#so I was reminded of this again

[audreydoeskaren]

Note about periodization

I am going to start describing time periods in Chinese history with European historical terms like medieval, Renaissance, early modern, Georgian and Victorian and so on, alongside the standard dynastic terms like Song, Ming and Qing I usually use. So like something about the Ming Dynasty I will tag Ming Dynasty and Renaissance. I already do it sometimes but not consistently. Here’s why.

A common criticism levied against this practice is that periodization is geographically specific and that it’s wrong and eurocentric to refer to, say, late Ming China as Renaissance China. It is a valid criticism, but in my experience the result of not using European periodization is that people default to ‘ancient’ when describing any period in Chinese history before the 20th century, which does conjure up specific images of European antiquity that do not align temporally with the Chinese period in question. I have talked about my issue with ‘ancient China’ before but I want to elaborate. People already consciously or subconsciously consider European periodizations of history to be universal, because of the legacy of colonialism and how eurocentric modern human culture generally is. By not using European historical terms for non-European places, people will simply think those places exist outside of history altogether, or at least exist within an early, primitive stage of European history. It’s a recipe for the denial of coevalness. I think there is a certain dangerous naivete among scholars who believe that if they refrain from using European periodization for non-European places, people will switch to the periodization appropriate for those places in question and challenge eurocentric history writing; in practice I’ve never seen it happen. The general public is not literate enough about history to do these conversions in situ. I have accumulated a fairly large pool of examples just from the number of people spamming ‘ancient China’ in my askbox despite repeatedly specifying the time periods I’m interested in (not antiquity!). If I say ‘Ming China’ instead of ‘Renaissance China’ people will take it as something on the same temporal plane as classical Greece instead of Tudor England. How many people would be surprised if I say that Emperor Qianlong of the Qing was a contemporary of George Washington and Frederick the Great? I’ve seen people talk about him as if he was some tribal leader in the time of Tacitus. European periodization is something I want to embrace ‘under erasure’ so to say, using something strategically for certain advantages while acknowledging its problems. Now there is a history of how the idea of ‘ancient China’ became so entrenched in popular media and I think it goes a bit deeper than just Orientalism, but that’s topic for another post. Right now I’m only concerned with my decision to add European periodization terms.

In order to compensate for the use of eurocentric periodization, I have carried out some experiments in the reverse direction in my daily life, by using Chinese reign years to describe European history. The responses are entertaining. I live in a Georgian tenement in the UK but I like to confuse friends and family by calling it a ‘Jiaqing era flat’. A friend of mine (Chinese) lives in an 1880s flat and she burst out in laughter when I called it ‘Guangxu era’, claiming that it sounded like something from court. But why is it funny? The temporal description is correct, the 1880s were indeed in the Guangxu era. And ‘Guangxu’ shouldn’t invoke royal imagery anymore than ‘Victorian’ (though said friend does indulge in more Qing court dramas than is probably healthy). It is because Chinese (and I’m sure many other non-white peoples) have been trained to believe that our histories are particular and distant, confined to a geographical location, and that they somehow cannot be mapped onto European history, which unfolded parallel to the history of the rest of the world, until we had been colonized. We have been taught that European history is history, but our history is ethnography.

It should also be noted that periodization for European history is not something essentialist and intrinsic either, period terms are created by historians and arbitrarily imposed onto the past to begin with. I was reading a book about medievalism studies and it talked about how the entire concept of the Middle Ages was manufactured in the Renaissance to create a temporal other for Europeans at the time to project undesired traits onto, to distance themselves from a supposedly ‘dark’ past. People living in the European Middle Ages likely did not think of themselves as living in a ‘middle’ age between something and something, so there is absolutely no natural basis for calling the period roughly between the 6th and 16th centuries ‘medieval’. Despite questionable origins, periodization of European history has become more or less standard in history writing throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas around the same time colonial anthropological narratives framed non-European and non-white societies, including China, as existing outside of history altogether. Periodization of European history was geographically specific partially because it was conceived with Europe in mind and Europe only, since any other place may as well be in some primordial time.

Perhaps in the future there will develop global periodizations that consider how interconnected human history is. There probably are already attempts but they’re just not prominent enough to reach me yet. Until that point, I feel absolutely no moral baggage in describing, say, the Song Dynasty as ‘medieval’ because people in 12th century Europe did not think of themselves as ‘medieval’ either. I am the historian, I do whatever I want, basically.

[silverysnake]

i guess this is my contribution for 2024

[ncutii-gatwa]

id like to thank dan and phil for not changing the way they edit videos and using the same sound effects even after so many years

[olileigh-art]

This image has been stuck in my head since I first watched episode 76 back in early January but I was busy with uni so it had to wait

[peachssodapop]

in the dark I found my sight And there your name was written large in letters bright! There my faith was! "Worry not!" declared the night

[skully-drawls]

This is gonna be the easiest challenge of his life.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Alas, this beautiful dream could not last.

[noctilia]

reference by photo.destruction

[myuniverseinabox]

Let's Go to Heaven

[glfry]

Can we agree that the "Thats two things" line from Mike was autistic as shit

[positivelyadhd]

reminder that making time for your friends, even when you're tried and socialising feels overwhelming is important to do every so often. it's especially important to do this actually.

time alone can be good, for a time, but humans are social creatures and we need to talk to people, there's nothing wrong with that!!

sometimes the more time you spend alone the more your brain will tell you to stay alone. that's not true, you're allowed to (and should!!) see people that are important to you. sometimes that alone can be surprisingly healing.

[kulai]

being utterly self-indulgent AGAIN

[thegunslingerletmedrop]

[crabsnpersimmons]

This one goes out to all the slow burn enjoyers, the dense Y/Ns, and the soft robo jesters that suffer in silence!

Inspired by @bamsara's “Solar Lunacy” fic.

If you feel like reading my ramblings and want to experience more heartbreak for fictional jester blorbos, check under the cut where I detail all the planning behind the frames!

so i heard this song for the first time in a while and the opening lyrics immediately made me think of moon, so i was daydreaming some scenes and then i decided to thumbnail some ideas:

and it all went downhill from there as everything became a metaphor and a parallel to each other, which i will now go into detail on!

you thought the animatic itself was sad?

*writing muse laughs maniacally* IT'S ALL A METAPHOR

Frame 1. "turn down the lights" We start with a back view on Moon. The lights are out, the Moon is out, but we do not see his face. The music and the greyscale atmosphere are enough to establish the weight of the moment and the weight on Moon’s mind.

Frame 2. "turn down the bed" We cut to a shot of Moon's body, kneeling on the ground of the daycare, like a padded cell. Moon’s hands are twitching with the effects of the glitch, with purple sparks coming from his hands. We still do not see his face.

Frame 3. "turn down these voices inside my head" Cut to an extreme close up on the dark half of Moon’s face. Now we see his face, but only a portion of it. His left eye is wide open, red and glitching out. The voices in his head can refer to the glitch but also his repressed feelings. Or maybe it could be Sun's voice in their shared headspace.

Frame 4. "lay down with me" Y/N's hand enters the frame from the upper right corner, lowering down to meet Moon where he kneels on the ground. Only a corner of Moon's face appears on the bottom left corner of the frame, his starry nightcap beginning to cover his glitched left eye.

Frame 5. "tell me no lies" An full shot of Moon on the floor and Y/N standing in front of him with their hand stretched towards him. A light spills out from behind Y/N, creating a boundary between them.

Now we see more of Moon. It is only when Y/N enters the frame—enters his world—that Moon’s body is shown in its entirely. When Y/N is here, he is no longer fragmented. He is whole.

Frame 6. "just hold me close" pspspspsps Playfully, Moon extends his own hand, beckoning Y/N to come closer, to join him. His right hand crossed over his body as he uses the playful gesture to hide his true feelings—to put distance between him and Y/N. His hat continues to cover his glitching left eye. He doesn’t want to worry Y/N.

Frame 7. "don't patronize" In response, Y/N’s hand pats Moon on the head, returning his playfulness. Moon looks surprised by the action. Moon, notably, does not lower his hand—perhaps he has forgotten it or perhaps his invitation is still open.

Frames 8-9. "don't patronize me" Moon rotates his faceplate so Y/N’s hand is touching the side of his faceplate, a more intimate gesture than a head pat. However, his hat is in the way. At this angle, his starry nightcap fully covers his glitchy eye and the dark side of his face, hiding his defect and acting as a veil between him and Y/N. A self-imposed boundary. So close, yet thinly separated. It's better this way. It's safer this way.

The lyrics are broken up by Y/N's arm, both to illustrate how the song is sung ("patronize" is drawn out and "me" is briefly added in before the chorus starts) but also to show how Y/N interrupts Moon's resolve, highlighting the irony between the visuals and the lyrics. Demanding not to be patronized, yet Moon happily accepts this play at intimacy. Don't patronize me, I am weak for it.

This is also the only instance where the red light of Moon's eyes glow and tint the surfaces around it. Visually, it makes it look like Moon is blushing (heavily inspired by @restinsodaroni's art). But also, in this moment of honesty, Moon's intrinsic light spills out, colouring the greyscale world. In this brief moment of honesty, Moon touches the world with his own colours, his own light.

(and this is also where i forgot to clean up the shading on Y/N's arm, but it's okay it doesn't need to be perfect it simply needs to be. And Moon will still love Y/N even if they are a continuity error.)

Frame 10. "'cause I can't make you love me if you don't" A parallel to a frame 4, Y/N retrieves their hand away and immediately Moon is reduced to the corner of his faceplate in the frame. Only now his glitched eye is fully covered by his hat.

The lyrics here (and in the next frame) in particular grow lighter to emphasize Moon's diminishing resolve and agency.

From here on out, the lyrics here are broken up, carrying on this theme of fragmentation. Y/N is pulling away, Moon is breaking up, the words are breaking up. Everything is coming apart.

Frame 11. "you can't make your heart feel something it won't" Y/N turns to leave. The lyrics, broken up as before, highlight the irony of the situation. Y/N, a human, can’t feel something they simply don’t feel. Whereas, Moon, the machine, feels something his code never intended him to feel.

Frame 12. "here in the dark in these final hours" Another full shot that parallels frame 5, as Y/N steps towards the light and Moon leans forward into the space Y/N once occupied. Y/N is leaving—that which makes him whole is leaving. And he is only capable of making it to the boundary where the light cuts into the darkness. The "final hours" suggest it might be the end of Y/N’s shift, or perhaps this scene takes place right before the glitch takes over—the final hours that Y/N has with the true Moon. Either way, time is running out—and only Moon knows it.

There is a contrasting display of body language here. Moon is on the floor leaning towards Y/N with his hand still left out. Whereas Y/N is turned away, walking away, and has already slipped their hand away and into their pocket. Y/N is closed off while Moon is limply open. Y/N is actively moving while Moon is on the floor, waiting, hoping, for that which he lacks the agency to reach for himself.

Frame 13. "I will lay down my heart" A close up on Moon’s hand, rising up again, perhaps to beckon Y/N back once more. This is a slight parallel to Y/N's hand reaching out to Moon. While Y/N can freely reach out and touch Moon, Moon cannot. He can't enter the light and more importantly he can't risk potentially harming his relationship with Y/N—be it through the glitch or by his feelings. He can only lay down his heart—put aside his feelings or hope that someone will pick up his pieces and make him whole.

Frame 14. "and I'll feel the power" Still on a close up on Moon’s hand, now clenched in slightly. This initially was going to have the glitch effects. However, I felt it more meaningful for it to be left without. Leave it up for interpretation why Moon pauses his hand. What is the power that he alone feels and stays his hand?

Frame 15. "but you won't, no, you won't" A parallel to frame 1, a view of on Moon's back with his hand stretched out towards the light, and Y/N walking into the light spilling through the open daycare door.

The placement of the lyrics suggest two different “you won’t”—Y/N who won’t realize Moon’s feelings, and Moon who won’t dare speak them into reality.

Another note on the parallel to frame 1, this time we also see Y/N's back, but it is notably different from our view of Moon's back. With Moon, we literally see inside him through the hole for his loop. However, Y/N is shrouded in shadow, just a solid, obscure silhouette against the bright light of a world Moon—and Sun for that matter—are closed off from. We don’t see into Y/N, just as the Daycare Attendant doesn't have any vantage point of Y/N's life beyond their time at the PizzaPlex. (The unfortunate reality of a being a character made for the purpose of being a vessel for the reader.)

Frame 16. "'cause I can't make you love me" We finally cut to face Moon head-on, frozen in place with his hand stretched out, unable to cross the boundary into the light. His eyes have gone dark. Where we began by seeing bits and parts of Moon, and never seeing his full face—now we, the viewer, see the full Moon, open and vulnerable—unbeknownst to Y/N.

Frame 17. "if you don't" But in the dark, behind closed doors, there is no one to perceive him—no one to receive him. The light dwindles as the daycare doors are closed. Moon stays frozen where he kneels. It is no longer the glitch that plagues him, but a far deeper dread.

But a lone streak of light peaks through the gap in the daycare doors. Perhaps that is just enough. A silver lining. A frail hope. A single, ethereal thread out of darkness and into light.

Thanks for reading and watching!

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled fun and games shortly!

[baeshijima]

so uhm…

what if i just died

what then 🧍‍♀️

[vulcannic]

Good Omens + Our Flag Means Death