers, then it still wouldn't make up that 11GB file size because the amount of layers doesn't necessarily add to file size on its own, at least not by that much, unless they're actually filled with stuff. And again, Rachel's art in LO doesn't scream "highly detailed with many layers". It only had many layers because for some reason she insists on working that way even to its own detriment.

From the looks of it, Rachel's importing all of her assistants' PNG's as separate layers and adding all the shading and the extra details on their own separate layers and basically dividing everything up into tiny bite sized pieces. That's the only clear explanation I can come up with. But if so, that means she's being INCREDIBLY inefficient with her workflow that it's amounting to SIX HUNDRED+ LAYERS AT 11 GB PER EPISODE. THAT IS ABSURD. THIS COMIC IS WAY TOO LOW QUALITY TO JUSTIFY THESE FILE SIZES AND LAYER COUNTS. RACHEL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK SHE'S DOING-

She's also very clearly using the cloud as a way to backup her work and work with her assistants. God knows how much she's spending on cloud space because of her own incompetency.

Honestly, at this point, as I sit here playing the Photoshop equivalent of Cookie Clicker, clicking the 'new layer' button over and over and over again with my mouse to truly understand what it would feel like to operate at 600+ layers per episode of a webtoon, I'm more inclined to believe she's just lying. Capping. Pulling shit out of her ass. Straight up making shit up. It wouldn't be the first time she's done that. But also because the alternative is a lot more grim - the #1 best selling webtoon on the platform is being operated like the world's worst group project and still coming out on the other side looking like deep fried garbage despite its stupid high file size.

[sadquickchristmassnowman]

do you guys ever think about how, when troy started messing with abed in 1x05, and they have that interaction like

“because I’m barack obama’s nephew”

“why are you telling me all this now?”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you. but now it’s time to tell you everything”

abed probably finally felt like he was really connecting with troy? like he was finally making a real friend? I mean troy was trusting him with his deepest secrets. to then find out that troy was just messing with him, and that those moments of percieved true friendship were just lies for entertainmemt… ouch.

and then him trying to adapt to troy’s view of friendship throughout the episode and him just being painfully wrong and going too over the top.

plus, troy’s position that “friends mess with each other” must originate from his high school experience. I’m sure he himself got messed with a lot as a kid/teenager. so, he learned to tell when people are lying for fun to him, and he learned how to do it to others. there’s a lot more to be said about that but again. Ouch!!!

I mean, of course it all ends well, with troy realizing that friendships don’t have to be built on surface-level pranks, and abed realizing that troy had been a real friend all along… and just them both realizing that they do genuinely care about each other, and that they’re each different from any other friend or acquaintance they’d ever had before. but yeah.

and this is all literally episode FIVE. stop it

[giantkillerjack]

PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS

PUSSY.

BIG FLAPPY WET JESUS PUSSY.

JESUS' SOPPING WET PUSS-PUSS

[Edited months after posting to discourage catholics from replying to this post after finding that both the nice and much funnier not-nice responses to this were equally bad for my mental health. I didn't wanna delete it bc I was quite proud of some of my responses and it helps to have a visual reminder of why I left an abusive organization. Also, this means that any catholic who has reblogged this in an attempt to convert me, has now reblogged a post that, if clicked, links back to this. Use MY post for propaganda, will you!]

Thinking about how it was never made clear to me in Catholic school exactly WHY Jesus died for our sins. I just remembered that I was literally never clear on who the dying helped??

I've heard theories as an adult, but basically what I'm saying is pointless martyrdom seems a little pointless, and also with enough propaganda the big logical gaps in a belief system get really hard to see. Especially if questioning anything is blasphemy.

I would have gotten in so much trouble for insisting the teacher explain how Jesus helped us by being tortured to death by Romans even when God could have prevented it! God sent his only Son, they would have said! Be grateful, they'd say! Be guilty! Stop asking why he did that!!!

[sonknuxadow]

"the sonic franchise has never had a misogyny problem" <- person whos never played a sonic game in their life

[ywpd-translations]

Ride 749: The last Straight Road*

(NdT.: same pun Kinaka always makes with his name and the word for straight road)

Pag 1

1: I....

3: Imaizumi-san!!

4: Go- good work!!

Good work!!

You were taking a long time for this lap

Pag 2

1: Yes, teh, I got a fl-fl-flat- my bike!!

Yessir!!

2: It's the tire!!

4: Only tires can get a flat

Ah- damn, yes, that's right

Right!!

6: I thought something like this might have happened, so I brought these

Replacement tubes, tire levers, and a pump. Use them

Pag 3

2: This is unusual!! I never thought Imaizumi-san was the attentive type – is it just for us!?

Yeah!! I thought first and second years were just not important to him....

3: You don't want to use the,?

We'll use them, thank you so much!!

4: You saved us, teh....!!

That's true

6: Ah, uhm... but..... Imaizumi-san

Earlier you said that

7: Sugimoto-san won't come”, what did you mean?

Pag 4

1: He retired

Pag 5

1: He's still displayed on the board, but

3: There's still time until midnight

If Sugimoto-kun....

4: Please leave the possibility open in case Sugimoto-kun wants to come back!!

5: Onoda insisted

6: Re... tired.....

Sugi..... moto-san....

Pag 6

1: He used up all his stamina and mental strength in his fight against Danchiku, and he was defeated

2: You didn't notice because you've been on the course the whole time

4: Ah... actually, when it got dark, Sugimoto-san and Danchiku-san passed us various times... teh

Huh!? That? So at that time-!?

5: You have no time to talk about unimportant things

As soon as you're done with the repairs, run, first years

6: Soon

Pag 7

1: Waa, ye-yes, teh, thank you for the tools

Yeah, there's still 40km

2: If we join our strengths....

Don't cooperate

5: Teh!?

7: From now on, you can't allow yourselves to run like friends

8: Huh....

Our “buddies” stickers.....!?

You have to fight

Pag 8

1: And win the last spot to be an Inter High member!!

Pag 9

1: Fa.... ight....

2: Against.... Kinaka-kun

3: Against.... Rokudai

4: 35km left!!

Gooo!! Kinakaa, Rokudaii!!

Do your best...!!

5: I feel like they'll be able to run the 1000km!!

Amazing!

Ah, but there was no distance between them just now?

Pag 10

1: Fight....

2: The spot as a regular in the two-times national champion, Sohoku....

3: I can't take it by just being friendly....!!

4: And also

5: There's Sugimoto-san's wish!!

Pag 11

1: Wa- wait, please, Imaizumi-san

But.... if in this training camp the condition to become the sixth regular was to finish the 1000km first....

2: Then why did Sugimoto-san and Danchiku-san race!?

4: I came here to give you a message from Sugimoto

5: I think, I think it's necessary, you know

Sohoku is a team that connect and support each other

6: Just like during our first year, you, Naruko, and Onoda, connected your wishes and aimed for the goal

7: And last year Kaburagi ran with Aoyagi-san and carried the team until the mountains on the third day

8: So I think we need it

9: Our third year Inter High members

Pag 12

1: Definitely need a “first year”!!

3: Even if he knew he was making his own situation worse, he thought about the best shape for the team would be

4: He accepted it, and fought

Pag 13

1: For the fifth place

3: Among the first years, those two are left, I look forward to see what they do!!

That's too much food

4: Danchiku probably understood it, too

That's why he fought with all his strength

6: Now you two have to run with the weight of those expectations on your back!!

7: Fight, against your opponent and against yourself!! Use all your strength

Pag 14

1: And pull to yourself that last jersey!!

2: Straaa-

Pag 15

1: Straight roaaad!!

2: - traight!!

3: …. ngh

Ugh.....

4: Kinaka-kun.....

5: Don't cry, Rokudai!!

Pag 16

1: What are you doing, oi!! I'll leave you behind like this!! I'll tear you off!!

If you give up, then it's lucky for me!!

2: My goal has always been the Inter High jersey!!

To get back at those senpai who made fun of me!!

3: To show it to the Onii-san who taught me how to ride bikes!!

So, for that....

6: So I'm telling you not to cry!!

Pag 17

1: But, Kinaka-kun....

It's that your “Straitgh road”, wasn't fast at all....!!

4: You knee? It's your knee, right?

Since when? Since a while ago?

5: Since when we were at about 800km

Pag 18

1: It's a race, Rokudai

2: You should have told me, teh

I didn't notice, teh!!

3: I'm such an incapable former manager, teh....

4: Since when I lost to you in the first years' race

6: I've been thinking that I would definitely not lose the next time we race

7: Even though the truth is that I don't really care about that anymore

So, once again...

Pag 19

1: It's a race, Rokudai!!

3: Let's do it, Rokudai!!

I can't, teh

4: Race me, pedal!!

I don't want to, teh....

5: Fight me!!

I won't pedal, teh

Pag 20

1: Because, if I fight you now, Kinaka-kun, I'll end up winning, teh

Pag 22

1: With that kindness of yours, support our senpai during the Inter High

[jesncin]

I think what's funny about MAWS S1 is how the build up to the show's attempt at allegory for xenophobia don't really affect Clark's character that much. His anguish before he fights Parasitezilla is due to the general's exposition holograms, and it ends up feeling that stuff was just there to set up Lois's speech. Also, I just find it funny how the show had Ma Kent take the time to knit the shorts- not a whole suit, just shorts.

Exactly! I've said that this show has a "short term memory loss" problem where it slaps on a theme to a series of disparate events and doesn't go back to check if those scenes reinforced the theme they were leading up to. Parasitezilla/Ivo's motivation as a villain is unrelated to xenophobia and makes no sense (we can't trust Superman, he's some nice stranger! Unlike me who will provide self defense suits you'll have to pay to use, therefore you'll be more,,, trustworthy somehow? Because you paid a product to protect others and yourself? Never mind that his tech made no sense either I could go on about how awful their Parasite is). It makes it so Clark (or his friends) don't actually go through character development. Stuff just happened.

Haha I think it's so funny that people praise Ma Kent for adding the red underwear because on a meta commentary scale it's a return to form to have Supes in the red trunks again- but like in the context of MAWS Ma Kent was a total freak for doing that! Clark was gifted with a suit from an essentially dead culture and Ma Kent's first reaction is hmm I'm gonna add red underwear on this sacred dead foreign culture's outfit. It's clear the writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too- they wanted that magical girl transformation scene where the Kryptonians bestow an outfit onto Clark, but they're attached to Ma Kent sewing the outfit too so this was their compromise. Freak Ma Kent lol

[familyabolisher]

lol if i were to corral a bunch of essays on literary houses / the literary function[s] of The House (those ive written before plus a handful of new ones) into one essay collection and chuck it up on itch.io for PWYC would anyone be interested

[masculinepeacock]

Here & Queer

[Image Description: A photo of a tan and light green house in the front of mountains, but is sitting in a field. A title on the photo says, "here & queer" in all caps, and it also says, "by h. moon" across the bottom. /end ID]

Here & Queer is a digital zine about the experience of being queer in the US south, especially with everything going on in the United States. 

This zine has two essays and six poems, all written by h. moon.  The author h. moon is a transmasc person living and going to college in the United States south. These poems and essays are based on his experiences in the south and do not show a monolith of beliefs.

Here & Queer is $2 on itch.io!

[my-hyperfixations]

This is my petition

If “Bernadette” by IAMX is the Fyolai song

And “Partners in Crime” by Set It Off is the Soukoku song

Then I raise to you all:

“Angel with a Shotgun” by The Cab as Suegiku’s song