#performance measures

[knifeforkspooncup]

my bad i forgot this was the morality ocd purgatory website where thought crimes are more damnable than real crimes and you can catch Being Evil like it's TB in the 1800s just by looking at problematic media

[qoldenskies]

cc!donnie calls himself stupid so much, does he actually think hes stupid? :(

yes and no? he doubts his own expertise with how much it's been called into question, and he is uncomfortably aware of his lack of social abilities and such, but rationally he knows he is like. objectively more book-smart than the average person. he did 100% mean it at the end of caged lungs when he told april he wouldnt be any good at helping her with coding, though. he was just too far gone at that point, and that stems from the whole situation with fixing leo's phone. later he just knows he has performance anxiety and cant be watched while he works.

in most cases its better to see it as, like... a programmed, conditioned response. it's something he says for not knowing things. it's people-pleasing, especially towards his brothers. he puts himself down to prop them up, to remind them that he knows what he thinks his place is-- mostly to prevent them from having to remind him. especially as he grapples with trauma, he gets upset with himself for freaking out and losing control of himself. he knows it's not stupidity, but someone has to call him that so he doesn't get too big a head, or get too confident.

sometimes he'll say it and mean it, but most of the time cc!donnie going "i'm so stupid" is the same as him saying "i'm sorry." it's his way of saying he knew he was bad when he thinks an apology wont work. it gets to the root of what he thinks the problem is-- that there is something inherently wrong with him, and he deserves to be treated like he's lesser because of it.

probably the best example of this ^^^ it's people-pleasing all the way down. he doesn't know what to say, he thinks an apology wont work, and he's scared. he was pushed to verbally degrade himself before while cursed, so it's what he turns to when he wants to make them feel better. sometimes it'll come off as guilt-tripping the way he immediately rushes to blame and degrade himself when they're upset, even in things he doesn't have a hand in, but in CL they beat him into that habit.

their counter now is usually "you're scared"/"you didn't know better", and donnie does try to internalize that, but sometimes it doesn't get to the root of the problem that donnie's refusing to express. sometimes he knows that he's not an idiot and that he cant help being afraid. what he's actually trying to say is that it's okay for them to abuse him. in a roundabout way, he's asking.

[preraphaelitepaintings]

Mariana

Artist: Sir John Everett Millais, Bt (English, 1829–1896)

Date: 1851

Medium: Oil paint on mahogany

Collection: TATE Britain, United Kingdom

Description

Mariana is a character from Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure. Her fiancé Angelo leaves after her family’s money is lost in a shipwreck. Still in love with him, she hopes they will be reunited. Here Millais shows Mariana pausing to stretch her back after working at some embroidery. Autumn leaves scattered on the ground suggest the passage of time. The painting was originally exhibited with lines from Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Mariana’: “She only said, ‘My life is dreary – He cometh not!’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary – I would that I were dead!’”

[majimaisms]

[shakingparadigm]

hey have we considered the possibility that the reason ivan specifically choked till was because he was mimicking what mizi did to luka in round 5

Yup, pretty sure that's where he got the idea. Ivan got to witness exactly what the consequences were in that kind of situation. He became aware of the near-immediate death sentence, a way to eliminate yourself before the scores are even tallied. Ivan was desperate, and this seemed like the only sure-fire method to ensure Till's survival since he was underperforming. It's most likely thanks to Mizi's outburst in ROUND 5 that Ivan was able to pull off this sacrifice.

[mariocki]

L'armée des ombres (Army of Shadows, 1969)

"It's impossible not to be afraid of dying. But I'm too stubborn, too much of an animal to believe it. If I don't believe it to the very last moment, the last split second, I'll never die."

[mervynbunter]

Ronald Pickup as The Forger in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (1973), dir. Fred Zinneman

Forget about makeup. The most important thing is the skin—your skin must look grey and tired. We used the trick in the army to fake illness and get out of fatigue duty. Can you get hold of some cordite?

[higherhell]

Full, Shilfee and Tulipcorobockles - Chichiro, two-tone portrait in black and red acrylic (April 21, 2025 - POSCA on 6x6 canvas)

[aliusfrater]

that being said knowing that jensen reads his scripts once and never ahead of time makes the rate of on set changes between jared and jensen specifically very interesting to me because i think it works really for a character as 'emotionally driven' as dean. it's exactly what he's talking about during panels wherein you have to be 'emotionally available', which i'd always assumed to mean specifically in the context of reacting to one's environment as your character except he's more so reacting to his dean's emotion as the conditions of his environment become separate from the page, real. it's cool. it would be really interesting to direct jensen i remember saying on my first watch that i thought he seemed to take direction really, really well and a lot of his work seems to take place more so on set than in preparation. which makes so much sense based on his 'training' on dool where he always had so much to do on a rigid schedule

[starleska]

just watched The Substance (2024), and oooooh, many thoughts. if you haven't seen it yet (and can stomach it), do yourself a favour and watch!! tw for discussion of body horror, body dysmorphia and drugs under the cut

i think the most genius thing about The Substance is how from the beginning, we are led to believe that the level of body dysmorphia and self-loathing Elisabeth Sparkle experiences is relatively recent, due to her being older for a Hollywood star. we think that this is something which is alleviated by the Substance, and at the very least Sue gets to live a life which is unburdened until she reaches Elisabeth's age... ...but that's not true at all. Sue experiences the same level of self-loathing and body dysmorphia at her own apparent age, and it's clear that Elisabeth has felt this way for her entire life. Sue holding up wizened Elisabeth to the mirror, and Monstro Elisasue looking at herself in the mirror...that has always been the way she views herself. it's symptomatic not just of being in Hollywood for a long time and spending years under intense scrutiny with your beauty and fitness as your currency. i've been that person before: a 'gets dressed and undressed 20 times before leaving the house' person, and a 'dissociates in front of the mirror because their face doesn't look right' kind of person. The Substance is a magnificent critique of the way Hollywood chews up and spits out young starlets, but it's also a scintillating dissection of every industry which profits off of convincing us that we are monstrous. it's brilliant, and it's sickening, and one of the most excellent and upsetting movies i've ever seen 💔

[heel-samizayn]

I can't imagine bringing up real-life shit or loss and having to keep it together live on tv like so many wrestlers do. I'd want to choke back and supress the emotion in order to keep the show going smoothly, almost risking sounding inauthentic, but then you also need to bring some of it forward to show that it's genuine, because that real emotion is part of the art. These guys are true professionals. You rarely see that careful struggle play out across their face or in their voice. Even if the words or stories have a grain of deeper truth, the performance must remain crafted, and they do a good job of striking a balance

[quietwingsinthesky]

“least favorite” isn’t anywhere close to bad. it just shows how damn hard the competition is going, but we’re talking about gold medals all around for each actor i’ve seen portray the doctor so far.

[artemlegere]

Mariana

Artist: Sir John Everett Millais, Bt (English, 1829–1896)

Date: 1851

Medium: Oil paint on mahogany

Collection: TATE Britain, United Kingdom

Description

Mariana is a character from Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure. Her fiancé Angelo leaves after her family’s money is lost in a shipwreck. Still in love with him, she hopes they will be reunited. Here Millais shows Mariana pausing to stretch her back after working at some embroidery. Autumn leaves scattered on the ground suggest the passage of time. The painting was originally exhibited with lines from Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Mariana’: “She only said, ‘My life is dreary – He cometh not!’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary – I would that I were dead!’”

[akkivee]

DID YOU ALL SEE THE WAY THE BAT SEIYUU ONCE AGAIN CHANGED THE TRAJECTORY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE THEY WERE GOING CRAZY UP THERE TAKEUCHI SAN YELLING HIS PARTS LIKE ITS A ROCK CONCERT SAKAKIHARA SAN SCREAMING AT US ITS GON BE ALRIGHT HAYAMA SAN CHANNELING FCKING BIMI ON STAGE NONE OF THE PREV FANMEETS PERFORMED THE 2ND DRB GROUP SONGS BUT THEY LET BAT PERFORM KAIGEN ANYWAY HOW DID WE GET TERMINUS AND KAIGEN IN ONE LIVE BRO WHAT A SHOW I LOVE THE BAT SEIYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[thegreatyin]

scoundrel assigned dirk kinnie.....

look. in my defense. i have sources.

it just works.

the central theme of a prince of heart is someone who either destroys emotion and one's sense of self, or destroys through emotion and one's sense of self.

the scoundrel's core narrative theme? identity destruction. self destruction. having such an unrelenting need to throw away everything that it literally ruins them both inside and out.

they even have a tendency to splinter! to create doppelgangers! to literally shatter their identity into a thousand tiny pieces!

look at their reflection. the tracklayer's city. the false yearner. self destruction, and thus self replication, is practically all they know how to do. and it's all they want to do. they've convinced themself they need it, and they need this, and they don't need anything else. not feelings, not friends, not family, not love, not identity- nothing, but this. nothing but the thing that will make them happy.

and yet, at the end of it all-

[psychopomp-namine]

I am about to start a neji route (because I feel that I need at least three playthroughs to fully understand neji and his plays, so I can't leave him for last). so my thoughts on this may change, but for the moment, my thesis is that neji and kisa are the same kind of thespian, just in different fonts.

(I am slightly exaggerating kisa'a character here. there are hints and I do think pushing the envelope of what her character could be is part of what makes kisa... kisa. as I'll explain later, for better and worse, kisa is constrained by the conventions of being an otome heroine.)

anyway. in essence. neji turns Other Persons into stories,

and kisa turns Other Persons into performances,

while they both simultaneously run away from, avoid, or sacrifice Becoming Persons themselves, for the sake of theater

or maybe it's the other way around. something something discovery if not recognition of the self through the other... except they're both unreliable narrators so who's to say if the recognition actually takes hold, really. kisa at least is a little bit self aware. neji, on the other hand, deals with realizations of the self through writing, without actually processing them (e.g. ms robin, domina, etc).

I keep thinking about (novel) kisa closing her eyes and feeling like her sense of self would melt away until tsuki centers her and gives her theater as a way to heal from the grief of losing her mother. it happens again during tsuki's univeil performance: kisa curling in on herself and tsuki pulling her back to theater as way to help kisa move forward with her dreams. pretending to be others is more fun than being herself.

and then there is neji (insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme). but in his case, he would rather play eccentric roles, caricatures, comic relief, than be a Person With Depth on stage. neji is always either a seer of some kind (a fortune teller, a ghost who sees 10 seconds into the future) or a bit character (employee A), or... whatever he initially planned for domina. he is the mechanic behind the stage, but never the lead actor. his vulnerabilities do not need to "stolen" for the story, though others' are fair game.

kisa does not think about gender as it applies to herself in her daily life (mostly) and only sees it through the lens of acting and theater. how does she act mukai vs maiden, charles vs chicchi? the same way that neji does not think about the motifs and characters he writes as a window to himself, but rather as objects to be put on stage. rukiora is based on a younger neji, mary jane is I Am Death: Revisited (mary jane is to takihime as gashadokuro is to jacob), sissia is always meant to be the foil to I Am Death. but neji doeen't really understand that just like how he didn't understand oh rama havenna. sissia (kisa route, jack jeanne ver) is to kisa as domina is to neji.

literally kisa at her most extreme is just theater thoughts 24/7

kisa "I don't like being me; I'd rather be other people" tachibana 🤝 kokuto "I need to experiment and witness visions I can't create or I'll die" neji: this is a totally sane and Normal way to cope with abandonment and grief 👍

(it is not implied in the game, but since kisa turned to theater to cope with grief as a child, I wonder if the reason she never looks too deeply into tsuki's disappearance is because she's once again using theater as an excuse to conveniently Not Think About It. out of sight, out of mind. tsuki must be doing well, wherever he is, whatever it is he's doing.)

there is also the meta perspective of how kisa in-game inhabits a role where the player can (and is expected to) self-insert. otome dictates that protagonist kisa must be malleable to the player (who can choose to focus on a variety of relationships in her stead), and the plot dictates that actor kisa must be malleable to her stage roles (jack or jeanne, maiden or hero, flower or vessel), and novel kisa dictates that kisa must malleable to pretending to be other people because it's more preferable to being herself.

every thought she has about herself must be tied to acting, somehow. kisa's personhood is defined through stagecraft. she is the maiden, and mukai, and charles, and chicchi, and sissia. she can romance anyone in the school, of the player's choosing. she can be jack, and jeanne, and jack jeanne. don't get me wrong; kisa is her own character and has a strongly defined personality, but the story also demands for her to be malleable. a painting and a blank canvass at the same time.

neji externalizes where kisa internalizes. where kisa Must Perform™ to function and to avoid herself, neji Must Create™ to function and to avoid himself. scriptwriter neji dictates that neji must use everything at his disposal — his memories, his classmates, his obscure knowledge — as inspiration for stories. director neji dictates that he must use everything he knows about his actors — their complexes, their relationships, their weaknesses and strengths — as inspiration for stories. from the cook (mitsuki) needing apricots for a recipe and wanting to harvest honey from a beehive, to mary jane (fumi) being good at sewing and wanting an equal in jacob. suzu and sou fighting and developing a rivalry leads to jire and fugio fighting over chicchi. kai limits himself as a vessel in hasekura, and kai learns to embrace his desires as the priest. from the water/ocean/drowning themes, to rukiora being based on neji's younger self, and her family life and relationship with domina.

every thought neji has must be tied to stories, somehow. neji's personhood is scattered through stagecraft. the more you read his plays and lyrics, the more you get a glimpse of who he is. it is to the point that neji himself doesn't... really see how his stories reflect himself. ms robin being a "random" song the jazz lounge singer sings that hasekura and ando can dance to, oh rama havenna being a so-so throwaway play that neji doesn't understand why it's entertaining. lmao. neji, please.

and this is why when problems arise, neji becomes a demanding director and kisa becomes a chameleon actor with a shaky sense of self (we don't really see this a lot because jack jeanne is not that dark of a story and kisa is still an otome heroine of an uplifting game, but it's a reasonable conclusion if you push hard on the kisa from neji's "good morning" exercise, or kisa going ham on method acting as charles. kinda wish the game explored more of that. I think a very stressed kisa can get lost in method acting, just as a very stressed neji is almost paralyzed by the fear of the death of talent).

idk where I was going with this. just. them. they have the same issues, just in different fonts. and I think that's actually what first attracts neji to kisa. kisa "steals" (to borrow neji's own words) just like him. kisa is a fountain of inspiration, an ever changing muse. and neji provides kisa with an endless amount of prompts and characters for her to inhabit. kisa does like to play pretend a lot. that's why she's in theater!

kisa and neji: Art Imitates Life people stuck in a Life Imitates Art video game

ANYWAY usual disclaimer that I'm jotting down liveblogging thoughts and I know some spoilers to neji's route but I'm only just about to actually start his playthrough so. yeah. this was drafted all the way back in may lol, opinions may change and all that