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denimbex1986 · 1 year

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'Christopher Nolan remembers when he first heard the name Oppenheimer. It was via the lyrics of Sting’s 1985 antiwar hit, “Russians”: “How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?” Like many in his generation, Nolan was already obsessed with the end of the world; he recalls the camps and blockades at Greenham Common in the early 1980s, when thousands of women joined forces to protest the placement of cruise missiles in England, and the growing campaign for nuclear disarmament in Europe. “As impressionable young people, when we were 12 or 13 years old, we were convinced we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust,” Nolan recalls. “I think very much the way kids these days feel about climate change.”

We’ve managed to meet on a day that itself feels cataclysmic. Raging wildfires in Quebec have made their way down the Northeast and shrouded New York in an orange pall of smoke. We’re here to talk about Nolan’s new film, a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. “Culture is a bit limited as to how many apocalypses they can worry about at one time, which is a problem because all of these things need attention,” Nolan says. “When I first told one of my kids about what I was working on with Oppenheimer, they literally said to me, ‘Well, no one really worries anymore about nuclear weapons and war.’ To which my response was, ‘Well, maybe they should.’”

“When you watch the movies, it’s very clear what’s preoccupying Chris at any given moment in time,” says Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife and the producer of all his films. “When our kids were little, Inception reflected his preoccupation with the importance of family.” And as one’s kids get older, one becomes even more preoccupied with what their future will look like — or if they’ll get to have one. Thomas notes that their daughter Flora is among the extras in a convoy of people escaping the dust storms in Interstellar.

Oppenheimer might have seemed like an odd story to tackle in 2021, when Nolan started the film. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine thawed the ghosts of the Cold War, it has felt blisteringly relevant. And making it took Nolan beyond his comfort zones. “Oppenheimer’s story and Oppenheimer’s spirit have hung over a lot of my work,” Nolan says. “To finally address it head-on, it’s just something that I felt ready to do now.”

Oppenheimer Finds His Foil

Just about all of Nolan’s works could fit neatly into popular genres – superhero pictures, thrillers, war films, science-fiction adventures. Oppenheimer is something he’s never tackled before, and an unlikely summer studio release. It’s a historical drama, based on Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus, a 591-page tome that was the result of two decades of research and five years of editing. It might also be Nolan’s fastest-paced film, hurtling at a speed most blockbusters would envy — even though it’s packed with detail and is mostly a movie about scientists and politicians sitting in rooms talking. At times it feels like Nolan has managed to fit most of Sherwin and Bird’s massive book into the three hour and 9 second film, right down to the lime juice and honey mixture Oppenheimer dipped his martini glasses in.

Nolan needs an ironclad structure before he begins writing a script, so he spends months taking notes and drawing diagrams. The film is told largely from Oppenheimer’s perspective, and the director wrote much of the script in the first person. “I’ve never seen that done before,” says Matt Damon, who plays Lieutenant General Leslie Groves Jr., the Army officer in charge of the Manhattan Project. “Instead of ‘Oppenheimer walks across the room,’ it’s ‘I walk across the room.’ This was a way for him to signal that, Okay, this is what the movie’s going to feel like. It’s going to feel immediate.”

The first person Nolan shared the script with after Thomas was his visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, because he wanted to find a way to picture the things Oppenheimer was seeing in his head. “He was imagining things like subatomic particles, but very few of these things had been observed at that time,” says Jackson. To that end, the visual effects team went out early and filmed all sorts of experimental footage — artful ways of showing particles, waves, chain reactions, bursting stars, droplets of molten metal exploding. Nolan passed this footage on to composer Ludwig Göransson. “I saw how they did that splitting of the atoms, with this ultraviolet light,” recalls Göransson. “I was sitting in a dark theater seeing this huge screen and these lights swirling around, and I was like, Okay, this is what I want the music to sound like.”

Later, editor Jennifer Lame would cut some of this footage into the film alongside real world images of droplets, ripples, crackling fires, and breaking glass, to try and depict the way that Oppenheimer, in his own words, was “troubled by visions of a hidden universe.” These inserts, which eventually become more and more ominous, are a key visual motif in the film.

But while structuring the script, Nolan also realized that he had to bring in another perspective, in part because much of the film focuses on Oppenheimer’s troubles with the U.S. intelligence Establishment during the McCarthy period. He found that in the story of Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a former businessman and chair of the Atomic Energy Commission who took on an increasingly contentious role in Oppenheimer’s life after the war.

The relationship between Oppenheimer and Strauss reminded the director of the one between Mozart and Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus: the brilliant, troubled mind and the petty, powerful man who both admired and tormented him. The film’s framing device interweaves Oppenheimer’s 1954 security-clearance hearing and Strauss’s 1959 Senate confirmation hearing to become Eisenhower’s secretary of Commerce — two mid-century American political battles that were huge news stories at the time. (The scenes from Oppenheimer’s perspective are in color, while those showing Strauss’s point of view are in black-and-white.)

“I challenged a little the Mozart-Salieri of it all,” Downey recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not sure in some ways that Strauss isn’t a bit of the hero here,’ which kind of raised an eyebrow on Chris. I half-jokingly challenged him on whether Admiral Strauss hadn’t done everything that any patriotic American would’ve done. And he said, ‘Well, this will be a wonderful ongoing dialogue. So, will you do the film?’”

A Huge Cast of Familiar Faces

Any story about Oppenheimer has to also be a story of the many scientists who came together for the Manhattan Project — whom Thomas calls “the rock stars within the scientific framework of the day.” Nolan was adamant about not creating composite characters, and to make sure audiences could keep track, he wanted each figure to be played by not just great actors but also those with recognizable or distinctive faces. Rami Malek, who plays physicist David Hill, only appears in the film for several minutes, for example, and yet he makes a remarkable impression.

For Oppenheimer himself, a real rock star served as partial inspiration. Cillian Murphy says that the director would send him pictures of David Bowie from the late 1970s — “when he was so skinny and kind of emaciated but had these wonderful tailored suits with the trousers,” Murphy says. “That was the Oppenheimer silhouette.”

Of course, screen time wasn’t an issue for him; his character dominates the film. “I’ve played a physicist before, in a movie for Danny Boyle called Sunshine, so I must have resting physicist face,” Murphy says. “What became clear to me really quickly was that there’s no point in me trying to understand quantum mechanics. I don’t have the intellectual capability. My job is to go after the humanity.” Others arrived armed with a surprising amount of knowledge. Benny Safdie, who plays Edward Teller (now known as the father of the hydrogen bomb), studied nuclear physics in high school. “I was working with a physicist at Columbia University,” Safdie says. “I was doing cosmic rays. It is a deep passion of mine.”

Safdie, an acclaimed filmmaker himself, was stunned by how quickly Nolan and his crew were able to move through scenes of various physicists and politicians arguing, debating, and questioning. He recalls sitting in one location thinking, “We’re going to be here for a while because this is like seven, eight scenes, it’s a hundred people, it’s period. But we moved to a new location before lunch! I said, ‘I have no idea how you did that.’”

The constant hubbub of scientific activity is one of the engines of the film, and Nolan was determined to give his actors a lot of freedom to talk and move. “You look down, there’s no marks on the floor,” Downey says. “You wonder if you shouldn’t pace it up. And Chris says, ‘Don’t worry about that. That’s my problem.’”

Because everything in Oppenheimer moves so fast, Nolan and editor Lame later went through the film repeatedly for what they called “character passes” – watching each cut of the picture to make sure individual characters weren’t getting lost in the shuffle. Nolan likens it to making a bed and pulling on each corner of a sheet, or changing a tire and tightening lug nuts. “You have to tighten the corners opposite so that everything stays in balance.”

Many of the real-life figures had written books, so cast members came in with a broad sense of their lives. “I always like to empower the actors to try things if they have an idea,” Nolan says. “In the script, the scenes are very, very stripped down. So you have to push your actors to come in with a bigger sense of the world, and walk through the door into the scene knowing what they just said to the security guard outside or whatever coming in.”

The director points to a scene in the office of U.S. secretary of war Henry Stimson, played by James Remar, in which a group is picking targets for the atomic bomb. Remar learned that his character had honeymooned in Kyoto, and it’s a matter of record that the city was taken off the initial list of targets – but Remar and Nolan added a line about the honeymoon being one of the reasons why. “It has this bureaucratic quality of a group of men discussing massive destruction and how they’re going to do these awful things. And you’re suddenly seeing a human face to these negotiations,” Nolan says. “There are some nice awkward silences in the movie, and that’s one of my favorite.”

Rebuilding Los Alamos

Oppenheimer, who was born and raised in New York, fell in love with New Mexico at a young age. “When I was a kid, I thought if I could find a way to mix physics and New Mexico, my life would be perfect,” the character says early in the film. He gets to do just that when he proposes that the heart of the Manhattan Project be situated in New Mexico on a sparsely populated mesa known as Los Alamos. To re-create the early days there, Nolan and his production designer, Ruth De Jong, initially avoided the real location, which still houses a research laboratory. “It’s got Starbucks, and it’s all modernized,” De Jong says. “Chris said, ‘I’ve scouted it. I’m not going there.’” Instead, they effectively built their own town near Ghost Ranch. (The film did, however, shoot some of its interiors in the original Los Alamos locations, including the house Oppenheimer and his family lived in.) They also employed a researcher to dig deep into files from the U.S. government and universities to find both literature and photos to guide their work.

But the research was the research. When it came time to building the actual town, Nolan wasn’t a stickler for authenticity. “He kept saying, ‘This is my western,’” De Jong says. “He really wanted a very natural world, a very honest world.” She looked at films like Once Upon a Time in the West, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Heaven’s Gate, and The Wild Bunch as references as they were location scouting.

“I remember when I got to the middle of the desert and I saw a city, poured concrete foundation,” Safdie says of first encountering the impressive, working Los Alamos set. At the same time, Nolan wanted to have the freedom to move the camera and actors about, and to use forced perspective to make backgrounds seem bigger and more distant. “Look, Ruth, we designed this,” De Jong recalls Nolan saying to her. “You should just get a bunch of Home Depot sheds. No one will know. Clad them. And let’s get a bunch of prefab trailers and clad those.”

Among the non-Western titles Nolan shared with De Jong as inspiration: Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1975 classic Mirror. “Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema had introduced me to Mirror prior to making Interstellar,” recalls Nolan. “Other than the fact that it’s a great masterpiece, we found it very useful for looking at the use of elements and the use of textures.” The visions of nature and the subatomic world that Oppenheimer sees throughout Nolan’s film reveal the workings of the physical world, but they also gather metaphoric force as the picture proceeds. “Mirror is an incredibly rich visual tapestry,” Nolan says, “but also one in which elements are allowed to breathe in symbolic ways.”

Large Format, Small Scenes

Some of Oppenheimer’s more spectacular moments feature simple, frame-filling close-ups of Murphy in Imax — something viewers are not used to because Imax was not designed for that. “You could never, ever put your camera as close as you wanted to your subject in order to get the close-up,” says van Hoytema. “So we started to build lenses that gave us that technical possibility to get much closer.” Kodak also created a black-and-white Imax film for the production.

Much of the cast was unprepared for how loud the cameras would be during intimate and dialogue-heavy scenes. Safdie remembers that when he first heard the roar of an Imax camera, he thought something had gone wrong and looked around to see if Nolan was about to call “Cut!” “It’s a machine that can pull 24 medium-format photography frames per second through a big gauge,” van Hoytema says. “And if you have a camera that sounds like a little diesel engine, it’s very hard to create some sort of very tender, sensitive, quiet, intimate moment.” Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, notes that despite the deafening camera and the technical demands of individual scenes, Nolan almost always stands close to the actors, away from the monitor. “When you do the scene, he’s standing by the camera and he’s watching you. And he’s close. So you really feel you’re in it with him.”

The Bomb and Beyond

Nolan’s filmography is replete with machines that must not be used: a cloning device built by Nikola Tesla in The Prestige; a citywide (and very illegal) sonar Batman creates out of Gotham’s cell-phone signals in The Dark Knight. Machines running on hidden knowledge that, if revealed, could upend the world. Often, of course, these machines are used, and the consequences are soul-destroying for the characters. But that’s fiction. In real life, there is no more vivid example of this than the atomic bomb.

To re-create the Trinity test explosion — the first time in world history that a nuclear weapon was detonated — the production had to walk a fine line between the documented footage and artistic interpretation. Visual-effects supervisor Andrew Jackson notes that because Nolan wanted to avoid using too much CGI, they chose to constrain themselves in terms of the materials they could work with. Special-effects supervisor Scott Fisher and his team used high explosives and fuel, mixed to give the shape of a mushroom cloud, and then slowed the footage down to make the explosion seem bigger. The explosion had to be not just impressive but expressive, something whose fearsome power could function as a culmination of Oppenheimer’s quantum visions and fuel his simmering terror and shame. “This thing they’re all trying so hard to achieve is horrific,” Jackson says. “They’re all striving for something that no one would want.”

Prometheus Bound

In the wake of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer became one of the most famous men in the world, and he eventually attempted to use his public profile to speak out against nuclear proliferation. But he doesn’t appear to have ever publicly expressed real regret or apologized for what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was, it seems, partly in denial about the role he had played.

“The whole film is about consequences – the delayed onset of consequences that people often forget,” Nolan says. It’s another idea that has run through his work. “You are not necessarily confronted with the strongest or worst elements of your action in the moment.” This idea is built into the style of the film. For Oppenheimer’s central theme, Nolan had suggested to Goransson using the violin to capture the physicist’s anxiety. “There is something with the unease of the violin, a fretless instrument, and how you can go from the most romantic, beautiful tone in a split second to neurotic and heart wrenching, horror sounds,” the composer says.

At the same time, the protagonist’s emotional conflict often remains beneath the surface, presenting a challenge for the actor playing him — which is also what drew Murphy to the part. “The film actors that I’ve always loved are the ones that, if they think it, you can feel it,” Murphy says. “That stuff, almost inexpressible, kind of beyond language.” Much of Oppenheimer’s moral quandary unfolds silently, as subtle changes on the actor’s face. “He’s got such an enigmatic quality to what he does,” Blunt says of Murphy’s performance. “There’s the whole shadow of his life playing across those rather extraordinary eyes in every scene.”

Murphy recalls a note Nolan gave him early on during a scene in which Oppenheimer argues with Groves: “I guess I came in pretty hard on the scene a couple of times. Chris took me aside and said, ‘He’s not a boxer; he’s a chess player.’ He would use his intellect rather than his physical presence, always, in these situations.”

Damon feels that the note expresses not just Oppenheimer as a character, but Nolan’s whole approach to the film. “It’s a message from a director to an actor saying, ‘I’m going to bring the whole movie to you. You can be as little as you need to, and it’s going to work.’ When I’ve been in that kind of partnership with a director, where you’re the fulcrum for the entire movie, you can get smaller and smaller.”

That is in some ways the captivating paradox of Oppenheimer. It’s a massively ambitious film about perhaps the most significant event of the 20th century (or, as Damon’s character puts it, “the most important fucking thing to happen in the history of the world”). And yet at its center is a tense, quiet man, pulled on all sides by various forces, tortured by what he’s unleashed. It’s the very opposite of a Great Man biopic.

The film itself is terrified by Oppenheimer’s accomplishment, reflecting its creator’s own fears for our future. “I don’t want to make a didactic film ever,” Nolan says. “I don’t want to tell people what to think or send a specific message.” But he also admits that after his journey through Oppenheimer’s life and work, there’s “there’s an inescapable nihilism that creeps in with the underlying reality that he changed the world in a way that can never be changed back. There’s no real catharsis there.”'

#Christopher Nolan #Cillian Murphy #Oppenheimer #Emily Blunt #Kitty #Matt Damon #Leslie Groves #Robert Downey Jr.#Lewis Strauss #Rami Malek #Josh Hartnett #Benny Safdie #Kenneth Branagh #Florence Pugh #Jean Tatlock #Matthew Modine

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shadows-we-missed · 2 years

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Every year I write notes to let go of it all. Here are the 2022 notes. Even if no one reads them. I feel better 💁🏽‍♀️ and I encourage everyone to take time to let whatever is bothering them go.

#1 Maybe I made it all up. I do have a ridiculous tendency of fabricating reality to make it seem a little bit less terrible. So let’s say I did, let’s say the whole thing was a giant manipulation. Well, props to you because that was a play of a lifetime. Somehow you managed to maneuver past every single safe guard that I put up and gain instant access to me.

What I did with you I don’t do with anyone. But you wouldn’t know that. You only ever got close enough to get what you wanted.

I think that’s the part that made me the craziest. Either you managed to master a level of manipulation so high that it felt seamless or… even worse, you meant all of it and then you just took it back.

I suppose I’ll never know what was real and what wasn’t. Actually I know I won’t know, because I’m more scared of an answer. Either answer is terrifying. I’ve already obsessed too much over this. And I know it’s me. I know I’m a lot all the time. I have every health issue in the world, I come with an abundance of trauma, and a sprinkle of sarcasm. But I’m still worth something, and I’m still a human.

And what I’m learning is that I deserve to be more than a maybe. I deserve to be more than held at arms length and used for whatever it is you needed me for in the moment. I know I’m stellar and I don’t want to wait around for anyone to figure that out.

I want to be more than just a person whose existence doesn’t bother you. So this is your letter, and I’m letting it go.

Maybe one day you’ll realize that it would’ve been worth it to actually get to know me. Or then again, maybe you won’t. I won’t know, and I’ll pretend that I wont be bothered by it until it becomes true. Until I become the ghost I was always meant to be.

#2 Where do I even start? You managed to literally drain me of every single ounce of care I had. Metaphorically and physically I was drained by you. You were so intense in the beginning, I suppose one could’ve called it love bombing. But I was all in. There were a thousand red flags, and I missed them all. First it was yes, then it was absolutely no, and then it was just kidding yes.

Maybe I was just happy to be seen but I ran with it. And it caught on fire just as fast.

I excused so so so much. You screamed at me, I let it go. You started calling me names, I let it go. You started acting compulsive and possessive, I let it go.

You made me feel insecure, and tired. But honestly I let you. You blamed everything on everyone else but the common denominator was always you.

You destroyed my car. You emptied my bank account. You took advantage of all the trust I had.

So here’s your letter. I hope you learned something from all of this. I wish I could say that I miss you, but you were slowly cutting away since day one, and I can’t say that I do. I just miss the time that I’ll never get back.

This is me. Letting it go…

#3 I’ve never written you a letter. I think I was just convinced that you didn’t need one. That I had done all the work of forgiving all of the people that protected you. But I’ve never forgiven you, because I didn’t feel like you deserved it.

As I get older I’m learning that forgiveness isn’t about what the other person deserves. It’s about what I need. And I need to let this go. It’s been years. 20 years actually.

My family never believed me. They took your side, or they hushed me along the way. Some of them literally wrote a different story into my impressionable brain. But I remember.

I remember all of it.

It came back in bits and pieces. But every single inappropriate word, touch, expression has all come back by this point. It used to be like a vision. I would smell something or hear something and it would just unlock core memories that left me crippled for years.

You, on your own, ruined every normal chance I had with men. There are things I can’t do now. There are things that I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from. There is also the pain. I’m almost positive that my chronic pain came from you.

So every time I take a step and it hurts, there’s a whisper that’s ever so quiet that says your name. Every time I’m intimate with someone and I get nervous, I hear that whisper again. I’ll admit that over the years the whispers have grown quieter and less frequent. But that doesn’t mean that they have escaped me yet.

Here’s the truth though,

I saw that you had a son a couple of years ago. And all I could think of was that I hope he was absolutely nothing like you.

Then again, perhaps you’ve been through trauma that I will never understand. Maybe when you go to sleep at night you feel remorseful for everything you’ve done. Then again maybe you don’t.

Either way, here is your letter. I forgive you for it all.

I’m definitely ready to let it go.

#4 We were inseparable. I worked 8 hrs in the morning and rushed home to take you the hospital. You thought you were fine. But I encouraged you. Your appendix needed to be taken out and I saved your life. The doctor said so.

So everything you did just hurt even worse.

When I talked to that boy, you uprooted the entire thing. And the party. Don’t get me started about the party. There was only one boy off limits. And you risked everything Including me.

You handed me drink after drink until I was almost so drunk I couldn’t remember my name. Then you convinced me to let a random boy make my drink. I was so drunk I didn’t think about it. So I took it.

I passed out. In and out and that was what you wanted. You let that man drug me so I could be your scapegoat. I haven’t gotten all the memories back yet. But I know what happened mostly.

I know how I felt in the morning. I know how I feel at every house party I go to now.

I don’t know what possessed you to get us to that point. But here’s your letter, and I forgive you. And I forgive that boy too.

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derekfoxwit · 3 years

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Doctor Dorpden’s Critical Tips of Prestige

Note: This post was made with satirical intentions in mind. I’m only emphasizing because I’ve had a couple of comments on previous joke posts I’ve did take it seriously. With that said, here we go.

Tip 1: For starters, remember that when looking at the work, if the Mystic Knee twitches fast enough to punch a hole in a wall, this suggests that the work should be near the lowest of the low. No further development of opinion is needed.

Tip 2: For an equal degree of sophistication, give the warm comfort of nostalgia at least 5 times more chances than the new thing that MAY seem actually poggers.

Tip 3: If you have the anecdote of encountering shitty fans, then use them as a scapegoat for the show they flaunt over being shitty. Clearly, they’re always making the show the way it is.

Tip 4: If you haven’t heard much about a newer film or show you’re yet to watch, there’s an 85% chance that film or show is actually not worth your time. The Father (2020) isn’t as widespread as Joker (2019) for a reason.

Tip 5: At this point, just go for the Asian Artist Dick. I’m actually in the mood to see merit in that because I want to look edgy against cute doodles. Stop attacking Uzaki-Chan, you cowards!

Tip 6: Avoid the electronic tunes. They’ll make you smell like a bum, for there’s no structural in a music album that’s nothing but wubs.

Tip 7: If you see a Tweet that looks dumb, use it as a means of generalizing all the fans of a work as sharing that same opinion.

Tip 8: If the cartoon I’m given doesn’t provide me with mature ideas such as slicing an Arbok in half or fake boobs, then the cartoon might as well be on the same level as Teletubbies.

Tip 9: You know the music is (c)rap when it brings up drugs, regardless of lyrical context.

Tip 10: Raw mood is the indicator of quality cartooning. If you’re quick to assume the worst in the newest HBO Max original cartoon, then you got thyself a stinker. Same thing if you were super bummed out when watching a new thing, regardless of anecdotal context.

Tip 11: When you’re not given continuous throwbacks, ensure you’re as reductive and over-generalizing about the works shown as possible.

Tip 12: If your hazy and imperfect as hell recollection of a children’s film, whether it’s Wall-E or Lilo & Stitch, would describe said film as “too sugary” or “key-waving schlock”, then that HAS to be the case. No meat on that bone whatsoever.

Tip 13: Simpler, more graphic style that isn’t as realistic as old-school Disney or Anime? You got yourself a lazy style with zero passion put into it.

UPA? Who’s THAT?!

Tip 14: Don’t trust anyone saying that western children’s cartoons had any form of artistic development after 2008 (with, like, TWO exceptions). If it did, why didn’t we go from stealing organs in a 2001 cartoon to showing opened stomachs in a 2021 cartoon?

Tip 15: Big booba is always important to the strong female character’s quality.

Tip 16: Only MY ships count, for they provide me with a feeling of intelligence.

Tip 17: “PG-13″ and “R” rating just simply mean you’re not caring for expressing themes in a sophisticated manner. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 18: In this age of smelly radicals, “Death of the Author” is more important than ever. Without it, this’ll imply that a classic like The Matrix was secretly toxic, due to what the Wachowskis have to say about it being an “allegory of trans people.”

Tip 19: Turn the fandoms you hate into your torture porn. Ask in Tweets to Retweet one sentence that’d “trigger” them. Go out of your way to paint all of them as blind consoomers. That’ll show them, and it’ll show how much more intelligent you are compared to those clowns.

Tip 20: Whatever the Mystic Knee dictates upon the first viewing of a work is what shall indicate the full structural extent of the film.

Tip 21: The mindset of a 2000s edgelord is one that actually understands the artistry of the medium of animation. Listen to that crazy but ingenious man.

Tip 22: Because sheer ambition makes me feel manly, the high pedestal you bestow upon a cartoon work should be based mostly on the mere mention or mere suggestion of serious topics. This means that pure comedy is smelly.

Tip 23: Is the new work tackling subjects that you’ve loved a childhood work of yours for covering? Just assume it’s super bare-bones in that case compared to the older case, for there’s nothing the older work can do to truly prove itself otherwise. Seriously, Letterboxd. Stop giving any 2010s cartoon anything above a 4/5

Tip 24: If the Mystic Knee is suggesting that the work is crummy, then consider any explanation off the top of your head for why the work in question is crummy.

Tip 25: Sexual and gender identity is inherently political, so don’t focus on them in the story. It’s no wonder why Full Metal Alchemist has caught on more than the She-Ra reboot.

Tip 26: Since I got bothered by a random butt monkey type character in a crummy cartoon, I’m now obligated to assume that having a butt monkey will only harm the writing integrity of the cartoon.

Seriously, Mr. Enter....what?!

Tip 27: We’re at a point where pure comedy for a kids’ cartoon is doing nothing but dumbing down the children. Like seriously...... I doubt Billy and Mandy would ever use farts as a punchline, unlike these newer kids comedies.

Tip 28: The difference between the innuendo in kids’ cartoons I grew up on and the ones Zootopia made is the sense of prestige they give me. Just take notes from the former instead.

Tip 29: Wanna make a work of artistic merit? Just take notes from the stuff I whore out to. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 30: Always remember this golden rule: If the newer work, or a work you’ve recently experienced the first time, was truly great, why isn’t it providing the exact emotions from your younger, more impressionable years?

Tip 31: If the Mystic Knee aims to break the bones of a character doing certain things (.i.e. having body count of thousands; lashing out to character; etc.), that means the character is bad and deserves no redemption.

Tip 32: If you want me to believe there’s any intrigue or depth in your antagonist, give them redemption, for I am in need of that sorta thing being spelled out. Looking at you, Syndrome. Should’ve taken notes from Tai Lung.

Tip 33: In a case where you’re going “X > Y” (.i.e. manga compared to western comics), ALWAYS CHERRY PICK! Use the recent controversies of the “Y” item while pretending that the “X” item has never had anything of the sort.

Tip 34: BEFORE you bring up those comments that shat on the original Teen Titans cartoon back when it was new, whether for making Starfire “more PC” or whatever.......the DIFFERENCE between them and me is that THEY were just bad faith fools that couldn’t see true majesty out of blind rage. I, however, am truly certain that calling any western TV cartoon from 2014-onward a work that transcends its generation suggests a destruction of the medium.

Tip 35: Based on fandom growth, it shows that any newer show isn’t being watched much by kids, but rather loser adults that act like children. Therefore, there’s more prestige in what I grew with.

Tip 36: The focus on children is bad at this point since the children of today have attention spans that flies would have.

Tip 37: A select few screenshots (or even one) of either a less elaborate attacking animation, less realistic game graphics, or a less on-model image in a cartoon indicates EVERYTHING about the work’s quality.

Tip 38: Consuming or writing media where characters go through constant suffering is little more than gaining pleasure out of it. YOU SICKOS!

Looking at you, Lily Orchard!

Tip 39: Whether it’s a sexual awakening story or just simply a romance, focus on a character being lesbian, trans, bi, etc., then it shouldn’t be in a kids’ work. It’s too spicy for them by default. Kids don’t want romance anyway.

Tip 40: The very idea of a western cartoon with no full-blown antagonist (i.e. Inside Out) is a destruction of animated artistry. Sorry, but it’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 41: Unless it’s my fluffy pillow, such as Disney’s Robin Hood, it should be obligated to assume the inserting of anthros is only there to pleasure the furries. Looking at YOU, Zootopia!

Tip 42: With how rough and rash The Beast was, it shows that he was more of an abusive lover. Therefore, I refuse to believe that Beauty and the Beast has any of the meticulous moral writing that most of Disney’s other 90s films has.

Tip 43: When you suggest one work should’ve “taken notes” from another work in order to do better, BE VAGUE! Those who agree will be shown to be geniuses.

Tip 44: Remember how morally grey Invader Zim was? That really goes to show how little the Western Animation scene has been trying since that show. Really should just be taking notes from that series (and of course anime).

Tip 45: Even if I have a radar that clearly indicates such, hiding the item I look for inside an enemy is always bad, for I refuse to believe it would be inside the enemy.

Goddamn it, Arin!

Tip 46: People struggle understanding your gender identity or pronouns? All there is to see in that is a giant cloud of egotism that reads “My problems” zapping another smaller cloud that reads “other people’s problems”. Seriously, kids are starving, so WHAT if you identity confused someone. Grow a spine!

Tip 47: Stop pretending that adaptations should colorize how a story or comic series should be defined. No way in FUCK can a cartoon or film incarnation become the definitive portrayal of my precious superhero idol.

Tip 48: Enough with your precious “limited animation” techniques, YOU WESTERN HACKS! All you’re doing is admitting to sheer laziness and lacking artistic integrity. Now if you excuse me, I’ll be watching more anime, since that gives me a sense of prestige.

Tip 49: If getting five times more detail than the 2D animated visuals have requires someone getting hurt, so be it. No pain, no gain after all.

Tip 50: Yes, I genuinely struggle to believe there’s this majestic level of layered material without having the most immediate yet still vague re-assurance practically yelling in my face. But that’s STILL the work’s fault, not mine.

Tip 51: Every Klasky-Csupo cartoon has more artistic integrity than any of them cartoons with gay lovers such as Kipo or the Netflix She-Ra show.

Tip 52: If Sergio Pablos’ Klaus is anything to go by, we have no excuse to utilize those smelly as fuck digital animation “styles” found on Stinky Universe, Suck-Ra or Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds.

Tip 53: Stop projecting your orientation onto works of actual talent. Seriously, how does Elton John’s I’m Still Standing expel ANY rainbow flag energy?

Tip 54: Hip hop and electronica have been the destruction of music, especially the kind that’s actually organic and not farting on the buttons of a beeping or drumming gadget.

Tip 55: The audience for cartoons has become significantly less clear over the years. We should just go back to Saturday mornings of being sold toys or shit kids actually want.

Tip 56: PSAs for kids shouldn’t be about ‘woke’ content. They should be actual problems such as doing drugs; not playing with knifes / outlets / matches; or acceptance.

Tip 57: The instant you realize a detail in a childhood work that’s better understood as an adult, you’re forced to paint that work as the most transcendent thing in the world. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 58: Before you lash out on ALL rich people, remember this: #Not All Rich People.

Tip 59: There’s nothing to gain out of the (c)rap scene other than becoming a spiteful, gun-wielding thug that sniffs weed for breakfast.

Tip 60: Since the Mystic Knee told me to get anal about prom episodes in several gay cartoons, this shows that writing about one’s younger experiences just makes you look pathetic.

Tip 61: Another smelly thing about Zootopia is how it was painting a police chief as stern and exclusive. #Not All Chiefs

Tip 62: Me catching a glimpse of Grave of the Fireflies as a kid and turning out fine shows that you may as well show kids more adult works without worry. No amount of psychological questions being asked will suggest otherwise.

Tip 63: There’s a reason why the Mystic Knee keeps leaning more toward the 90s and early 2000s than most decades. That knee KNOWS where there’s a sense of true refinement.

Tip 64: The BIG difference between rock and electronica? Steward Copeland actually DRUMS. All that the likes of Burial, Boards of Canada, Depeche Mode and several others did was push drum buttons.

Tip 65: One exception to the golden nostalgia is when the work in question doesn’t stuff your face with fantastical, bombastic stories. At which point, there can only be rose-colored blinds covering Nickelodeon’s Doug. Nothing of merit or personal resonance to be found.

Tip 66: Remember that the sense of nuance in the work comes down to there being everything including the kitchen sink, whether it involves multiple geographic landscapes; giving us hundreds of characters; etc. Only through the extremes will I be able to tell there is nuance.

Tip 67: Once you see a joke that has an involvement with sexual or violent content, just ignore the full picture and just reduce it to having nothing to it but “sex, violence, gimme claps.”

PKRussel has entered the chat

Tip 68: With all the SJWs messing up the art of comedy, lament the times where you could be called a comic genius, NOT a monster, for shouting out the word “STAB,” calling a gay weird, painting Middle Easterns as inherently violent, etc.

Tip 69: Guitar twang will always win out over (c)rap beats. There’s a reason your grandma is more likely to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Kendrick Lamar.

Tip 70: Once the Mystic Knee notices a lack of squealing at the video game with linearity, that shows there’s more artistry in going full-blown open world.

Tip 71: Related to Tips 66 and 68, ensure your comedy gets as much information and mileage out of each individual skit as possible. EMPHASIZE if you need to. Continuously spout out your quirky phrase of “STAB” if needed.

Tip 72: Based on the onslaught of TV shows with many seasons and episodes, animated or otherwise, it shows that there’s more worth going for that than simply having a miniseries or a 26-episode anime.

Tip 73: Building off of the previous tip, you’re better off squeezing and exhausting every little detail and notable characterization rather than keeping anything simple and possibly leaving a stone unturned, especially if there’s supposed to be a story.

Tip 74: Playing through the fan translation of Mother 3 made me realize how much some newer kids’ works just try too hard to get serious. Why even make the kids potentially think about the death of a family member?

Tip 75: The fear I had over Sid’s toys from the first Toy Story and similar anecdotal emotions are the be-all indicators of what kind of show or film is fitting for the children.

Tip 76: Seeing this British rapper chick have a song titled “Point and Kill” just further exemplifies the fears I’ve had about rappers being some of the most harmful folks ever.

Tip 77: The problem with attempting to make a more “relatable” She-Ra is that kids aren’t looking for relatability. They want the escapism of buff fighters or something similar. This is why slice-of-life is so smelly.

Tip 78: Based on seeing the rating of “PG-13″ or “R,” I can tell that the dark humor is little more than “hur dur sex and guns.” Given the “TV-Y7 FV” rating of Invader Zim, the writers should’ve taken notes from that instead just so I can sense actual prestige.

Tip 79: The original He-Man has more visual intrigue in its animation than any of those smelly glorified doodles found in the “styles" of the 2010s and early 2020s.

Tip 80: It’s always the fault of the game that my first guess (that I refuse to divert from) on how I have to go through an obstacle won’t work.

Tip 81: Zootopia discussing prejudice ruins the majestic escapism I got from my precious childhood films from 1991-2004. Them kids might as well be watching the news. Now to watch some Hunchback after I finish these tips.

Tip 82: There is no such thing as an unreasonable expectation, and there’s especially no wrong way to address the lack of met expectations! For example, if you expect some early 2010s cartoon on the Disney Channel to be a Kids X-Files, yet you get moments such as some girl getting high on stick dipping candy, you got the right to paint the worst out of that show for not being “Kids’ X-Files.”

Tip 83: Related to my example for Tip 82, if you get the slightest impression of something being childish, you know you got yourself a children’s work that does little than wave keys and has basically nothing substantial for them. In this situation, those malfunctioning robots found in Wall-E are the guilty party.

Tip 84: Without the extensive dialogue that I’m used to getting, how can one say for certain there was any amount of characterization in the title character of Wall-E?

Tip 85: Ever noticed yourself gradually being less likely to expect an upcoming work or view a work you’re just consuming as “the next best thing”? That’s ALWAYS the fault of smelly “artists” (hacks really) and their refusal to give a shit.

Tip 86: It’s obligatory for your lead to be explicitly heroic just so there is this immediate re-assurance that they’re a good one.

Tip 87: Without the comforting safety net of throwbacks, one cannot be for certain that there has been an actual evolution of a series or the art of animation and video games.

Tip 88: Don’t PSA kids on stuff they give zero fucks about. That means no gender identities or pronouns, race, etc.

Tip 89: Don’t listen to Mamoru Hosoda saying that anime women tend to be “depicted through a lens” of sexual desire. He’s just distracting from the superior prestige found in anime women.

Tip 90: If you’re desperate to let others know that your talking points are reasonable, just repeat them over and over with little expansion on said talking points.

Tip 91: 7 or more seasons of art is better than 26 episodes of art. EVERY TIME!

Tip 92: Always remember to continuously talk up the innuendo and mature subject matter of the childhood work as the most prestigious, transcendent thing of all time. With that in mind, there’s a high chance that your favorite childhood work will be better known than Perfect Blue (1997), and there’s likely a reason for that.

Tip 93: An art style that gives many characters relatively more realistic arm muscle details will always shine through more than any sort of art style done for “simplicity” (laziness, really).

Tip 94: Seeing a few (like, even VERY FEW) people show more enthusiasm for Steven Universe over Invader Zim really shows the lower bar that has been expected out of the western animation scene compared to anime.

Tip 95: Electronic music makes less conventional time signatures cheap as hell. REAL music like rock makes them the exact opposite.

Tip 96: If your Mystic Knee suggests that the 90s cartoon being viewed doesn’t showcase a vague sense of refinement or artistic integrity, then every related assumption of yours is right. EVERY TIME!

Tip 97: Doing everything and the kitchen sink for one series or movie shows a better sense of refinement and prestige than any form of simplicity. THIS includes character design as well.

Tip 98: The advent of that Star Wars: Visions anime really shows just how stinky western cartoons have become.

Tip 99: For those wondering, no, Europe isn’t being counted in my definition of “western animation”. Doing so is a complete disservice to prestige.

Tip 100: If even less than half of these tips aren’t being considered, you can kiss that prestige badge goodbye. After all, I SAID SO!

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withoneheadlight · 3 years

Text

The kitchen’s Steve’s favorite part of the house.

It has this odd shape. Trapezoid. “Fuck, Stevie, so goddamn weird”. Doesn’t make sense in a, on the other hand, perfectly rectangular house (or, well, it does but, they’ll only find out about that later). The cabinets are ceiling-high. The tiles of the wall white and cracked under the repeating pattern of light mint-green-stemmed, yellow-petaled lilies. The whole backdoor is painted on that same shade Billy calls Ripe banana dreams, both so terribly old-fashioned and fiercely cute none of them says a word about repainting it. There’s a wooden piece, built into the farthest end of the counter. It looks disgustingly juicy and mercilessly stabbed when they move in, but Billy insists on keeping it, and sanding, and treating, and varnishing it. Manages to get it back up on shape because “Better than anyone, darling you should know what a little touch of class can make”. And for more than two weeks straight the only goal of his life is to learn to cut vegetables at high speed because “I have to live up to this level of professionalism. Impress our most un-impressionable guests”

(And, to Steve’s surprise –and probably hers– when she finally deigns to pay them a visit, his mom is, in fact, pretty much impressed.)

He learns how to make good casserole. Tries his luck with Mexican and Italian. Fails miserably with Japanese. Will never-ever admit it but, he loves it when flour ends up staining every single surface, making the biggest mess around himself when he bakes. Steve knows why it is. It’s a shared feeling. Floats up till it reaches the ceiling and bounces back down to them, heavy with the warm smell of cooking pie and cinnamon. Tastes docile and tamed like “Maybe not so much vanilla next time. Whaddaya think, babe?.” Tastes savage and daring, like the overwhelming tang of freshly squeezed lemon lingering on Billy’s tongue, when he crowds Steve against the fridge and kisses him, nibbles a shuddering laugh out of him “How the fuck are you able to even think about putting your mouth near that thing, Hargrove?. That was––ugh. That was disgusting”, “Well you know me, whatever it takes to make you squirm” leaving Steve with absolutely no option but lick the sugary dough stain over his cheek to “Cover up that foul flavor” and maybe because he wants to make Billy squirm a little too.

It’s a heart-warming, welcoming feeling. Like the vivid smells of green tomatoes and parsley and mustard sauce. Like the taste of love on Billy’s lips. The way he loses his breath when Steve kisses the sugary flavor into Billy’s mouth with his:

This place smells like home, tastes like home. Like finally, finally. Home.

It’s Billy’s favorite place, too. But Steve doesn’t think it’s just because of that. But also because maybe,

maybe.

He has also noticed that–

There’s this particular, particular moment. It happens around seven on autumns, right when the day starts to fade. It happens between six and six past twenty-eight on winters, and holds the sleepy cheeks of the newborn tulips on Steve’s garden till they fall asleep on springs, sun already sinking behind the horizon by the time both hands of the clock meet over the spiral of the eight, pointing towards infinity. And then grows bigger and bigger and bigger from there, flooding into summer: the golden sunlight seeping through the wide, double-paned window facing the backyard in an oblique angle, making the yellow flowers of the tiles look like they’re re-blooming in gold.

It’s the moment the day turns into a fire.

It’s their favorite moment in time. And in this particular, particular day of July, it happens at ten past nine.

Billy is making Spaghetti Carbonara. The kitchen is damp with the rich smells coming out of the boiling water. Mushrooms and oregano, black pepper and lime. A song is cooing at them from the radio, the beat of the drums a boneless memory of that one echoing around the quarry on faraway almost-night on a faraway July. Water rippling under the quiet sigh of the breeze. Trees cutting the liquid rays in asymmetric halves.

Billy takes off the apron. Turns the stove down.

Reaches out to Steve, fingers wavering come, come, come.

To me. Come to me. “C’mon, Harrington. Do I scare you or what?“

He has this way of looking at Steve that makes the space between them narrow, narrow: the whole unknown world. And aseptic, non-lived-in flat in downtown Florida. This tiny, tiny town. A mysteriously-shaped kitchen––

“¿Can I have this dance?”

Steve walks to him, takes his hand.

––Their bodies, pressed flush.

Inside his chest, Steve’s heart is running.

(“Can I at least have this dance, before we say goodbye?”

Mazzy Star was playing. The corner of Billy’s eye felt wet where his skin brushed against the corner of Steve’s mouth. They danced till the daylight faded, till there were teardrops falling from the night sky.

“Billy, I don’t have to––”

“Don’t, pretty boy. Don’t say it. I’ll make you stay if you do. And I can’t do that”)

They made lovelovelove on the back of Billy’s car.)

In this light, they fell in love, they fell apart. Ran away. Ran back.

Steve nudges at Billy’s chest, makes him move backward till he’s far enough to tug, draw him in between their tangled arms, hands intertwined. Steve curls himself around Billy’s back, noses at the warmth trapped between his curls. He smells like BillyandSteve, like this home, like past, like future. Like us.

Steve whispers in his ear. Three words. Billy’s neck curves towards him. An instinct. Tickled by their warmth. Steve kisses the curve of his ear. Tugs the collar of his shirt aside, bites where shoulder meets neck and up, up.

“Easy, Prom King” Billy teases, grins at him tender and wild. Knows when to use the one that gets Steve every time “Or you’re gonna make me think we’ll become picture-perfect from this magical moment onwards. A bunch of kids. White fences. You know, the whole shebang”

(Billy crashed the Camaro into a tree in the winter of two thousand and fourteen. Had left the house in a frenzy. Something happened Max wouldn’t talk about. But she was scared, so she had called,

“Find him. Please.. Make sure he’s alright”

When Steve found him, Billy was in the middle of the Brookville road, feet stumbling on the twin yellow lines, following them nowhere. So weary, so impossibly small like this: head hanging, arms wrapped around himself. A crooked shape, carrying the weight of the shadows the tall pine trees cast on his back.

So unlike him.

Steve stopped the car at his side, engine oozing steam, shaking in the icy mid-May air “Billy” he said. Low. Careful. Careful. Billy’s eyes looked wet in the moon-silver night, pupils blown, deceivingly calm, “What are you doing? This is dangerous” And Billy’s spine had bent even lower, forearms finding rest on the window frame. Leveling with Steve. Looking wasted, looking tired, but still, he flashed a grin at him, teeth-shark white, never going down if he wasn’t going down swinging. And Steve–– hadn’t known at the moment, but the blood staining his cheek, the screaming-purple mark around his eye.

Those weren’t from the crash.

“I was sleepwalking, Harrington” he said, voice dry, laugh harsh. Shrugged “Waiting for a lucky strike”)

“What does it make you think that’s not what I’m aiming for?”

(When he took Billy to his house Max was already there. Had sneaked out. “Neil will kill you if he finds out,” Billy said and she nodded, white knuckles peaking red with how hard she was gripping the handler of her bike, and Steve hadn’t seen her cry before, not ever, but her eyes were swollen and wet and,

“Are you––”

“I’m alright, kiddo. You know me. I’m always alright”

And the lie sat heavy, between them. Two lies, covering the truth. Poorly stitched. But Max had called Steve for help, so that’s what he did. Help. Sent her back home. Took care of Billy’s face. Billy’s hands. Nodded at those same lies, let them do their work while taking care of wounds he didn’t know, back then, couldn't have been for a crash. Made him spend the night.

Billy still hadn't woken up when Steve left the next day, leaving food and a note on the nightstand ‘I’ll be back soon. Stay’.

Retraced Billy’s steps down the yellow lines splitting the forest in half. To find it.

The Camaro wasn’t done yet. Howled like a wounded beast under Steve’s touch, but stayed together all the way to Donny’s garage. And Steve paid for the repairs. Covered it all up. Max has said “His dad can’t know, Steve. Can’t know. If he finds out he will--” and steve was starting to put two and two together. To realize some billy was, maybe, running away from something. Someone. When he crashed his car.

Woke Billy up when the hands of the clock met over the spiraling infinity of the eight. Seventeen hours straight of sleep and still looking like he could use a lifetime. Told him “The car will be ready in two or three days. ‘Til then, you stay'' covered his mouth with his hand. Didn't let him complain “And If whatever happened last night happens again, you take it and you run. Back here. And you stay again, ok?”

Two weeks later, Billy showed up at his door. Lit him a cigarette. Offered to teach him how to fight.

“I cannot give you back your money, but I know you don’t need that”

Made him laugh.

They spent almost the whole summer together, after that. Some days. Most nights.

Wasting time. Fighting. Joking. Driving.

Falling.

No ‘what ifs’. No promises. Just,

“Leave the light on if you can’t sleep, pretty boy. If I manage to sneak out of the Old fuck, I’ll pick you up. Promise I won’t stop kissing you until dawn. Gotta make up for what you paid for that ca, uh?”

Because Steve was gonna leave. Wasn’t gonna throw a single glance behind his back.

That was the plan.

And he did. He did. But––)

He spins Billy out. Tugs him back. When their chests bump, his laugh bursts, bubbles up. Weightless. Happy. Because all that matters to him, to them, it’s between these four irregular walls now.

And God this, this, is Steve’s favorite part.

(–ended up coming back running, hoping the love would re-stitch itself as he followed the road’s yellow lines.

Hoping Billy was the one letting his light on this time.)

Because the sun’s gonna keep on shining. They can keep on dancing in here, in their weird trapezoidal kitchen (in their house, in their home), for as long as they want. Hearts touching. Lips brushing. Bodies swaying, spinning, cutting through the golden light.

#harringrove #and #this is the end #!!#i know is not too goo but i'm happy i finished #it #and also #i wanted to have something for this #1 year anniversary so :D #thank you again fandom #i wouldn't have make it this far without you #also! ns*w anon. i don't know if your're still around but #i published this part for you long ago #and it my head its now for you so <3 #xharringrove #xfluffy

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marcilled · 4 years

Text

[this is gonna be a big long post about minecraft youtuber drama... press J to scroll past this if you don’t care about that. lol. sorry]

idunno if anybody took my post the other day as me “cancelling dream for cheating in a videogame”, i posted it mostly out of bemusement of the whole situation, and because that video was really well put-together. (context: his 1.16 speedruns were disqualified by the minecraft speedrun.com moderators & there was a video & document explaining why).

I definitely don’t correlate cheating a speedrun w/ ableism, racism, etc etc. I already knew about a lot of nasty shit dream has done, like the video he did with Notch, and how all of his early content was about pewdiepie, just further normalizing those two to his young audience. I’ve always disliked him for those things, which I’ve been aware of pretty much as long as I’ve known of him, and he has never apologized for those things. It’s why whenever I posted about him before (which was... maybe once or twice?), I always say “don’t stan him or anything he sucks”.

I had no idea there was so much more to it honestly. It’s kind of galling seeing the full context now, because whenever I’ve seen any kind of criticism against him, it’s been him presenting it in an apology. I dunno why I wasn’t suspicious of this given what I already knew about him, but the guy seems to be very clever with how he damage controls any sort of possible controversy regarding him. He presents a really heartfelt, honest apology for whatever happened and gives a few cherrypicked examples of things that people said about him and says how wrong he was and how he doesn’t want to alienate his viewers.

The fact that it’s Dream presenting the evidence of his controversies, means that he gets to control how the conversation goes. Instead of a popular “mcyt” stan account getting to control the conversation, pointing out the shit he’s said and done, he addresses it in a livestream, and does not provide the original context. Huh, I wonder why. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want everyone to see that his mistakes are more than just little “oopsies”, it’s him being actively malicious and getting so defensive that he tells off anybody who could possibly disagree with his view of things.

While his actions and words are pretty horrid on their own, I think the thing that has me most concerned about Dream is... He seems pretty fuckin’ good at manipulating peoples’ perception of him.

-----

After the video about his speedruns being cheated came out the other day, he had this to say on twitter (this is his second, “personal” account):

Now, as I said before, cheating in a videogame isn’t at all comparable to racism or ableism. What I’m trying to point out here is his response to any sort of criticism.

The video he’s referring to is this one, published by Geosquare 2 days ago (dec 11th). What’s interesting to note here is how he singles out Geosquare specifically in this tweet. If you click on the video, the first few seconds establishes that it’s a video made by the entire Minecraft java edition speedrunning mod team (which is made up of a team of over a dozen people). The video and document was a true team effort from every single one of them, and it only got posted to Geosquare’s account (& got his narration) because he’s already a youtuber with a pretty comfortable amount of subscribers.

So, instead of pointing his ire (and those of his many, many fans) at the whole speedrun mod team, instead, he points it squarely on Geosquare, so that people have a convenient name to latch onto. He then accuses Geosquare of using his name as “clickbait” in order to get “easy views”, sowing the seed of this idea that Geosquare is doing this in an opportunistic grab for personal gain. If you clicked on the video and saw the description/pinned comment, you’d see that not only did Geosquare disable monetization on the video, he disabled monetization on his entire channel for as long as this drama goes on (and he knew there would be drama, dream made extra sure to threaten the mods with a video of his own in retaliation if they ended up banning him).

Then, in a reply to the first tweet, he says that there are “multiple moderators” messaging him saying the verdict was “biased” and that they may quit the mod team. He provides no evidence for this. However, if you click on the tweet and view any of the thousands of replies from his fans, it doesn’t matter that he gave no evidence, his word is enough. If you’re wondering, Geosquare and a few other mods have stated many times that it was a group decision on their part, and nobody had any question in their mind that Dream must have cheated. So... Dream, who are these “mods” that are messaging you? He won’t say.

Lastly here, I want to point out that in his next tweet on the matter, he makes this very bitter comment about how useless it was for them to investigate a “16th place run”. It’s a minor detail, but I think it’s worth mentioning; this kind of downplays how impressive his run was at the time. At the time he submitted his sub-20 minute speedrun, it was a top 5 run, in a very competitive category of speedrunning the game. In the 2 months since, several people have passed his time using new strats, but that doesn’t diminish the fact it was a pretty amazing “run”... if it weren’t cheated of course. But, I’m just rambling on about how petty I am about him cheating at this point so let me get back to the main point here.

If you see the numbers on these tweets (hundreds of thousands of likes), you’ll understand why this is pretty scary for those speedrun mods. The same day this happened Geosquare joked around “I’ve only gotten one death threat so far!”. Dream’s fanbase is unparalleled in minecraft youtube, and incredibly sizeable for a youtube channel overall. If you’re not familiar with this new wave of “mcyt” minecraft accounts, it’s... it’s pretty much exclusively because of Dream’s fame. He’s the driving force of minecraft youtube content right now. Any youtuber who even breathes near the guy blows up in subscribers & views. His minecraft server, “Dream SMP”, is like... it has a legitimate cultural impact, whether that sentence disgusts you or not. Especially for young gen Z kids.

The point I’m trying to make is, ever since he came onto the scene in early 2019, he’s grown and grown at exponential rates, and I can’t understate the kind of influence he has on not just his own fans, but the fans of like. Pretty much anyone who is plugged in to anything minecraft youtube related right now.

People have discussed this before, but Dream’s sudden rise to fame happened shockingly quick. So quick that it’s almost impossible it were by accident. He’d spent something like a year or two studying how the youtube algorithm works, how famous youtubers grow their popularity, etc. He spent a lot of time studying, and it paid off for him. It makes me wonder if he’s studied how youtubers deal with controversy as well. Because it seems like he’s doing everything right to keep his fans “loyal” to him.

So I think it’s not unreasonable to say that it is pretty goddamn concerning when he reacts to criticism like this. His immense fanbase, who are often worryingly obsessed with him, of mostly impressionable kids... It’s a recipe for disaster, in the hands of someone so entitled and immature.

I think what really has me worried, though, is a video he published to his second channel the other day. Recently, he published a video about his “stans”. The entire video essentially boiled down to him disputing claims that “dream stans” were toxic, or that stanning people or “stan culture” was creepy/unhealthy. He spent a lot of the video comparing stans of content creators to passionate fans of football teams, and expressed repeatedly how he thought it was normal and OK to be totally obsessed with a content creator and engage in “stan culture”, as long as you weren’t being a legitimate stalker. He pretty much only talked about the positives of being a Dream Stan, and how positive the “community” is. The whole video painted this really idealistic image of what it means to be a Stan of a person, and fandom in general.

Now... I don’t know about everyone else reading this, but I found that video to be... incredibly creepy and weird. It completely ignores any actual arguments about how stan culture can be unhealthy, and how engaging so heavily in parasocial relationships can be quite damaging, especially to younger people.

But, mostly? It seemed like the whole video was basically designed just to reinforce the most unhealthy impulses of his stans, and reward them with the positive encouragement that he actually enjoys it when they are obsessed with him so much that they can’t imagine he could ever possibly do anything wrong.

And that? That is fucking dangerous for a person with such a huge fanbase to be peddling to their fans.

Surely, he must know- a great deal of his fans are so obsessed with him, that they think they know him as well as, if not more than, a personal friend. So that when he does something disagreeable and wrong, and he claims “no that’s not how it happened, they’re biased and trying to cancel me because they’re jealous”, they just take that at face value, because why would he lie? He’s so honest and genuine in his videos and livestreams!

This sort of behavior from Dream, along with his tweets I posted earlier, reads to me as if he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think he is purposefully insulating his fans from the truth of his actions, so that he can present this idealistic picture of him in their mind, so that it seems absurd that he would do something wrong.

I think it’s only a matter of time before it comes out he’s done something much worse, honestly. What it is, is hard to say- he’s already done so much that anyone reading this should rescind their support for him, imo. But, I know that none of this matters to his millions of fans. While I worry for them, I also worry for anyone who becomes a target of Dream. I could see this speedrunning drama being the start of a downward spiral for him. Things could get real ugly with all that minecraft clout getting to his head... I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

TL;DR, dream sucks, and not just because he cheats at videogames.

I apologize again for writing a multi paragraph post about a minecraft youtuber. I will not post about this anymore (probably) please do not unfollow me .

#vivi bleats #txt #long post #i might delete this cuz im embarrassed i typed this much about this topic #but idk i already typed it so.#dream

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mr-and-mr-dameron · 4 years

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Learning to love ALL of Star Wars

I’ve grown a lot the past few years, and with that I’ve came to appreciate a lot more things about what I love. I’ve went from bitter and spiteful about what I don't have to appreciating what I do have, and at the centre of that storm is Star Wars. A franchise I’ve only really been invested in the last year.

The beginning

So I was always a “fan” of Star Wars, sure. I grew up with the prequels and I was excited when Disney was releasing their new movies. But the past year is where I really got invested and found a whole new love for the franchise. And strangely enough, it was through the simplicity of Lego. You see, I started watching videos by Brickvault about Lego Star Wars minifigures, and something about seeing the toys I loved as a kid from a modern perspective took me right back to wooshing my Jedi starfighter around my room. From there, I started moving away from Lego and dipped my toe in theories, lore videos and eventually discussion and review videos, the turning point being Cosmonaught Variety Hour. Now, I have some opinions on the guy now, but Cosmonaught was perfect for me at the time. He was opinionated, entertaining, but most importantly knew his shit, and I liked that. His videos on Star Wars are pretty good, and really helped form my opinions back then... In a bad way... Now I’ll make this clear, this is NOT on Cosmonaught, it was just how impressionable I was as a person back then. I’m just saying how his video affected me on a personal level. Up to this point I didn’t really understand the hate for the prequels besides the fact they were “bad movies” and “people don’t like them”. Cosmonaughts video on the prequels gave me those reasons, and I finally felt like I got the distaste for those films. However, like they say... A little knowledge can be dangerous, and boy was I about to learn that lesson the hard way...

The fall

So here I am, knower of all things, the CORRECT things... I’ve watched my fair share of videos from a handful of sources, I know my shit. I’m making my opinions known, and I’ve become that friend. But whats this! A dissenting opinion!? My boyfriend actually likes the prequels more than the Original Trilogy!? SACRALAGE!! I must prove him wrong! And prove him wrong I...! Did not... In fact, something rather bizarre happened... He convinced me. I was stubborn at first, but I’ll admit, my wall got broken down at long last. He (bless his soul for dealing with me) managed to get through to me exactly what it was he loved about those films, and it wasn’t just the nostalgia. I had always seen the politics of the Galaxy like most other people did, some boring preachy nonsense that had no place in Star Wars, but I came around to it. Granted with a little help from the Clone Wars I managed to piece together just what it was there was to like about these films... I wont say they’re perfect, far from it. But internally they have so much more going on compared to the Original Trilogy. The Era has some of the most fun and expandable concepts and ideas in all of Star Wars, and while it may not be as iconic, the visual artstyle of it all is still its own recognizable brand of Star Wars. And almost like magic (or my phone spying on me) youtube started recommending videos that disagreed with Cosmonaught, and I got my first taste of how his video wasn’t as sound as I thought. Now as a side note: I still like Cosmonaught. He’s a funny guy who like I said knows his shit, but he obviously isnt the be all end all right and wrong which I hadn’t quite learned. I can enjoy his content while disagreeing with it, and I think thats just fine. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of creators I watch now and he’s just joined them. But hang on, we’re missing something here... A certain... Mouse? Perhaps?

The dark times... The Disney Empire...

So hop back to modern day for a sec, this timeline pretty much lines up with the end of the Disney movies right? So how do I feel about those? Well... When the first three came out, I liked them. Like everyone else I was loving new Star Wars. As a young art student, I loved Rogue One and TLJ for their stunning visuals, deeper themes and their attempt at something new and fresh. I loved the throne room fight scene, the light speed ram and how Rogue One had such a bitter sweet ending. But ho ho no one else felt that way! And whether it be peer pressure or my love of dumpster fires my opinions changed like that. I laughed at the Rose Tico and Snoke memes, I hated the Canto Bight subplot and poor Luke being butchered on screen like that, and then there's Rey... Solo came and passed. I refused to go see it, as I did with TROS which came out around the time I was getting back into Lego, and along with the prequels I was watching video essay upon video essay about why the sequels sucked and how to rewrite them. Some of them coming from a positive place, others... Not so much.. And so my hatred for them grew as I got back into the franchise and came to appreciate the originals for what they done great, and loathing the new films for lacking that same spark. And unlike the prequels, I didn’t really get enough pushback to change my mind. But what I did get was the full brunt of spite and hate the fans had for these new films, and honestly? It was depressing.

Hate leads to suffering.

I finally reached my rock bottom. I genuinely reached a point where I debated giving up Star Wars for the sheer amount of negative feelings I had towards the state of the franchise (which might I add is valid if you ever end up feeling that way about something you’re meant to be enjoying).

I struggled to get past how Disney “ruined” Star Wars, and clearly nothing was going to change. 40 Years of history had been wiped out and the new timeline was a contorted mess, and the amount of discourse and disagreements in the franchise honestly did not help at all.

Nothing was simple, everything had a catch. You like how Kylo was irredeemable in TLJ? Well he’s redeemed in TROS. TFA is a fun film but it sets up a lot of the things people hated about the sequels so you cant even just head canon that the other two never happened. And then...

Saved by Lego

There was Lego, making the best of a bad situation. It didnt care if you didn’t like that Palpatine was back (somehow), it didn’t care about the clunky prequel dialog, and it didn’t care about the thousands of retcons from the entierety of the franchises existence.

Whether by contractual force or not: It was pure, distilled Star Wars.

I loved how a set with Rey could stand beside a set with OT Luke and thats just how it was. It put into context that this was reality, and I could either be bitter about what could have been or accept what was, which wasn’t easy and I’m still not really over it. But I reached a place where I could accept the fun in all of Star Wars, that I liked how some of these characters looked, that these characters all existed in one Galaxy, and it was nice.

And it led me straight back into...

Learning to love Star Wars

One of the most important lessons I learned in the past year was trust your gut. Sure, hear out other peoples take on something, and if it changes your opinion all the more power to you. But don’t fight the fact you felt something in that initial reaction. I liked the prequels as a kid, so why don’t I as an adult? Is it because i outgrew them and see them for the disasters they are? Or is it because a someone who watched them as a fully grown adult that grew up with the OT was underwhelmed?

And to that extent... I rewatched TFA and TLJ with an open mind and an open heart. The result?

Im indifferent towards TFA. It has fun character moments and has a decent adventure, for what it is its good. But I actually found myself enjoying TLJ after all these years of hating on it. I liked their take on Luke, I liked the mutiny subplot, it didnt push the story forward leaps and bounds but it was a more methodical take on the franchise and for the I liked it. It wasn’t perfect, its biggest flaw is how bleak it can feel and its lack of doing anything interesting with its setting, but it does do a fair amount of decent things and I’ve come to appreciate it for that.

I’m planning to watch TROS at long last soon, so maybe I’ll update it here. But what I will say is that I hope Lucasfilm don’t give up on the sequel era and characters quite yet. There is still a lot to love here as much as you may not like it, and I hope that they can explore more interesting meaningful themes and narratives in external media that they couldn’t in mainline films cough cough Stormpilot cough cough...

I know not everyone will agree with how I feel now, heck a lot of my problems I had still stand, but I’m at peace with it all now. I just want to sit back and enjoy this franchise for what it is. While I might not forgive Disney for its severe mishandling of... everything (a rant for another time) I’m content just not them supporting to the best of ability.

Star Wars is in such a unique position where each generation has a different stance and appreciation for different parts within the franchise. The prequels were hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, The Clone Wars was hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, and the sequels ended last year, their fans haven’t quite got their voice yet. But I’m interested to hear what they have to say.

#star wars #star wars trilogy #self reflection #thoughts #meta commentary #star wars prequels #Star Wars Sequels #lego star wars #my post

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bubbelpop2 · 4 years

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PLEASE READ

It is SO scary to think that nobody talks about the fact that nazis, the church of scientology, and terfs PURPOSFULLY target young people and groom them into antisemetic, racist ideation by using abuse tactics and gaslighting. We REALLY need to spread this information that people that aren’t doing well mentally, especially young and impressionable ones, get baited into these abhorrent, disgusting hate groups.

If you see this, PLEASE reblog. The act of being a nazi is inherently harmful, and people thinking that being a nazi in public is okay? That’s going to make others emerge. We need to make racists afraid again, and protect kids from becoming them. We need to stop the problem at the source: recruitment.

And if you see someone who IS a nazi? You may be tempted to try and change them, but don’t debate nazis, ever. They’re not trying to convince you, they’re trying to convince the people watching the debate. And these tactics that they use and I’m about to show to you make it hard to win, and they know it. They silence you, and deny and deny and deny until the people that are watching the argument are convinced.

It’s important to know the difference between “Nazi Prevention” and “Nazi Redemption”

Nazis are pieces of shit and need to shut the fuck up. But the people that are the most venerable to their bullshit need to hear now more than ever that nazi recruiting and nazi abuse tactics are very real and very dangerous.

They’re two VERY different things, and honestly, the second one causes more problems than it’s worth. Instead, do your best to protect your jewish mutuals and followers so that they don’t have to deal with nazi bullshit anymore than they already do by just existing. Don’t get baited, don’t get dragged into an argument, and don’t let them tell you that you’re confused.

What you SHOULD do, ESPECIALLY if you’re not jewish, is to use your white privileged to explain to other white non-jewish people that they likely have some misguided opinions that were put into their head by subtle nazi propaganda. Don’t just look at other communities for prejudice, look into yours. Root them out, and let them know that they’re in danger.

Keep yourself informed. Keep others informed. Don’t let the nazis win. It’s not just black people and jewish people they’re after. It’s indeginous people, it’s asian people, it’s trans people, it’s gay people. Everyone who isn’t white, blonde, and Straight is a target to them. Don’t let them win. Don’t.

They’re smart, they’re manipulative, they’re abusive, and they know what they’re doing. This is a problem RIGHT NOW, and right now is the time to strike it down for good by calling out their tactics, informing people on how to protect themselves, and push push push. Racism is still alive and kicking. This is far from over. It’ll be over when black people can go outside and trust the law enforcement to keep them safe. It’ll be over when Jewish people don’t have to keep the fact that they’re jewish a secret to avoid being hurt. It’ll be over when the thousands of natives that are suffering right now can know that their culture is going to survive, and that the colonizers didn’t win and commit a complete genocide on their way of life. White goyim people especially are VERY venerable to these recruiters, because their method of recruiting requires our rejection of them.

On that note, if you’re white: check out these [x,x,x] posts on my opinion on the phrase “all white people are racist”, it talks about a similar sentiment, and are good examples of easy to swallow pills for you to start with before you move on to tackling the big stuff.

Before you go: check out this post on how to be a good ally, This post to learn more about the ins and outs of Nazi Grooming and how to prevent and combat it, and make sure to send this post to all of your friends that you think are in danger of being groomed. Prevent nazis before they even happen.

#shut up bubbz #blm movement #blm #blm advice #blm recruitment #nazi tw #antisemetism tw #tw #nazis #racism #george floyd #breonna taylor

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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years

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@acelania replied to your post: theworldbrewery: saturday D&D tip: write all your...

*waves hand excitedly* @c-is-for-circinate, could you possibly share about your planar geography model? It sounds Super Interesting and I am ALWAYS up to hear about interesting worldbuilding!

@yfere replied to your post: theworldbrewery: saturday D&D tip: write all your...

@c-is-for-circinate every time I hear about your academia campaign I !!!!! Because I just want to live in that world,

Man, <3 to you both. I need to post more about my worldbuilding on here. I think it’s a pretty cool world to play in! There’s some shit going down with the history of elves. Also I feel like Tumblr would probably appreciate the folktale of the Hero Resolve.

The planar geography of this universe (geography? theography? thaumography? what do you call it when it’s entirely different planes of existence?) is, by nature, beyond mortal comprehension and cannot be accurately modeled in three-dimensional space. Also, because I was at an extremely impressionable age when I first learned about Planescape, it’s important to note that the various planes of existence are in fact infinite, and many of them exist outside of the local planar cluster inhabited by our world of Onde, its inhabitants and regular visitors, and their local gods.

Which means that for centuries, scholars have been trying to come up with some model to describe how the planes relate to each other, how they function, and how the fuck they even exist in the first place.

Various things they’ve tried over the ages:

The Great Wheel cosmology from classic D&D, with its Inner and Outer planes (fairly similar to what we seen in Exandria, actually!) is a very classic historical understanding of How Things Work. Think, like...if Aristotle existed in this world, this would be his model. Logical, influences all science and research for thousands of years to come, and actually entirely wrong. (Mostly. Except for how it’s not.)

The Gradient Model suggests that, rather than being defined by good/evil/law/chaos, all planes exist on a spectrum somewhere between Material and Magical (or Divine). Material planes contain mostly physical objects which tend to follow specific laws of gravity and object permanence; aside from Onde itself, this includes elemental planes, the Feywild and the Shadowfell, and a handful of others. Magical planes are made entirely of will and essence. Death and existence gets weird on magical planes, because souls are as real as (or more real than!) bodies there, so dying doesn’t entirely matter (though it might when you try to go home). Worth noting that while Onde is classified as mostly-Material, scholars have never actually found a fully material plane. The theory is that one could exist, and you might be able to travel there, but you could never leave due to the lack of magic; current avenues in theory are still exploring methods of detecting a fully-material plane.

The frosted plum pudding model, which is absolutely a riff on the plum pudding model of the atom, was very much the thing every kid learned in school a hundred years ago. The theory here is that the various material planes exist embedded, more or less stationary, within the ethereal plane. The entire ethereal plane is then surrounded by the astral plane, like a whole lot of frosting. All the various magical planes are embedded within that astral plane. The planes have fixed positions and relationships to each other, and the ethereal and astral planes function more as a medium for holding everything else than as independent planes in their own right.

The inverted orbital model, which was ABSOLUTELY WILD when it was first proposed, suggests that actually, the more magical planes should be envisioned as sitting at the middle of the planar system, with pure will and magic and divine energy at the center of all existence and everything else spinning around it, since they’re generally all very close to each other, travel between them is relatively easy, and they intersect frequently. Material planes, at the edge of the system, are far apart and move very slowly which is why they seem to have fixed positions relative to each other, but divine planes shift around each other constantly. This is the model that is now generally taught in elementary schools.

Most high-level scholars generally agree that in actuality the planes all overlap each other, and the study of Cloth Theory (where each plane is envisioned as a piece of fabric, and various planes may be folded together in some places and far apart in others) is another main drive of modern research. There isn’t a distinct model related with this field that’s easy for the general public to grasp, since nobody agrees quite how the planes overlay one another, so this is very much the thing that college kids learn that blows their minds, sends them into an existential crisis, and either cements them as arcanologists for life or turns them immediately into humanities majors.

If the science of this continent ever knew about the city of Sigil or the Outlands (because fuck yes there’s a city of Sigil, I met Planescape at an extremely impressionable age), they forgot about its existence centuries ago, and it would blow their little minds.

#C the DM #asked and answered #dungeons and dragons #worldbuilding #d&d #look if you can't use the cosmology of your homebrew game world to riff on string theory #then what CAN you use it for #really

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infernoxhq · 5 years

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WELCOME ABOARD THE INFERNO X, hope your trip goes smoothly...

firstly, i want to thank everyone who applied. there’s been some real gifts in this bunch and i had to do a lot of thinking when picking these apps. even if you weren’t accepted, know that i did not read a single bad app today. they were all phenomenal. i certainly had my work cut out for me.

to those of you down below who are accepted. welcome! i’m so excited to start this crazy journey with you. you have 24 hours to send in your account. if you can’t make it then, please message me. you also have the option to send in your discord before sending in your account. we can get chatting as soon as you’d like but you still need to follow the 24 hour rule for accounts.

take a look at the check page. follows will be released once we have 80% of the accounts in.

CONGRATS, CLAIRE, you’ve been accepted for CELESTIAL

wow can i get a space mom? this was such a blessing to read and my heart absolutely goes out for huxley. a comeback story is really one for the books and while maybe she comes from a super affluent family, she’s a woman of science and i love her for it. plus with her family back on earth but her devotion to her craft, i am really excited to see those two things play out with the plot, and see the kinds of choices she’ll make.

CONGRATS, ALLIE, you’ve been accepted for COMET

can a gal just take some notes in peace? no. she can’t. and boy am i excited to experience her reactions when shit starts going south and this very much is not the mission to just snap some pics and take some notes. of course, even if she wants to just keep her head down, she’s still a bad bitch! good for her! now i just wanna see that Bad Bitch Come Out.

CONGRATS, BUCKY, you’ve been accepted for DARK MATTER

being selfless isn’t cute? damn what a hot take. and i’m here for that honestly. love that the alien babe is out here like that. of course, i loved everything about william and you captured so beautifully his desire and love for things out of this world, even if maybe he’s never had the pleasure of going out to space himself. i really am excited to see how things will go once he gets off that shit rock, and starts seeing alien life forms in person.

CONGRATS, YANG, you’ve been accepted for EQUNOX

pandora said ?? i’m baby?? but the fact is, she’s trying not to be baby and i love that so much. nothing puts a damper on your shit than being the first ever successful & perfected designer baby in known history. this app really was a beautiful story to read about some kid who didn’t ask for any of this shit and was a gift to god and now just wants to be their own human being and you know what?? i hope pandora gets it.

CONGRATS, DIVYA, you’ve been accepted for NEPTUNE

everyone’s gotta have a narc friend. but the best kind of narc friend. juna’s story was a wild fucking ride to go on and of course she deserves better than what she got. but you also explored the aspect of being a co-captain that i’ve always found really interesting. there’s a lot that rides on being a captain and it just didn’t work for her. but that’s alright bc she’s going to co-cap the fuck out of that ship and i can’t WAIT for everything to get wild for her.

CONGRATS, SUMMER, you’ve been accepted for PENUMBRA

step on me. that’s it. mila had a really striking story that i just could not get over. we see many people in this timeline who have really had to fight for where they are, and she’s not an exception to that, but her struggle with following family traditions, and being true to herself was powerful. i think it’ll be especially powerful given this group. i am really excited to see her interact with the others who maybe followed the path she was always meant to.

CONGRATS, CORY, you’ve been accepted for PENUMBRA (omega)

protecc. at all. costs. i never excepted penumbra to get five apps, and i spent a long while debating the two. and then i thought, this is my swamp. of course, we can figure out the logistics of having two engineers but i figure, it’s a big ship. orion really was such a gem, and so different from the rest of the people on the team, i really wanted him to come along on the adventure. some of the things you mentioned in his biases also got me really excited for gameplay and his choices when things start to go wrong, and i can’t wait for them to come into play.

CONGRATS, D, you’ve been accepted for SATURN

it’s captain america ft. marital issues. i’d def be interested to see if that could plat out on dash, and if anyone would be interested. but aside from that little fact, i think nico is an excellent captain. especially with your added sprinkle of being on inferno ix, an extra little spicy detail. and a bitch aint scared of death. i respecc that.

CONGRATS, JENN, you’ve been accepted for STARLIGHT

cue the new york vc: SALLY BERN? i see you. i see what you’ve done. this app was spectaculat. i read this on the plane today and was kind of shook ten thousand miles in the air it was a bit of a hazard. glad i made it out okay because now i get to see echo interact on a ship. your little lowkey fact about them being impressionable is so exciting to me and i know i’m so biased to androids and they all make me sweat, i can feel the development of this one is going to be *chefs kiss*

#accepted

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buriedincharcol · 6 years

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Red and Blue Lights

(Red Crackle Detective/Criminal AU

@jaythesaltybastard i blame you for this and you know exactly what you did)

Carmen Sandiego had wanted to be a detective for as long as she could remember.

Every day after school, she would fight her sister Amy for the remote and plop herself in front of her family's old TV. When she won the hard-earned battle, she would adjust the antennas just right so she could watch her favorite programs: true crime shows and buddy cop movies. The young girl was riveted by the thrilling chase scenes, spellbound by the explosive shoot-offs, moved by the deep bond between partners, but most of all she was intrigued by criminals and the motivations behind their schemes.

Now one could argue that exposing an impressionable child to these kinds of media would desensitize them to explicit violence and perhaps even warp their moral values. These concerns would be perfectly justified and measures would be taken to protect their young minds... if it were any household other than Carmen's.

She and her sister Amy had been adopted by Kage Gozen - the ambitious, stoic New York Chief of Police (dubbed teasingly as Shadow-san by close family and friends). Instead of discouraging his daughters from following in the footsteps of their father, he encouraged their interest in his dangerous profession. Kage enrolled his daughters in martial arts and self-defense classes, taught them how to shoot, and drilled into them the nuances of the law. Perhaps he was grooming them to become officers - maybe he wanted to carry on the family profession of law enforcement just as he took up the mantle after the retirement of his mother, Tomoe Gozen, from the same position.

Or perhaps the weeb side of him just thought the idea of having a couple of badass anime kids was cool.

(There was evidence to suggest this was the case, but if forensic pathologist Doctor Bellum ever breathed a word that she caught him Naruto running down the street to catch a suspect then he would stop bringing his homemade castella cake to the break room every Sunday. It was mutually assured destruction - nobody would end up happy in that situation.)

Regardless of his intentions, Chief Gozen ended up with two very capable, very opinionated, and very independent young women.

Amy, always a stickler about the rules, decided to study to become a prosecutor. After seven grueling years of hard work, she cried when she finally passed the board exam and then cried some more when she realized they misprinted her last name as "Santiago" on her licence to practice law. Since the elder sibling was off doing another profession, that meant the responsibility to follow in their father's footsteps fell to Carmen.

It was good that the girl's father instilled her with a strong sense of justice and a clear distinction between right and wrong because otherwise her obsession with criminals and the law could have gone the other direction.

Can you imagine Carmen Sandiego as a criminal? Absurd.

She knew from the moment she graduated from the Academy that she'd have to work twice as hard and be twice as efficient than her male counterparts to be treated with even half the respect. This challenge only fueled her drive her to push herself and become the best cop in her father's precinct. She resolved that when she usurped Chief Gozen's position (not if, only when) she would leave no doubt that she earned the place for herself instead of gaining it through nepotism.

That wasn't to say that she hadn't already tried asking.

Eventually, her efforts payed off as she quickly rose from police technician, to officer, to detective. Carmen was sure that along with her trusty partner, Mike "Player" Tozier, she'd reach enough solved cases and arrests for their superiors to consider promoting them to corporals soon. They had a 98% success rate - so far, it looked like smooth sailing towards her goal. What could go wrong?

(If you read the previous statement and thought to yourself: Ah, that looks like a setup to introduce someone or something that made everything go wrong...

...You'd be absolutely correct you funky little detective.)

The thief known as "Crackle" was the teensy, tiny wrinkle in her carefully mapped out life plan towards success.

"Evading us for the tenth time is not a small problem, Carmen." "Shut up, Player. I totally had him that time."

He had appeared out of nowhere and jumped onto the detective's list of Top Priorities when the Panthère de Cartier - a necklace crafted from glittering precious stones and white gold priced at fifty-two thousand dollars - disappeared directly from the neck of the actress known as Countess Cleo as she attended the Met Gala. She only noticed its absence when a photographer asked her out the bold fashion statement of wearing a folded piece of paper dangling from a piece of string as an accessory with her Ralph & Russo evening gown.

Law enforcement quietly infiltrated the Gala when the grand theft was called in by the woman. They discreetly pulled the victim aside to question her about the crime since the last thing they needed was frenzied paparazzi, press, and celebrities causing a panic and destroying potential evidence. Cleo was inconsolable as she cooperated with the police, makeup running down her face. While Player questioned/consoled the her, Carmen's intense grey eyes studied the note left over by the thief. Her gloved hands were careful while dusting the outside folded area for prints. No dice. When she opened the note it simply read: the name is Graham Crackle.

Carmen deciding that it was a stupid-ass codename, cut off the first part and dubbed him "Crackle".

At first she didn't have the slightest clue as to what the thief looked like, but then she noticed that at every crime scene that had Crackle's calling card - a note usually with some flirtatious pickup line or message - there would be a tall, athletic-looking man with swept back brunette hair on the security footage who would leave right before they arrived and would turn right at the last second towards the camera as if knowing that they would be watching.

Sometimes, if Carmen squinted hard enough at the grainy footage, she could swear that the man would flash a cocky smirk that felt entirely too much like he was mocking her personally.

However, she didn't look closely that often because Player would tease her relentlessly about her 'checking out the suspect'.

He would laugh, "Maybe that's why we haven't caught him yet - you have puppy love for the perp." She didn't know how else to reply except by shooting him a quick, but indignant "Shut up!"

She was an independent young lady with high standards to match her high moral values who absolutely did not blush whenever she opened up those notes and she absolutely did not lay awake in bed thinking about him.

"Well... shit," Carmen said aloud to herself as she stared up at the ceiling of her apartment, her short hair bedraggled from tossing and turning on her mattress as the night went on.

His motivations didn't make sense.

Crackle would steal an assortment of priceless items like the Olympic gold medal of athlete-turned-coach Sarah Brunt, the abstract (and disturbing) fine art paintings of the renowned Professor Maelstrom, and the bejeweled necklace of Countess Cleo along with other objects of high value. With his prizes, he could absolutely sell them with ease on the black market and gain a fortune... but that wasn't the case. After a few weeks or months at most, the items would be found in the homes of their rightful owners - it was like he didn't want to steal for the money but rather because it was like a game to him.

It was almost like he just wanted the attention.

Carmen laughed to herself, "What a stupid idea. What kind of dumbass-"

She was startled as a sharp knock on the door broke through the silence of her apartment. Still half asleep and groggy the brunette rolled herself out of bed, thumping onto the hardwood floor. She groaned as she stood up unsteadily, checking herself over on her iPhone camera to make sure she was at least halfway decent. The bright screen of the phone momentarily blinded her as she squinted at the time. She hissed, "What the- what the fuck it's fucking three in the morning? Who the fuck?"

Suddenly alert, Carmen grabbed a her father's present from when she first moved out: a big ol' can o' mace. She stalked toward the sound of the knocking. Apparently, her visitor had already become bored while waiting as they had taken to rapping their knuckles to different beats on the wood like they were playing a drum.

When she looked through the peephole, she realized that it was the brunette suspect from all the crime scenes:

Crackle.

As she swung it open, the door hit the inside wall of her apartment with a loud bang. He stopped mid-knock to look down at her (and the nozzle of her pepper spray) with an odd expression that seemed to show shock, apprehension, and... something else she couldn't recognize. Slowly, he raised his hands up to show that he was unarmed and they stood frozen in her doorway silently sizing each other up for a few seconds. The tension felt like it could be cut through with a knife.

"So, uh..." Crackle trailed off as his eyes traveled over her black sheep onesie, "Come here often, Lambkins?"

Huh, he's an Aussie.

Carmen's expression hardened.

In a flash of movement, her right hand free of the mace reached up and grabbed the collar of his shirt with an iron grip as she dragged him into her apartment. Still holding onto him, she turned slightly to kick the door shut behind them.

When she turned back, she noticed a deep rosy blush had exploded over his face.

Seeing him over the grainy footage of a security camera was much different than seeing him in person.

Oh no, he's hot, she screamed internally.

Her external expression remained stony as she advanced forwards while he was forced to move backwards, hands still in the air. Carmen shoved him onto her bed while she remained standing with the pepper spray aimed towards him; he fell onto the mattress with a yelp. "Do you do this with every strange man who shows up at doorstep in the middle of the night? Don't you think it's a tad too forward, mate? Not that I'm complaining-" "Shut up." Carmen cut off his nervous rambling.

She continued, proud that her tone didn't betray her internal freak-out, "You're going to tell me why you did what you did."

From his sitting position he looked up at her with a cocky grin, "I did a lot of things today, Red. You're gonna have to specify-"

Suddenly, the detective threw the pepper spray off the side as she leapt onto him. The woman quickly maneuvered until she ended up with one forearm at his throat, the other arm pinning his hands tightly to the mattress above his head, and both her knees squeezed securely around his hips to ensure he couldn't escape. However, escape was last thing on his mind at that moment. Carmen stubbornly ignored his pink flush as she spoke, "Did I not tell you shut the fuck up, Crackle? Did I fucking stutter?" He slowly shook his head under her grip. "I'm going to let you get up, and you're going to tell me why you went through all the time and effort to steal all those things only to give them back. I'm not playing around - if you fucking twitch wrong I'm going to knock you out cold and with the rest of the force will be here before you can even blink. Nod if you understand." He slowly nodded and she moved herself back until she was standing again.

Although their contact had ended as quickly as it had begun, Carmen could still feel the way his pulse fluttered against her skin.

Crackle sat up from his previous position on the bed while still looking up at her as he rubbed his neck, "First of all, the name's Graham. My friends call me Gray and I suppose you should call me that considering how close we were just a few seconds ago." She huffed and crossed her arms, glaring at him.

He continued, "Alright, so you asked me why I would rob shit and return it right? Well it's simple, there is no tragic backstory or puzzle I just wanted to get your attention." He studied her face to gauge her reaction and almost laughed at the way her expression could only be described as 'carmen.exe has stopped working'.

The cogs in her head turned, still processing his reason (and confession) when she finally let out a hysterical giggle, "I had my suspicions, but I didn't think anyone would be that much of a dork." He looked at her offended, "What? Theft is absolutely a valid language of love if you're trying to lure in a detective!" His upset tone threatened to turn her giggling into unattractive chortling, "Says who? What disaster of a person recommended this to you?" "My friend Jean-Paul said that's how he snagged his husband!" The thief defended. She stopped for a second, thinking about the familiar name, "Oh yeah, I know Antonio and his husband. He totally would've given stealing as a flirtation technique." Carmen made a mental note to confront the couple later about their unorthodox relationship advice.

The detective thought for a moment, "Wait, I hadn't even met you before you starting stealing things. Why me?" Graham looked off to the side and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, "I was just visiting to precinct to drop off something I borrowed from Antonio when I saw you working on a case with your partner. I thought you were cute so asked Jean-Paul for his advice, and the rest is history." She looked at him with exasperation, "I can't fucking belie- I would've gone out with you if you just asked me like a normal person, dipshit! You didn't need to break the law! I needed to do so much paperwork because of you!" Carmen waved her hands about to help express her frustration.

Graham looked at her as he seemed to think something over, "Well, what if I ask you out like a normal person now? What do you say about meeting me at that little cafe on 20th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue? Maybe on Friday at 8:00 PM?" Carmen considered him for a moment, "Okay, I'll meet you there... if you promise to stop stealing stuff and just date me like anyone else would." His mouth twisted into a cocky smirk, "No promises." She groaned as she grabbed his elbow, hauling him up and started to walk him back towards her door, "Why did I think you would reply any differently? Just... remember to bring your loot back to their owners."

"Of course, Lambkins"

"Don't call me that."

She opened the door and just as Graham was about the step out, she yanked him down so they were face-to-face; they were both hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu.

Carmen's stormy grey eyes peered into his as she spoke, "I just thought that you should know something before you leave: If I find out everything you've talked about was a lie? Or if you just disappear on me and don't show up on that date? I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I'll do worse things to you than what I did earlier when you got smart with me." Her soft voice was filled with warning.

Graham met her gaze with his own, his eyes eyes half-lidded, "Bold of you to assume that's not exactly what I want."

A rosy blush spread across her face as he smirked.

Carmen abruptly pushed him out the doorway and slammed it shut behind him, listening with her back to the wood until the sound of his footsteps in the hallway faded away.

She rubbed her face, tired from the events of the night as she shuffled back to her bed. Right as she was about to take a running leap onto the soft, inviting blankets, she noticed a folded piece of paper on her pillow. She hadn't even noticed him leave it there.

The brunette laughed to herself as she picked up the calling card and read aloud, "I’m supposed to be the thief, and yet you’ve stolen my heart." What a dork, she thought to herself.

And if Carmen's face heated up just a little bit then Player wasn't there to tease her about it.

#red crackle #my writing #graham crackle #carmen sandiego #carmen x gray

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ukdamo · 5 years

Text

KZ Sachsenhausen

One of mine...

KZ Sachsenhausen ; there and then, here and now

In the summer of 1936 the posters on the underground in Berlin declaimed to every traveller, “Escape the big smoke. Come and enjoy the forests and lakes of Oranienburg". A forty-five minute train journey from S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse (1), in the heart of the city, brought sun seekers into the pleasant countryside to the north.

And why not? The dappled forest paths and clear lakes offered welcome relief from the thronged streets of the capital, streets filled with thousands of visitors who had come for the Olympiad being held in the new stadium, built to the west of the city.

People from all over the world had flown in to Flughafen Tempelhof, the airport whose buildings were a stone testament to the vitality of the l000 Year Reich. From there, visitors jostled along Swastika-hung streets to view the city sights: the Brandenburg Gate, the treasures of the Pergamon Museum, Schloss Charlottenburg; to climb to the top of the Siegessäule (2) not yet moved, on Hitler's order, from its home in front of the Reichstag; to stroll down the Unter den Linden - although the crowds were no longer shaded by its eponymous trees since they had been felled so as not to obscure the vista of Nazi (3) parades.

Few visitors, admiring the State Opera house, recalled the newsreels of 1933 which showed this building lit by the flickering light of a great bonfire - a bonfire of burning books heaped on the adjacent square.

Impressionable tourists lunched in the Café Schottenham, by the Anhalter Bahnhof (4), and then walked admiringly past the Bauhaus designed Europahaus en route to the splendid new Air Ministry building. Only a few years earlier the sightseers might have taken their coffee and cake in the Hotel Prinz Albrecht but this was now the HQ of Reichsfűhrer SS (5), Heinrich Himmler.

With every pavement, café and square teeming with tourists it was no wonder Berliners escaped to the relative calm of Oranienburg, to take a boat out on the lake, or to walk through the woods.

There were some city-dwellers, however, who travelled there under duress and for a more sinister purpose. To prevent the possibility of any embarrassing incidents in Berlin during the period of the Games, to disguise its anti-Semitism, and to forestall any negative publicity, some of the measures taken against the Jews by the regime were suspended.

Behind this façade (quietly, unobtrusively, diligently), the Gestapo (6) intensified its labours rounding up the enemies of the Reich - Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, liberals, Christians, Jews, Sinti and Romany peoples, pacifists,

Jehovah' s Witnesses, homosexuals, those designated 'anti-socials' or criminals - and took them to the purpose built camp on the outskirts of Oranienburg. It was known as KZ Sachsenhausen. (7)

On a wintry day in February l996, I followed in their footsteps.

---------------

I was part way through my week in the city when I made my ‘pilgrimage’. After breakfasting, showering, and dressing in my most colourful clothes and dangliest earring,

I picked up the remembrance (8), quitted my Berlin lodgings and set out for Oranienburg. The journey that had brought me to this time and place had begun years before in quite another location. As a younger man, studying Modern History at the University of Liverpool, I had focussed my enthusiasm on nineteenth and twentieth century European history: Berlin was a pivotal place in the scheme of things. My perspective, particularly on twentieth century German history, was informed by the lived experience of being a gay man. There and then reached a spectral hand into the here and now.

The cold February sky was downcast; grey, lowering. pedestrians turned up their coat collars to insulate themselves and hastened to their destinations. Sometimes I drew startled looks - my appearance being somewhat conspicuous - opposing the bleakness of the morning as it did. It was the fluttering ribbons which attracted most interest though.

(Like the compelling image of the red coat in the film "Schindler's List"?)

The train journey to Oranienburg was a journey in time as much as through a landscape. The train trundled across the city, heading northwards. Tenements gave way to light-industrial enterprises, these, in their turn, to detached houses with steeply-raked roofs. The houses thinned out and were separated by fields, wooded areas, little ponds and watercourses. As we clanked onwards, the landscape became more open. I could see now that the ground was waterlogged; crusty, muddy and frosted with snow. Even the larger lakes were frozen. Denuded trees pointed bony fingers to the sky. Somehow I had drifted into the winter of l944/45. The train reached its terminus and we few passengers reluctantly turned out of the warm carriages to brave the wind-scoured platform.

Almost immediately, a gentle dusting of snow began to fall. (I am surprised to find that 1 feel glad it is snowing. It seems appropriate). I am possessed by the unshakeable conviction that no-one should visit at a pretty time of year. It would be sacrilegious.

There is a mixture of buildings in the town, old and new, the streets are cobbled not asphalted. It requires no effort of imagination to see columns marching along this road. Straggly columns, sore-footed, threadbare.

Oranienburg is a smallish town, similar to my own home town in NE Lancashire. There is some road traffic thudding over the cobbles; Trabbies and Wartburgs as well as VWs and Opels. Some kids look at me with unrestrained interest, older people with more reserve. Some of them even have a reproachful aspect.This is no longer Berlin, where people of unusual aspect arouse little notice and less comment. This is not even Manchester, where gays can be visible with a modicum of safety. This is the familiar, narrow, inhospitable ‘small-town’ Bronski Beat sang about with such eloquence.

I recognise it from my own lived experience.

I become conscious of many thoughts; "This building would have been there then"

"What must it be like to live here now, with such a legacy?"

"What do these little kids make of it?"

Practical considerations imposed themselves and I looked for a signpost. There was one. How sobering, how chilling, to see it written. No longer a name from the past but a place here and now: Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen (9).

Following the directions indicated, I walked towards the camp. As I neared it, the monument became visible above the rooftops. It stands uncompromisingly - a concrete grey monolith with pinkish triangles on the upper section. You could easily imagine that it was physically holding up the clouded sky, like Atlas.

At the corner of the Strasse der Nationen (10), which leads to the entrance, there is a small display board that remembers those who were killed on the 'Death March'. In the spring of l945, when it became obvious that all was lost, the authorities decided to march the camp inmates to the Baltic, intending to put them on ships and sink them.

Six thousand died before the column was liberated - they were shot, beaten to death, or killed by cold and exhaustion. It was a sombre marker for what lay ahead.

Before going into the camp proper visitors walk through an entrance gate and along a wooded way that leads past the information centre. Through the trees to the left (sparse, wintry and naked) glimpses of the perimeter wall can be had. I went in to the office and collected an English guide map. The room was dominated by a big, green-tiled stove that radiated masses of heat. It made the cold outside seem that much more intense.

"What must it be like to work in such a place?" I wondered,

"Do you grow used to the horror of it all? Can you afford to forget?" I quitted the building and felt very alone. There was just me, the remembrance, and the reality of Sachsenhausen. There and then, here and now. I feel strongly that Sachsenhausen is not history: history has no life in it. Sachsenhausen can never be mere history as long as there is someone who knows, who remembers, who lives in the light of that remembrance.

The first place that presents itself to the visitor is a modern exhibition centre (1961) which houses photographs, archive material, and an allegorical stained glass memorial window. The building dates from the original opening of the camp as a centre for national remembrance, in what was then the GDR (11). It focuses on the wartime history of Sachsenhausen. It stands in what was the SS barrack area, just in front of the gatehouse. Inside, I noted the brief descriptions of the photos in English. Many needed no explanation: the horrors were all-to-evident. Among the most harrowing were the pictures of those murdered on the march to the Baltic.

Corpses were scattered along the route - in fields, in ditches, in the woods, by the roadside - killed by a single pistol shot to the head. From under makeshift coverings (which those who found the bodies had used to try and afford them the dignity denied them by their tormentors) poked emaciated limbs, bruised and disfigured faces, unshod feet. Other photographs detailed those who were left behind, the three thousand in the 'hospital', found when the Russians entered the camp on April 22nd 1945.

On that April day, some few miles to the south, Hitler was in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. He had celebrated his last birthday two days previously. The sounds of the strife above ground were muffled and did not disturb the delusions of ultimate victory he cherished. In the cold reality of day, Flughafen Tempelhof was about to fall to the advancing Russians.

Within a week Hitler would be dead.

Some of the prisoners in Sachsenhausen made slow recoveries and joined the sea of 'Displaced Persons' trying to get home in post-war Europe. For others, death's grip was too tight for liberation to make a difference.

Leaving the photograph collection, I turned toward the entrance to the camp proper and walked through. Arbeit Macht Frei (l2) said the mocking inscription on the gate. By the end of 1944, over 204,000 people had read that sentence as they passed under the lintel and in to the Appellplatz (13). Once inside, more than 100,000 of them were systematically put to death. Others met death in camps they were transferred to. It would be invidious to try to describe the sufferings endured by camp inmates in a purely statistical way; in any case, the destruction of records means that an accurate total can never be known. The information in Sachsenhausen suggests that some 30,000 gay men were sent to the camps under the Nazis. Estimates vary. A figure of 60,000 or more may not be unduly high. Perhaps as many as 2/3rds of these men did not survive.

Standing there, 1 felt as if I had ought to remove my boots and go barefoot. A stupid idea but an almost overpowering feeling. I gazed across the open courtyard, at the monument towering beyond, and was filled with unutterable sadness.

The camp is laid out like a gigantic triangle, with the gatehouse in the centre of the baseline. Emotionally, I felt this to be an obscene joke. Apparently, it was simply the result of Nazi thoroughness and the exigencies of security - a shorter perimeter, fewer watchtowers, fewer unobserved corners, better sightlines. All so easily calculated.

The courtyard presented a large semicircle - the placement of the first row of huts being indicated by a latticed wall. Behind me, to my left and right was the neutral zone (actually a killing field); a wire boundary marker, a few yards of bare earth, then an electric fence. Finally, and almost superfluously, there was the perimeter wall with its barbed wire crown. To step over the marker invited being shot without warning. Photographic evidence shows that some prisoners chose this. Still others crossed the death strip and embraced the electrified wire.

I looked down at the map in my hand. It was difficult to use it nimbly because of the cutting wind and my chilled muscles. My eyes were watering, too, but I could not blame the wind for that. The ribbons on the remembrance fluttered; the only colour in the landscape.

Immediately in front of me was a great concrete roller that weighed three metric tonnes. The Häftlinge (14) were forced to run pulling this and were beaten if they moved too slowly. A semicircle just in front of the first row of huts was identified as the Schuhprűfstrecke (15), Here, in a broad arc, were nine sections - each of a different surface - gravel, flint, broken stone, sand etc… Prisoners had to walk over these for ten hours each day (about 25 miles, carrying 35lb in weight) to test the durability of shoe/boot soles. I looked down. The frost-frozen ground cracked beneath my own booted feet and I sank into the mush. Scattered snowflakes flitted by. A few rooks called, screechingly.

A party of British teenagers came in through the gatehouse. They were chatty, boisterous, as kids are. But their voices grated on my ears even more than the shrill rooks. Some places in the world must only ever be silent places. Not because noise is a bad thing.

No, Act Up is right when it says that Silence = Death. But in Sachsenhausen the silence is needful. It is what makes it permissible to be noisy elsewhere. If the potent and clamorous silence of that place is ever trodden underfoot, then the laughter, songs, protests, whistles and dancing that enliven and affirm us wherever we are will be themselves in danger of being silenced forever.

There are those who wish it so.

In September of 1992, a number of individuals broke into the camp and burned down two of the huts (known as the Jewish Barracks). It is thought that this act was a deliberate desecration of the memorial and was an indication of the resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the recently re-unified Germany. In Berlin itself, on Oranienburger Strasse, stands the recently restored Neue Synagoge (16). It is guarded by three armed policemen and is protected by stringent security measures. Inside is an exhibition that focuses on the history of the Jewish people in Berlin, even so, it acknowledges that racism and prejudice have deep roots are widely prevalent.

Closer to home, there is a latent racism abroad on the streets of my own town. The National Front has contested, and continues to be active, in local elections. Dispersed asylum seekers meet with thinly veiled hostility. In 1994 an NF candidate was successfully elected in local council elections on the Isle of Dogs, London. Jewish cemeteries are regularly vandalized. Violence directed at lesbians and gay men, is, sadly, an unremarkable occurrence.

My train of thought had been interrupted by the noise of the school kids, so I allowed them to go their own way and then turned my attention back to the map. Over to the right was a temporary exhibition that told the story of the Jewish Barracks and their inmates. The future of these two barrack blocks (38 and 39), destroyed in the arson attack, remains to be decided.

Further on was the special detention camp set up for prominent political, and other, prisoners. A number of the cells are still there. Prisoners were often held in solitary confinement for long periods, tortured, denied food and drink, kept in darkened cells for months or even longer. Martin Niemőller (17) was a prisoner here. To walk along and look into the tiny cells (some with memorials inside) was a humbling experience. It was not hard to imagine the clang of steel doors, the turn of keys, the sounds of brutal interrogation echoing down the narrow corridor.

What was the date again?

At the far end, the building opened on to an exercise yard, separated from the rest of the camp by a high wall. I stepped out again into the bleak, dismal light. To the left was the Erdbunker (18), a burial cell or pit where prisoners were virtually entombed, exposed to bitter cold and oozing wet walls with only a small, steel barred hatch above.

What would you see from inside? A cross hatched patch of blue? A slate grey torrent?

On the February day I was there, the ground was waterlogged. I could hear the drip of icy melt water as it fell into that dark maw. A great puddle surrounded the hatch, frozen on top, squelchy underneath.

Just beyond the bunker, on the wall, was the memorial plaque that I had come to see; journey’s end for the beribboned remembrance, journey’s beginning for my living remembrance. The plaque is a stark in its simplicity: a black rectangle with the letters punched out by stencil, exposing the wall behind. On the ground below, a few tiles, and, scattered on them, a few carnations. Had they once been pink? The wording of the memorial was as stark in its simplicity as the plaque itself. How else could it be? How can you dress it up in fine language?

TOTGESHLAGEN

TOTGESCHWIEGEN

DEN

HOMOSEXUELLEN

OPFERN

DES

NATIONALSOZIALISMUS

Taking hold of the remembrance, I drove the pole in to the ground as far as it would go and then banked up the mushed, sandy, ice-filled soil around it to hold it steady. Not caring whether I was observed or not, I knelt down in the waterlogged yard,

sank back onto my haunches and waited quietly for about the length of time it takes a man to walk a mile slowly. Everything was hushed. The ribbons flapped and the poem waved about as the wind caught it. For a moment or two, there was a dancing rainbow

When the time was right, I stood up to continue my journey. (I returned to the remembrance before I finally left the camp, the hard frost meant that the banked earth at the base of the pole was already beginning to freeze. Almost as if to ward off the chill, the freedom ribbons fluttered gaily. This optimism made the leave-taking that much easier).

I moved on item the exercise yard to the exhibition mounted in the former prisoners’ kitchen. The route took me past the sites of the gallows where prisoners deemed to have committed offences were hung,. Other grisly punishments were also meted out here during roll call "pour encourager les autres". Away to the right, by the perimeter wall stood a monument to those who died in the camp during the period 1945-50. For Sachsenhausen's infamy did not end with the war's end. The Soviets operated the site, under the name of ‘Special Camp No. 7’, and imprisoned former members of the Nazi Party, members of the SS, and the Wehrmacht (20), as well as prisoners of war released by the Western Allies, and others. Later on, inmates included people who were victims of denunciations, people who were arbitrarily arrested, growing numbers of Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals, opponents of the Soviet occupying power, and of the emerging East German Communist regime. It is estimated that 20,000 people died as a result of the conditions in the camp..

The sights that met the eye once inside the former cook-house were stinging. Further calculated horrors, to which the prisoners were subject, were held up for unwelcome yet necessary inspection.. There were artefacts from the wartime history of the camp – Zyklon B canisters (21). Human hair, gathered for use as war materiel. Fillings from teeth.

Striped uniforms, with their triangles of various colours (22). Plates and cutlery, stamped with prisoners’ numbers. The ‘height measurer’ from Station Z (23). This building was a place I wanted to run through quickly and escape from. Instead, I walked slowly and deliberately through it all, step by step, case by case, from one information board to the next. It was like the Stations of the Cross. Is it realistic to hope for a Resurrection? ‘Can there be lyric poetry after the Holocaust?’ someone asked.

Can there be?

I do not feel able to answer that question. But I can witness to this: the even in Sachsenhausen it proved impossible to crush the creativity and aspirations of the human spirit. Prisoners crafted necessarily small but beautiful things from the most basic materials and contraband. They made chess sets, inlaid cigarette cases, even a crude radio receiver. Furthermore, there is at least one recorded instance of resistance, carried out by the ‘Jewish 18’. In the autumn of 1942, in protest at their inhuman treatment, eighteen Jews staged a protest in the Appellplatz. Their act of resistance, though brutally suppressed, did result in some amelioration of camp conditions for the Jewish inmates. It did not save the 18 from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

When I had reached the end of the exhibition I paused for a long time by the visitors’ book because had to frame carefully what I wanted to write there. What response can on make to such horrors?

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one remain silent", noted Wittgenstein in his philosophical investigation of language. He must have been thinking of the situations that test the boundaries of human experience when he formulated that precept. And here was I in such an extremity. Just how do you write down a howl of anguish in the soul?

When I left the block I saw the great monument towering before me. I went up close and looked at its huge bronze figures and its concrete vastness. The scale was so big as to be scarcely human. In a way, this is perversely fitting since the dreadful events to which it testifies are equally vast in scope and inhuman in character. The sculpted group of figures at the base of the tower is entitled "Liberation". (A secular version of Resurrection?)

Feeling tiny, I turned and walked the short distance to the site of Station Z.

If Dante's Inferno is taken as a metaphor for Sachsenhausen, then Station Z may be thought of as the deepest and most damned region of that place. Perhaps it is fitting that this was the last place I visited and the place where I most nearly lost what measure of self-control was left to me.

The area is shielded from the elements by a canopy. The suffering and the loss are recalled in an affecting monument; bronze figures two adults with a dead child. More affecting still are the remains of the building that stood on this spot. It was built in l942 and was staffed by the SS. Here thousands upon thousands were gassed, or shot. Their bodies were profaned (treated as the source of raw materials for the war effort) then burned. Any remains were crammed into a subterranean bunker close by.

Given what preceded death, this can be no real surprise. Often, camp inmates were used as a slave work force for various SS-run enterprises. Prisoners from Sachsenhausen were compelled to build the canteen and recreational facilities, used by the Gestapo and SS, on the Prinz Albrecht Terrain (24). In the 'hospital' prisoners were used in experiments to test drugs, chemical weapons, and 'treatments'.

The foundations only remain.

No access is allowed: visitors look through a wire fence on to the features that rising up from the earth. Clearly discernible are the rooms that comprised the gas-chamber (disguised as a shower room) the ante-room where prisoners stripped before going in to the 'shower', and the ramp where the dead, having been thrown on to carts, were pulled the few yards to the crematorium.

Also evident were rooms used for interrogations and a killing room made to appear like a clinic. Prisoners were stood against a height measurer attached to a wall. (A wooden finger that ran between two slats, marked off in centimetres). Unknown to the inmate, there was a hidden room behind the wall. Once the wooden finger was upon his or her head, someone in that room would shoot them in the back of the neck. Bodies were dragged across the floor and through a door that opened on to the crematorium.

All so convenient, so duplicitous, shielded from the eyes of the other inmates.

But there could be no secrecy; the smoke, the smell, the miasma, the point of no return.

It must have been evident for miles.

The wind whipped up again. Steam rising from the boiler house in the old laundry block caught my eye and was transformed into the smoke from this charnel house. It was suddenly 1944 again. The camp was filled beyond capacity with the enemies of the Reich, 90% of them non-German. There were representative groups from virtually all of Nazi occupied Europe.

Russian prisoners were being systematically exterminated. Food was scarce, warm clothes scarcer still. Prisoners were beaten, worked to death, tortured, subject to crazed experiments.

The rooks sent up a cacophony of cries that brought me to myself again. Here I was, in 1996, looking& back at what had been. Statistics in Sachsenhausen indicate that there were more than 2000 concentration camps, sub-camps and detention centres in Germany alone.

I blinked back tears as I looked through the fence and reconstructed these terrors in my mind's eye. Walking round the site, moving clockwise past the sculpture in the near left hand corner, I caught site of a feature that I did not immediately recognise and so moved closer. Suddenly, even through eyes misted over, it became all-to-evident.

The few courses of bricks, the metal doors and the flues, resolved themselves into ovens. There were four in a row. I was absolutely stricken. My legs buckled and I let out an involuntary cry as I stumbled and reached out for the wire to support myself.

From then on, I was in a daze. I tottered across the frozen earth and picked my way gingerly down the trench that led down to the bunker where the bones had been dumped. Signs on the sides of the wooden ramparts indicated where prisoners of war had been shot. Others who met their death at this entrance to Hades included those sent to Sachsenhausen by Reichssicherheitshauptampt of the SS and the Gestapo (25).

Most sickening was the mechanised gibbet, worked by a winch and pulley, which allowed four people to be hung at one time, with the minimum expenditure of effort or manpower. It was what 1 had come to expect of the Nazis during the course of my visit. That I was no longer shocked by such atrocity was a shock in itself. I stared out of the pit at the vast grey sky, punctured only by the concrete finger of the monument. The sky was heavy under the weight of its own sorrow.

The closing scene from the film Judgment at Nurembergcame to mind. An American (small town) judge visits his leading Nazi counterpart whom he has just sentenced for war crimes. The German judge offers, as mitigating explanation, that he thought the Nazis could be controlled and used, that he never imagined it would come to this. His counterpart dismisses this very cogently and simply: "It came to this the first time you sentenced a person to death whom you knew to be innocent."

If Sachsenhausen indelibly imprinted one idea in me, it is this: that every step down the road which begins with disrespect for another person ends at KZ Sachsenhausen. All the sentences which begin, "I'm not …………… (insert your own favourite prejudice)…… but ......" conclude, ultimately, with the sharp report of a pistol shot, or the creak of rope, or the bolts sliding home on the door to the 'shower'.

Many of the entries in the visitors' book say, "This must not be allowed to happen again". My feeling is that it has never stopped happening. I believe that it may prove truly fatal to think of there and then and exclude here and now. I am convinced that the celebration of life and difference, the promotion of human flourishing, is dependent upon us being ever vigilant, and ever respectful of the dignity of others.

My visit to Berlin showed ample evidence that a significant number of people share this perspective. In the wake of the arson attack on the 'Jewish Barracks' at Sachsenhausen, there was a spontaneous gathering at the memorial to express concern and regret. Subsequently, a demonstration was held which focussed on the theme 'reflecting in Germany - together against xenophobia and anti-Semitism'. 7000 people attended.

When the Berlin city authorities were considering what uses the Prinz Albrecht Terrain might be put to, concerned citizens and organisations took an active interest and even direct action, including a symbolic 'dig' on May 5th., 1985. The discovery of the foundations of the buildings associated with the site, particularly the cells used by the Gestapo, and those parts built by the slave workers from Sachsenhausen, together with the insistent pressure brought to bear by those who saw the necessity of an explicit recognition of the role that the site played during the period of the Third Reich, resulted in the opening of an exhibition pavilion and associated memorials which currently comprise the site. The motto of the groups coordinating the May 5th dig seems very appropriate: "LET NO GRASS GROW OVER IT!"

The city is notable for the number of memorials and plaques that detail the location of many buildings, and chronicle many events, which some would rather forget. Berlin's insistence on facing up to the past and continuing to confront it in the present struck me very forcefully. Less formal but no less striking is the graffiti that can be seen in the city. Particularly in the workers residential areas, like Prenzlauer Berg, graffiti appears to be regarded as necessary.

Graffiti ist kein Verbrechen!

Lesben Pauer

Nazis vertreiben, Auslanderinnen bleiben

This is a Nazi house

Much graffiti was focussed on current concerns – Kurdish refugees, the confrontation between Neo~Nazis and their Anarchist and Anti-Fascist opponents. Some was witty and creative but most was political in its inspiration. Amongst my favourites was the pointed reminder: "Wer bunker baut, wirft bomben" (27).

Comparing this situation to that nearer to home gives cause for unease. I do not feel that we recognise the dangers of forgetfulness, or apathy. Remember Pastor Niemöller's lament?

Muted public concern permits our government to play fast and loose with human rights - witness the attempt to expel the Saudi dissident, Mohammed al Mas'ari, to protect lucrative arms deals with the Saudi government. Consider how the Criminal Justice Act is used against travelling people and against those who wish to undertake direct and legitimate protests.

Examine closely those churches who claim to esteem the unique dignity of the human person in absolute terms yet couch their teaching and pastoral documents in such a way that the human dignity of some is completely abrogated. This may be noted particularly when the churches address themselves to women’s issues, lesbian and gay issues, or issues of race and ethnic origin. There is no comfort to be had in looking at the wider situation - the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Chechnya, or Rwanda.

I wish I were able to claim for lesbians and gay men some innate virtue that renders us impervious to the propaganda of racism and sexism, but I can't. Though we may identify more strongly than some with the women, children and men who were butchered there and then in places like Sachsenhausen, and though we might feel their suffering acutely and recoil in genuine horror, still that does not confer an automatic immunity to the hateful thinking patterns that produced the concentration camps.

If it is true that lesbians and gay men (among others) have a 'privileged' access to the experience of the Häftlinge, then we have a particular responsibility to be vigilant. The danger we face because of that propaganda and its attendant terrors may be more subtle and understated in Britain than it is overseas but it is no less invidious. We must be vigilant not simply to prevent the virulent return of those values that consigned us to the camps (the fear of being inmates in the here and now) but also to prevent us from being seduced by the simplistic slogans and false promises that would make us accomplices in their institution. Without such vigilance we face the awful an almost unimaginable possibility of being deceived into acting as the new guards.

The lesson that Pastor Niemöller learned (too late?) was that if it could be you, it could be me, and if it were me, then it could be any of us. For that reason the same thing is demanded of each of us:

Vigilance and respect; there and then, here and now

2001 © PD Entwistle

Notes

(1) S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse:

Berlin is served by a variety of train and tram routes. S-Bahn refers to the Schnellbahn - the overland train network, Friedrichstrasse to the station in the centre of the city.

(2) Siegessäule:

Victory Column, built to commemorate the military victory over the French which led to the founding of the Second Reich in 1871.

(3) Nazi:

NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The National Socialist German Worker's Party. Elected to power in 1933, the party began to usurp the power of the state, supplanting the rule of law and government by the fiat of the party and the instruments of terror it wielded. Within a few months Hitler had stifled all opposition and abandoned any pretence of democratic rule.

(4) Anhalter Bahnhof:

This was one the chief railway termini for Berlin. Severely damaged in wartime bombing, there now remains only a portion of the facade.

(5) Reichsfűhrer SS:

Himmler’s official title, ‘Reich leader of the SS’. The SS (Schűtzstaffel) was the Protection Squad of the Nazi Party.

(6) Gestapo:

Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret state police.

(7) KZ Sachsenhausen:

Konzentrationslager, concentration camp. In the earlier years of Nazi Germany the camps were sometimes referred to as Schutzhäftlager, protective custody camps.

(8) Remembrance:

This had its origin in two distinct items which seemed to belong together as a 'token' that could be taken to Sachsenhausen and left at the memorial there. The remembrance consisted of 6 freedom ribbons, in the rainbow colours, attached to a pole. These ribbons had been part of a larger banner that had been carried on the Lesbian and Gay Pride March (London) in the summer of 1994. Together with the ribbons was a poem (see below).

The Colour of Forget-Me-Nots

rose pink

carnation pink

perky pink

panther

champagne pink

in the pink

lily the pink

lipstick

blushing pink

candy floss pink

baby pink

bootees

marshmallow pink

bubblegum pink

fuchsia pink

Triangle

(9) Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen:

Many of the former camps have been designated as places of national remembrance and reflection. Sachsenhausen is the one closest to Berlin.

(10) Strasse der Nationen:

Street of the nations

(11) GDP:

German Democratic Republic more commonly referred to as East Germany .

Now, of course, no longer in existence since the reunification of Germany.

(12) Arbeit Macht Frei:

The motto which was found at the entrance to the concentration camps. Work shall

set you free.

(13) Appellplatz:

The place where inmates were assembled for roll-calls, punishments etc…

(14) Häftlinge:

Prisoners of the camp.

(15) Schuhprűfstrecke:

The shoe-testing ground.

(16) Neue Synagoge:

The 'New Synagogue’, completed in 1866. One of two dozen synagogues vandalised and set alight on Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), November 9th., 1938. Following this pogrom 12,000 Berlin Jews were brought to Sachsenhausen.

(17) Martin Niemöller:

Pastor Niemöller, U-Boat commander in WWI and a one-time supporter of the

Nazis, came to reject Fascism and was incarcerated in Sachsenhausen.

He is, perhaps, best remembered for the following verse –

First they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

And there was no-one left to speak out for me.

(18) Erdbunker:

Literally, ‘earth bunker’.

(19) Totgeshlagen…:

A literal translation is difficult. The inscription may be read as –

BEATEN TO DEATH

SILENCED TO DEATH

THE

HOMOSEXUAL

VICTIMS

NAZISM

(20) Wehrmacht:

The German Army.

(21) Zyklon B:

The cyanide gas pellets used in the gas chambers.

(22) Triangles:

Prisoners in the camps were made to wear triangles of different colours. The

respective colours indicated the reason for their incarceration, eg. green = criminal,

red = political offender, black = anti-social, pink = homosexual.

(23) Station Z:

The mass extermination facility, built by the SS in 1942, and run by the

Totenkopfstandarte SS (Death’s Head battalions of the SS). Here, thousands

upon thousands were systematically butchered.

(24) Prinz Albrecht Terrain:

An area of central Berlin that housed the offices and HQ of the Nazi state terror

apparatus eg. the Gestapo, the SS. Bounded by (what is now) the Wilhelmstrasse,

Niederkirchnerstrasse, Stresemannstrasse, and Anhalterstrasse.

(25) Reishsicherheitshauptamt:

An approximate translation would be Head Office of Reich Security.

(26) Graffiti:

Colloquial translations might be –

Graffiti is no crime!

Lesbian Power!

Deport the Nazis, let the immigrant women stay

(27) Wer Bunker…:

Whoever builds bunkers, drops bombs

#holocaust #holocaust memorial day #remembrance #sachsenhausen #concentration camp #gay #homosexuality #persecution #nazism #nazi #berlin #damian's writing

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acrobaticcatfeline · 6 years

Text

Thanatos Taunts Our Minds Without Our Consent

Word Count: 2949

TW: death, abuse, transphobia, cancer, i think thats it, if theres anything else sorry! let me know!

Notes: All my children have sad stories and Virgil just has to deal with all of it for always. Poor sons. All triggers were vague simplified references for the most part because the characters are so young. This is probably really bad and i probably did a bad job at explaining their stories but you know i love this and its done now so yeah.

Pairings: none, platonic analogical, prinxiety, and moxiety.

Summary: “Damn it! This kid needs to listen, he’s in so much pain, why won’t he just let go? Huh? Rem cut it out! PUT DOWN THOSE SCISSORS BEFORE YOU CUT YOUR ARM OFF!!!” Virgil is a grimm reaper and he has to save the soul of children every night. The past month has been making his life stressful as ever. he just needs Patton to come to Neverland soon.

“Damn it! This kid needs to listen, he’s in so much pain, why won’t he just let go? Huh? Rem cut it out! PUT DOWN THOSE SCISSORS BEFORE YOU CUT YOUR ARM OFF!!!” the Grimm started chasing his pixie friend around his room. After a few seconds the scissors fall, and the teen flew up and around to avoid them. He glared at the fairy as he landed and picked up the tools.

“you are obnoxious, you know that right?” tink tink tink “yeah yeah, exercise or something, listen, I don’t need to practice flying, I’ve been flying longer than you’ve been alive!” tink tink “what do you mean I haven’t flown for years? I’ve flown everyday for the past hundred thousand years you pest! At least I don’t need to bathe in dust everyday to continue flight” tink. “oh, shut up Remy.”

At that moment a quiet knock resonated through the large wooden room. The Grimm straightened and landed on the floor, touching it barely with one toe. He glared at the pixie before calling for the person to enter. The small creek of the door barely showed the small bit of blue hair peeking behind it, followed by little round glasses and a wash of bruises covering the body of the boy. A pinch of heartache stings in the Grimm, wishing that the marks from now 3 years ago would fade, yet still knowing they never would. He managed to plaster on a smile at the child, and sat on his knees, welcoming him in.

The boy smiled brightly and rushed into the arms of the teen, happily curling up in the warm hug given to him.

“why hello there Logan! How are you doing this fine morning? Are the others still playing nice? What have you come for young one?” the boy tightens his frail grip on the Grimm.

“Mr. Virgil! I saw you came back and I wanted to see you! I’m doing good, but Roman’s teasing me again. He painted my face blue earlier and said I matched my arms and legs.” Virgil frowned before smiling again, smaller this time.

“he doesn’t understand lo, he doesn’t know why you are all blue and so he’s reacting based on what he thinks. He doesn’t mean to hurt you. He really is a good kid, just like you!” Virgil ruffled the little boy’s hair and smiled wider at his childish giggles. “send him to me, I will talk to him about it. Don’t worry about it lo” Logan nods and gives one last squeeze before getting up and running to the door. He stops quickly, turns around, bows awkwardly, then runs out. The teen lets out a sigh and stands.

“who told him he needed to bow?” tink tink tink “ugh, Val and Thomas always have been ones for the dramatics. Little lo is so impressionable, geez, he was only 5! He should have turned 8 last week, but no, his parents- no, not right now, I can’t be getting so angry, Roman will be here soon and I’m not going to yell at him. Remy why is this job so hard?” tink “you know there’s a fly swatter right here if you really want to keep up with that mouth”

There’s a loud knock at the door and Virgil’s head whips to look at it and grant entrance. A taller kid walks in, looking worried. Virgil’s heart melts as he seats himself and beckons the child closer. The boy is slender, and has strong curves, matched with a pirate outfit that seemed too big at the ends and too small at the tops. His hair is long on one side and dyed bright red on the soft blonde locks, with no hair on the other side, shaved clean. The boy had his arms covering his chest tightly and protectively. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him as he walked up next to Virgil and sat across from him in a w sit while staring purposefully at the floor boards underneath him. Virgil adjusted into a criss cross and looked at the child who was still avoiding his gaze.

“Roman? Do you know why I called you here?” the boy shakes his head. “kiddo I need you to look at me ok?” he rises his head to look up at him through his hair. “so, you were teasing Logan about his arms and legs being blue earlier?” this caught Roman’s attention. His head was thrown up and his eyes looked terrified.

“NO!!! I mean, well, I guess, but I didn’t mean it in a mean way!!! He matched!!! It was just something I noticed and then I painted his face before I thought about it!!! He looks nice in blue and I- well I- I dunno… I wasn’t thinking I guess?” Virgil nodded and clicked his tongue to get Roman to look up again.

“do you know why his arms are like that Roman?” he shakes his head. “you know how when I found you your dad had thrown a shelf at you?” he nods. “for Logan, it wasn’t a one-time thing, having things thrown at him or being hit. The day I found him, he had been dealing with that for 5 years. Those black and blue marks were from where his parents hurt him” Roman gasps and covers his mouth as his eyes widen. “Unfortunately, this place pauses your body from aging, which means that those marks aren’t gonna leave him. Its not very good that you tease him on that. He’s not mad at you though, you know him, he doesn’t get angry very often and he doesn’t hold grudges. You know what he’d probably really enjoy?” Roman’s head tilts as Virgil summons a book, about 200 pages long. “if you read to him. I think you’d both really enjoy this one. Its about a secret and society protecting it from the bad guys and having to go on awesome adventures to keep the secret safe. Now, go and apologize and offer to read to him. You know you’re his favorite of the others, right?” Roman smiles and takes the book offered to him before giving him a big hug, bowing, and running out.

Tink tink tink tink “Remy I’m gonna throw you out the window.”

After that the rest of the day went rather normally and smoothly. That is until that night when he had to scoop up all those who had passed that day. 40,000 people every single day he had to convince to follow him. Adults were generally easiest, as well as super young or scared children. But at the end of the night he stopped at the little hospital room where a little boy with fluffy brown hair sat kneeling, trying desperately to watch the cartoon on the screen in front of him. Virgil flew in and sat on the uncomfortable bed before covering the little boys’ eyes asking in a spooky deep voice “guess who?” and the little kid giggled and swatted at his hands.

“Mr. Virgil!!! C’mon!!! I’m watchin tv!!!” Virgil smiles and laughs along with his eyes closed softly.

“now isn’t it a little late for little Patton’s to be up and watching tv?” he says while ruffling the boy’s hair. Surprisingly, he leaned into Virgil’s side.

“Mr. Virgil? Does my brain win against the super villain? Whys big bro so angry all the time? Ever since we moved here, he’s been grumpy. If I go with you will my head stop hurting? Can you help me?” Virgil wrapped his arm around him protectively.

“your brain can’t win Patton. But through your fight you’ll help the next person who has to fight it win. Your brother doesn’t know how to handle the fact that you’re gonna lose and that you’re hurting. Its hard for him to understand, but he loves you. He loves you so so much. If you come with me, you won’t have to fight the super villain anymore. They’ll leave you alone. I want to help you Patton, I really do, but I need you to follow me. Are you ready to go Patton?”

Patton coughs harshly and can’t look at his hand, now covered in blood. He nods, and Virgil helps clean him up and helps him get changed into his comfy outfit that isn’t the gown he’d been stuck in for months now. Jean shorts, a baby blue tank top with a cat hoodie over it, as well as thigh high gray and blue socks with his favorite white converse. Virgil brushes softly through his hair and pins it back with little barrettes. Virgil takes a look at the bed sadly, sitting there is the dying body of the boy in front of him. He waves his hand and tucks him in, he looks peaceful, the first time the kid has been at peace since he was 5. He douses Patton in pixie dust and pulls him through the window as he snaps his fingers to set off Patton’s monitor. He turns harshly back to Patton who’s flying, completely carefree even as his parents and siblings are alerted that they had finally lost him. They will be ok, they had prepared, they knew that the young boy wasn’t going to survive the massive tumor in his brain, but the loss of a child will never not hurt. He continued forward, the second star to the right, where everyone goes eventually, a place most call death.

After the long journey, they land on the beaches of neverland and Patton is quickly surrounded by all the lost children. Their excitement slightly scared Patton, but Logan snuck in between the bigger kids and looked at him quietly and curiously. The small boy picked up Patton’s hand and softly tugged him toward the shore as Virgil ushered the rest off to do some handiwork.

“look!” Logan says. “there’s a mermaid over there! Do you like mermaids? I like mermaids!” Logan sat down and messed with the water after seeing Patton’s nod of affirmation. “what’s your name? my names Logan! Mr. Vee saved me about 3 years ago! Did he just save you? Were you hurting too? Were your parents mean? Mine were super jerks, but I have cool marks that match my hair now, so I guess its alright.” He gestures at the bright blue and black stains littering his arms. “You wanna see some fairies?!”

“well uh, my name is Patton! I love fairies too!!! I dunno if he saved me, my parents were really nice!!! I was hurting, but that was the super villain in my head, that’s what mommy said. I got to wear a cool dress all the time which was cool!!! I’m sorry your parents were mean! When we go back, we can share mine!!! How old are you Logan? I’m 7!!!” Logan stills for a second then tilts his head.

“well I’m 5, or I was when he saved me! But what do you mean go back? We don’t go back! This is home now, you can be a lost boy!!! If you go back, your super villain will come back!!!” this causes Patton to start hyperventilating, he turns to Virgil who is pointedly looking away from him.

“M-MR VIRGIL I WANNA GO HOME!!! YOU SAID MY MOMMY AND DADDY WOULD BE WITH ME!!! PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME STAY I WANT TO SEE MY BROTHER!!!” Patton curls in on himself, and Logan backs away, scared at what he had done. Virgil walks over and kneels in front of the scared boy. He sets his hands on the kids’ tiny shoulder and hollowed cheek.

“Patton, I know you’re scared, but you can’t go back. This is where people who hurt go when it gets to be too much” Virgil pauses before sighing and continuing. “do you understand what death is kiddo?” he nods. “well I apologize, but you’ve died” Patton’s eyes widen. “this is where you go when you die. The last month I was trying to take you here, you were so very sick. You couldn’t eat, or walk, you were dying. My job is to get you before you suffer too long. You aren’t supposed to suffer. You won’t hurt here Patton. I promise you that everything is going to be ok now. Now, there’s a party to welcome you. Go on and have some fun. I have some more work to do, but I’ll be there soon” he cries into Virgil’s arms for a little bit longer before wiping his eyes and getting up.

“you promise?” Virgil nods. “…well, ok. Uh, bye then…” he walks over to Logan who smiles softly and grabs his hand and starts dragging him off to the center of the island.

Days like this are always hard for Virgil, but someone had to do it, and no one came around to relieve him of duty, so until then, he’d have to deal with it. Didn’t make the past 10,000 years any easier though. As Virgil walked over to his room, he sent his pens off to list all those who died that day. Though many in the world of the living will never know for certain who died when, Virgil kept a detailed list. He did a twirl as he changed out of his reaper robes and into his favorite outfit. He wore a tightly fitted purple plaid long sleeve with a patched jacket of the same colors but with a large storm cloud emblem on the back. He also wore ripped black skinny’s and dark purple converse. He lifted his hood and grabbed Remy as he left to the festival.

He walked up, seeing all the lost children celebrating and partying, even Patton dancing around. He let himself grin, at least he didn’t hate it here. He might even be able to have him become a lost boy. He stayed in the shadows, watching as his children introduced themselves one by one. He had missed most of them it seems, Roman being the only one left to go. He listened as he recounted his story.

“hello young Patton!!! I, am the great Roman, happily at your service. I have quite a story to tell. Now, I’ve been here for but a humble year. I was just 13 when I passed in such a horrible way. Now I was born as someone vile, her name shan’t be uttered, she had long golden locks and curves that were smooth like butter, but she was a witch! She wasn’t to be trusted, and I knew that. Since I was 6, I knew that she and I were opposite entities. When I turned thirteen, my loving parents, turned. They bore fangs and claws meant to rip me apart. They turned to foul predators for that night, I told them, I was Roman. I was a strong powerful man, and any who dare disagree would take me in a duel. They won, but they played dirty. They threw lamps, and tables, and knives. They were scared of me. But as I speak to you this very night, I tell you that Virgil, our caretaker, our beloved leader saved me. He swooped in, and before I felt the biting pain of the end, he swooped me away, and here, is more of a home than that ever was, because here is a place of love, unconditional. I know your story is tragic in a vastly different way, but I hope that neverland becomes your home as well” he bows and beckons Patton up on the podium. “go ahead and tell us your story darling. We are here to listen”

“oh! Um, hiya! My name is Patton, and I’m 7 years old” he clutches a stuffed dog that Virgil had replicated for him. “this is Mr. snuggles! Um, my story? Well, about three years ago I got really sick. My head hurt a lot and my emotions weren’t being good. My mommy told me about 2 years ago that I had a big bad super villain fighting my brain. And that my brain probably wasn’t strong enough to win. She said some more, but she was crying too much. We moved to this really big building and we had lots of roommates who were always checking on me. I guess we were staying with the doctors and the nurses. My parents and brother were always really upset at each other but were extra nice to me. About a month ago Mr. Virgil showed up. I didn’t wanna go, so I didn’t until tonight. My head hurt a whole lot and I could barely move, so I left with him. And now I’m here! Thank you guys for bein so nice to me!!! Is there gonna be more dancing?” the cheers erupt, and Logan is dragging Patton off to a chair with a bunch of books as Virgil shows himself and the crowd goes silent.

“hello lost children, and Patton, I see you’ve been having fun! Now that the festivities have commenced, I would like to offer a position in our ranks to Patton here. We have an elite group of brave kind-hearted kiddos who decide to join the lost children and protect the others from our enemies and those who seek to destroy what we’ve built. Would you like to be a lost boy dear Patton?”

“well uh, I dunno, that sounds scary, but um, s-sure! I’d be um, I’d be honored!”

“well that’s great news!!!” Virgil snapped and a cool sash and pin appeared around Patton’s shoulders as well as a hawk feather tucking itself in his hair. “in that case, let the party begin!”

Let me know if you want to be tagged in later days or my writing in general!!!

Thank you for reading I will see you later ladies lords and nonbinary royalty!!!

#virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #my writing #my fanfiction #peter pan grimm au #tw abuse #tw transphobia #tw death #tw cancer #oneshot

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kincringeemporium · 6 years

Text

The Promised Party Cat Callout (Long Post!)

Here we go, y’all. I’m not gonna go all-out with the salt and vitriol typical of my longer posts, because... this isn’t about me being salty. This is about highlighting the issues with Mod Party Cat of the fictionkinfessions blog.

Nor is it intended to bully or chase Party Cat off of Tumblr. Yes, this is a callout post; no, it’s not an invitation to attack the blog with hate or stalk their sideblogs. And no, it’s not just my personal opinion, which we will get to.

This is intended to show Party Cat exactly what is wrong with how they’re running the blog and how they’re behaving. If they learn from it, good. If they don’t... then, they don’t.

Last of all, we did gather opinions from both kin and non-kin in a survey. This isn’t meant to antagonize the entire kin community. In fact, the information from kin really helped to support this argument. Thank you to the kin people who did respond to the survey.

(Btw, survey is still open: https://goo.gl/forms/lDoffQVVmELDo2EZ2 )

Obvious content warnings for dark shit apply. (Abuse, depression/suicide, etc.)

With that being said... let’s begin.

The main reasons for the callout are these:

Passive aggressiveness to or about other mods

Passive aggressiveness to anons/senders

“Cutesy” or overly positive typing/behavior in serious situations

Material that is generally improper for this kind of confession blog

Hypocrisy

Majority of survey takers agreed with each other and with the points made in this callout

We’ll go one by one.

Passive-aggressiveness to/about mods

(The bottom half of the mod page was linking to Party Cat’s other blogs and crediting some theme elements. Not relevant to callout.)

There isn’t a lot of information about the other mods or why they left; the general consensus on Maude is that they left because of school, but nothing about Kuroocrow. Now, why is this passive aggressive?

There was no need to publicly say that there’d been a “catfight” (ha ha, funny) with Maude. We don’t know if Maude even gave Cat permission to say this. If not, it’s disrespectful. (Nothing wrong with saying they’ll be okay.)

What Cat is saying about Kuro is even more aggressive than that. “They refuse to do anything to help!” Okay. That could be true. There’s still no need to rant about it.

“Ask them on my behalf what the fuck is going on with them!” Adding ‘on my behalf’ comes across as incredibly self-centered. And saying ‘what the fuck’ adds to the aggressiveness. Even if not intentional, that is how it looks, and it needs to be changed.

All that needs to be said is something like this: “It’s just me, Party Cat! Maude is on hiatus, and Kuro is absent. If anyone knows what’s going on with them, please DM me!” There. That’s respectful and to the point.

Passive-aggressiveness to Anons/Senders

This section will be... long.

So.. there’s a lot of overlap here with the ‘cutesy typing’ issue, but I’ll get to that later. I had to crop the screenshot to just this because there was so much that wasn’t 100% relevant to the callout. (Context for this post: Cat promo’d a kin server, an anon found some unsavory things happening in the server, anon warned Cat, and Cat said this.)

“...Seriously there’s like a few thousand people following this blog” is an unnecessarily rude way to say this. The point itself is legitimate and understandable. It really just need to be reworded so as not to come off as salty.

Alright, I’d understand this one if there was anything in the blog description or about pages to warn people that the blog can get dark. Confessions about death, suicide, rape, incest, murder, violence, high emotional distress, etc are jarring to see when this blog tends to be lighthearted.

While this anon does look a little bit defensive or offended, that’s so slight compared to the defensiveness of the response. Personally, I read the question as confused. (Y’all, who agrees with me? Who disagrees?)

Cat... people don’t tend to expect very dark content on a blog like this, especially when there’s no warning, and they might not even bother to blacklist the tags you use because they don’t expect it. (That’s a guess. If I’m wrong, then smeone should explain it. ) There isn’t much of an answer here - you just answer their question with another question.

So, okay, I agree with Cat saying that this ask is vague. And it’s not good to add “but” after something like ‘No disrespect...’ -- because “but” does negate whatever precedes it.

Those are the only things in this screenshot that make sense. Now we’ll get to the things that are passive-aggressive.

“Maybe it’s because...” Vague in itself. ‘Maybe’ gives you wiggle room to get out of this perfectly legitimate critique, instead of saying “Hey, I seem this way because...”

“People keep asking me things without providing the barest amount of information...” People actually do provide information. Sometimes it isn’t enough. That doesn’t mean they aren’t trying, and they could be dropping the subject because of how you respond (nobody really wants to interact with someone being rude).

“I just fill up the dead air with jokes!” Plenty of people do. And it’s fine... just not in this situation. When something serious comes up, you shouldn’t simply make a joke and move on. This reads like an excuse, and even a way to shame people. (”Oh... it was only a joke? Now I feel bad! :(” )

“And then people get more mad because... I don’t know!” This looks like you are blaming people for their feelings. People are allowed to feel mad. It’s never okay for them to send hate or be dicks -- which they’re not doing.

“Nobody reads that page, lollerskates!!” This could easily be solved by a regular, repeated post linking to the FAQ. Or a regular, repeated post explaining why confessions sometimes aren’t answered. Or something like that. Just a bit more effort.

Okay: “This blog is only for kin. We want to keep it within our community. If you have questions, check out this FAQ!”

Not okay: “You have no business interacting! You don’t know anything!”

That ‘sincerely’ isn’t very sincere at all. Most antikin will respect kin not wanting anti interaction on their blogs. Those that don’t are being dicks. And non-kin people who don’t have anything against kin are not at all likely to be hostile toward you, so being this hostile to them is unwarranted.

It’s confusing that this community, in general, would like non-kin and antis to become educated about what kin is/means... then such an influential blog sends a message like this. Regardless of how people feel about Cat, she does have pretty decent influence and a huge following; it’s very easy for impressionable kids to pick up on this weird double standard.

There’s nothing wrong with preferring to let someone else educate non-kin. There’s nothing wrong with pointing non-kin in a different direction.

There’s a lot wrong with blatantly pushing them away like this. It’s rude.

Inappropriate Cutesy/Overly Positive Typing

Cat isn’t stupid and knows full well what this anon (same one from before) meant. There was no need whatsoever to make such a giant joke of the question.

(Not to mention... why the hell would she tell everybody that she has so much medical debt and can’t afford electricity? I don’t know her situation so I can’t say it is/isn’t a joke too. It is something that could genuinely upset people, and some would even believe it. It’s a terrible thing to say.)

“:3c” Not harmful in itself. Just doesn’t belong in a serious ask.

This anon meant a post in which they were venting about abuse... they were angry that a character had abused their kintype. Cat knew that, considering their abuse content/trigger warning tags. This response looks sugarcoated and mentions some random anecdote about a thing Cat does, which is not appropriate in a situation regarding child abuse.

This was in response to something that was legitimately annoying Cat and breaking a blog rule. It does not look like an appropriate or effective way to address the issue - even looks immature. Did people take this seriously?

Yes, this really is a tag on a venting ask about a real life abusive stepfather. A joke. In a venting ask... about an abusive home life. There is a tag saying ‘Your stepdad sucks’, which is good. A joke, though, is too far.

(Apologies for a repeat screenshot - I saved this one for right now, for the sake of organization.)

There is, as I’ve been saying, no need for this. It’s very strange to ‘roleplay’ and act cute when there’s possibly a toxic Discord server going around.

When asked if any of Party Cat’s mannerisms were bothersome, one person said this:

Others said these things:

Inappropriate Material

Shoutout to @queen-dragon-slut (damn Tumblr won’t link you) for getting me this screenshot.

What the hell, Cat? This is serious -- this is even more serious than people sending confessions saying things like “Ugh, I hate this kintype!” or “Ugh! I hate that character!” This person actually endangered their own health and safety to force themselves into a ‘kin shift’. And it’s in no way Cat’s fault.

However.

To not even provide the anon with links to help blogs or any kind of resources, list some tags, and move on, shows an incredible lack of effort. Not only that, but I feel bad for this person. One note. That’s it. Nobody seemed to care that someone was suffering this badly, Cat included, which is, quite frankly, disgusting.

Again, something this dark doesn’t belong on a casual confession blog (which is what your blog looks like it’s supposed to be). And again, it genuinely fucking worried me. Is this person okay?

And it’s not even tagged. Not as ‘suicide’, not as ‘depression’, not as ‘suicidal ideation’, nothing. Which is what this is. This person feels like they’re not needed, like they’re pointless, which exactly what suicidal ideation does to you.

You can’t DM an anon saying, “Hey, you alright?” You can, however, at the very least, link them to the help blog page.

Mod Ryan, who is also part of the fictionkin community whether we like it or not, has seen:

Confessions about incest

Confessions about being abused otherwise

Confessions about stalking and being stalked

People saying they liked to kill

People saying they weren’t at all sorry for violent things their kintypes did

Asks saying characters or people should’ve killed themselves

@queen-dragon-slut said about some of the suicide-ish confessions: “ Tbh when somebody sends in a confession saying “I killed myself in my canon” it just sounds like they have some fantasies of wanting to kill themselves but cover it up by saying that their kin kill themselves and try to play it off. That’s not healthy.”

Hypocrisy:

Alright. That looks reasonable -- but wait.

The asks and other screenshots I just posted do strongly come off as suicide wishes, if not actual notes.

Here’s what people had to say when asked if they’d seen Party Cat acting hypocritical. I did not even mention suicide asks or dark asks in the survey question:

____ I wish I had time to say more but class starts in twenty minutes. When I’m back, I will add onto the callout with one more thing: that people feel Cat isn’t doing enough to help distressed anons.

Huge thank you to everyone who helped out with this!

It’s something that people have wanted to say for quite a while, and something that should’ve been said a long time ago.

Nobody should be demonizing Party Cat; there is a real person behind the screen. This should be a learning experience for her. Not an attack.

-K

#party cat callout #tw suicide #tw abuse #otherkin #kin cringe #otherkin cringe

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