#talked about in class and it also draws a lot from not modern art - i'm gonna stop before i decide to sit down and edit the thing

[thrassisfras]

Crazy how not wanting to do my final essays for two of my classes has propelled me to write both an entirely separate essay for fun but also to start plotting out a story idea I've had on the backburner for a couple years.

[teecupangel]

Hello. Hope you're feeling good.

I was wondering if assassins in modern au weren't assassin and just lived like normal people what was their job?

Hi, nonny. I'm doing good. Just found some time to rest up after all the moving and unpacking XD

Oooohhh, I like this ask, nonny, but Imma cheat a bit and use a lot of my answers from the modern-day fic I wrote last year XD

Altaïr

I think this will depend on how much you want to reference Altaïr’s upbringing in AC1.

If you want an almost beat-by-beat reference, Altaïr will be heading some kind of PMC that he ‘inherited’ from his foster grandfather. He’s born into the family business and it’s the only life he knows. Reading about new tech helps make the PMC always be up to date with their equipment but Altaïr usually reads any kind of scientific advancement on his down time.

If you want to give him more freedom to choose his own path, his scholarly nature would make him a job in the field of science or history (with philosophy being a favorite hobby of his)

History: more on archaeology who mainly does fieldwork, sometimes goes to conventions and symposiums to talk about his team’s latest finds. His journals detailing each day when he’s in the field are usually published and a lot of people in the field enjoy reading his thoughts… even if he sometimes gets off track and there’s suddenly a drawing of the person he loves in one of the pages…

Science: owner of a privately-funded research and development company (might even have funded it from the inheritance he got from his foster grandfather) and actually leads one of the teams. The company focuses on researching and developing new tech that would make life easier for everyone although Altaïr does have a notebook filled with the deadliest ideas for weapons that he doesn’t really have any plans to make.

Ezio

Definitely born into a rich family that operates one of the oldest banks in Italy and he’s being trained to be a COO. Would have summer jobs in one of their banks.

His passion though lies in the arts and he would paint whenever he needs to relax. His parents agreed for him to take art classes because they want to support him (and Federico is meant to inherit the business anyway).

He meets his best friend in art class and they start a friendly competition of painting the same thing.

His friend is the one who gets recognized but that’s fine with him. He paints because it relaxes him, he’s not there for the spotlight.

Their banks would have framed paintings of his and he still paints as a hobby.

He mostly works for the family bank as a foreign representative, going to other countries to help out a new branch, train the new management, and sometimes talk to possible clients and partners.

Ratonhnhaké:ton

His father wants him to inherit the family business but he decides to take over his mother’s job as the representative of their tribe and the usual liaison that talks to outsiders.

His mother is currently a judge in tribal courts.

He also works similarly to a park ranger and would check their lands regularly, making sure nobody trespasses or hunts in the nearby forests.

The Kenways:

Edward married a socialite named Tessa Kenway a few years after the death of his first wife.

Before that, he used to be a captain of a freight ship. With Tessa’s money, he started his own freight shipping company.

He’s now retired with his son taking over his company and lives with his wife in Kenway mansion. He sometimes visit his son and grandson to annoy his son and to just ‘hang out’ (“Isn’t that what you kids say nowadays?” “… yes. I suppose so?””) with his grandson.

His oldest daughter (from his first marriage) ran away from home after they tried to get her engaged to a rich dude, Edward knows she’s living with Mary and Anne, two old buddies of Edward during his freight ship captain’ing days and visits sometimes. He didn’t tell Tessa though (it was Tessa’s idea to marry her off) because he doesn’t want things to escalate and Tessa has a suspicion that he’s having an affair with Mary or Anne (or both!) while Haytham learned that his sister is fine and living her best life when he tried to catch his father cheating for his mother.

Even in a modern day AU, the Kenways will still have drama. Them’s the rules.

Desmond:

Ran away from a very isolated community that may have been cultists or just really ‘we don’t trust the government’ kind of hippies. Desmond likes to joke both.

Works for a bar that has a new owner who isn’t afraid to try out new things.

Desmond thinks he’s flying by the seat of his pants but his heart is in the right place so Desmond tries to be supportive.

Also… he was given the go signal to adjust the drinks menu and make new drinks so that’s an automatic ‘that’s my boss and I support his decisions!’ for him.

Shirley Templar is his signature drink. He’s other signature drink is “Desmond Take The Wheel” which is just him preparing whatever the hell he wants for a customer who cannot take back the drink because that is what they ordered.

Shay:

Used to work for a freight ship with his dad being his captain together with his best friend Liam.

Hope works as a logistics support for the company they work for and also a radio operator when things get hectic. Shay and Hope may have been flirting on the radio for a while (much to his father’s amusement).

The company they’re working for started making really bad decisions after the owner lost his wife and son. Liam was transferred to another freight ship to be its captain and, during just a routine job, they got hit by a massive storm too far off the nearest coast which they wouldn’t have hit had their course not been switched an hour before their departure.

Shay’s father and a lot of the crew died that day and Shay blamed the owner because the route was approved by him. He refused to settle and lost with the cause being given as damnum fatale.

Haytham scouted him soon after and he was a captain first before being elevated to Head Logistics Officer.

Arno

He owns a cafe that once belonged to his uncle (not related to him but was a close friend of his father).

He’s been arrested for disorderly conduct (he was suppppeeer drunk and his longtime girlfriend/childhood friend just broke up with him) but the officers pitied him so they just let him sleep it off in one of the cells. The dude on the other cell started singing along when Arno began to sing sad love songs. Both of them were drunk though so they made the police officer giving them an easy time… well… a hard time.

He uses the profit he got from the cafe he inherited to buy more establishments.

He’s now focused on learning how to make a bar profitable… by buying a bar.

Jacob

He was the one in the other cell. He got into a bar fight but he wasn’t that drunk. The officers heard the fight happen because some slurs about Jacob’s sexual preferences were shouted by the other dude so the officer just left Jacob with a warning.

He’s actually the owner of a small orphanage and has an out-of-school youth program that usually helps children from high-risk areas. All of this is funded by his family (to be more exact, his sister).

He has a degree in pediatrics and this is his dream job.

This might (if the rumors were true) have been because he had been an unwitting accessory to a tragic fire as a young man that led to the death of children.

He has an adopted son named Jack.

Evie

Doctor, got top marks in her batch, and continued their late father’s job as a concierge doctor. She took over her father’s patients who are all quite wealthy (including the Kenways).

On her vacations, she would join her long-time boyfriend (“You married yet?” “No, Jacob. Jayadeep and I believe-” “Yes, yes, if it happens, it happens, blah, blah, blah.”) who is part of Doctors Without Borders.

She’s officially the head of the Frye family which she inherited from their father but she always gives Jacob his share (“So you’re still a trustfund baby.” “Pretty much, I guess. My sister loves me… as long as she doesn’t have to hear about my latest dumb stunt.”) while also donating a lot to his orphanage and program.

There are rumors that it’s a money laundering thing but that’s unfounded.

Bayek

The police officer who had to suffer thru Arno’s drunken singing of his ex’s beautiful flaming hair and Jacob’s sulking.

Almost always gets the graveyard shift so his fellow officers can go home and spend them with their families.

Used to be married, and had a divorce after a hit-and-run killed their only son, he still has a picture of his family on his table and everyone knows he still loves his ex but the death of their child was too much for both of them.

His ex may or may not be part of the government’s secret intelligence gathering bureau… maybe. Bayek does not know and does not want to know as he doesn’t want to risk her job in any way IF she was an actual spy.

Layla:

Still works for Abstergo and still has a feud going on with Sofia Rikkins.

Kinda friends with Lucy and Daniel Cross, enjoys adding chaos to annoy Berg if she knows she can get away with (or make someone like Robert take the fall).

Likes to drink in Desmond’s bar (technically Arno’s) and always takes the “Desmond takes the wheel” option.

Okay, so these ones aren’t Assassins or Hidden Ones (officially) but I kinda felt bad leaving them out since I wrote about Bayek.

Kassandra

MMA fighter who came from a military family.

Had a falling out with her stepfather when she was young and she left. It’s not clear if she left on her own or if she was kicked out and she doesn’t like to talk about it.

She only talks to her younger brother although her mother is trying to mend broken bridges… it… isn’t really working… unfortunately.

Her brother is in the army per the traditions of their family and she always worries about him.

Eivor

Spokesperson for her foster brother and working to help out for his reelection at the moment.

Her passion is in poetry though (and drinking everyone under but that’s more of a pastime) and she’s working on compiling her poems into a book. Her poems are quite beautiful but tend to be on the side of trash-talking certain types of people.

It took months but the ravens/crows around the area of her home now recognize her and would leave trinkets as a thank you for always feeding them.

Note: not a lawyer so I’m not sure if damnum fatale can be used for Shay’s part but Imma wave my fanfic writer card.

[pilferingapples]

7, 22, 24 Feuilly for the character ask!!

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like that we're about 9000 percent more likely to give him dialogue than Hugo..... >< He's not even one of the Top Three Most Popular Amis in Fanwork or anything but WE REMEMBER HIM<3 And generally try to put him in group scenes and all as much as we can, if we're making those! --also also one perk of modern shift work vs canon era is that it's very VERY easy to justify Feuilly having more Off time overlapping with the other Amis and I have ZERO issues with people using that to include him in the hijinks. Put that political nerd in some Situations!!

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

...I like it when he gets nice things he wants I am a simple creature who likes fluff and fix its but I also like it a lot when he's centrally involved in activism and planning and gets to go on long rants about politics (thought I suppose for Feuilly that is also Nice Things He Wants )! I love his canon tendency to talk about his One Niche Interest, which happens to be EVERYONE IN THE WORLD <3<3<3 and I like when that gets fanwork time (although I VERY MUCH get that it's hard to do! how do you draw "intense interest in global politics and solidarity across national lines" ? it's a lot harder to compose than a handholding scene! XD) For the other part of this...ok I don't exactly dislike it but I do think it's very funny when people decide that since he's a Worker he must be a big muscledy jock laborer. He's a fan painter. Graphic Design is His Passion. His only workplace injuries are carpal tunnel and headaches from paint vapors and eyestrain from going over the same dozen damn seasonal motifs for twelve hours at a time XD Sorry to all the art idealizing men of the Working Classes as Big Buff Hulks, Feuilly is a little glass cannon with puny wizard arms and a migraine (I love him) .

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

..man that is HARD. There are not a lot of characters like Feuilly! Even heroic characters! Especially when so many heroic characters spend huge chunks of their story going " oooohhhh nooooo pleeeaaase don't tell me I have to use my cool powers to do awesome things, I'm just a little birthday boy" and Feuilly's whole thing is I WILL SAVE THE WORLD ARMED WITH BASIC LITERACY AND SOME DAMN COMPASSION

I...y' know what? Captain Kirk. Original flavor, poetry-quoting Stack of Books With Legs James T. " Let Me Help" Kirk. And I wish I could think of more characters like this because I love them, but well, here we are.

[lord-nichron]

did you take classes for art?

Yeah I took some actual classes in meatspace a long time ago, a painting class and a life drawing class.

But most of the stuff I've learned is from online courses and tutorials. I did a few really good ones on Schoolism, like the Kris Pearn Storyboard class (which is very old now) and two Sam Nielsen courses on color.

But I also watched a lot of stuff that frankly was just a waste of time and money. I'm not going to name any but I have to say that a lot of modern "courses" are just recorded Zoom sessions with several artists very loosely talking about the subject at hand. Those suck.

A great example of a properly structured course that covers both theory and practical examples is the one I bring up all the time: Toniko Pantoja's animation course. I consider that the gold standard of online courses.

Also I've done and still do a lot of practice, I do half a page of these every day most days:

These are with short time limits and mostly from photo reference but I also copy drawings that I like to try to understand them, there are two Chels in the bottom right.

Oh and the black lined ones are super fast without lifting up my pen, which is a fun way to warm up and teaches you to see the whole figure.

[rice-pudding-slaps]

are you researching about pinochet's dictatorship in general, or a specific topic? It makes me sad but I'm thinking about also researching about it

Hi anon! I'm doing my thesis on Retablo de Yumbel, a play by Isidora Aguirre that talks about the Laja Massacre on 1973 under Pinochet's dictatorship. Sadly most of my sources are in Spanish, but the Rememberance and Human Rights Museum in Chile has an english page with first hand testimony and research on the topic from the 60s to present time.

If you want sources as in books, I can recommend Gabriel Salazar's books on the more historical side. But I am a literature major, and the topics that I have a special interest in are the remembrance and narratives around it, so my recommendations go more by that side

In books that are more "tellings" or fictions "Tengo miedo, Torero" (I'm afraid, my bullfighter) by Pedro Lemebel not only sheds light on the dictatorship by itself, but also on queer issues. Isabel Allende's "House of spirits" is absolutely translated and you *should* read her books. Nona Fernández's "La dimensión desconocida" (Unkown dimension) and "Space Invaders" are two of the more recognized modern books on the topic, which are fairly recent and are translated! So give them a read

If you want outright testimony "Tejas Verdes: diario de un campo de concentración en Chile" (Tejas Verdes: Diary of a concentration camp in Chile) by Hernán Valdés tells his own experience in the detention camp. Is the first testimony book about the time published in Chile and you'll find a lot of important stuff in there. Also books like "Amor, te sigo esperando" (My love, I still wait for you) is a new one about mothers and widows that are still looking for their loved ones who disappeared.

If you want theatre, Retablo de Yumbel is one of my favorite plays ever, but also "Los que van quedando en el camino" (The ones that were left behind on the road) also from Isidora Aguirre. Nona Fernández's "Liceo de Niñas" (Girl's High School), Ariel Dorfman's "La muerte y la doncella" (The death and the lady) (This one is noy only tranlsated but presented around the world. You can absolutely find a copy), and Marco Antonio de la Parra's "La puta madre" (Mother whore) are good reads, but I don't know if they're translated. Also I can recommend Juan Radrigán's work, and Jorge Díaz's.

If you want poetry, Raúl Zurita, Damiela Eltit, Nicanor Parra and Víctor Jara. I'm not much of a poetry guy, but I bet you can find a lot of their work translated.

If you look for art, the obligatory one is Miguel Lawner's "Venceremos!: Dos años en los campod de concentración de Chile" (We will win!: Two years in the concentration camps in Chile) which I know for a fact is translated to at least english and portuguese; those are the drawings that represent different scenes on Dawson Island and other camps were Lawner was. You can also look at the Rememberance and Human Rights museum in Chile with a pretty complete collection of art, both in the recognized art world and clandestine and domestic world.

If you're looking for movies, I think "NO" by Pablo Larraín is a very good watch that talks about the end of the dictatorship. Also "1976" by Manuella Martelli. Honorary mention to "Bear Story" by Gabriel Osorio for being a short film with no dialogue that also tackles the topic.

Also shot out to the series "Los 80" (The 80s), which is a chilean soap opera about a middle class family living through the dictatorship and everything that ensues. It's on Amazon Prime, tho I don't know if it's translated.

If you're looking for documentaries, I think "Colonia dignidad: Una secta alemana en el sur de Chile" (Dignidad Colony: A german cult in the south of Chile) is a very good watch. It's on Netflix and completely in english. Also "ReMastered: Massacre in the National Stadium", also on Netflix, talks about the murder of Víctor Jara (Tho there's new developments on the case). But the ultimate ones are everything that Patricio Guzmán ever did. "La Batalla de Chile" (Chile's battle) a series of 3 documentaries that tell the story of the country between 1972 and 1973 on the historical front. In the remembrance front he has "El botón de nácar" (The nacre button) about Villa Grimaldi and the Death Flights and "Nostalgia for the Light" about the Atacama desert, the concentration camp there and other searchings that were done there.

I hope this helps a bit to start. Sorry if I went a little bit overboard, and I do wish you the best researching the topic. These are all off the top of my head so I definitely forgot some important ones lol

[yostresswritinggirl]

I was referring to Japan’s Heian period! I really like the style from that era, especially since the Tale of Genji and the Pillow Book were written at the time by women. It does lean more towards luxurious stuff, though. But a lot of etiquette, I imagine, would be part of Scara and puppet reader’s mannerisms since they are quite old. Maybe puppet reader has an archaic way of speaking? Scara would have adapted to a more modern language but I do like the idea that these immortals have habits from long ago that didn’t really leave, yea? Because I do enjoy the thought that if Scara has a house built for him and puppet reader, it would be similar to how he envisions the world he wanted to create for them. Him possibly using a bunch of mora from his time as a Harbinger to either save up, or go straight ahead with building it.

What I enjoy most about these two is how their relationship works and what goes on in the setting outside of their interactions with other characters. How would Scara continue to provide for them as he had adopted the role of the provider and they have somewhat adopted the role of house spouse? Thoughts like that. At the same time, I lean towards there not really being a perfect label for them because there just… so much that is left unseen and unsaid because there’s so, so much history and fondness there. A bond that one cannot name and limit with titles. Because to name it is to give it definition, yes, but it then it limits what it is. And that doesn’t seem to fit them. (Philosophy class hit me hard, ig.) But they are immortal (like lobsters) and there are many things about their relationship that are just 💖.

Anyway, I was reading into the Heian era and I just enjoy how the arts flourished and now the thoughts of Scara and puppet reader playing these old, aristocratic games while the rest of the audience (Paimon) has no idea what the game even is or why it’s complicated. Reciting poetry while looking at the moon. (Or just playing simple games for fun and being happy.) Scara personally harvesting plants and making his own pigments to paint puppet reader’s nails and draw their red eyeliner. Think about the stories they could inspire together.

I am… overwhelmed with feelings. Like, yes plot is important but I always want to dig and see the characters outside of it. Who are they? What makes them “them” and why do they do things a certain way?

Red Eyeliner of Fate: Tales of Scara and Puppet Reader in Liyue? A new adventure guide coming to bookstores near you!

🌸bloom anon🌸

Oh yeah, I do understand that part but I was just unfamiliar with the era and its aesthetics haha thank you for elaborating here tho! The luxurious and elegance (etiquette) part I'm positive that the both of them were subjected to before they were abandoned, and I think it's more apparent with Scaramouche with how he talks and acts canonically (his gestures are honestly so smooth and expressive)

Puppet Reader has a hmm I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, because as implied by the story, their speech patterns were heavily influenced by the years of worship and prayers when they were staying by the sakura tree village! Respectful usually, flowery and taciturn

Scaramouche definitely got most of his caring, breadwinner attitude during those days when Reader is fragile. You can also call it projecting his insecurities of being considered worthless and useless so he made conscious effort to be needed, and it then turned into a part of his personality around them. Now that they're in good condition and have no Fatuus to do everything, they now have to deal with overprotective Scara insisting to do everything while they want to carry half of the work because they CAN and they really WANT to haha

And you're right about the label thing! Mostly because they don't feel the need to label it, it just feels natural, meant to be, probably a connection they realized that do not parallel most human relationships and so, unable to worded properly. They are everything. I've also made sure to lengthen the first part at best to establish how they are during their wandering days but I did miss some scenes sadly

Red Eyeliner of Fate is definitely what we can call this alternate timeline where it revolves around the good ending of them still being together hahaha

[bugtransport]

oh geez guess who remembered they can actually explain the thought process behind Whatever The Fuck The Rothko Comic Is look don't ask me let's just let me talk about art for a minute that's probably easiest

"nooo aha dont write a fucking novel about your favorite piece of art haha youre so sexy" shut up! my meat is huge. AND i'm sexy as hell. thank you.

let's talk about Clothespin by Claes Oldenburg.

my favorite piece of art of all time. this isn't a joke actually. this 10 foot tall clothespin has made me feel just about every emotion in existence. there's a larger (i think about 45 ft?) version in philadelphia somewhere that i'm aware of but i haven't actually gotten to see that one in person (maybe someday) so we're just going to be talking about the smaller one. which is still quite large. i think to actually explain myself and this one i need to take you through my history with it and how i originally saw it, because that really plays a lot into how i view it. maybe more so than the actual piece itself.

i'm just going from memory here so bear with me... this story takes place back in middle school when i lived in the midwest. i was a young dumb kid who liked drawing stuff so my parents would just sign me up for whatever art classes they could find (i took botanical art with a bunch of middle aged ladies once which fucked severely) and, since we were in the burbs just a train ride away from chicago, one of the options available was to take kids classes at the art institute. so i took some digital art classes there.

enter me: 12 years old and just wanting to learn how to draw anime girls on the computer. at this point i have not thought about art beyond knowing superficially that i enjoy Some Paintings and that certain narrative works have whipped my nuts off and sometimes i would look at pics on deviantart and get emotions i was unable to describe but i have not really, at this point in the story, thought to question why i feel that way.

there's one other important thing to know to make this whole experience make sense. the timing of me attending these classes was right around when the art institute opened up their modern wing! brand new wing + taking a digital art class = i spent so much time in there i cannot even begin to describe it. i wouldn't necessarily say that i like modern art more or less than anything else... but i can say that by sheer volume alone, no question, it is the majority of museum art i have consumed.

anyway, for those unfamiliar: the art institute has two entrances (well, that i know of). there's the main one with the lions that you've probably seen in ferris bueller's day off, and the second one is through the modern wing. here are some pictures i found online showing what the main hall is kind of like:

that glass wall in the far part of the picture is where the doors are. it's a really nice space; there are galleries both upstairs and downstairs. this is also the same place that i saw Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) but that's really neither here nor there. i've just seen it brought up before here and thought i would mention that it was a very cool experience. one of those things again where i saw it way before i could comprehend why it made me feel the emotions it made me feel... and then i got hit with The Understanding years later like a cartoon anvil. i couldn't actually find any pics in the 5 minutes i had to spend on google with Clothespin actually displayed, but here it is with a different statue in roughly, to my recollection, the same place:

that is a really dramatic place to put a sculpture.

okay well, anyway, the first time i saw this piece, i did not think it would rock my shit. i actually thought it was just kind of funny. i still remember it - our little group was walking to go take a look at a specific piece and of course, had to go through the lobby to get there. i saw Clothespin for the first time and went "haha, that one's kinda funny, i wonder what that means?" and someone shot back "i don't know, maybe a giant lost it doing laundry." that exchange tickled me so much that i spent the rest of the day and into the next week thinking about it.

the second time i saw Clothespin i was mostly just confused. in the same way that today i can still remember my first interaction with it but not any of the other pieces of art i saw that day, i was confused as to why this thing was leaving such a large impression on me compared to everything else. i did look at it for a while and then just kind of left. and came back to it. and left again. and came back to it.

that dance continued for a couple visits until i finally got the chance to sit down and watch it for a while. there were some benches under the stairs for people to rest; i took one of those and started to people watch. and brother... suddenly i began to get it, i think?

[to be read in the tone of someone who has been haunted by these thoughts for over half their life] see, i think the real genius in the way this was (and the really large one is) displayed is that they're in thoroughfares. they're both in high traffic areas where people are mainly trying to get from one place to another more interesting place, right. people entering a museum usually have a starting point in mind that they're looking to get to and go from there; people exiting a museum are usually kind of wiped and probably not really looking to look at much more art at that point. it's not quiet in a lobby like you get when going through an exhibit - it's not loud, but there is a constant background hum. there's a café upstairs and people checking tickets and families and school groups chatting and, of course, in the middle of that, a 10 ft tall steel clothespin, being largely ignored.

yeah, okay, not totally ignored. people would stop and look at it for a second or make a comment about it maybe or glance at it in passing. but people didn't really tend to look at it like they would if it would have been displayed in a room. maybe that was because they didn't want to hold up the flow of traffic going through (it was always pretty packed on the weekends) or maybe the display location inherently lowered the perceived value of the piece as art - it's not "enough" to be put on display in one of the collections specifically, it's just a clothespin. but it was big and quite impressive and in the middle of the floor and not something you could easily ignore, really. the juxtaposition between the impact it had on me and the way it was being treated by the visitors en masse... you know what? it is kind of being treated with the same thought that you would give an actual clothespin.

it might seem like a pretty base level concept. and it is! of course everything that has ever been made has been made by someone. but this was the first time that thought had really occurred to me in a way where i actually grasped the impact of that statement. somebody out there designed the clothespin and put thought into how it worked and felt and looked. even the most utilitarian designs are still designed. Clothespin my beloved is a reminder to myself to appreciate and recognize the beauty in the little things in life that people might not otherwise think about and i cannot overstate the impact that way of thinking has had on my life. some pieces of art i think definitely are better learning things about the artist but i've never looked anything up about Clothespin - i don't think this is necessarily the impact that the artist set out for it to make, but it alone and regardless of intent obviously has done one hell of a number on me.

"julia that fucks but what does that have to do with sonoi tarou" i'm getting there i'm getting there. god!

i think the important and relevant part of that story isn't at all what i ended up getting out of that piece. the important and relevant part is the confusion i felt leading up to the realization. i am not looking to get into a debate about What Makes Art but i think that we could probably agree on a baseline statement that one of the things that may make something art is the ability to elicit emotions from the viewer.* while yeah sure probably not what i think most people would anticipate or look to get out of art, frustration at your own lack of connection and understanding is an emotion. being unable to understand the artist's intention and experiencing connections but taking those connections you make completely off book is still experiencing an emotion. simply enjoying something superficially is as well an emotion. sonoi is so painfully close to getting things in my Humble Onion and goddamn that really makes me feel some kind of way. he just has to unclench about it.

for someone who has a stick so far up his ass ("integrity and perfection personified," cannot stand the bitch) i can understand why the concept of allowing himself to relax and consider how he is already obviously being impacted by art and what that means is hard. to focus on the correct way to view and create art is... well, how many duels have he and tarou had? how long have they spent trying to do things "right" and get the "correct" feelings from it? i mean, it makes sense for his character. i know a lot of people who feel the same way looking at art. i totally experienced adjacent feelings before the cataclysmic earth-shattering world-busting event known as Clothespin. ooh i just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. introspection! it's uncomfortable but that's the joy in it! i want to psychoanalyze him so bad.

fuckin, to conclude: MY moral of the story is that there's no right or wrong way to look at art. and i dont think there's any wrong way to love someone either.

*"julia are you arguing that fat anime milf tits are art" fuck yeah i am because they make me feel an emotion: HORNY. sorry i had to add that joke into this otherwise dry ass essay.

p.s. it's my life goal to make everyone look at Clothespin. i have a picture of it at my desk. again i have never made a joke in my life

[ulubionywuja]

So I'm graduating an art academy in 4 days...

I'm defending my master's thesis on Tuesday, 11 am. It's been five years since I started this college (technically it's an academy,not university, not art school, it's an art academy), and thought I'd share my thoughts on my time there in a sort of written blog-ish format. I had written blogs as a teenager and younger adult, there were three, and the last one is still there for people to read. (It's mintwmb.blogspot.com, it's in Polish + I was still younger, slightly more cringe and much less bitter when I was writing there. Still love that blog tho.)

I started uni (I'm gonna call it that, it's easier) in 2019 in October. In Poland, academic year has two semesters - a winter one which runs from October to January/February and a summer one, from February to June. I started as a graphic design student, but graphic design was only available as an extramural studies course, which I was ok with... until I learned that it wasn't free, which in a standard in Poland. It was 600PLN/150USD per semester, so 1200PLN/300USD per year. Not really that bad, but still I wasn't having any of it. It was too late to move to general graphics, which is free, so I payed for a year and moved for year 2.

The design course was awful for me, I hated it. We mainly learned how to use Adobe programs, basics of typography, basics of graphic design history etc. There was almost no drawing or painting - duh it's a DESIGN course, but it wasn't that obvious for 19 yo. me. Also I didn't really like the people there, but I think it was also a me problem, not a strictly them problem. I was incredibly depressed during year one, but it's not like they were saints. I knew that they talked shit about me behing my back when I wasn't in the room, but that wasn't really a problem for me? I've been goth for 11 years ffs, I'm used to that! Also I didn't value them as people and I still don't. It's not like we could really get along. I had one friend, her name was Hanna, she liked a lot of stuff that I did. She became friends with the other girls from our year at the end of the summer semester, which I saw as betrayal, but I don't think it's the case now. I wasn't exactly likeable during year one.

The lecturers were weird. One lady, who we'll simply call A., was a nightmare. She glamorised being overworked to an extreme deegree, she even asked people from my group to tell her the time they were going to sleep. She was only impressed with people who had unhealthy sleep schedules because of work and treated it like competition.

I moved to general graphics for year 2. The course includes printmaking (like eatching, linocut etc.) and graphic design. Why put these two together you might ask? Well, in Polish they're both called "grafika". That's the reason. A castle and a zipper are both called "zamek" and nobody confuses these two, so why put such different things into one course? We'll never know.

Me and Hanna during class, year one of Academy

To this day I think I chose my uni course (both of them really) poorly. As a 24yo woman I'd choose something like ethnology, history or cultural studies on Wrocław University, but at that time, a dumbass, late teen version of me thought that a fondness for drawing is enough to go through a Fine Arts Academy without major mental health consequences. It's really not. You need a real appreciation for modern high art (no, not furry fanart), some understanding of it, and most importatnt, a need to create it. I have a need to draw whatever I like at that point, be it a historical era, classic gothic horror icons or even some anime fanart, but no need for fine, modern art. But also, ngl, I feel like painting something pretentious after I learned about it...

Anyways, years 2-4! I moved to general graphics. I was on the same course as my boyfriend. I had a bit of catching up to do... or I could have, but COVID happened. I was so happy when it did, I could finally isolate myself from these people without consequences. I already hated this uni and considered to drop out, but I actually really enjoyed online classes and lectures.

But. I had one particular subject that I hated with burning passion - creative drawing. In this academy you choose two main workshops alongside other classes like photography, typography etc. Workshops are divided into prntmaking workshops and design workshops. At that time we were choosing multiple design workshops but only one printmaking - mine was creative drawing, which is basically a very pretentious mix of modern art, drawing, painting and prontmaking. I was really shit at that ngl. But I wasn't alone there.

There was another girl who moved from graphic design to general graphics and ended up in creative drawing - my to this day bestie Pamela. We are polar opposities, she wears 99% pink and is a dancer, I'm a goth and currently a museum lecturer. At that time neither of us had a job, but I was interested in history and she liked K-pop.

I chose to change my printmaking workshop for Intaglio (mixed media but in the printmaking realm, the professor is a great artist and besides being VERY demanding, a nice man).

An acid etching print that I made in 2022, the plate measures around 100x60cm I believe.

I made a very bad decision called "artbook design workshop" during year 3. The lady leading the workshop was A., with all of her overworking yourself to death bullshit. Our assignment for the semester was making a pocket calendar inspired by the Academy (so they can sell it and never give us a penny). I made one inspired by the Academy's iconic neon sign, known widely in the city. I was getting standard critique sessions every week and showed the so overworked A. and her two assistants, K. and M. my progress. It was all online, so I shared my screen with Adobe Illustrator every time. People who do graphic design will probably be suprised - Illustrator is for designing vectori shapes, like logos. InDesign is for books, you can't make a book in Illustrator. Well, it was my first time making a book and I didn't know. When they realised what I was using, AFTER AT LEAST TWO MONTS OF SHOWING MY SCREEN WITH ILLUSTRATOR OPENED, they lost their shit. And it was all my fault. For not knowing. I re-made it in InDesign but it did cost me a lot of stress and I hold a massive grudge to this day.

The neon calendar made it to an exhibition called Bookmakers 2022, but at what cost.

During year 4 I got into a final leg of an art competition, which required me travelling to Northeast Poland aka Podlasie. The place was nice, but the organisation of the final exhibition was hell and again, made me incredibly stressed out. Also the organisers were almost allergic to listening waht others have to say.

Year 5, doing my master's.

The genral graphics course doesn't give you a bachelor's, it gives you a master's. Extramural graphic design is divided into bachelor's course first and then master's, but for genral, you just make master's. Actually, two of them, in design and printmaking, so I'm gonna be a double MFA in four days. BUT AT WHAT COST. During year 5 it was normal for me to work 15-16 hours per day with one meal break + tiny bathroom / making tea breaks. Also I started my museum job, so sometimes my workday lasted about 20 hours at worst. For a year. When I wasn't doing my museum lectures, I made prints and worked in Illustrator and InDesign. The stress was insane with all of that + paperwork, I have many physical health problems to deal with because of it too. But it's over now! Almost. I spent $400 on printing my design diploma and $70 on chocolate for my promoters (it's a thing you don't technically have to do, but practically, you have to. My bf was the only person who didn't give chocolates to the promoters and he's the only one who got a lower diploma grade <3 Still a 5 - we have a scale from 2 aka failed, to 5,5 aka best grade - but everyone who had gifts got a 5,5). I hope my defense will go well.

My last uni photo, made in the Academy's garden. Had to fill in my thinning-from-massive-stress hairdo in an app, so that's fun :))))

So yeah, that's my uni. I'm so happy to graduate and just work in the museum <3

[the-timeless-founder]

What would Carla and Claire's relationship be like in Modern AU? 👀

Modern Claire and Carla

A lot healthier than canon, I'll tell you that 😭 I'll lay some background about modern! Claire first and I hope you enjoy! ❤️

How They Met:

They met at art school. Saeclus definitely has Carla involved in his passion for painting, and Claire's adoptive family expects a lot from her as a gifted actress.

They didn't share a class or anything, they just happened to meet during an event where the actors were tasked with coming up with a pose with a word given to them. The painters would then draw them in that pose.

Carla and Claire were paired up, and since Claire was instantly interested in him, she opened up the conversation and managed to hook him on just enough to have him meet her properly.

So they kind of talked and even laughed a few times before their time was up. They didn't exchange phone number though, that came a few weeks later.

Claire seemed to accidentally bump into Carla everywhere she went, and neither of them was stupid enough to think it was a coincidence. A few more conversations passed and Claire finally got his number. And he got hers.

How They Got Closer:

They often had conversations at school and even after school at times. Carla went to these fancy ass plays that Claire did work at as part of an after school project so she could earn money and move out faster.

Naturally, they got to see each other at those events too, and that's really how they just started spending time together without a need for a reason.

Sounds crazy but Carla actually didn't mind going out in places to meet her as long as she's model for most of his drawings. There weren't a lot of women he trusted around himself, much less ones who'd expertly get into a mood and a pose.

He told himself that he was just humoring her because of this, and fooled himself into thinking that it was just a relationship of mutual benefit. Once all thatwas over, they'd be over.

Well he was wrong, and even after he'd filled a whole sketchbook with portraits and fullbodies of her in different angles, clothes and hairstyles, he still wanted to see her everyday.

They never really asked each other out, just slowly progressed into "going out" together. Neither of them really calls it dating, but if someone asks if they're single, they'll both deny.

General Dynamic:

They are that one couple in high school and university who are not really together but are serious about each other.

Claire is more in tune with society than Carla, and is generally more talkative, so she does most of the talking. She's also the one to acknowledge other average human beings instead of pretending to not notice them like Carla does.

Carla is not big into PDA, but he will walk arm in arm with Claire at every event they attend because he wants everyone to know she's taken. And if someone so much as sends a longing gaze her way, he's going to give them the death glare of their life until they back off.

Claire doesn't shy away from more physical and verbal affection though, and if Carla acts too stiff and uptight, she'll start calling him "husband-to-be" which only serves as a trigger for Carla to glare at her and for her to giggle about it.

Generally, Claire is much more affectionate than Carla, especially when they're around other people. He'd be more open to her affection when they're on their own, and it's these little moments that keep her around.

Carla is very protective of Claire, especially when it comes to her family. And while Claire can handle herself, she finds it sweet that he looks after her in his own way and lets him defend her.

They rarely fight because Claire always keeps things from escalating that far. Though whenever Claire does get heated about something and they do fight, Carla usually makes up afterwards, despite his pride.

Much healthier than their canon selves, I'm proud of you sweeties.

[dannyphantom-rewrite]

Character redesign references: Danny, Sam and Tucker .

(Art by the wonderful @gally-hin-phantom / @gally-hin ) click/tap image for higher resolution.

This is way overdue!! Sorry for the delay!

Danny

Full name: Daniel A.Jax Fenton

-Yes his middle name is A.jax and it's entirely bc of this post and this post .

-Danny is Trans, (note the cute bracelet!) having officially transitioned over the summer between middle school and his freshman year.

-Danny is still fourteen, and is the youngest, as well as the shortest out of the trio.

-12 ounces of whoop ass, snark and anxiety. Also puns. Dear God, the puns....

-hobbies include: Astronomy, astrology, D.O.O.M and horror movies.

-Astronmy is more of a hyperfixation tbh.

-Proficient in gymnastics, having taken classes from ages 6-12, and participated in jr. cheer-leading throughout some of middle school as a flyer. Actually used to be friends with dash and paulina.

-Favorite classes involve Science and Mathematics, he’s good at understanding difficult concepts when he can pay attention. Absolutely awful at reading comprehension.

-His style hasn't changed all that much; he absolutely lives in graphic tees, jeans and sneakers. He usually wears the hoodie to cover up the litchenburg figure scars he received from the accident.

-The Accident occurred roughly a week or so before the start of his freshman year at Casper High. 

-Much of how Danny got ghost powers remains in line with the established canon, with Sam urging him to investigate the ghost zone portal, and his getting caught and electrocuted within the frame after accidentally turning it on. 

-Sam didn't have to do very much convincing though, Danny's definitely a lot more interested in his parents work that in cannon, even if they can be super embarrassing about it a lot of the time.

-And this is the point where I break off from that canon: but I'm going to make a seperate post for detailing Danny's ghost half / Phantom.

Sam

Full name: Samantha Nicole Manson

-Sam isn't an Amity park native, she moves into town over the summer after getting expelled from a fancy private school and finishing the year out online/ at home.

-At 15 years old, She's the oldest out of the three of them- having gotten held back a school year at some point for "behavioral issues"

-Sam's personality is still very much in line with her cannon counter part, although while she may still be stubborn to a fault, she knows when to admit she's wrong.

-Her revised style is really more punk, than goth.

-Sam's family is still pretty well off, as her father is the Owner of "Manson refrigerators" which has had a long-standing partnership with Dairy-King Co.

-She doesn't have a great relationship with either of her parents- they view her as out of control while she feels that they're too controling. Her grandmother is a constant mediator between the three of them.

-she's a vegetarian, she won't eat meat, but ethically sourced eggs and dairy is fair game.

-Pan-romantic Asexual.

-hobbies include: Cooking, Gardening, urban exploration, social activism, Anime, horror films and novels, and D.O.OM.

-She meets Danny over the summer at the movie theater during a horror flick marathon. After talking with him for a while, she's intrigued when Danny explains what it is his parents do. Being equally shocked that she doesn't immediately dismiss their work and call him a freak, he invites her over to see the portal...

Tucker

Full name: Tucker Foley

-Meet Danny in kindergarten, and the two of them have been pretty much inseparable ever since. He's only older than Danny by about a month.

-Was the first person that Danny came out to.

-Bisexual

-Dated Danny VERY briefly (like, a week) in middle school, which, unfortunately leads to a lot of people assuming they're still a "thing" (it's annoying but I has absolutely gotten them out of a few sticky situations *cough* fake out make out *cough*

-Not really a fan of sam at first. Tuck Actually feels somewhat threatened by her in the beginning beacuse for the longest time it's been JUST him and Danny, the dynamic duo. He gets worried that Danny'll stop hanging out with him because Sam is just SO much cooler. (These worries are completely unfounded, of course.)

-Still a tech wiz, same as in cannon. Even though I've decided I'm going to set the rewrite in the early 2000's, there's gonna be more "modern" technology. (bc I love the fact that Jack, Vlad and Maddie were in college in the 80's and also don't feel like doing math to adjust the timeline) Tucker probably still has at least one PDA somewhere cause hey, vintage shits kinda cool! But it's definitely not gonna be his go to device anymore.

-Tucker has an issue with iron deficiency...hence, an increase of red meat in his diet. The "meat vs veggies" debate is absolutely a heated issue between him and sam, although after a while it settles into friendly banter rather than lengthy arguments that have Danny pulling out his hair at the lunch table.

-Tucker hates the horror genre, cause he's a freaking wuss, lmao. But he lets Sam and Danny drag him out to see movies anyway.

-Tucker's hobbies include tinkering, computer games, (including but not limited to D.O.O.M) coding and yarn crafts.

-His grandmother taught him to crochet when he would visit her in the hospital, Tucker Actually made his beanie himself.

-Danny's the only one who knows about that though because he doesn't want to be teased for liking something "girly"

-He still has a phobia of hospitals. Watching has grandma slowly deteriorating in one is what caused it.

I think I've covered everything, but odds are I'll be adding onto this at some point.

Next post will probably cover Danny's ghost half in depth!

(on a final side note, if anyone is interested in drawing character refs for this project, dm me! I can compensate with a fic based on prompt of your choice, or if you have set commission rates, $$$)

[sanstropfremir]

ok this took way longer than i expected because i got sidetracked looking at paintings and reading poetry and just admiring the mv, but it's finally finished!! let's talk about

higher

✨

i'm going to draw your attention to a few things.

firstly, these verses from rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge, published 1834:

The harbour-bay was clear as glass,

So smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,

And the shadow of the Moon.

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,

That stands above the rock:

The moonlight steeped in silentness

The steady weathercock.

And the bay was white with silent light,

Till rising from the same,

Full many shapes, that shadows were,

In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow

Those crimson shadows were:

I turned my eyes upon the deck—

Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,

And, by the holy rood!

A man all light, a seraph-man,

On every corse there stood.

This seraph-band, each waved his hand:

It was a heavenly sight!

They stood as signals to the land,

Each one a lovely light;

This seraph-band, each waved his hand,

No voice did they impart—

No voice; but oh! the silence sank

Like music on my heart.

secondly, this ivan aivazovsky painting, chaos (the creation), c. 1841:

and thirdly, the memorial of percy shelley, who drowned in a boating accident at age 29, in 1822:

there's a common conflation between the romantic and the pastoral in the general cultural consensus because the pastoral a) has been around as an art term longer than romantic, and b) romanticism does use some similar imagery. but there is a key difference: the pastoral is specfically an idealization of 'the simple shepherding life,' often for high class and urban audiences who have no conception of the details of this life includes. one of the more famous examples is christopher marlowe's a passionate shepherd to his love, published in 1599:

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,

With Coral clasps and Amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

whereas romanticism is a more pointedly specific movement that was active from around 1800 to 1850, primarily focused on intense emotion and catharsis as the primary experiential output of an artwork. which most prominently manifested in a deep fascination and glorification of the natural environment and historical nostalgia. the movement sprung from the german sturm und drang (literally storm and drive/stress) period of the late 1760s to early 1780s, which was a direct reaction to rationalism and enlightenment. romanticism had similar impulses; it was also a revival of medievalism and a reaction against the looming urban sprawl and mechanization of the industrial revolution. a typical romantic poem from one of the originators of the english movment william wordsworth, composed upon westminster bridge, september 3, 1802, originally published 1807:

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

this romantic fascination with nature was underpinned by the philosophy of the sublime, generally agreed to be first treatised by edmund burke in 1756, the theory was also written about by kant and hegel. in the simplest of terms, the sublime is a quality of greatness beyond calculation, imitation, and human comprehension. the sublime is twofold; the greatness of the ocean is beautiful, but its power is also terrifying, and the experience of the sublime is to feel those two at once. to be in awe and also to be horrified of its ability to sink ships and drown a life in a tempermental change of tide.

let's take a quick detour to talk about

clothing

in the present day we have become much more lax thanks to the aesthetic movement in the late nineteenth century, but back in the early victorian period there are still highly structured rules about when and what clothing one can wear in public. and the clothing itself is also highly structured. anyone with a passing understanding of the victorian era knows about the whole flashing of the ankle thing and corsets galore, and it is true that the general day to day garments cover a lot of area. for men in particular, this manifests in no less than three layers in public at all times: shirt, waistcoat, and suit jacket, with a coat or mantle overtop in colder temperatures. this also includes a variation of a neck tie (depending on what year), hat, gloves, and any other decided upon accessories (this can also include a corset and other padded structural underpinnings). an important tangent to mention here is that this is the uniform of the upper classes, although the rules do apply to the lower classes if they wanted to appear 'sophisticated.' the working man's uniform was also shirt, waistcoat, trousers, but the difference here is in the textiles themselves; the colours tended to be much more drab, with less complicated patterns. obviously due to the price fabric itself, but also due to the labour of laundry. an indicator of class here is the white shirt itself and its pristine implications. (there is a longer conversation here about the invention of neckties and detachable collars and cuffs, but that's for another day). the silhouettes are very important to note here in the higher mv, as they are directly referential to the 'romantic poet' archetype of loose shirt and tight pants that we see in popular culture. but as i've just said, the reality is that men of the era were not dressed like this out in public. this look is essentially underwear; the implications are salacious. so where did this come from? well, we can blame it mostly on lord byron, who by all accounts was the first western 'rockstar.' notoriously called 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' by lady caroline lamb (a married women he publically had an affair with), byron was openly bisexual and deeply hedonistic with a lot of questionable habits, but his poetry was so popular that he was known to have women following him in the street and gathering in large quanities to see him at salons. and this was close to three decades before lizstomania. his close friends and contemporaries included percy and mary shelley, with whom he lived with abroad in italy for some time (this living arrangement resulted in the writing of both frankenstein and john polidori's the vampyre). byron's reputation was so eclipsing that the image of the lush poet lazing in his undergarments has become its own genre of romantic, slightly removed from the movement byron was writing in. it's also worth it to point out that there are no official portraits of byron dressed like this from the time. the visual assumption is somewhat apochryphal. now let's get into some specifics. a.c.e is not unfamiliar to this silhouette; as previously mentioned in this post i wrote about their styling, the boxy loose upper and fitted lower is their general mode for their styling because of its emphasis on legs. cactus was the most extreme example of this, and to prove my point, this specific silhouette is extremely common in classical ballet:

1. vaslav nijinsky, giselle, 1911 2. nehemiah kish, george balanchine's ballo della regina, 2011/12

higher fits very neatly into this same category: we have an emphasis on the legs through tightly fitted garments and also through light reflective textile, as well as a secondary emphasis on arm and shoulder movements with looser fit shirts. plus, the shirts are made from fabrics that have good drape and flow, and mimic the visual effects of water:

there are also several instances of scale patterning and wetlook hair styles, further elabourating on the siren theme. and the jewelry is the same, purposefully cut clear stones for oceanic sparkle or pearls, the gem directly born from water, as highlighting accents to specific parts of the body - namely eyes, hands, and torso:

the body jewelry also serves a double purpose in addition to being sparkly; it gives a semblance of shape to their torsos so their movements aren't totally lost in the shroud of their shirts, and it also invokes some of that salacious element that us as a modern audience doesn't necessarily perceive in the same way when we see a man wearing only a shirt. all of these points are especially prominent in the stage costuming. concerning the veils, these are an aesthetic choice following the theme of depicting water without actually using water. the song has a very breathless quality to it, and the lyrics directly make reference to water and breathlessness, so it only makes sense to have a physical manifestation of struggling to breathe.

now let's talk about

mise-en-scène

unlike most kpop mvs, I would argue that higher is not a spectacle in what we normally see spectacle to be. the overwhelming visual saturation of goblin (and the goblin remix) is more in line with what we expect, but how do you follow that, top it? the answer is that you don't. you aim for something with a completely different feel, which is exact what they did with higher.

the performing arts did not escape romanticism. the very start of the movement, sturm und drang, is actually named from a specific play written by friedrich maximilian klinger that premiered in 1777. the plays of the brief period are characterized by extreme and passionate emotions, and were siblings to one of the most famous genres of theatre, the melodrama. meant to appeal directly to the emotions of the audience using sensationalist plots and stock characters, the melodrama was the predominent form of entertainment in victorian england and gradually developed a specific form of its own. in this period we also start to see the development of 'stagecraft' into the recognizable form that it takes today. footlights, limelight/spotlighting, the separation of house and stage lighting, fly galleries, elevator platform mechanics, and the first (purported) western use of rear projection are all innovations of the late 18th and 19th centuries, as melodramas were known to have very intricate and spectacular stagings. and to go along with these stagecraft mechanics we see the rise in designated stage crews, which were predominantly off-duty sailors looking to make money. the rope systems that made up the fly galleries were very similar to that on ships, and much of the terminology and supersitions crossed over: this is the origin of the term 'rigging' being used for suspending set elements, and also the origin of the 'don't whistle in a theatre' superstition. as sailors communicated with whistle patterns on ships, the same system was adopted for changing scenery, and therefore whistling a random pattern could potentially drop a setpiece on an unsuspecting victim.

so with all this backstory out of the way, what is the very first full location we see? a stage, complete with forced perspective via the painted fabric legs (the side panels) and borders (the wavy upper panels). we even have a flat painted backdrop with a projection screen and hanging overhead lamps. there's also a second interior set, a desk in what looks to be a study of some kind. bit self explanatory on this one, taking the poet notion on the nose.

the locations have a bit of an obtuse arc, but it's there when you look for it. it starts interior spaces, where the ideas of sublime attempted to be recreated for the viewer. then it moves to transitory spaces; portions of nature isolated from a whole environment, interjections of human architecture into natural spaces:

(the white hut structure in the greenhouse is reminiscent of a skene (literally hut/tent), which is the structure at the back of the stage in ancient greek theatre used for the actors to change their masks and costumes. it was originally temporary, but slowly transformed into permanent stage architecture)

and then finally outdoors, into the sublime itself:

jwm turner, crossing the bridge, 1815

lastly,

lighting

there's a very clear lighting pattern here, primarily in light and dark. the base colour story is fairly simple complementary pairs; there's a lot of purple/red and green, and blue and yellow/amber, with everything relatively on the same tonal level. there are deliberate interjections of heavily saturated red for specific effect. there are also, most notably, a 'dark' version of all the sets. obviously as a reference to the eclipse that we see in the mv and in the concept photo series, but also as a reference to that darker undercurrent of the sublime, the upsetting, the uncanny, and the terrifying:

And the bay was white with silent light/Till rising from the same/Full many shapes, that shadows were/In crimson colours came.

[slowlyreadinghouseofmirth]

Page 7

In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment -> Selden's affections here are plain to see, made so especially by subordinate clause 'in truth' which conveys an honesty and freshness about his feelings. Most importantly, he likes her when she is being her true self, unconventional, and willing to take risk. It's likely informed by his disillusion with high society and finding commonality in someone willing to disregard its etiquette. This is where Lily is unique.

There's also this sense that Selden likes Lily because she is impulsive and this sparks his curiosity to try and understand why she does the things she does-- understand Lily as a person.

He knew she had accepted without afterthought: -> This reaffirms Lily's lack of hesitancy, which alludes to how willing she is to be in Selden's company. It also shows how comfortable she is with him as she is aware of the rumours that could occur but never merits them with being a possibility, showing great trust.

Alternatively, being aware of the risks and having not afterthoughts could suggest that she doesn't fully understand the risks' depth and nuance as in future the situation at Monte Carlo would suggest, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

he could never be a factor in her calculations -> there's a colon that separates this clause from the previous one which suggests this is an explanation for Lily's certainty. To me this would point more towards Lily not really associating the risk of rumours with Selden because she trusts him so much. i.e she does not think of him when she thinks of the risks. But given that they are going up to his apartment it seems strange that Selden would not think himself a factor in her decision. It's therefore possible that he thinks that Lily does not think of him worthy of great consideration.

Also the noun 'calculations' would suggest a lot of thought had gone into the decision where it was previously implied it was one of impulse. This seems like Selden thinks that Lily is playing an intricate game, which further demonstrates his curiosity about her and need to understand her.

there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontenaity of her consent -> This further contrasts Selden's perception of Lily's 'calculations' and I think the narration is a fine weave between objective reality--where Lily is impulsive-- and Selden's subjective perceptions-- where Lily appears impulsive but there is something more complex informing her decisions. I think this is meant to show that Selden is blinded somewhat by his affections for Lily, seeing things deeper than what are there or what everybody else sees. Alternatively, we as the reader lack Selden's sight into the complexities of Lily and so she is introduced to us as other people see her, which isn't well at all, and we have to learn how Selden sees her. It's a challenge to care for Lily as he does.

The spontaneity invokes a light hearted and refreshing feeling of being in love which mirrors the honest of truth mentioned earlier.

So there's Selden's surprise at Lily being so spontaneous which draws back to a previous point about she is unique for being impulsive almost reckless. It's like we get a sense of her character and her environment from how the two are at odds with each other. Lily is impulsive; noone else of her class should be like that. In a way that makes her free from the system and yet shows her struggle against it but ultimately her struggle will be more defining.

She noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table -> I assume that this is a reference to future letters although I don't know if they would be the same ones. If they were, I don't even have the mental capacity to unpack that. Just the thought that Lily's fall is inevitable, that even when she is happy, having a nice time, an unknown omen lurks within the same room that will bring her sorrow... oh its symbolic, for sure. But I don't want to think about it.

Lily sank into one of the shabby leather chairs -> the verb 'sank' shows how at home Lily really is with this kind of surroundings, how the shabby whilst not fashionable or expensive, is comfortable. From this we and the the pile of letters we get an image of a a slightly disorderly but well-lived in home. This is one of the tragedies where we see the possibility of what her future with Selden could look like where it is unconventional but Lily is comfortable at home even with it.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to oneself! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman," -> I love Lily's exaggerated turns of phrases like 'delicious' and the exclamations; I think Wharton's emphasis on these exaggerations is to capture Lily's innocence through her speech by making it similar to that of a child who is easily excitable.

Again with the exaggeration but this time with 'miserable', we get the sense that Lily has found the world difficult as a woman to live in but miserable seems too strong of a word, certainly at this stage in the book and is sort of hidden within her other hyperbolised expressions. Maybe this creates a kind of cry-wolf situation where, when Lily properly starts to struggle, people don't take notice not only because it wasn't the done thing to do to talk about struggles but also because of her melodramatic personality, everyone thought the same stuff was happening as it had before and Lily was making a big fuss over nothing.

There is repetition of 'miserable' in association to being of female sex further down the page which is another example of Lily's melodrama. But at this point we as a modern audience start to question if she is actually alright (or at least I did). I'm not sure if a contempary audience if the time would have given the strict taboo over discussing any kind of struggle financial/physical health etc. let alone the discussion of mental health. From the impression I get of the time, the only real source of outlet for people struggling with mental health beyond self medication was art, which makes me wonder as to the position Wharton is writing this from.

she leaned back in a luxury of discontent -> The juxtaposition of 'luxury' and 'discontent' raises an important theme that wealth does not equate happiness and that Lily is not happy as a socialite but happy in the company of Selden, and that actually money is the source of Lily's unhappiness. In this specific context, she is lamenting her lack of freedom to live the lifestyle that Selden does.

"Even women," he said "Have been know to enjoy the privaledges of a flat." -> Putting the discourse marker directly after the subject of 'women' breaks it apart from the rest of the sentence and emphasises the extraordinariness of women being able to live independently. But it also raises the possibility of it and suggests that Selden thinks Lily is extraordinary and unconventional enough to achieve the possibility if she chose to.

"Oh governesses– or widows. But not girls– not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!" -> Again we have the breakdown of womanhood into distinct classes like governess, widows, and girls,which creates the idea that there's no intersections between any of them and is a reflection of of societies fixation for categorisation which loses sight the complexity of situations and problems. And it also makes it easier to place social stigmas like those on governesses and widows. Those stigmas are made apparent here but in contrast to how Lily describes girls, being a governess or a widow seems desirable.

In the list of adjectives 'poor, miserable, marriageable', marriageable is equated to these other adjectives and we see that Lily associates marriage with a poverty of kind, of the heart.

It's also interesting that Lily talks about herself as a girl where Selden speaks of her as a woman. Lily plays up her innocence as she has probably been taught to to make desirable marital match, but with that Lily carries around an air of immaturity and naïvity; she's still very child-like. Perhaps that's a part of her that's trying to cling to her youth so she doesn't have to face her future where she will need to marry to survive. Lily sees her adulthood as a constraint on her and her desires whereas Selden sees her potential.

"you mean Gerty Farish," she smiled a little unkindly. "But I said marriageable–" -> Okay so definitely a little tone deaf on Lily's part buts she's honest to a fault and her honesty is refreshing and entertaining.

I'm no expect on autism and don't claim to be but there's something about Lily's mannerisms here that reminds me of people who I know and am very close with who are autistic. And it makes me wonder if Lily was autistic and neurodivergence was recognised in her time if her fate would have been any different.

"Her cook does the washing and her food tastes if soup. I should hate that you know." -> I just love the imagery of the first sentence, it strikes my funnybone. I guess it also illustrates that Lily's privileged upbringing if she thinks this is a bad situation to live in.

Okay I'm going to bring in a bit of a technical term to describe the verb 'should'. So it's a modal verb (expressing possibility based on context) but specifically a deontic modal verbal, meaning that Lily's hate depends on social rules. When she says she should hate it it implies that society wants her to hate it but she wouldn't necessarily hate it. That's what that verb phrase implies in today's english, but language has changed since the time it was written so it may not have been written with this meaning, especially as a signifier of an older text is the use of modal verbs in places we wouldn't today and a lot more of them.

The shift from Selden's reflections to the quick dialogue and short simple sentences of action creates a lively and charged atmosphere that feels almost flirtatious in its rhythm but by the nature of the content is more domestic (preparing afternoon tea). The balanced turn taking feels comfortable in that they both have equal power in the conversation, being allowed to say what they want to and being listened to. It goes towards simulating what a possible future could be and also shows how happy they are in this moment.

[transcendentcacophony]

Thoughts on Worldbuilding: Storytelling with Geography: Lunar Lakes

So I've been thinking about worldbuilding for awhile, and one of the things that I like about certain worlds is that they tell a story with their geography. I think Lunar Lakes is one of these worlds.

Image: An overview of Lunar Lakes from Sims 3

All Lunar Lake images will be from here

This is going to draw from James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed and the concept of Zomia

So one of the central concepts behind Zomia and The Art is the idea that not everybody wants to be a part of centralized governments or nation-states.

Traditionally, most academic fields have held that as societies centralize around agricultural centers that evolve into urban centers, they draw everybody to them through some kind of unexplained magnetism as they gradually expand. It's usually held that this is because the centralizing power of agriculture allows for population booms not supported by hunting-and-gathering. At least one philosopher <cough> Daniel Quinn <cough>1 this is a result of these populations controlling access to food. Not just surpluses of food, but access to food at all, forcing those within their borders to join the system or die.

This idea that agricultural societies are somehow fundamentally better. We see this reflected in different cultural evolution models (all of which are horribly racist but still manage to hang on in weird places, particularly developmental models). As such, the shift from hunting-and-gathering to sedentary agriculture tends to be heralded as a good thing in most history text books and is pretty much always seen as a step towards "modernization.2" But what if you don't want that? What if you have zero interest in joining the agricultural community and implied state control?3 What options do you have then?

You, then, may be interested in Zomia or one of the other extra-territorial spaces that function similarly.

Image: A village in the mountains

So what is Zomia? Zomia encompasses a large territory that ranges across Southeast Asia up into Tibet. Its primary defining feature is its rugged terrain and various populations that have no interest in different state-sponsored "civilizing" projects. While different agricultural centers expand outward to fill the lowland regions seeking to bully those they encounter along the way into joining, various people along the way say "f*ck it" and go up into the mountains. Why? Because the rugged terrain makes it harder for their valley-based neighbors to control them while providing plenty of hiding places push back against their expansion.

Image: A map of the Zomia area highlighting the Southeast Asian and Himalayan Massifs, areas encompassing the geography of Zomia itself.

Agriculture tends to lock people into place and makes them easier to control, therefore nation-states interested in keeping track of large populations have a vested interest in convincing people to farm. Buggering off into the mountains offsets this. Agriculture isn't necessarily harder in these mountainous areas4, but you do have different crops as a result of altitudinal zonation and a fair amount of people choose to engage in animal husbandry instead because the high altitudes impact calorie consumption as your body spends more energy keeping you warm.

This impacts cultures in these regions as well. People may choose to define themselves in opposition to the lowland culture they are avoiding. They may hybridize with cultures already in the mountains, create new languages, or define themselves by the fact they are there for political or semi-political reasons and expressly avoiding the control of an outside party, even if that outside party is the nation-state they are legally considered a part of. There is also a tendency of these cultures to discard literacy for orality, in part because orality is easier to carry around and in part because it marks them as Other compared to their lowland counterparts. It also gives you a since of control over your culture itself, as orality can't be shared unless you want it to whereas almost anyone can learn a writing system and open a book.

So what's this got to do with Lunar Lakes? Let's look at LL more closely, shall we?

Image: The downtown region from Lunar Lakes

The most densely developed part of Lunar Lakes is easily this "downtown" district in the lowlands region. This area contains most of the community lots for the world, and, most tellingly, City Hall and the Perigee, which we're told in the original blurb brought the (human) sims to Lunar Lakes to begin with.

Image: The Rim

There is a little bleed over of rabbitholes from the city center onto the Rim, a slightly elevated area just above it, but these are no where near as "mountainous" as the craters we'll get to in a minute.

Image: The Canals

Another defining feature of the lowland central area are these canals. As these canals do not extend to a beach or other waterway, they can't be for trade, thereby lending themselves to the idea that they are intended for agricultural uses. They could, of course, predate the colony, but that doesn't change the intent.

Image: The Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot

On the backside of the craters, we have the Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot. We're told in the original backstory blurb for the world on the Store page that the residents had to harness the crystals to to make their colony sustainable, but it feels abandoned now. Given the importance of the mine in the early days of the colony, it makes sense they'd have a transport depot here for the workers and an outpost, possibly for the military, to protect it, especially if the world was inhabited and the indigenous people wanted nothing to do with them or actively apposed them.

Image: The Craters from Lunar Lakes

Which brings us finally to the craters themselves. Here's where Zomia comes in. If Lunar Lakes was inhabited and if the native population had no interest in joining the colonists or being exploited by them, where would they go? The craters, of course! This would also hold true for anyone who didn't want to fall in line with the colonial leadership among the human sims themselves. We know the Louie family, for example, had to move to the craters after they were exiled by Patricia Cross, the current colonial leader. It therefore stands to reason that, even if the people who live here are colonists, this is where they are expected to go if they are exiled or want to get away from the political milieu of the central powers in the downtown district.

Image: Suburban Subspace lot from Lunar Lakes

And, of course, architecturally, this is where we got those distinctive mushroom houses, which again, suggests an alternative development of this region compared to the lowlands even if the people here are exiled colonists, deviants, etc.

Regardless, we end up with a setting that is rife for internal worldbuilding and storytelling based on its geography. If you add an alien population seeking to escape SimEarth colonization by fleeing to the craters, it establishes a political backdrop for stories, making the world feel more lived in and providing a ready-made backstory. This is one of the things I think is drastically missing in the Sims 4 with their itty-bitty neighborhoods and lack of connecting spaces.

Anyways, these are the things I think about when worldbuilding myself. What story does my world tell geographically? Does it have a built in backstory represented by its geography? Are the different regions/neighborhoods connected in a way that makes cohesive sense? Are their other worlds you think do a good job of storytelling with their designs?

If you build worlds, do you take into account the storytelling potential of your geography? Why or why not? If you play in worlds like Lunar Lakes, does the geography inform your storytelling? Does it help build a metadiscourse around your game? Are there other worlds that inspire your gameplay with their layouts?

Edited in response to @nornities excellent feedback.

1) This is not meant as an endorsement of all of Quinn's arguments; he's got a weird overpopulation theory built into his writing that's a little too close to Malthusian for my liking, but I'm not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.

2) Ever notice how "modernization" and "development" are always fundamentally anchored in how Europe moved from feudalism to imperialism to democracy etc.? Yeah, that's the remnants of that "cultural evolution" model I'm talking about. "You're not successful until you look like us!" "Take these developmental loans from the World Bank or the IMF! We promise the strings attached are for your benefit too!" "What do you mean you want to skip industrialization and natural resource extraction and invest in your environment, happiness, and long-term sustainability? You'll never be like us that way! You're a failed state! Ignore the coup in the background we swear we had nothing to do with!"

3) This is the section that was edited after @nornities pointed out that it could be read to imply that non-agricultural societies don't have taxes, class warfare, epidemics, subjugation, slavery, conscription, etc. That was not the intention, although it is clearly stated in Scott's original work that he considers these and other negative societal effects to be the direct result of such "civilizing projects." It was not my intent to perpetuate that idea as these things do happen in non-agricultural societies, so I have changed the original wording. Thank you, @nornities

4) I also forgot to mention the clear exception to this: the Incan Empire. Unlike most empire models, the Inca engaged in a top-down society (literally) that was based in the mountains and expanded downward and outward over time. They were predated by two earlier Andean civilizations.

[zu-is-here]

Hi Zu!

How would you describe your handwriting? Do you like it? Do you write by hand often? What do you think about calligraphy?

I believe I've never heard of this poet, but you have an incredible taste, that's a fact, so I'm definitely going to do some reading now ✨ And I read Words before writing the response to you, and this poem is good indeed, just as expected from something you recommended (: The meaning is deep and important, and I like the choice of words and the rhythm it creates. And, obviously, I do like poetry as well, although I don't read it as often as I'd like. I'm just very serious when it comes to poems, so I need all the focus on that. Which is difficult, especially when I'm not quite alright... I read modern poets a bit more often though. Every now and then something comes up on my dash in vk, and sometimes I can't help but take a look. So, um, I apparently don't really have favourites, since there's a lot more for me to read and learn. Perhaps one day I'll have an answer. And, well, yeah, I did try writing poems, still do actually... Some of the words just come to me in the form of poem and not prose. People seem to like it as well, I even performed a few times... That was an experience for sure (x

Oh, you have no idea. I was forbidden to do many things, going farther than a street away from home is one of them. And we lived in a house, not flat, so streets are very close to each other, and traffic isn't that busy there, etcetera. My family's been unreasonable since forever. That's just how it is.

Well, I like to think it is a special kind of magic — holding a conversation with the universe itself, with both outer world and inner world, my own and the person's for whom I'm reading the cards ✨ To be honest, when you said you don't believe in supernatural, it made me a bit hesitant about mentioning this whole thing at all, but now I'm glad I shared this. It's nice to talk about it and being heard even despite our different views. By the way, if you'd ever like to get an advice like that, my cards and I are always there.

Oh. Wow. Sounds absolutely amazing, and your enthusiasm is simply contagious! No way this topic is dangerous, I love listening to people gushing about things they like, even if I don't share their interest, it's the best anyway ✨✨✨ And I'm so glad to know you have the opportunity to indulge yourself like that, it's just awesome. Do keep bringing yourself joy! Also I'm glad to provide an opportunity to talk about it, again, you clearly enjoyed yourself, and that's exactly what I wanted (: As for me, I'm not as much of a fan as you are, but I do like tea and coffee. Though I mostly use tea bags, and there is much more milk and sugar and sometimes syrup in my coffee than, well, coffee itself (x

Yay! 'Re-watching and appreciating Major Grom the masterpiece even more' squad! Now I'm even more excited, even though we'll go separately, in different dates and places. Still!

Your excitement really means a lot to me, it's... soothing in a way. Somehow makes me feel less afraid to mess up. Strange, but true.

Okay, now I'm happy (albeit quite embarrassed) that you're happy, it's a loop! The class was good, but the more progress I make, the more obvious it gets that we need more time, ahem. But that we can't afford, unfortunately, and I can't help stressing over it, especially since it's very likely that I won't get into the course with Chinese in university. Hope I'll be able to make it work after all, even if right now I have no idea how.

Let me tell you that I'm so grateful and glad you didn't resist the urge to draw! That crossover art is absolutely lovely, and the idea is cool! It's so in-character, and oh, the expressions... I do love the whole of it 💗

However, I also hope you did get enough sleep, and no nightmares interrupted your rest 🌻

Take care!

Hi anfie╰(*´︶`*)╯

Tbh I have several handwritings depending on the speed and angle of writing (thanks to my lecturers XD) despite the fact I write by hand quite infrequently *click click* Though my main one is like... a piano passage? Pretty fast, continuous, downhill ♪ What's yours like? *^*

By the way, it's just a theory and I may be completely wrong, but are you left-handed?

As for the poetry, that's the right approach! And it's really nice to have such variety for reading *^* Modern ones, you say? I was once at a modern poety evening, and it left me speechless... not in the good way, not gonna lie. The poems were full of feelings yet in profanity, and it didn't sound like a soul's cry but like a cry literally. Sure not all the poetry nowadays is like that, I believe, but I was kinda disappointed for the untapped possibilities of our beautiful, rich language. Though I in no way condemn them, for they have the full right. Luckily, the evening ended on a pleasant note when a woman came out from the audience and read her poem as a counterweight. It was no less lively and expressive yet very reverent and careful to every single word, every sound and pause... that was the poetry ˚✧₊⁎

You did perform with your poems?? \(//∇//)\ Isn't is magnificent! How was it? I'm sure you left the audience impressed ☆ Could you maybe share a bit with me, if you'd like to? It not, it's alright! Live performance is a special pleasure, after all <3

Ohhh I feel you (ó3ò) The more rules and limits, the more sweeter freedom, the sharper the boundaries of personal space... Guess your parents were just really worried about you and didn't want you to get into trouble (ówò)

May no one stop you from expressing yourself╰(*´︶`*)╯There's nothing wrong about having your own different opinion! As I said, there are many different ways for trying to explain supernatural, and they all matter. That's why it's called supernatural, cause we can't explain it, but it doesn't mean this doesn't exist or work or that we are completely wrong. After all, we're all different but we still respect each other and accept ourselves and others <3 Wow– can I get an advice even from a distance? (°▽°) I don't have any questions to ask now tbh, say, what can / can't be known with the cards? *^*

And thank you so much for listening to me ♡ You're a wonderful interlocutor, and I'm always pleased with your attention and responsiveness (〃ω〃) Oh, I can’t speak for coffee since I don’t drink it but many tea bags deserve more sugar and milk for sure XD

Yay the squad! (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)☆ We can share our new impressions and opinions with each other next time <3

Oh don't be afraid to mess up, that's what can make your work special <3 I mean, it doesn't have to be perfect. You're doing great already! (*'▽'*) And don't even worry about the future, everything will happen in the best way ☆ Just live the moment!

Again, thank you a lot for your support (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ I'm really happy to see others getting interested in the originals and sources or recognize the references (that's even better)! That's what makes me happy (๑>◡<๑)

I did <3 Though there's a long night of Easter preparations ahead... ☆ How was your day today? I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Take care *hugs* ♡

[deepdonutkid]

🌹📕💔 (I'm going for the angst) 💯(I bet you did something cool)💄🥁❤️

I AM THE SPAM MONSTER

Thank you!

🌹 - are you a romantic?

In my mind, yes... in action... not really?

I crave a different kind of intimacy and that's not typical romantic, because I think that's mostly pointless shit. Like giving cut flowers... They die so soon and and a potted plant won't die, but that's of course less romantic.

Also... I don't like the typical idea of dating and stuff. That's so annoying. Honestly, fuck the roses and the pralines and the surprises... I don't need that.

I value somebody loyal, honest, funny and smart over some fuckboy with romantic bullshit.

Acts and services and compliments are far more attractive for me. And I do them also a lot. Like I shower a person with affection and I do everything for them. But mostly it's not even romantic. I start cleaning or doing the laundy, so the person doesn't have to.

My stories are a different thing tho, because that's just living in my mind and it's not actually based on efficency (because I love slooooow burn)

📕 - what’s your favorite book?

I got that question for several times now and my opinion on this still haven't changed! It's torture the artist by Joey Goebel, which is an amazing book about the modern view on art and music industry and how creative people tend to suffer in order to make great art.

💔 - have you ever broken a heart/had your heart broken?

I guess, I was heart broken twice and I broke four hearts at least. Maybe I forgot someone, but... hahaha, that's still not good stats for me right.

To be honest, my ex and me, we wrecked each other equally. She was in love with me, when I was still into somebody else, but he was still in a relationship. Which broke my heart for the first time and it took me super long to get over it.

But then I moved on and started dating my ex. She broke up with me after six month and it was pretty much out of the blue for me and I cried a lot and she told me to not cry.... like what the fuck did she thought, what would happen? I would be super happy about it.

Anyways, the boy, I was into before, was single again... a month after my break-up with my ex... So... what did I do? Well, of course, I didn't hesitate, because I longed to be with him for a very long time and I missed him and we had a connection. So... why wait?

My ex wasn't too happy, when she found out and accused me of not loving her, which was a shitty thing to say and it hurt like hell, because she had no right to talk about my feelings like that... and I did love her.

Yeah, both times, I got my heart broken and there is still another funny story about the time I broke somebody's heart.

To be honest, I'm quite a bitch in this story, but I was a different person back then.

Soo... when I was 15, there was this guy, I hung out in breaks and we had no classes together, but we were friends and he invited me to a town fair, because he was part of a club or something and then, we told hands there and we kissed like... once? I just remember his sweaty hands to be honest.

Months passed, we were chatting and everything, nothing special and we didn't got far or something... when he wrote me, he was with friends and he accidently made out with another girl. Funny, huh? How is that even possible? But he told me, it won't happen again and everything... and I was like: "dude, that's not a problem for me. just chill" and he was like: "why are you not mad at me? You are my girlfriend" and I said: "That's a new information for me. I didn't know, we were in some sort of relationship and you didn't ask me"

"Yeah, but... I love you"

And I was like: "Seen 19:45"

After that I got a lot of mean messages from his friends... but funny thing tho, one of them developed a crush on me. And apparently, I was a bad person in this story. But yooo... I was lost in translation here.

💯 - what’s something you are extremely proud of right now?

answering this long ask? Honey, really, I don't know, if I'm proud of anything this moment... because I don't do anything right now. No writing, no drawing, no cleaning and well, I played witcher the whole day, but that's not an archivement.

I'm looking forward to write something soon again, but right now I got nothing. Maybe I work on my multi.chap again, because it's not abanoned yet, I just wrote requests instead of a next chapter.

💄 - do you wear makeup?

Yes, but either all or nothing. I don't do natural looks or something. Either I look like a hobo with cholera or like a drag queen, nothing in the middle. I would even do so far and say... I'm good at doing make-up, but just my own. When I do other people it's kinda weird.

🥁 - do you play an instrument?

I used to play the flute and bongos... but that was when I was three years old and I forgot everything and since then I'm very untalented at playing anything of instrument. I can't even hold a rythm... it's just not in me. I love music and I love a musician, but I can't play for shitbricks XD

❤️ - do you have a crush right now

On a lot of fictional characters and my bf, which I love dearly for six years now and I remember the time I had a proper crush on him so well. I was acting like an idiot around him and everybody knew. I couldn't hide it!

[deus-ex-knoxina]

When you added onto your tags and acknowledged that tightlacing is vastly different than corsetry... I'm ace and I think I'm on the aro spectrum but that was extremely hot of you and I think I fell in love

hey i’m on the aro ace spectrum too high five!! and FUCK yes i’m so glad that my strong feelings on making sure everyone knows the difference are appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!! and also you’re giving me this stellar opportunity to talk about it even MORE anon i love you let the infodumping commence

this gets long so the rest is under the cut:

TL;DR: corsets serve the same purpose as a bra, supporting from the hips instead of the shoulders. today, some people wear them for that purpose, and some people wear them as medical devices for scoliosis. if a corset doesn’t fit properly, it’ll be uncomfortable, which is why we hear actors complain about them so much (because they’re not wearing custom-made ones, like they would have, say, a hundred and fifty years ago).

so when everyone was wearing corsets, they had ones that fit them, and corsets HAD to allow women to breathe and move because EVERYONE was wearing them, including working-class women. tightlacing was done by a tiny minority of upper-class women to get the tiniest waist possible, which was fashionable at the time (and still is, if you look at modern waist trainers). and yes, it was damaging to them, but it’s not the intended purpose of a corset. the reason that so many people today think it IS is because of victorian men, who sucked.

(so don’t draw neil josten like a super-rich super-fashionable victorian woman)

(and that was the tl;dr so as you can imagine! what’s under the cut is quite long! BUT IT’S INTERESTING SO I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE U TO READ)

OKAY SO HERE’S THE DEAL. we always hear about corsets as like, women-oppressing torture devices. that’s not true. the *reason* we have all these misconceptions about corsets is the fault of victorian men, just like so many things are the fault of victorian men

the actual purpose of corsets??? like the ACTUAL actual purpose of corsets??? they have literally the same function as a bra. the benefit of a corset is that it supports from the hips and waist, not from the shoulders, so depending on your bust size a corset might be better for you (and for your back)!

and people do still wear corsets today, *not* just people dressing up. like i mentioned above, they’re practical, they’re COMFORTABLE ACTUALLY, and if you have scoliosis then special corsets are sometimes used as medical devices!

so back to them being comfortable. this is another huge-ass misconception. you know who wore corsets Back In The Day? women. not just rich women. middle-class women, working class women, EVERYONE. because it’s underwear. do you think a woman who lives on a farm and has to help with farm things could do that with a super uncomfortable, super tight corset? no.

you can try to lace your corset up as tight as possible, but if you have ANY form of core/abdominal muscles whatsoever, you’re just. not gonna be able to have a wasp waist. you’re just not! you have muscles there that can’t be pushed out of the way!

and are you REALLY gonna put all that effort in to lace it super fucking tight every single day? no. you’re not. because unless you’re super rich, you’re probably having a family member or spouse or maybe a single maid help you get dressed in the morning, and the two of you just don’t have time to turn ‘putting on undergarments’ into a whole fuckin’ production every single day.

but birl, you ask, why is it that movie actresses (such as emma stone and emma watson, literally just off the top of my head) always complain about corsets? simple answer: they’re not fitted well, and the actresses have been inundated with victorian men’s opinions on tightlacing and think that wearing a corset automatically means they’re gonna have their internal organs fucked up. if a corset doesn’t fit you, of course it’s gonna be uncomfortable!!!

and when it comes to movies/tv, whether it actually fits is... not always treated as a primary concern. because they’re doing it for costumes, and since it’s film, the actresses can change out of the corset and wear something else when they’re not filming. if you’re wearing a corset as part of your everyday clothes, you’re GONNA pay for one that’s made specifically for you (not to mention that off-the-rack clothing is a fairly recent invention, and for the vast majority of human history, clothing was made to fit an individual, so OF COURSE women would wear corsets that fit them)

costume corsets are frequently not a functional garment and they don’t need to behave like one. real corsets are, and they have persisted as a functional garment for CENTURIES, which they would *not* have if they were actively harming every single person who wore them. which, if you recall, was... pretty much every single woman. that’s the difference, and also, like i said, there’s an element of fear that also drives those actresses complaining because they have fallen for the victorian male complaining.

(side note: i watched enola holmes recently, and it’s a great movie, but for FUCK’S sake a corset is not a tool of repression any more than a bra is! i know some of y’all like to say that a bra is a tool of repression, because you hardly have any need for one! but a lot of people actually do need breast support SO THEY DON’T DEVELOP BACK PROBLEMS)

now. on to tightlacing, finally. with a normal corset, you lace it tight enough to get support from it, and no tighter, because why the fuck would you want to imprison your lungs and also you probably have core muscles because only a TINY subset of society was rich enough to afford zero abdominal strength.

tightlacing, on the other hand, is what most people think of when they think of a corset. pulling the laces on the back of the corset as TIGHT AS POSSIBLE (sometimes with multiple people pulling) to get a teeny-tiny waist. it severely restricts your lung capacity (since your lungs go all the way down your back), it forces your internal organs to move, and it can deform your ribcage.

additionally, since you can’t breathe very well, you have to breathe into the top of your chest (this is where the whole ‘heaving bosom’ thing comes from), so you can’t really engage in physical activity AND when you take your corset off, you’re likely to faint because of blood rushing everywhere.

and like i have mentioned SEVERAL times, if you have abdominal muscles, it is NOT GONNA WORK. because you can’t push muscle out of the way.

so this can only be done by the superrich, and IT WAS A FAD. i cannot state this enough. it didn’t last, because it fucked people up! and the fact that it wasn’t healthy, combined with some good old victorian misogyny, meant that victorian men were talking about tightlacing CONSTANTLY. and since normal corsets had been around for forever, nobody was talking about them because everyone knew how corsets were supposed to work!

which means, of course, that if you look at, say, victorian sources discussing corsets, they’re gonna be talking about tightlacing, and if you don’t live in a time where the VAST majority of women are wearing corsets, then you might not know that tightlacing is this weird fad among super-wealthy women and assume that it’s what everyone was doing!

now here’s the thing. we have bras now. we also have modern corsets. guess what? we also have modern tightlacing. those are waist trainers. now, i don’t know as much about them as i do about corsets, but i imagine they at least pretend to be better for you than tightlacing. don’t fall for it. being able to breathe is sexy.

AND if you’re interested in this, bernadette banner and karolina zebrowska have some great youtube videos on it! i actually don’t remember off the top of my head if bernadette banner has a video dedicated to corsets but she does talk about them when analyzing terrible ‘historical’ movie costumes

another side note: so what sparked this initially was talking about the aftg fandom and how neil josten is frequently represented in art as having a tiny waist. having made it to the bottom of this post, i hope u now have an ARSENAL of facts with which to know with 100% certainty that it is impossible for neil josten to have a wasp waist. the guy’s a d1 athlete.

and even if it’s some kind of AU, if he runs as much as he does in canon, no wasp waist. he has abdominal muscles. and body fat, because he is not a bodybuilder and he NEEDS body fat. i get that he’s short???? but he’s not a twink. he’s a future pro athlete. so even if he tightlaced a corset, he would STILL not have a tiny waist. it’s physically impossible for him.

the end!