#while also being universal enough to be understandable and non-pretentious

[kickedin17]

Scaled and icyyyyyyyyyy. What to even say. I admit I was not its biggest defender when it hit the ground in 2021 but it has grown on me so much over the last few years. Visually their most beautiful and cohesive era that tells such a specific and clear story all on its own. Sonically so fresh and bouncy and served as Tyler's "back to basics" self produced project where you can tell he was having fun trying new sounds out for the band while keeping a very specific feeling and energy throughout.

The almost genuinely horrific dissonance set up on Good Day between this very peppy bright music, and absolute crushing misery and isolation. Constant references to self-medication/allusions to addiction. Clinging to how the world used to be because how it is now is unbearable (hello ongoing pandemic). Clinging also to imagination as an escape and a form of freedom - but that can only get you so far, really. The first album where we properly got to know/understand clancy imo (obviously he was present during trench but it was much more subtle back then since we only had dema org to work with, sai gave us the livestream and very lore heavy shows and more heavily narrative videos).

Regardless of how the boys might feel about scaled and icy after the fact due to its reception ("kinda wishing that I never did saturday") to me it's so clearly the album/era where they fully realized they could just go for it, whatever it was, and we would follow them and have a good time. Both in terms of basically becoming a full-blown concept band & in terms of the music itself.

I know we all adore redecorate and did from the moment it dropped but I also truly believe songs like saturday and mulberry street are some of tyler's best production work ever. Choker is one of my all time favorite songs of theirs. The livestream gave us both the heathens/trees mashup and the jumpsuit/hds mashup & then we ALSO got mtv unplugged out of this era ?? For being a peak early covid album it still gave us some of their best live material ever. And ofc tyler's sparkly jacket and miss faux fur shirtless diva josh dun.

SAI is probably the tøp album I have the least weird personal emotional baggage tied to, which is why this post has actually been about the music lmao. But I respect the music so much. And I also appreciate this era so massively for seeming to have brought a good number of people into the fandom :-) there is no bad first pilots album to have but SAI is a really special one I think. Love you forever girliepop <3 happy birthday

[alatuswind]

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

☆☆

(this review is my honest opinion and has no intention of offending anyone. So just read if you want. It contains spoilers.)

(Quite long as I had a lot to rant about 😅)

Okay, let’s talk about one of the most disappointing, nonsense books I read and it was one of my biggest book disappointments.

The premise of the book was dark academia with big plot twists, about a group of talented people that enter a competition for a year to be part of a society that has the knowledge that once was in Alexandria. However, only five could pass to the second year and turn to be society members.

World Building

Bad or even non-existent. In this book, there are people with and without magic. However, a lot about this magic system is not explained in the slightest.

We know that there are different types, which makes us believe that people are born within a specific type. However, characters end up talking about having abilities outside their magic type. Despite it trying to explain (minimally) how that is possible, we just don’t know enough about the magical system to fully understand it. It just comes as a very broad and limitless magic type where quite everything can be put in a way to fit it.

The separation between humans and magicians is also never truly explained. It tells us that people with magic go to universities, have important roles and even high-paying jobs. Due to this, you end up assuming that everyone knows about magicians. However, suddenly when explaining that an old scientific theory regarding light was actually wrong as the real event was caused due to a magician making fun of the unaware scientist, we have to assume that humans actually don't know about magic. It could be that in the past humans didn’t know about it but now they do. But there is really no point in thinking it forward because it is never truly explained.

This constant lack of explanation of the world that you are being introduce to will, unfortunately, continue.

Another good example of how the world of this book lacks structure is the existence of mermaids. I had to reread the section more than once as I was surprised that this book had mermaids as they were just introduced out of nowhere. Pretty much as “Ah, and that’s Gideon, he is half mermaid, half something else”. So, they are in the universities but again does everyone know? Never explained. Additionally, why do they exist? They were meaningless besides creating a subplot for Nico and Gideon, which was also meaningless, so...

Writing Style

The writing style made it difficult to understand what was going on. I have nothing against simple writing, there are lots of books that can be very profound while maintaining it simple. But it was quite different. It kind of felt that the author didn't have the energy to properly explain and write things clearly. For example, she tends to use brackets to explain things further or even to indicate who talked. It went pretty much like this:

That had begun almost immediately after the installations (”installations” being Atlas’s word for all of them nearly dying on their very first night as part of the society).

“Why would someone want us to think Rhodes was dead?” (Nico.) “Is the question why Rhodes, or why us?” (Parisa).

The use of a certain vocabulary also made the writing feel like pretentious tweets more than actual thoughts, conversations or explanations, but I believe this is more a picky point on my part.

Some quotes really didn't make that much sense. You just have to think about them more than once to see the flaws behind their logic. For example:

You have a choice, you know. You have only one true choice in this life: live or die. It is your decision. It is the only thing no one else can take from you.

Hmm... not so sure about it. There were some more, but this was one of the best.

There were also moments when it seemed that what was pointed out in one page, was forgotten in the next one. For example, after a battle Atlas shows up and it is described that Dalton was right behind him when everyone looked. Considering this is written in POVs, they saw him, but in the same scene, it is pointed out that they were surprised when he talked because they didn't know he was there.

This type of situation is repeated in the plot too. For example, when Atlas and Ezra were thinking of their motive to create the new team, it is said that they didn’t know but wanted to do something useful with this magic. But suddenly on the next page, it changed and now it was because they wanted to destroy the society as they disagreed with it.

However, the scene that made me question my interpretation skills was the battle, which I blame on the lack of proper description. In this scene, Libby and Tristan are trying to defend the place from some invaders and they enter a room that has some enemies. For Libby, there were dozens of them, but Tristan could see there were merely three (powers and stuff). So they start arguing about it, and due to the lack of description, it just looks like the enemies are just there waiting while they start understanding their trick. Another thing that made me annoyed in this scene was when this pair entered another room where there were two more enemies. But the thing is that it just described that they entered and decided to wait to see if there was someone else. So... were they hiding? Were they just standing there in the middle of the room? I don’t know. However, when it is mentioned that the men looked up from the computer and immediately locked eyes with Tristan, I just laugh. So I guess they were just there, in the middle of the room. I actually tried more than once to understand this scene and reread it but still have no clue.

Characters

This is a topic that lots of people seem to disagree in their opinions. Some love all the characters, and some really hate most of them. I would say that I am in the middle.

Nico was my favorite initially (aka he was giving Cardan vibes). However, despite looking like he was gonna be the focus on the first pages, by the middle of the book he was practically forgotten in the main plot of the book and only appeared to participate in the secondary plot, which was honestly meaningless for this book.

Libby was also a character that I enjoyed. I did like her interactions with Nico for the most part, but they did start to annoy me as they were always the same, their relationship got no development whatsoever. Plus, it did feel like she was always a topic in almost every chapter, even if the reason was everyone making a very teen-like comment about how she asked too many questions when all were still meeting. This made no sense as she didn't ask that many and didn't even ask many more for the rest of the book. It feels like the author wanted to make us understand that Libby’s attitude irritates the group but thought that only describing her being annoying once would be enough to justify everyone's constant complaints for the entire book.

Reina is probably the most boring of them all. Not because she didn’t have potential but because she was simply left out of everything in the story. She was just there to read, quite literally and didn’t care about anyone, or start caring. So, when she disliked someone it would only feel dull as there were barely any disagreements besides a single moment. Once again, it feels like the author thought that just one single scene where nothing major happened was enough to justify the characters' complaints for the entire story.

Tristan was the one that I disliked the most. I understand he is the guy with daddy issues who looks for people who can hurt him and be cruel towards him. It was an interesting build for some time. But it got to the point that his monologues were always the same. All of his thoughts are loyal to his traumas but it never felt like he barely tried to think outside that even if he had all the ways to do so. No development whatsoever. Plus, his sudden high interest in Libby after that drunk nightstand just didn’t feel right to me. I can understand the reasons for the attachment, but it was just too sudden. However, I was quite interested in his dynamic with Callum, to the point that I would much prefer that the attachment he created with him would have been the focus instead.

Parisa was a surprise for me as I didn’t expect to like her as I did, but she was without doubt the most interesting one. Parisa made her relationship with s*x seem very logical. For her it was not just s*x, but her way of playing mind games. She is by far the most intelligent character in the entire book and the one that made this book seem engaging for a while. Everything she did had a logical objective and made sense. She even made the fact that the author always had to add sexual references in almost every moment a little bit more tolerable, but just for a bit.

Callum had all the potential, but none of it was used. His perspective on morality was very intriguing and his thoughts on emotions due to his ability were fascinating. He could have been the character that would make the reader doubt, make them question, be the imbalance, be the one that would challenge others, but all that was left behind. His game against Parisa was the best part of the book and the only reason I might have given 2 stars.

Plot

Firstly, there was the plot regarding the society. As expected this was the most academic part of the book. All six of them had to create better security for the society. Were they able to do it? So for the largest part of the book it was completely forgotten, but eventually it was mentioned their success when it was no longer important. If it ever was.

We also know they are having classes about certain topics and I guess they needed to research independently (once again, wasn't very clear). Three of them ended up working together on this research regarding wormholes in space. Despite sounding like a very big event as it was never done before, it was, once again, completely forgotten for the rest of the book. It didn't add anything to the book at all. And this same pattern repeats. There are academic topics that appear from nowhere, then the characters do something incredible, nearly impossible, and then it is just forgotten or not developed.

Now, back to the mermaids. From the very beginning, we know that Nico needs to protect Gideon from his mother. However, we never know what bad stuff she's on, apart from her being a terrible mom. We are constantly reminded that she is a threat, to the point that Nico almost died just to make a safe place she couldn't invade. However, she didn’t do anything threatening. By the end of the book, we are just left wondering why she even existed. Of course, this narrative may be going to be expanded in the sequel. However, I can not even feel a bit excited about it as her existence wasn't important for this book.

Despite these, there was a part of this book that was okay. Since the tension between Parisa and Callum started, the stakes got higher. The majority of it was still dialogue and not a lot of action, but when we finally got a bit of it actually made me interested. The best parts of this book were definitely when Parisa manipulated Libby and Tristan and the mind duel. At this point, it felt more like a dark academia and I was so ready to see their corrupt arcs coming up, especially when all of them decided to kill Callum. Until it was all left behind for the "plot twist".

One of the main topics of this book was about what we do for more or prohibited knowledge. This is introduced when they all understand that they have to kill one of them. The book makes it look like most characters would have refused before but the time in the society and the taste of all that knowledge had changed them and they would kill to continue having it. However, at no point in the book we saw this corruption happening. There were just random discoveries but never the obsession with it nor the selfish thoughts. And is not like most cared for each other to think murder would be a big challenge.

Now the "plot twist"…

Guess what, Libby’s boyfriend, Ezra, was all this time a time travelling and together with Atlas, selected the whole group for a reason that changes each page. Jumping all the moments and changes of narrative in the only chapter where all this was presented, I want to point out how badly this plot twist was introduced and how it completely destroyed the good potential that it had.

The first time we are foresight about this was when Tristan saw someone outside the society and the reader can easily guess that it was Ezra. At this point, it was intriguing. Then Ezra speaks with Atlas out of nowhere. Then we know there is an outsider from the initial six. Finally, we are just explained in one chapter to the end, that Ezra saw the future and Atlas is a traitor who is planning to destroy the whole world. This whole chapter made me just scream "WHAT?", and not a "now everything makes sense" WHAT but a wtf WHAT. Everything in this chapter is just confusing. Was Ezra not being part of the initiates a betrayal or his decision? Does Ezra like Libby or not? I don't really know since he does say he likes her and then thinks it is better not to respond to her question regarding him caring for her since he does not have something good to say. Even the whole thing about Ezra now having six recruits to go against the society made me question how the hell he got time to find those people as he didn't even know about Atlas's plans for the longest. Atlas’s choice, despite having good logic behind was terribly discovered and foreshadowed. The only things we know for the whole book about Atlas are that he got a position uncommon to be gained and that he was not in society a lot. The same applies to Ezra. To add to all this, Ezra only associates the end of the world he saw in the future with Atlas because he remembers a conversation between them when drugged. He didn't even question if he was wrong, that his friend would never do it. No, he immediately knew clearly it was Atlas.

This book made me feel that all the years learning English were for nothing because I constantly couldn't understand what was happening.

[asvli]

&  .   announcing her royal highness  ,  asali dhakiya mwezi  ,  the  33  year old  crown princess of tanzania  .  she is often confused with  laura harrier  .  some say that she is  blunt & obstinate  ,  but she is actually  intuitive & decisive  .

/     BIO   ∙    PINTEREST   .

&   FAMILY   .

all referenced from the adopt post & jelani’s amazingly written intro !

her parents married for love but obviously love, alone, isn’t enough to make a family stay together  !  however since image was everything to them, they stayed together despite the obvious differences that began to form a more than hostile environment in their household  –   it also didn’t help that her brother isn’t her father’s kid  –  and that created even more animosity in the house as asali began to see how different her father treated her in comparison to jelani.  however,  this made her need/want to protect her brother more even if it meant standing up to the big bad man she called dad

but her father relented  ( at times ) because he loved asali and so begins her role as the mediator of the family

her relationship w her dad has been rocky since then since she doesn’t approve of the way he treats jelani but she still somewhat cares / acknowledges him because he’s never treated her outwardly 

other than that she loves her mom and jelani to bits  (  out of everyone she knows,  these are the 2 she’ll ever really be Soft for  )

her mom is her literal role model

while jelani can do no wrong in her eyes,  for her,  as long as he tries or attempts,  she’s like  “oh my god, you’re amazing, JUST AMAZING.”

yes,  she’s biased.  does she care? lmfao no.

&   ASALI TIME   .

even if her father didn’t want to conform to the pressure of his family, he had no problem pushing those same expectations on little asali

at the age of 4, she started at an international boarding school ( haven’t decided which so hmu for boarding school blues! ) and from then it was always about being the best, getting the best grades, going to the best schools, wining the best awards, and undoubtedly going to the best universities and becoming the Best of the Best

not that asali truly minded, she liked the push, and she liked the thrill of winning things, but it did give her an unhealthy ( read: pretentious )  ego boost  /  aka she’s unhealthily competitive 

her father had gotten into an ivy league school,  so obviously asali got in with flying colors

unlike her father who lacked the ambition, asali had that in spades, after her bachelor’s, she got her master’s and immediately began training under her mother to take up more responsibility as crown princess

while others who cracked under pressure, asali flourished under it

however unlike her parents’ love story for the ages, the fall out of such a star-crossed romance only made her jaded, her love life, however filled, left her distant and at arm’s reach  –  you never really knew asali except for what she let you know, you never really understood her except for what she wanted you to understand about her

and if you caught her slipping, no you didn’t

the same goes with her platonic relationships, girlie burns bridges as fast as they are no longer needed. once your purpose was up, so was that relationship (select few were the exception to this) !

#UnbotheredPrincess, she’s not afraid to speak her mind and will call you out on your stupid

because of her home environment, she got really good at picking up non-verbal cues  ;  the slightest ripple of an expression or tick.  while she hates to sugar coat things, she does know how to do it and will do it if it will meet a certain means to an end

currently,  shopping for business deals in order to develop tanzania 

&   PLOTS   .

any plots would be great !  

would love more political plots for her as well + business partners

[langernameohnebedeutung]

„Middle schoolers“ is like starting from year 7 or so right?

In my school Latin was the first ‚foreign language‘ we learnt (in year 5) even before learning English (in year 6) so would that mean we were , in american school system terms, elementary schoolers when we started learning Latin? Because that’s so funny to me somehow

I mean...I don’t really understand the American education system and at this point I’m afraid to ask, but we have to face facts: For a country that was never part of the (actual, original, non-knock-off) Roman Empire, Germany is a bit obsessed with Latin. Like, other than Trier, Cologne and the rest of those west-rhine-ian chumps, people here were hanging out in the forests while the Romans were doing their thing. 

I know, I know, language of science, scholarly tradition, the influence of the catholic church on academia and all that - but sometimes I still feel like we’re kinda still compensating from the millennium we spent cosplaying as Rome or at least the fact that we were not part of one of the Ancient ‘Hochkulturen’. 

Like, I actually wanted to know what the guys up in Northern Europe are doing and I found this in a Swedish paper:

“I Tyskland, som ju är ett land mycket nära oss, har latinämnet en helt annan ställning. Mitt kusinbarn på 11 år har just börjat läsa latin jämte de första meningarna engelska, något som inte är ovanligt på det tyska gymnasiet (som är nioårigt). För dem som väljer att studera vidare vid universitet är det därför inte heller ovanligt att man har ett latinstudium bakom sig – det är på många utbildningar nämligen ett krav. Detta medför att det finns fler personer i Tyskland än i Sverige som besitter baskunskaper i latin.”

“In Germany, which is a country very close to us, the Latin subject has a completely different standing. My 11-year-old cousin has just started reading Latin as well the first sentences in English, something not uncommon in German Gymasium (that is nine years). For those who choose to study further at university, it is therefore not unusual at all to have the learning of Latin behind you - it is in many programmes listed as an (entry-)requirement. This means that there are more people in Germany than in Sweden who own basic knowledge of Latin.” 

(Listen, Sweden, not to get on your case but I’m pretty sure there are more of everything in Germany, you might not want to argue with population size here)

United Kingdom, according to Wikipedia: “In the first half of the 20th century, Latin was taught in approximately 25% of schools.[9] However, from the 1960s, universities gradually began to abandon Latin as an entry requirement for Medicine and Law degrees. After the introduction of the Modern Language General Certificate of Secondary Education in the 1980s, Latin began to be replaced by other languages in many schools. Latin is still taught in a small number, particularly private schools.[10] Three British exam boards offer Latin, OCR, SQA and WJEC. In 2006, it was dropped by the exam board AQA.“

I’m not sure what Eastern Europe is doing, but I know Latin is less popular in East Germany because the GDR broke with the tradition and even Poland, despite being super-catholic, is only now bringing Latin back more front and centre: “ After years of being only available as an extended-level subject, Latin and classical antiquity return to the high school curriculum and pupils are to learn that “repetitio est mater studiorum” as of the upcoming school year of 2020/2021.”(x)

I know the Dutch also got the hard-on for the classics, but like...it’s honestly kinda funny to me because jokes and stereotypes about Latin class are such a cultural staple here and to see so many people go: You guys ... had Latin? In Middle-School? - is so funny to me. Our suffering is not universal. There is even material that shows that Southern Germans have a different accent in Latin than Northern Germans because they’re more church-y down there.

In all fairness, we had these ‘clubs’ in elementary school for French (third grade) and English (fourth grade), but those were optional and we just learnt a few very simple words and phrases and when I did a placement in a kindergarten for two weeks for my Sozialpraktikum they also taught the older kids English songs and phrases in little extra groups.

And then in Gymnasium, we started English in fifth grade, chose between our elective third language in 6th (we had Latin and French, because our French teachers boycotted Spanish) and then you could later on (I think in Mittelstufe?) also add the other one as your third language. And then you have those Gymnasien that specifically insist on the classic languages and also teach Ancient Greek, probably also at the expense of teaching living languages.

@zerogravitykitty also said that people got shamed for picking English as their first language at her school because it’s too easy - entirely regardless of the actual usefulness. And I feel like somewhere in this, the essentials of what is wrong with the German and the American language education system are both broken down to their bare essentials. Like you have one school system which just...barely teaches languages at all, and then you have Germany’s very classist, pretentious, very seperatist school system (which is entirely not good enough to warrant that level of snobbishness) where this is kinda symptomatic for our problems: 

At least at university level, if you don’t know the major Ancient authors and poets and some basics of Latin, you get side-eyed, and form what I hear, not just in the Humanities. But at the same time, Realschüler and Hauptschüler don’t even have access to this kind of education, because it is part of Latin-class. So not only do they have the upwards struggle of actually getting an Abitur or Fachabitur to get into university, they're also made to feel unwelcome for not knowing stuff like this. 

When I was in Ireland, when you were quoting literature or source material in your term-paper, you could do that in English - but here, even in English-class, we have to use the native languages (assuming they’re from a chosen, elitist group of European languages) and you definitely have to quote Latin in the original Latin to - I quote my tutor! - show that you read and understood the Latin. While even if you read and understood the Latin, you could still have come to the conclusion: “This will lose none of the information if I write it in German and it would fit into the text much better.” Like, one of our lecturers accepted that we were allowed to add the German quote into the text, if we out the original Latin in the footnote. Good times.

[auspiciousinformant]

Core Character Ranking - No Straight Roads

At this point with the game having been out for well over four and a half months, I figure that with having a small piece of fiction under my belt, and with the fandom having cooled down from the initial release but still hot enough for content to steadily be coming out from the fanbase, now is a good time for me to share my thoughts on No Straight Roads - rather, what I call the Core Characters of No Straight Roads.

I call them this because they are the collective protagonist main characters and antagonistic bosses - not filling up one bucket or another quite satisfactory. I might even make this into a series if anyone cares enough to hear my thoughts on other pieces of fiction. If you’re interested, continue below the line.

Oh, also, spoilers for No Straight Roads if you still care about that.

Disclaimer before continuing onwards - I’ve never actually played No Straight Roads! I’m not exactly a person with enough wealth to throw at my own interests and hobbies, but I feel I’ve absorbed enough through culture osmosis, 100% walkthroughs of the game, and other people’s interpretations of the game to be able to make my own informed opinions on the characters.

Also, this isn’t a “bosses” ranking list - this is a character ranking list. Meaning that individuals are going to be ranked rather than the whole. For example, Sayu will be divided into the four members behind Sayu (hereafter refered to as “Team Sayu”) as well as Sayu herself. This also means I won’t fully go on the gameplay mechanics as I don’t have enough experience with it to make a fully informed decision. I will talk about what I’ve seen though.

With that in mind, we’ll be starting as all of these lists usually do, from the bottom ranking to the top: ________________________________________________________________ 20. Eve

Now, this may come as a shock, but I absolutely despise divas. Eve was entertaining enough, but through her videos she was only relatable and likable to me before she and Zuke broke up. Mostly because I could relate with her self-loathing and her found happiness.

Still... setting someone’s hair on fire? And then being confused as to why that happened? Then completely blaming the victim and using that mistake as fuel to shut out any other potential kindred relationship for the future? I’ve seen people who do that; it’s pathetic at best and annoying to see at worst. Thankfully, due to Zuke, she does eventually come around.

Her music and boss fight are interesting enough I suppose. I like how the perspective changes and I adore when you have to switch over to Mayday and it becomes a fully chaotic mess of limbs, doubt, hatred, and rage. I live for that chaotic aesthetic.

Otherwise, she’s just... the weakest character to me in No Straight Roads.

Maybe she’ll Eve-ntually earn my respect in supplementary materials.  ________________________________________________________________ 19. Sofa

The first member of Team Sayu I’m mentioning and he’s this low on the list. Ouch. Not to say that I hate him, the hate started and ended with Eve - he, along with the others don’t really have much of a personality canonically that I can see to judge him on. But in terms of his design, I’ve never been much of a fan of “overweight and silly” outside of Doctor Eggman/

Do not take this the wrong way. I am in NO way fatshaming ANYONE.

I just have never liked that design in fictional characters. See Hifumi Yamada from “Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc” for more on what I mean

Still, he’s a core member of Team Sayu and from the fanfiction I’ve read he’s one of the better characters to write with. Maybe if we got a spinoff or other related materials, he’d go up a few numbers in rank, but as it stands, he’s the weakest of the group.

Sofa-r so good, let’s move on before these puns go too far. ________________________________________________________________ 18. Mayday Yeah. I’m not a huge fan of Mayday herself. Hotheaded protagonists are fine here and there, but she’s so hot-headed I’m surprised that she didn’t have the fire aesthetic as well. I guess with it all being taken by Tatiana, they could only give her a warm color scheme so it wasn’t redundant.

Her gameplay seems fine, if a bit basic. The heavy hitter is also a hothead, who could guess. I kinda like how someone as scrawny and small as her also has the biggest heart and temper. Also the gags that come from her relating to the other bosses are hysterical and make for good protagonist material. Still, outside of her interaction with DK West, Zuke, and Team Sayu, as well as the very end of the game, there’s a lack of enough “heroic” traits that makes Mayday fall flat from just shy of ranking higher.

I don’t have a clever pun, joke, or one-liner for Mayday, so let’s go to the next person in my list. ________________________________________________________________ 17. DJ Subatomic Supernova I have never really liked disco or dance music at the best of times, but I love space. So what happens when you mix something I feel lukewarm to, something I absolutely adore, and combine it with a trait about a person I absolutely also despise?

You get space helmet man who likes fresh ice cream and goes on for minutes about how great he is and how everyone else around him are plebeians - not knowing how pretentious the stage name “Subatomic Supernova” is.

If I had made this list when I had first seen No Straight Roads, he’d be only just ahead of Eve just because I dislike her so much more than I hate egotism of DJ Subatomic Supernova. But he’s now gone higher on the list since he’s grown on me thanks to the fandom and me realizing the game is parodying the stereotypes and the industry of music. Also, Zuke’s drum solo is AMAZING with the EDM version of DJ SS’s theme. He’s even gone so far as to become half of my second favorite paring in the NSR fandom!

Shine on, you funky space man. ________________________________________________________________

16. DK West Ewah! Older of the two brothers by age, younger of the two by maturity. I absolutely love this goofball. His shadow powers are absolutely amazing to watch and while I normally don’t like rap outside of Eminem (and even then only select tracks), he grew on me a lot. He’s so unique and the culture he’s based on from what I understand was researched with a lot of respect and care.

I’ve heard (and seen) that the third fight ramps up the difficulty way too much, but considering that Mayday is attempting to repair a broken household, it makes sense it’d be such a heavy undertaking from a gameplay and story point.

Also DK West Encounter 1 is a smash hit, telling us everything we really need to know between DK West and Zuke while being an absolutely great song that reminds me of Epic Rap Battles of History for anyone that remembers that.

He overshadows his previous competition by a large margin, and I can’t wait to see more of him if that’s possible. ________________________________________________________________ 15. Yinu’s Mom As the real mastermind behind Yinu’s position in NSR, it suddenly makes so much sense as to why a literal child is in such a strict EDM hierarchy like NSR. What keeps her from going above and beyond this ranking isn’t anything more than just the pressure she puts on Yinu to perform. During the fight, and what I can only presume also happens outside of concerts in the universe of No Straight Roads, it seems like she entirely forgets the reason Yinu keeps playing the piano in the first place.

However, I am a huge sucker for family dynamics, and her stopping her assault due to the memories that Yinu was able to drag out of her through the broken piano by playing Heart of the Prodigy is enough to almost enough for me to reach the level of emotional catharsis as the ending of Pixar’s “Inside Out” did for me. And the way she shielded Yinu when they were falling, the gasp of fear that she might not survive the fall - just pure, amazing storytelling through “show, don’t tell”.

I will say, the more morbid part of me that enjoys things like Danganronpa, Your Turn To Die, and Nonary Games, had the thought of “if it weren’t for the fact that Mayday and Zuke also fell from that height and survived (and that this game is meant for younger audiences), Yinu would have became an orphan.”

Mother of the Year award goes to Yinu’s mom for being the most realistic, sympathetic, non-dead mom in fiction. ________________________________________________________________ 14. Yinu I love classical music, but I don’t really like children. Yinu is an exception to my general dislike of children. The promotion that was released before the game was a little eye-rolling, but it was also funny. Fortunately, in the game, Yinu is so much more mature and interesting than the promotional material lead us to believe. The way the piano plays plays in the base version of VS Yinu conveys just how talented she is at nine years old. It’s a shame that it slowly gets covered up by the EDM version as the battle goes on.

But her reasoning for playing the piano, through the photos you get from Yinu’s backstory is all the more reason to respect this literal child. She turned the loss of her music teacher and father into a shining passion for music. The piano being the very memento of her deceased dad - looking at the photos and then realizing what you did in shattering her piano creates a fantastic retroactive look at just how destructive Bunkbed Junction’s revolution really is to people.

We’re not even half-way down the list, and yet we already have great characters like this, so let’s keep looking. ________________________________________________________________ 13. Dodo There’s been a huge gap since the last Team Sayu member. So what makes Dodo so great compared to Sofa? Well, the deep voice that comes from the scrawny, blue man is funny to me. It caught me off-guard the first time I heard it and had me giggling for hours afterwards after I paused the video to regain my composure.

That, and mocap work is hard work. On top of that, though he’s mostly not the face everyone remembers when fans think of Sayu, it takes a lot of talent and self-confidence to dance like a cutesy mermaid despite being a male, at least in my opinion. So I see him as having high confidence, but also being like Zuke in the “chill and mostly quiet” department.

There’s not much else for me to say, since most of Team Sayu doesn’t have blatantly obvious character traits. So let’s move on. ________________________________________________________________ 12. Sayu Sayu herself is... well, not real. It’s like trying to judge any number of the Vocaloid/UTAU voice banks. Sure you can place any number of personalities and messages into it, but in reality she’s just been built as a “cutsie, wootsie, pink mermaid” idol.

Still, the personality that Team Sayu gives her is fantastic. Her fight is annoying, and lackluster even to watch, but her song is amazing in all of its forms, even if for me the vaporwave version is the least effective of all of them - and Analog Aquatics is the BEST lead-up song to it, even ahead of Heart of the Prodigy.

Hatsune Miku? Who’s that? I only see Sayu as the best Vocaloid. ________________________________________________________________ 11. Remi Technically the creator of Sayu in the first place and her designer, Remi seems to be the “all according to plan” type. To think that his passion for art would lead to a career such as NSR, and a close-knit friend group like Team Sayu. It’s something that I’m sure that every artist has had as their goal at one point or another.

I highly respect anyone with the ability to put their artwork out in public, both in real life and as a character. Even so, there are characters I like even beyond Remi, and once again, we don’t have much to go off of for him outside of the very few times we see him in Sayu’s battle.

Almost all of Team Sayu has been covered at this point - heck, even Sayu herself has already been covered. So where’s Tila you ask? Well, we’ll get to that, but not for a while. ________________________________________________________________ 10. Tatiana “Kul Fyra” Qwartz From the very moment we first hear her voice, we can tell she’s all business and order. When we watch all of NSR reject the rock music outright and listen to Tatiana’s speech afterwards? How she seems to disregard her artists own safety and prioritizing undermining Bunkbed Junction’s efforts just because she can’t bear to remember her old bandmates? Wonderfully selfish for a heartbroken character.

Also, for those who hate her time-oriented powers and how weakly linked they are to Tatiana herself? Consider this: She’s almost 50 years old by the time Bunkbed Junction starts their revolution. She’s lived long enough to be anyone in the cast’s mom - probably even old enough to be Team Sayu and Yinu’s grandma. She has only seen a progressive march of time erode at everything she ever loved and cared about.

The blazing passion within her is brought back to her through Bunkbed Junction’s actions, but through a reversal of time and a reflection of her memories. Bunkbed Junction literally shatters the world view that she constructed for herself to ignore the regret and pain that had been slowly eating her up inside without her ever even having fully realized it in the first phase. By the time Tatiana reverts back to using her Kul Fyra form, she’s trying so hard to list any number of reasons to ignore her past and focus on what little time she actually has left to work on the future.

This was a bit of a longer explanation and reasoning, but for a character as amazing and symbolically complex as Tatiana, she absolutely deserves it. And as you’ll see for the next character, this is only a fraction of my love for the characters of No Straight Roads. ________________________________________________________________9. Neon J And here we start with my absolutely favorite characters, the ones I not only enjoy reading and writing about, but that in canon I can wholeheartedly accept them for who they are, flaws and all.

My grandpa was in the navy, and to make a long story short there were some complicated things that happened that required me to live with both him and my grandma when I was really little. So already there’s something that I can latch onto and adore. Even with how cringy Neon J is at the end with him attempting to try to give an epic war hero speech, my grandpa can be the same way sometimes, and that’s okay. They kind of act similarly outside of that as well.

His design is so sleek and smooth, and sometimes I forget that he’s actually a cyborg, unlike his sons boyband creations. Normally I hate the military, war, and what it all represents at a cynical level, but when it’s portrayed in a way like No Straight Roads did for Neon J and 1010, it reminds me of the people who actually join to serve their country and the people in it, despite how few in their countries actually deserve their respect.

And yeah, I can already hear the “blah blah fiction is poorly portraying law enforcement/the military because ect ect”. I disagree. Think of it this way: Neon J is a fun example of what a leader in a military unit is. Not only that, he’s extremely loyal and willing to do what it takes to get the job done - including having a program inside 1010 that makes them explode when they fail to generate the requisite fan praise that’s likely required to keep 1010 merchandise flying off of the shelves and thus prove to the other NSR artists that even robot boybands can be used to help Vinyl City; AND use said robot boyband as weapons to fight off any threats - internal or external.

Also think about what he had to go through to become a cyborg. That means he likely had to replace everything that’s on the surface - imagine what he needed to replace underneath all of that metal. How much of his original body is left? How badly did the war he was involved in hurt him? How many comrades did he lose to try to recreate that feel in a boyband? Aren’t the implications of that so much more grand than the surface level “radar head man is bad representation of military people because he’s silly and ineffective at his job”. Furthermore, tell me of a person in the real world who lost so much of their body they literally had to become a cyborg that has a literal radar for a head.

On top of all of that he’s the second half of my second favorite pairing. Not that is has any major bearing on how great Neon J already is. Is it silly that Neon J tries to give a huge speech at the end when we know Bunkbed Junction is just trying to get to Tatiana? Yes. But it’s fun.

I salute the No Straight Roads team for creating such an amazing character . ________________________________________________________________8. Blue 1010 Robot | Purl-Hew Ah yes, now we start getting to what’s taking up most of the top 10 slots. Kind of funny that not all of the 1010 members are going into the top 5 slots with how much I ranted and raved about Neon J. But I have characters I like way more than most of the 1010 band members.

And yes, I’ll bring this up now since we’re actually talking about 1010, that will apply to all the members of 1010 so I don’t have to repeat myself: I already know that they’re meant to parody boy bands, pop bands, and how similar all of them are and ect ect ect. That doesn’t stop me from going “hee hoo pretty boys” at fictional characters. And, yes, I know they don’t canonically have names, but I’m going with what’s been accepted across the fandom. Also all of their body types are the same: I like them alot. They’re tall, in monochrome (hah, chrome), and the way they bob to the beat in their battle is fantastic and shows they are powered by music as much as any machine is in the universe of No Straight Roads.

Starting off with my least favorite of them, Purl-Hew just reminds me of Garnet from “Steven Universe”, which is not a bad thing. It’s just that outside of what we learn of Garnet, she’s a character I often forget exists. I think it’s honestly the shades and the blue, more square-like hair that makes me draw the comparison. Purl-Hew strikes me as the “cool” one. The one that recites his poetry in coffee shops and is the sensitive boy with a cold exterior. You know the kind of person I’m talking about.

Other than that, I like the 1010 branding on the side of his head. I normally don’t like hairstyles like that, but somehow with how it flows and how non-obnoxious it is, I actually find myself liking the hairstyle. Also coupled with the fact that I see him as the second eldest of all five of them, who likely cemented an identity for himself before the others, makes me like his entirety even more.

A cool dude deserves a cool transition, but since this isn’t a video, a line break will have to do. ________________________________________________________________7. Red 1010 Robot | Zimelu Zimelu is one of the ones that strikes me as the one that’s borderline trying to break free from the rest of the band and become his own artist. The mowhawk, the color red, even to what he’s likely supposed to represent in-universe. Many see him as having anger issues, and considering what 1010 is about coupled with, again the hair style and his color, yeah I can see why.

But I also see him having a somewhat tsundere side. Not overtly fully tusndere as “I-It’s not like I like you or anything!” but more of a “Hey, I got you [insert favorite food] to eat. Don’t read too much into it.” while looking off to the side to avoid seeing your reaction just because he’s not sure if he can handle the thought of him possibly being wrong and then seeing you be disappointed kind of tsundere.

I don’t see a lot of peices of work exploring this concept, and I’d love to see more of it - or heck, even other personality traits that could be lying under the rebellious design of him.

I see him as the middle child of the group, which could also add to the rebellious personality and anger issues. Not sure if anyone agrees with me on this though. ________________________________________________________________6. Yellow 1010 Robot | Haym Okay, so this is a bit weird. Haym is my second least favorite in terms of design, but third favorite because he’s supposed to be the sunny, shy, and sweet one. I see him as the second youngest of all of the 1010 members. Old enough to have experience and understand his purpose, but young enough to retain that childhood-like innocence and sweetness.

I think he’s content about his place in 1010. It’s not that he would slack off or anything, but he’d be the most comfortable with his identity out of all five of them, even years down the line. Where Purl-Hew has to upkeep his identity, Haym is fine just being who he is and happy that the crowd accepts him for who he is.

Also him saying “even your lips, which form that raaaaadiant smile~” made me smile like an idiot and my heart flutter when I first saw him - and don’t even get me started on his pose when he was saying that. So that probably has at least some bearing on his placement in this list. ________________________________________________________________5. Green 1010 Robot | Eloni Haym was weird for me to admit I still don’t fully like his design, but Eloni’s design is actually worse for me. I still don’t like the fact he looks like you could hang him on a Christmas tree or a keychain and not be out of place there. But as I learned more - especially the part where in-universe he’s the least-liked because he’s the prankster type, my heart melted for the guy.

While I myself am not a prankster or a fan of prankster types, sympathetic characters that are generally unliked in-universe for something minor or not their fault is something that will always get me to love a character. There’s also a lot of great fanfiction out there for Eloni, playing with the idea of jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, and the resulting love and support that inevitably follows from a strong supporting family.

Also, I see him as the youngest, and likely the one who thought it’d be a good idea to give everyone reindeer heads for the Christmas event instead of whatever was originally planned. The fans probably loved it anyways, even better than what was originally planned, but never knew it was Eloni’s messing around that gave them the toy-soldier-with-reindeer-heads 1010.

Second best 1010 boy deserves to be in the top 5 for all of this and more. ________________________________________________________________4. Tila Tila? You mean the one girl who only goes “pyun” a few times? The only one of Team Sayu that has any voice lines that are more than sobs, grunts, tremoring fear, and sounds of triumph?

Yes. That character. You want to know why?

First, lets start with her design. She wears an oversized hoodie and glasses - already two things I can relate to. The color contrast is just perfect between her hair, skin, and hoodie. Her design alone to me screams “high-functioning introvert”.

Her one line? Going “pyun” a few times? Absolutely adorable. I wanted to hear her say more lines, and the delivery of them being so uncertain filtered through a microphone to not come out that way as Sayu? She is definitely the shy one of the four of them. Also let’s not forget she’s Sayu’s voice actress in universe. Meaning that VS Sayu is something that Tila is singing.

Also, in the background material for Sayu, she’s the one that apologizes for using Remi’s art for one of her songs, and starts the collaboration with all four members of Team Sayu. It’s her story we follow. Not any of the other four members, though Remi does actually say something.

Though we don’t get much else of her, which prevents her from taking a spot in my top 3 picks, if we got just a little bit more from her, I’d definitely bump her to 3rd, maybe even let her take 1st. As it stands, compared to the rest of Team Sayu and Sayu herself, top 5 is nothing to sneeze at. ________________________________________________________________3. Kliff “No one like’s Kliff! He’s evil and bad!”

I mostly disagree with that statement, politely of course. Does no one like him? Seems that way in the fandom, but I like him. Is he evil? Yes, most certainly. Is he “bad”? Well, what’s the context of bad in this case? A bad plot-twist? A bad character? A bad guide? Not really. Well, except for the last part, possibly, but even then he’s still serviceable.

I mean take into context that Tatiana is Kul Fyra. On a first viewing, after having fought so many people after first meeting Kliff, most people would have forgotten that he, like Mayday, also likes Kul Fyra and was even there for her concerts. People who have insane memory would remember it, but for the rest of us, it probably came as a shock that Kliff would send a satellite into the NSR tower.

But he’s a fan that put Kul Fyra on a pillar, just like Mayday. He’d hoped that rock artists would get her back into rock music, to reignite the fire in her, so that he could enjoy her music again. He even says that he’s still her fan. He questions Tatiana “did my loyalty mean nothing to you?”.

And while yes, she didn’t technically owe him anything, the way that Tatiana shoots Kliff down so coldly after all of his attempts and his waiting - after she shut herself away from any potential future differing opinions and banning rock so she couldn’t remember the heartache - he snaps.

I’m not saying that Kliff was right, or that his reaction was fully justified. But imagine him saying he’ll be the strategic planner of NSR - after all, it was thanks to him that Mayday and Zuke got as far as they did. They knew what was coming ahead of time due to his advice. Mayday and Zuke would just be figureheads. It would be entirely realistic, and not make Kliff entirely evil.

Still, with all the hypotheticals out of the way, having an entirely selfish twist villain like Kliff was amazing. When you go through the entire story knowing how it will end on a second playthrough, suddenly his motives and what he says makes so much more sense.

I want to see (or maybe someday I’ll write) a redemption arc for Kliff. He’s not so fargone that I’d write him off as another villain for the sake of evil, but it would take actual work and effort. It’s something I look forwards to seeing in the far future.

Though he is also fun to see as an antagonist in all of these stories I read about him. ________________________________________________________________2. Zuke On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rank Zuke an 11. From his design, to his animations, to his background, his voice, his lines - everything is an 11/10 for me.

Starting with design again, normally I’d dislike the major contrast such a saturated green against a saturated blue. But there’s other bits in Zuke’s design - his red eyes, the fact that his clothing is a good neutral base to draw away from the chaos of colors of his head - only to lead back into what looks like ultra-comfortable blue-and-green flannel with dark blue flats? It all screams the perfect chill dude to hang out with.

His personality matches too. He’s laid-back, wise, rational, humble, and kind. Almost the perfect man in every way. Though he has his limits, especially when it comes to DK West, and he’s not always the most intelligent at times. Sometimes he takes a minute to put two-and-two together, especially when he’s under pressure and nervous.

And his drumsticks being used as a walking cane when he’s not battling, admitting that it’s NSR property - recognizing that NSR itself is not bad, it just needs change. He doesn’t generally talk smack unless, again, it’s DK West. He probably says less than Mayday does out of the two, but I wasn’t counting. I was just thankful that he was talking at all, attempting to be the voice of reason in situations, telling Eve he was wrong for leaving so suddenly (even though he’s not at fault for his hair being set on fire), reconciling with DK West after Mayday gets them to talk about their feelings to each other - he experiences the most growth over the longest period of time.

In fact, it feels like we’re witnessing Zuke’s entire story through the eyes of Mayday. Sure, Mayday has a stake in the conflict, and a small bit of growth, but none nearly so much as the jolly green giant between them. Heck, he’s so good that he made DJ Subatomic Supernova’s music actually sound good.

If this wasn’t enough, he’s also one half of my favorite pairing. Where’s the other half? Where he belongs of course. ________________________________________________________________1. White 1010 Robot |  Rin Look guys, my favorite character of No Straight Roads is finally here. Let me be the ideal fan and give him my utmost attention.

ATTENTION!

Hoo boy have I been waiting to talk about Rin! His design is the one that I love the most despite how simple and obviously pandering it is. I mean come on, he’s got the kind of hairstyle that just screams “typical emo/scene/goth/pop leader” without the sweeping bit of hair in front of the eye like Haym’s or other emo/scene/goth hair styles. He has no unique colors to himself (white and black are technically not colors). Heck, as a robot meant to parody pop/boybands, he technically should be the most bland and uninteresting part of 1010.

But that’s where you’d be wrong. Rin is the one who leads the flirting attempt against Mayday. Rin is the one who is focused on the most of all the 1010 members when the cutscenes play. Rin is the one who’s talking the most in the promotional video for 1010 and No Straight Roads. Even though Zimelu takes up most of the spot in the in-game photo op, Rin is the second most noticable. In the “wefies” the 1010 members make in the promotional video, Rin is front and center.

Rin is the poster child. Meaning he has the most mounting on him of all the members of 1010. And this can manifest in any number of interesting character traits. I’ve already written an (as of posting this review) three chapter fanfic on Rin and his dynamic with not only the other half of my favorite pairing, but also his dynamic with Neon J, and how both Zuke and Neon J view Rin - through what I perceive how Rin actually feels and acts when he’s not on stage.

I could probably do an entire 20 minute review on why Rin is the single-best character of No Straight Roads, both in and out of canon, but I don’t have the tools for it. And as a side note, the guitar solo that Mayday can play over the song is the single-best of all the guitar solos, the second being the one against Yinu - and that deep passion for 1010 is reflected well in the guitar solo.

Zuke may be an 11/10, but Rin is a perfect 10/10 - and I wouldn’t have it any other way . ________________________________________________________________Afterwords Finally, after an entire 4 hours of writing, I’d like to hear your thoughts on all of this, if you’ve made it this far.

What did you agree and disagree with? Feel free to comment if you want.

As for me, I think I’ll continue to browse the work of the fandom, keep an ear out for any future updates or sequels, and rock on with the amazing soundtrack of No Straight Roads jamming loudly in my ears.

Rock on fellow No Straight Roads fans! Or whatever genre you prefer to listen to.

[dajokahhh]

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

[ca-tk-in]

I may be about to get needlessly controversial on main about dark academia but this has been bothering me for a while so I’m just gonna say it.

As much as I enjoy the dark academia aesthetic, I feel like so many people in the tag come across as deluded on many things. 

The thing with academia is that it is inherently classist - just think of tuition fees, maintenance fees, books, paywalls for articles (and then you throw on top of that a whole aesthetic you want to emulate?) - and by extension is racist, and I’ll go into racism in academia more in a second. I understand that you can enjoy fiction without translating it into real life but that doesn’t seem like what’s happening here, and if you want to do that you have to have some level of self-awareness. 

Dark academia in the fiction popular on this site demonstrates the dangers of elitism, and also shows a huge lack of diversity - the dark academia aesthetic on tumblr however seems to celebrate this elitism and despite the efforts of very few still shows a huge lack of diversity. What this does is exacerbate the problems in real life academia and they’re bad enough without a whole new aesthetic adding to them. Not only this but you guys need to learn that being called pretentious is an insult - and it should stay an insult because it’s not a good thing. Being pretentious doesn’t make you clever or profound or passionate about your subject, it makes you tasteless and tacky and unpleasant to be around. You shouldn’t be saying thank you if someone calls you pretentious. 

I can, of course, only provide a very UK-centric perspective and as a white person I can only comment on the racism using what other people have told me. Academia and universities in this country are going through a very bad time, to put it simply. Lecturers get paid next to nothing and are either at risk of or have already had cuts to their pensions. They work non-stop and as applicants to universities are dwindling they have dropped their standards for new students, so classes are full of apathetic students who don’t like academia but didn’t know what else to do. Your dreams of becoming an academic are going to get crushed when you realise how much stress you’re going to be under, especially in the academic climate right now. There is very little that is left to be positive about it.  The people who run the universities - who do nothing for the students, don’t really do much in general and yet are still bad at it - get paid 6 figure salaries for some reason. 

Even more serious - and again, this is very UK-centric - with Brexit racists in university have seemed to get perhaps not worse but much more confident. At my university the campus mosque was vandalised and people have drawn antisemitic graffiti all over campus. We have a society that invites racist, right-wing people - an alt-right youtuber, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Katie Hopkins etc - to give them a platform to speak and our university doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. This is just my university - and it prides itself on being the ‘European University’. It is supposed to welcome diversity but it is full of people who do these disgusting things. 

Sometimes the books you read for pleasure have to be read with more care than just liking the aesthetic. Books like The Secret History and If We Were Villains have a message that you guys say you get but it really doesn’t seem like you do. There is a fundamental issue in our society and it has an affect of academia - which, I know I’m biased but still, is a very important part of our society. But I would advise people to start being careful with how they promote this aesthetic and recognise its failings and make it better. I’m not saying to dislike dark academia, I’m just saying consider the effects on real life that celebrating an aesthetic that celebrates white-centric elitism has. 

I’m sorry this was such a long post and if things are unclear at all but let me know. This’ll probably not get seen by anybody but I’ve got it off my chest. 

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue part... one..??

Alright, let’s do this.  As I’ve said, the page after this one is all I’ve seen, I’m diving in unspoiled.  Also I gather from some of the non-spoilery chatter I’ve heard from my friends -- one of which warned me this sort of thing was coming a couple weeks ago, and I believed them (but didn’t want to) -- that this first epilogue-upd8 may not be the only epilogue-upd8, which isn’t surprising either given how Andrew works.

Alright, let’s go.  Hope my stomach can take it!

So, Page 1, the mock-AO3 page that’s the only thing I’ve seen before posting this.  The content warning is EXCELLENT, and gives me hope that this will be the usual Hussie-caliber and more humorous than heartwrenching.  :)

It also makes some serious sense that there would be multiple epilogues; from the sound of the summary, this one might focus more on John and then leave ample opportunity to discuss the others.

Let’s click page 2 -- oh, or contents: “Prologue”, this being a chapter list for this is another way to do it.  Clicking Prologue.......

Okay wow, this is novel format for the moment.  Good chance it won’t stay that way.

These first two paragraphs are well-written and ominous, sure -- describing stuff we pretty much already knew was happening, in different words -- but even though the writing isn’t really pretentious, there’s still a good chance Andrew *views* it as pretentious enough to find cutting away to art-style instead hilarious.  Onto the third paragraph...

Music and Calliopes the other Calliope is conducting, yeah... Oh, there’s a garbage disposal reference.  In regards to a black hole.  Like the one I kind of pointed to during Dave’s intro sequence in the Third Scratch theory and stuff in all those big theories.  The ones I was, er, wrong about... ahem.  Moving on.

“Your name is John Egbert, and you have just had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare.”

Pfffffffff  :D

I love you Andrew Hussie.  Reading on...

YES I see chat colors. Chat colors!!! I need chat colors.  Reading reading reading let me get down to them let me

Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know, because you created it.

Baahahahahah.  :D

Okay yes I’m at the phone-sterlog.

Uh oh.

I am reading elevated levels of angst compared to usual pesterlogs in this log.  Which is to say, virtually any at all, really.  THAT doesn’t bode well for the outcome/overall tone of this epilogue.  :X  --Not to say it isn’t *appropriate*, given they still haven’t fixed/resewn Paradox Space together, but... yeah, *future feels* are popping up on the radar, that’s what I’m worried about.  I loved the tone of the snapchats and the feeling that everything was going to be fine, especially given how the ending “not being what I expected” shook me a fair bit, but to look forward to when that may end... D:

Yeah, Rose having some serious visions about some unfinished business they need to get around to instead of just fucking around and living their lives makes sense.  :X  --or at least some timeline version of them.  I’m imagining they’re living varied, excellent lives in a whole TON of timelines of promise that commit our imaginings of their potential futures to virtual canon, really, with the main thread that ties off Caliborn’s stage play almost irrelevant in comparison... that was kind of the whole point of the Ending of homestuck earlier, of that final anime flash, the fact that the victory and planet and *lives* they won meant a whole lot more than whatever Lord English’s irrelevant machinations were.

So... returning to the tail end of that main thread and seeing how *serious* it might be....... yeah. Kinda mildly panic-inducing. :XXX

You move the phone away from your ear and assume an expression you haven’t practiced in years. It is the look of a man who actually has something to do.

Okay that was good.

Ah, he’s twenty-three now!

Let’s click the next link. ==>

Fuck let’s not recount Rose’s substance abuse.

Oh, cool. Er, “cool”. Rose is getting some of Rosejaspersprite^2′s awareness of all her alternate-timeline doomed selves and their lives.  No wonder she’s worried about the substance abuse she technically mostly *avoided* in this timeline.

Light explicitly relating to knowledge, good.  That’s a nice aspect tidbit to have reiterated.

ROSE: There’s a different scale I’ve come to understand. Another dichotomy that’s less... emotional, I guess? ROSE: Consider, instead of the word “good,” using the word “essential.” ROSE: And what exists at the opposite polarity from essential is... ROSE: Something that is best not to contemplate.

ooh.  oooooh. holy shit.

okay NO, BOOTS/BKEW.  DON’T GET FUCKING EXCITED.

DON’T get excited.

It only SOUNDS like she’s learned to recontextualize the whole adventure in the rich context of the classpect system, that’s just your wild fanfic-y theoryimagination talking.  Shoosh.  (Even though she IS very, very, *very* clearly referencing the Light/Void dichotomy with the above quote.)  Just... tamp down your hopes, Boots.  Leave it at MILD hope.  Like cool porridge.

Reading on.

Alright, yeah, this universe exists beyond the timespan of the Green Sun’s influence.  Unsurprising, since it was heavily implied.  And she doesn’t have access to her expanded Green Sun powerset while *in* such a universe, which was also heavily implied by alt!Calliope or her denizen or I forget the exact conversation where it said she’d have to make the final journey without Green Sun powers or whatever.  That’s cool.  (Though having it spelled out more explicitly than usual does make it more awkward to have her use her powers for humorous purposes on MXRP in the future.)

OOOH DAVE KARKAT AND JADE ARE IN A PERPLEXING SOCIAL ARRANGEMENT YESSSSS  :D

Best news.  Okay reading on.

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.

Yeah I guess.

Again, the way the ending sort of put it was that..... our heroes did have to defeat Lord English eventually?  Or set right some prior stuff like doing the stage play?  But that part of the point of this whole story -- the Ultimate Reward -- was that it didn’t really matter, because they had earned nigh-infinite branching timelines of promise in a brand new universe where they could go YEARS AND YEARS living their lives in many of the ways they wished, richly enjoying themselves and starting civilizations that would last billions of years, loving and living and experiencing, only “needing” to go finally check off these other responsibilities in a single timeline of promise at the end of an extended period of vacation they chose with no particular urgency.  Branching years-and-years of essentially heaven as long as they EVENTUALLY fulfilled that particular endpoint, and they knew it.  More or less.

Rose phrases it pretty explicitly, though.  John’s powers are the only thing that can warp people through canon like that without restriction, so he was always to be involved, but... *he* needs to defeat him?  Does that mean alone?

JOHN: yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday. ROSE: I’m sure we all did. That is, even those of us without visions. JOHN: i was doing my best not to think about it. i guess we can’t put it off any longer then? ROSE: Now is the time. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. If the decision isn’t made soon, it will be too late. The issue will no longer matter. JOHN: when exactly is the point of no return? ROSE: Today. JOHN: wow. JOHN: ok then.

Ouch.

That’s slightly more abrupt than the picture of branching bliss I just painted.

JOHN: fine? ROSE: Of course everything is fine here. ROSE: We’re outside of canon now. JOHN: yeah, i know. what does that actually MEAN though? JOHN: are you saying this isn’t really happening? ROSE: Of course it’s happening. ROSE: Just because certain events take place outside of canon, it doesn’t mean those events are non-canon. JOHN: oh. ROSE: In other words, there is an important distinction between events which can be considered to occur inside canon, outside canon, and those which are not canon at all. ROSE: The day we went through that door and claimed our reward, we passed a threshold between continua marked by differing degrees of relevance, truth, and essentiality.

Well okay then.  I was wondering why she used the word “canon”.  They literally DID escape the narrative literally as *well* as figuratively with that Juju, then, Neverending Story style.

Also, Light being highly tied to canon and Rose having spent so much time outside of it... yeah, I can understand the headaches more, too.

Alright, reading on, it seems Andrew is using Rose to more explicitly explain how he intends all the non-canon stuff he’s presented to us to “matter”, for those who didn’t quite get or fully believe the implied explanation from context towards the end of the story.

Heh, so the idea is that the urgency comes from “it’s been too fucking long since the story ended, and this epilogue needs to come out when an epilogue would still matter to anyone”.  That’s kind of brilliant.

ROSE: As long as we live outside canon, everything that happens will technically be “real,” but only conditionally. ROSE: There are certain crucial events inside canon which must happen in order to continue to prop up the legitimacy of events here on Earth C. ROSE: And you specifically, John, have a responsibility to make sure those events take place.

Closing threads closing threads CLOSING THREADS :D !!!!!!

FUCK is this epilogue going to be mostly devoted to TYING UP LOOSE ENDS and clarifying stuff??? :D  Like the HUNDREDS OF LOOSE ENDS that were left unanswered because the ending tried to paint it all as sidelined/irrelevant regardless of the fact that they hadn’t been answered/fulfilled, which had previously pretty much traumatized me around Homestuck’s end because I was (1) so used to Andrew expertly tying up almost every loose end eventually and (2) was a theorycrafter with explicit investment in the idea that Classes, Aspects, and most of these loose ends actually DID matter???  :D

Sign me the fuck up!!!  :DDDD

...I know it’s doubtfully going to be anything close to all I hoped for, but still.  Answers, contextualization, and John tying up loose threads.  Like that final frog warped in front of Jade as a child.  That’s good, that’s VERY good.  I’m excited instead of nauseous.  :D

--and yeah, reading on, Rose makes more explicit what I said earlier that the justification Andrew’s painting for this is “we have to wrap up all these loose ends before everyone forgets about Homestuck.”  That is hilarious.

Okay, so the juju is a big plothole. Heheh.  We’ve heard it called that earlier.

...Oh.  Oh huh.

Rose is pretty much explicitly talking about the stage play consisting of a bunch of non-canon ALTERNATE VERSIONS of themselves that mean the original versions of them living happily in the new universe won’t actually die.  Holy shit.  I mean we theorized that for a TIME with some of them but THOSE loose ends (like Roxy still having her mask on) were closed up toward the end...  So instead, having it put THIS way (preserving our ideas of them living full lives post-victory), and not only that but having John DO all this stuff RIGHT NOW to fix things retroactively with some really well-written contextual clarification we’re bound to get to help with the closure... god DAMN.  This is really good.  This is going to make a LOT of people feel a whole lot better about Homestuck.  Like me.  :D

...Pff, some other girl is getting punched by John in the face again.  :D  Don’t worry, Rose isn’t saying that this is the Vriska punch at the beginning of the whole Retcon arc and that this epilogue somehow happened in the middle.  (I hope.)

...Yeah Rose implies heavily that John is gonna die his heroic death if he does this?  Or it’s meant to make us THINK she’s implying that.  Yeah.  And she feels pretty fucking horrible about what she’s asking John to go through regardless, so.  (Yeah, everyone looked pretty genuinely dead but a few at the end of the stage play, but it was pretty uncertain.)  Either way, she’s acting like John isn’t going to “come back”, even if he lives through this.

Stupid feels.

Clicking the next link.  ==>

Hiiii roxy and callie!!! :D

Yes how polite of them.

“Ultimate self”?  Yeah, a sort of synthesizing of all the offshoots of her Heart and Mind, pulling it all together and realizing the full person she is and sum of her whole experience across all timelines, pasts and futures.  Yeesh.  Pretty uncomfortable for someone who ain’t a hypersprite.

...Roxy and Rose aren’t as close?  Is it because of the substance abuse, because of the Light/Void dichotomy literally-or-metaphorically distancing them (with how disparaging Rose just was about anything that isn’t relevant), or something else?

Ah, Kanaya hogged her until she got “sick”, that explains some of it too.

A bell tower? (DOOONNNNGGG)

Fffff interpersonal relationship mildangst.  Fuck

You and all your friends have dispositions affected by your classes and aspects. You think you know what that means in your case. But what about her? You can only speculate. Void is a place where things sink and disappear. Where they linger forever, but cease to exist. You aren’t actually sure if your feelings for Roxy ever really faded, or if they just grew numb with time and distance. Is it the same for her?

Holy fucking shit.  What a big middle finger to everyone who told me aspects didn’t matter to their personalities.  :D

...Though, I think he has it kind of backwards, since he still doesn’t totally understand all this business.  It’s easy for those in canon, introduced to this subject, to think that the classes and aspects affect their dispositions, to an extent where the reality (at least I contend) is that it was their natural dispositions in the first place that the classes and aspects were actually describing.  The power that was latent in their very personalities and tendencies to action all along.

Reading... Ah, yeah, a choice.  Was pretty sure this terminology would be important earlier.  It depends on what SORT of choice this is though... see, so far, Rose hasn’t given John a lot of really EXPLICIT motivation to go through with this, other than some mumbo-jumbo that would supposedly be “bad”.  And it doesn’t even address the black hole in his nightmares.  And here, we have Roxy and others explicitly encouraging him with regard to the fact that he can choose NOT to do this if he wants to.

The main question it brings up (to the future of this epilogue, how it’s going to be considered afterward, etc) is if this is the sort of Choice that John would always say yes to -- in which case it’s more canon than anything else -- or if he will end up being on the fence enough for a Terezi-style Mind-split.  Because this would be the PERFECT out to have him “die” in canon.  See, if he’s on the fence ENOUGH about going, then he creates two timelines that even both potentially have promise within the confines of this universe (since universes hold more than one timeline of promise, according to one of the Calliopes I think)--  One where he lives here, happily ever after with everyone, and another where he completes his Heroic death in canon to fix everything.  It would let Andrew kill John in this epilogue while still letting him live out eternity with everyone else outside “canon”.

He’d get to have his John-death and keep him too!  Seems plausible enough.

Anyway. Reading... it looks like they know more about this decision that Rose has told them, including the consequences Rose might have been dreading.  And likely know that IF John might die doing this, that it won’t be in a way that he regrets.

Oh wow, that whole Meat or Candy sequence is GREAT.  Silly to the core, and yet perfectly emphasizing the debate that... well, I mean, think about what Andrew’s been telling us all along.

He keeps TRYING to tell us that non-canon stuff is fine.  Trying to use that huge ending sequence of Homestuck to try and tell us that the fact that everyone is FREE from this story and its confines, free for everyone to imagine COUNTLESS ways things played out afterward for ALL these lovable characters in carefree futures, is almost MORE important than any of these stupid loose ends.  But some of us were really cut by that ending, the insistence that the actual final battle “didn’t matter” and that this escaped-from-canon existence was the true victory.  But if Andrew just upped and drew a bunch of bonus pages to start explaining more story, THAT would cheapen the escape-from-canon ending he wanted even as it satisfied those of us who wanted ends tied up, who wanted questions answered.  He had to find a very careful, very well done way to give us BOTH.  To write out the real “ending” of “canon” for those of us who needed it, without compromising the ESCAPE from the very necessity of it that was the essential point he WANTED to make with Homestuck’s story from the very beginning.  To carefully keep the endless branches of post-victory possibility and play intact while still, separately and with explicit hedging and qualifications, give us the potential results of one last canon thread to tie up the lingering questions that he so dearly wants us to recognize still “don’t matter” as much in the vast scheme of things.

And he’s doing it.  And it’s WORKING.

Holy SHIT.

I am excited for Homestuck.  I am excited for Homestuck for the first time in years, and my nausea is gone.

I’m not going to start theorizing again; that’s over.  But I’m definitely going to keep reading as the new Epilogue chapters come out, and do so with a spring in my step.

To Be Continued.  :D

[pdchronicles]

Long Post about Trolls in WoW

I have, for a very long time, had an issue with the way Trolls are portrayed in World of Warcraft.  On the surface, this must sound like a rather pretentious and borderline entitled statement to make, and I understand that.  I’m not trying to sit here and tell Blizzard how they should portray a group of people that they’ve created in their own game and in their own intellectual property.  Instead, I’m trying to explain a potential that I see in them.  I’ve mulled over making a post about this in a place where someone at Blizzard might actually see it, but I’m concerned it will come off as a bunch of complaining in an already saturated echo chamber.  I’m also not confident enough in my own ability to effectively capture my thoughts and articulate them into carefully ordered words.   Before I continue, be aware that I’m going to be referencing things that I’ve seen in BfA’s beta, so there will be heavy spoilers in this post.   I was prompted to make a post like this after seeing the outdoor content that will be released with the new Warfront feature in Arathi Highlands.  Before this content was datamined, we learned that Witherbark Village got an overhaul in its design, with new assets added to spruce the place up and make it look quite nice, and very Troll (even Zandalari) themed.  The Warfront content includes a quest to kill 20 Witherbark Trolls in order to drive them out of Arathi Highlands.  The quest for both the Alliance and the Horde are the same, albeit with slightly different text.  Here is the quest text for the Horde-side quest: “The bloodthirsty Witherbark tribe has always refused to join the Horde... and now that the Horde holds Arathi, we will succeed where the Alliance has failed. Drive the forest trolls from the Highlands.“ In a war between the factions, wouldn’t it make sense for the Horde to try to gain any allies that it could?  A bloodthirsty group of Trolls seems to fit right into the Horde that Blizzard is currently portraying to us.  It’s right there in the quest text.  The Horde’s mentality here is “if they’re not with us, kill them”.  It’s true that this convenient alliance has been done before, such as way back when the Orcs aided the Darkspear Trolls.  Or, when the Taunka joined the Horde in Wrath.  And it’s likely being done again with the Zandalari, because I don’t understand how they would join a Horde led by an undead unless the circumstances were incredibly dire.  (More on that later.)  However, I think the only thing more tired than “convenient alliances” is the “Trolls being driven away from their home” trick.  Darkspear by the naga.  Drakkari by the Scourge.  Amani by the elves.  Frostmane by the Dwarves.  And so on, and so forth.   I think that it’s totally in-character for the Alliance to want to drive the forest Trolls out of Arathi.  However, I think it would make more sense for the Horde to try to work with them, even if it’s just leaving them be and perhaps encouraging them to attack the Alliance for them.  It’s possible that I’m stuck clinging to an idea about the Horde that is no longer relevant.  Before we had Garrosh, who was interested only in orc superiority, and before we had Sylvanas, who cares only about herself, we had a Horde that served as a refuge for the people of Azeroth who suffered because they were different.  This was something that I could relate to, deeply, because I have always felt different myself.  I’m a gay man living in a predominately conservative part of the United States, a country that seems on the brink of a moral crisis, where the people in charge, if they had their way, would deny me basic human rights in the name of their religious beliefs.  I live in a country where the current “president” jokes that his vice-president wants to “hang all the gays”.  I don’t think I need to explain this in any more detail to show how my own feelings of being an outsider made me relate to what the Horde was.  They were a group of misfits who banded together to help each other because the other people around them hated them and didn’t want them to be a part of their world.   The Horde feels much different now.  I struggle to both relate to it, and feel like I’m a part of it.  Still, it would be nice to see a little bit of that from time to time, and the situation in Arathi Highlands offers a small opportunity to do so.   Another reason I felt I needed to rant about all of this is because I’m simply tired of the Trolls being the go-to bad guy fodder.  As if it wasn’t obvious, they are my favorite race in the Warcraft universe.  I love the fact that they are one of the oldest sentient civilizations.  Zuldazar is the oldest city, still standing, in the world.  They mastered magic before the elves.  Elves are descended from Trolls, the magic of the Well of Eternity mutating them into what they are.  Trolls, through their Prelates of Rezan, also mastered the art of the holy warrior before Human paladins ever came into existence.  The Amani Trolls hunted down the C’Thrax and sacrificed almost everything they had to defeat Kith’ix.  They saved the world.  Trolls are the oldest (we think) non-Old God or non-Titan created beings on Azeroth.  They called the Titans “The Travelers”, and they witnessed the Titans first battle with the Old Gods.  Trolls never enslave anyone.  When the lower castes of the Zandalari wished to leave the Empire and go out into the world, the Zandalari encouraged them to do so.  These lower castes would eventually become the Gurubashi, Amani, and Drakkari tribes.  It’s because of these tribes that the Aqir haven’t destroyed Azeroth.  The Trolls’ persistence at hunting them down forced them to split up into separate groups themselves:  Azjol-Nerub, Ahn’Qiraj, and the Mantid Empire. That was quite the history lesson, but it helps to articulate my point.  The Trolls have a long, deep, and varied history.  This makes it an absolute travesty that they are used for little more than villain fodder and comic relief in the game itself.  Every circumstance of the Trolls doing something evil can be traced back and attributed to one thing:  Desperation.  They are constantly losing their home to outside invaders.  The first example of this was the elves, who stole the Troll’s lands because they wanted the magic within it.  The Great Sundering, a fault of elves, caused terrible destruction, death, and starvation for the Trolls.  In desperation, the Trolls called out to their gods, and these calls were answered by Hakkar, and this led to even more suffering.  The Drakkari killed their own gods for their power in a desperate attempt to stop the Scourge from destroying their tribe.   I could go on like this for a really, really long time, but I think you get the point.  For a people so ancient, with so much history, and so much potential for their culture, they deserve better than to be slowly and efficiently erased from existence.  But, that’s what’s been happening over the course of WoW’s history.  Just look at the Darkspear.  They have gotten so little development that we don’t even know who’s leading them right now.  We don’t even have very many of them left to be candidates for the role.  The elephant in the room, of course, is the incredibly disappointing end to Vol’jin’s character arc by unceremoniously killing him off by a random demon in the opening act of Legion.  There are so few notable Darkspear characters that Blizzard invented a new one, just so the Alliance could kill him during the Battle of Lordaeron.  They have already killed off so many of the Tribe that they had to invent one...to also kill off.  This, in a game that felt the need to add two more “races” of playable elves in a game that already has two.  And a new class that’s only playable by elves.  I have never understood this direction. With all of this on my mind, I hope you can see where I’m coming from when I say I’d like to see something other than “kill the Trolls” in a quest.  But, let me shift gears here, and maybe be a little more optimistic for a while.   I’m thrilled that the Zandalari are being added as an allied race for the Horde, and I’m excited that we’re going to get to explore and experience Zandalar.  I do think it’s unfortunate that these things are being added to the game now, because the faction war is really putting me off.  More specifically, the direction of the Horde, and Sylvanas leading it, is really dampening my enthusiasm and I’ve been really struggling to get past that.  It’s going to be really depressing if their methods for getting the Zandalari to join the Horde will be to make them suffer so incredibly that they have no choice but to ally with them.  But hey, I said this was supposed to be optimistic now, so let’s get to that.   In the novel Shadows of the Horde, Vol’jin mentions that King Rastakhan has a plan to unite all of the Trolls once more.  This plan is only hinted at, but it’s described well enough that it is clear that whatever this plan may be, it is different from that of the Prophet Zul.  Vol’jin denied Zul’s offer of joining with him (along with the Drakkari, Farraki, and Gurubashi), and the events of BfA fully reveal what Zul’s plan ultimately entails.  (Hint:  It’s not good.)  King Rastakhan’s plan appears to be different from this, and doesn’t seem to involve any of the shady shit that Zul’s been up to over the last several years.   In that same novel, while Vol’jin is conversing with the spirit of his father Sen’jin, the elder Darkspear seems to indicate that perhaps it is time that a Shadow Hunter once again leads the Trolls, like it was before the formation of the first Empire of Zul.   Fast-forwarding ahead to BfA itself, there is an area in Zuldazar that is sort of a Troll embassy.  It’s a place where a representative from the different Troll tribes meet, each tribe represented by speakers.  The Amani, Farraki, and Gurubashi, being the largest of these tribes, have their own specific areas.  The other, smaller tribes all hang out together.  The existence of this area might just be for flavor, but I like to believe it has some other purpose.  It could be there to give further merit that King Rastakhan is working on a plan to unite the tribes once more.   In addition to this, there is a Zandalari NPC in Zuldazar who offers to give you a glimpse of your future, in a way.  One of the possible things that she tells you mentions the unification of the Troll tribes.  

Again, it could be here for flavor.  But, why?  I’d like to think this is another hint that Rastakhan has some sort of plan for the Trolls, and that we, the player, could be a part of it.  And since this is seen during the Horde leveling experience only, it means it’s the HORDE player that could be a part of it.  The optimist in me hopes this is foreshadowing an eventuality where many, if not all, of the Troll Tribes join the Horde.   Naturally, there are a thousand holes that can be poked into this.  But like the Trolls I love so much, all of this wishing and hoping is a result of desperation, because we’ve been given so very little in regards to the Trolls for years now.  Blizzard just can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to making Trolls suffer.  It doesn’t stop in BfA.  Nazmir is an entire zone dedicated to killing Trolls (Blood Trolls), and there is no option or hope of saving them.  The Zandalari, in turn, are made to suffer through the murder of several of their most revered Loa by both the Blood Trolls and Zul’s fanatics.  It’s questionable whether King Rastakhan will even survive the expansion.   These thoughts, this negativity that I have has been plaguing me for a very long time.  It started in full with Vol’jin’s death.  I don’t mind admitting that watching that happen made me cry, if that’ll better articulate how strongly I feel about this race of misfits.  I’ve felt a pang of sadness and regret every time I’ve watched Blizzard unceremoniously kill off a Troll character before they could be fully developed or their character arcs brought to a meaningful conclusion.  Zuni.  Torunscar.  Zul’jin.  Vol’jin.  Durja.  Zin’Jun.  Not to mention the countless “cannon fodder” NPCs.  The voice line of a dying Troll on the Broken Shore yelling “Da pain!” still fucking haunts me.  Blizzard’s portrayal of Trolls is heartbreaking.   As you can probably tell, I care a bit too much about this.  Trust me, I recognize that.  I’ve been dealing with this in a number of different ways, not least of which is continuously reminding myself that WoW isn’t for me.  It’s for a huge audience of different people with different interests and different passions, and it’s unfair of me to expect my own desires to be fulfilled.  At the end of the day, my point here is that I see incredible potential for amazing stories and it frustrates me that I seem to be in the minority about that.  Games are an amazing medium and they offer this unique ability to make the player feel like a hero.  That feeling is the main reason why I play games in the first place.  The real world is complicated, ugly, confusing, and it’s not always clear which choice is the right one.  In games, it can be different.  You can see the wrong and you can stand up against it or help to fix it.  I’m finding that more and more difficult to experience in WoW because I’m playing a race that I feel its creators care very little about.   In an attempt to wrap this up, because I’ve been at this for way too long already, I want to see what Blizzard has in store for the Zandalari.  Their portrayal will likely decide if I still stay invested in WoW to any degree, or if I finally leave it behind for good.  None of the characters I have exist canonically in WoW’s story any longer.  Why the hell would I put them through that?  But, I still enjoy the gameplay and getting inspiration for my own stories from Blizzard’s creativity.  This is their game and their story to do with as they please.  I’m just hoping they recognize the potential that they have with the Trolls and start utilizing them for something better than they currently are.  Thank you for reading.  

[another-tiny-ant]

Why an ant? What’s it all about?

So I heard that Tumblr is the place to come to vent your feelings, and I have been told by various counsellors, etc, that I ought to write things down to help clear my head. I got out a notebook and felt far too embarrassed to put pen to paper, and there was greater risk of someone I know finding it, which would humiliate me even more. So the internet it is- in true millennial form. I don't expect anyone to read this- I actually kind of hope they don’t. But I think I need to start talking, and typing/writing has always come more easily to me. Also this way, I can avoid burdening or upsetting the people I care about. So here goes...

I think mental health problems have always been there for me. I was bullied from the second I started socialising with other kids, and I’ve often wondered why that was. I have a learning disability, dyspraxia, which has affected my coordination, processing, speech (especially when I first started school), as well as other vital life skills, like organisation and planning. I know that, especially because I was undiagnosed, but also because kids are cruel, this marked me out as ‘stupid’ or ‘vulnerable’- an ‘easy target’- or whatever, but I don't think that can have been the only reason. Perhaps I was simply too timid, or kind, or willing to please, and so I got stamped all over (fortunately only ever verbally, though I say “only”...). It sounds pretentious talking about myself like that. But school was simply something to survive for me, not to enjoy, ever, for the whole fourteen miserable years I endured. Despite that, I have always had a love and thirst for knowledge and learning, and that was where I found my solace when things got too much for me- getting my head down in the textbooks (especially because most of my teachers were useless, or even abusive, to varying degrees), finding problems and then finding ways around them. I had to fight my own way through, and find my own coping strategies, because there was never anyone in school either with the time, empathy or will to care. I suppose that’s something to be proud of- I thrashed my own path through that jungle of dashed young hopes and dreams. Though that sounds painfully bleak.

I would be lying if I said I've never had friends, or fun, or love. I certainly have. Though I think my experiences have made it hard for me to trust people- I open up reasonably easily- though only superficially I suppose- but I find it very hard to trust. Friends have taught me to expect people to be unreliable. There are exceptions though. Can you tell, I’m forcing myself to be positive? I have people to see and talk to- I just crave some kind of connection or kinship that I haven’t really found from friends. The one person, however, with whom I do share that kinship, who ‘gets me’, and always not only exceeds, but explodes my expectations, is my boyfriend. Whenever I am down, or vulnerable, or upset, he doesn’t recoil, or ignore me, or push me down more, as I would expect any person to do- he gives me his hand and helps me up. He helps me brush down my clothes, clean myself up. He puts a smile on my face and reminds me that some people at least, are good. Not just good, but pure. Loving, open souls who spread positivity, like light that shines from their bodies and penetrates even the darkest shadows. And he does all of that, without even realising, or making any conscious effort. He is just himself. ‘Just’ implies some kind of put down- but nothing could be more perfect, or glorious. I don’t think he has any clue quite how wonderful he is. In fact, he’ll deny it out of hand. I wish he could see himself as he is reflected in my eyes- perhaps that would make his own battles so much easier to fight.

I have been struggling again recently. Just to state the obvious- anyone who read this I’m sure would see that straight away, just from my tone-of-written-voice. I would at least. But then perhaps, I’m different. I went to my uni GP surgery the other day- when I finally did get them to agree to see me- and tried to speak to one of the GPs there about what’s been going on inside my head. The trouble is, I stammer and struggle to get my words out, or really articulate what I mean, when I get worked up or confronted with those kinds of situations (hence this blog- my mind suddenly becomes less cluttered when I start to write- and less panicked). So the appointment really didn't go well. Added to that, I was very obviously quite under the weather- but the first thing I was told when I arrived was that “we can’t possibly address more than one issue in this appointment”. My mind becomes so much foggier when I’m ill, and my ability to cope becomes virtually non-existent. The only times I’ve ever punched bullies have been when I’ve also been unwell. Anyway, when I started trying to describe how i’d been feeling (and failed dismally to convey quite the aching bleakness I feel in my chest sometimes), the doctor googled a depression questionnaire, and got me to score myself on the questions. Naturally, I paled at the thought of potentially over-exaggerating, as I’m permanently paranoid of undermining the much bigger battles other people experience, so as always, I under-played everything I was feeling, and the results were pretty unrepresentative. Even so, I scored on the depression scale (though that sounds like an utterly arbitrary, bullshit scale to say the least). I suppose that was her way of telling me she was diagnosing me. Five minutes later, I was turfed out of the seat I was in, and clutching a list of phone numbers she’d handed me, as I walked out of the surgery, I felt no closer to mending myself that before I went. If anything, I felt even more cut loose and abandoned, in an institution that wouldn’t care if I lived or died. That’s not to say I’m suicidal, but I do often feel so overwhelmed that i just want to get on a plane and fly far, far away, and never come back. 

In case you hadn’t already guessed, I’ve kind of forgotten where I was trying to go with this. I suppose I’m just pressing keys and spewing words and hoping that I will suddenly feel a weight lifted off my shoulders. Nothing that miraculous has happened, but I do suppose I feel somewhat better for getting things off my chest. I suppose I just find it hard to see the good around me sometimes, and I take for granted what is special around me. I can remember from pretty much when I started talking (and more importantly, people started understanding me- let me tell you, that took a while), I was always called a pessimist. I have to consciously remind myself how lucky I am. I suppose that's why I feel so ashamed to talk about what's inside my mind. But I have my health (physically at least). I have my mind (for the most part). And I have potential. Most importantly though, my family could not be more supportive of me, and openly loving, and I couldn't be luckier to have my extraordinary, sunbeam boyfriend. Christmas is coming up, and not only will i get to escape university, but I will get to go home and spend quality time with the people I love most. I’m not in the slightest bit religious, but I love how everyone makes an effort to put all the crap to one side at Christmas, and just share their love instead. Beyond that, there will be the summer. So there is hope. I just have to keep reminding myself.

I remember now what the whole point of this post was. Haha! What did I say about my planning ability? I wanted to explain my Tumblr name/blog name/whatever-the-fuck-its-called, but basically why I am referring to myself as an ant. The basic reasons- it’s anonymous, first and foremost. But its also non-identifying, non-gender/age/class/creed/etc-specific. The real reason though is that it comes from something my mum has always said to me. So I’ve always been criticised for being a ‘perfectionist’. A counsellor even sent me links to webpages to read all about perfectionism, procrastination, and self-destruction. If I were to write an honest CV, those are probably the ‘skills’ I’d boast about. So when I get worked up about not doing a “good enough” job of something, or putting too much pressure on myself, or I’ve fucked it all up, my mum gently says to me something along these lines: 

“We’re all just tiny ants, scuttling around on the log of the Earth. None of us are more important than the other, but none of us are that important either. That’s not to depress you, but to remind you that existence is short. You’re not around for long. Don’t spend your life stressing about what you’ll achieve. Just do good. Even if it’s just in small ways. Treat people right. Care about the right things. Be kind, always. Make the small changes that you can and live happily. That's what it’s all about in the end. Just do the good that you can.”

That’s not to say that she doesn’t support any ‘big’ ideas that I have. Or that she doesn't tell me “you can achieve anything you set your mind to”, because those are also things she says to me all the time. What she means is take comfort in this perspective- don’t make things matter too much. Save your energy and enjoy your life, because life is short, and you do only get one go at it. And that perspective of being a tiny speck, if even that, in the plane and timescale of existence has always frightened me, but I think I am finally maturing enough to understand what she means. Live your best life, to the best of your abilities, with the best people, and love freely and plentifully. Don’t get yourself wrapped up in what it all means, or what the point of it all is. You’re just an ant- but not “just” an ant. You are a being with a life that you are going to live as best as you can. So this is me, trying to come to terms with the point of it all, but not wrapping myself up in “the point” of it at all. 

I’m Another Tiny Ant. 

🖤🐜🖤

[grahkingston]

Vaccination Services in Kingston: Feline Vaccines Benefits and Risks

Animal Vaccines are preparations that resemble infectious agents like bacteria or viruses but are not pathogenic. When directed to an animal, they train the immune system to protect against these infectious agents.

At Grah Kingston, we are providing quality Vaccination Service in Kingston. We are known as one of the best Animal Vaccines vet clinics in Kingston open 7 days a week.

How Animal Vaccines Work

After vaccination service, the immune system is trained to recognize infectious agents by producing proteins called antibodies or activating specific cells to kill the agents. When a vaccinated cat encounters these agents in the future, it rapidly generates antibodies and activates the cells that recognize the agents, producing an immune response that results in the elimination of the invading agent.

While vaccines represent one of the greatest achievements in preventive care medicine no animal vaccine is 100 percent effective and they don’t induce the same degree of protection in every cat. Thus, presentation of even inoculated felines to different felines or situations in which transferable operators might be found should in any case be limited.

Vaccinating Kittens

Kittens are susceptible to a variety of infections due to their immature immune systems. Immunization at the proper time and limiting presentation to irresistible operators are hence significant, especially in cats for which the historical backdrop of satisfactory nursing from the mother is obscure. Cats get a progression of immunizations over a 12 to 16-week time span starting at somewhere in the range of 6 and two months old enough.

Earlier vaccination service is not effective because kittens ingest beneficial protective antibodies in their mother’s milk during the first few hours after birth, but these antibodies also interfere with their responses to vaccines. The antibodies ingested by a kitten while nursing last only a few weeks, so it is critical to vaccinate kittens at the appropriate time to ensure that they are still protected after the maternal antibodies wane.

Vaccinating Adult Cats

Decisions regarding which animal vaccines to give adult cats and how often they should be administered are based upon multiple factors including the risk of a cat’s exposure to various infectious agents the duration of protection of a given animal vaccine the risk of cats passing diseases to humans and the rather minimal risks inherent to vaccination services. Adult cats with unknown vaccination status should be treated as unvaccinated, and should receive the full series of vaccines outlined for kittens. Adult cats that are overdue for vaccinations should receive booster vaccines, regardless of the interval since the previous vaccination.

Risks of Vaccination

As with any medical intervention, there are always some inherent risks associated with vaccinating cats. Gentle responses, including a slight fever, torpidity, diminished hunger, and confined expanding at the immunization site may begin inside hours after inoculation and normally die down inside a couple of days. If they do not subside within this time frame, call your veterinarian at vet clinics Kingston.

In very rare cases, cats can have allergic reactions to vaccines. In mellow cases, which establish most of unfavorably susceptible responses to antibodies, felines may create hives, irritation, redness and growing of the eyes, lips, and neck, and gentle fever. Severe allergic reactions may cause breathing difficulties, weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, pale gums, and collapse. In the event that a feline gives any indications of unfavorably susceptible response after inoculation, contact a veterinarian right away.

Remember that for the normal feline, the advantages of a suitable inoculation program far exceed the potential dangers related with immunization.

Core Animal Vaccines

The Association of Feline Practitioners Vaccination Advisory Panel suggests that all family unit felines kept inside consistently get the accompanying immunizations:

Calicivirus: This profoundly infectious and universal infection is one of the significant reasons for upper respiratory contamination in felines. Influenced felines may encounter sniffling, eye and nasal release, conjunctivitis, laziness, loss of hunger, bruises on the gums and delicate tissues of the oral pit, and weakness.

In some cases, affected kittens may develop pneumonia. In rare cases, a much more virulent strain of this virus can cause inflammation of the liver, intestines, pancreas, and cells that line the blood vessels. This unadorned form of calicivirus can be deadly in up to half of pretentious cats.

Rabies virus: This deadly viral infection most commonly spreads through bite wounds, but can also be transmitted to any mammal by exposure of an open wound to the saliva of an infected animal. People are in danger of contamination whenever chomped by a tainted creature or if the spit of a tainted creature comes into contact with an open injury. Rabies is regularly deadly once manifestations create.

Non-Core Animal Vaccines

The choice to inoculate a feline with a particular non-center immunization includes a cautious appraisal of the feline's way of life, age, wellbeing status, introduction to different felines, antibody history, and, sometimes prescriptions that the feline is being treated with. With the understanding that all treatment is related with some danger, the antibody explicit danger must be weighed against the potential advantage that is special to each feline's circumstance.

A cat may need additional animal vaccines depending on its risk of exposure to infectious organisms due to outdoor access, living in a shelter, or being housed in a home with infected cats. Consult your veterinarian at vet clinics Kingston to determine if any of these may be appropriate for your cats.

Cat Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV): This viral ailment can bargain the safe framework, inclining felines to an assortment of different irresistible infections. It is spread basically by means of the salivation of tainted felines through chomp wounds, so transmission among socially viable felines is uncommon. Felines that adventure outside, where hostility among felines is bound to happen, are in danger. FIV vaccines are generally not as effective as most other vaccines, and it is difficult to distinguish between a new infection and previous vaccination.

Bordetella Bronchiseptica (kennel cough): This highly prevalent bacterium is a common cause of upper respiratory infections, which can cause sneezing, discharge from the eyes and nose, and sometimes a cough. Cats can be infected by direct contact with nasal and oral secretions of infected cats or dogs. B. bronchiseptica thrives when cats are densely housed, such as in shelters and multiple cat households, and this vaccine is a tool to help control the spread of infection in these situations.

Chlamydia felis: This bacterium can cause conjunctivitis and upper respiratory infections in cats. Vaccination can help control the spread of the bacterium in multiple cat environments where verified infections have occurred.

Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP): This almost universally fatal viral disease stems from a mutant form of the relatively benign feline coronavirus. The mutation occurs within the individual cat and there is scant evidence that the deadly FIP form of the virus spreads efficiently between cats, although recent shelter outbreaks suggest that transmission of the lethal FIP form can occur under certain conditions. Most studies indicate that vaccination against FIP is not effective, so FIP vaccination is not usually recommended.

Pet owners are welcome to visit our Animal Hospital in Kingston. The veterinary team at GRAH Kingston will assess which inoculations are required, specific to your pet’s needs as well as age and stage of development, different vaccination packages are available at the vet clinics in Kingston.

[theadmiringbog]

*wakes up and looks at phone* ah let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device 

–@MISSOKISTIC IN A TWEET ON NOVEMBER 10, 2016

--

A more recent project that acts in a similar spirit is Scott Polach’s Applause Encouraged, which happened at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego in 2015. On a cliff overlooking the sea, forty-five minutes before the sunset, a greeter checked guests in to an area of foldout seats formally cordoned off with red rope. They were ushered to their seats and reminded not to take photos. They watched the sunset, and when it finished, they applauded. Refreshments were served afterward. 

—                 

Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online.                 

--

They write: If you can have your time and work and live and be a person, then the question you’re faced with every day isn’t, Do I really have to go to work today? but, How do I contribute to this thing called life? What can I do today to benefit my family, my company, myself? 

To me, “company” doesn’t belong in that sentence. Even if you love your job! Unless there’s something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning—and in my opinion, no one should accept this, not now, not ever.                 

--

Audre Lorde meant it in the 1980s, when she said that “[c]aring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”                

--

As Gabrielle Moss, author of Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious (a book parodying goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-priced wellness empire), put it: self-care “is poised to be wrenched away from activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.”                

--

Thinking about sensitivity reminds me of a monthlong artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other—that wasn’t the point—but we listened to each other, and we did each come away different, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position.                

--

The life force is concerned with cyclicality, care, and regeneration; the death force sounds to me a lot like “disrupt.” Obviously, some amount of both is necessary, but one is routinely valorized, not to mention masculinized, while the other goes unrecognized because it has no part in “progress.”                

--

Certain people would like to use technology to live longer, or forever. Ironically, this desire perfectly illustrates the death drive at play in the “Manifesto of Maintenance Art” (“separation, individuality, Avant-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path—do your own thing; dynamic change”)30. To such people I humbly propose a far more parsimonious way to live forever: to exit the trajectory of productive time, so that a single moment might open almost to infinity. As John Muir once said, “Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment.”               

--

Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: “I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more time with your friends.”                

--

... he said, with an epiphany he had while accompanying a fellow clergyman on a trip to Louisville: 

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.       

--

My most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger. 

Obviously these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.                

--

Our aimless and desperate expressions on these platforms don’t do much for us, but they are hugely lucrative for advertisers and social media companies, since what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement. Meanwhile, media companies continue churning out deliberately incendiary takes, and we’re so quickly outraged by their headlines that we can’t even consider the option of not reading and sharing them.                

--

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one.                

--

Standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the “wrong way”: a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it.                

--

A crowded sidewalk is a good example: everyone is expected to continue moving forward. Tom Green poked at this convention when he performed “the Dead Guy,” on his Canadian public access TV show in the 1990s. Slowing his walk to a halt, he carefully lowered himself to the ground and lay facedown and stick-straight for an uncomfortable period of time. After quite a crowd had amassed, he got up, looked around, and nonchalantly walked away.                

--

So to a question like “Will you or will you not participate as asked?” Diogenes would have answered something else entirely: “I will participate, but not as asked,” or, “I will stay, but I will be your gadfly.” This answer (or non-answer) is something I think of as producing what I’ll call a “third space”—an almost magical exit to another frame of reference. For someone who cannot otherwise live with the terms of her society, the third space can provide an important if unexpected harbor.                

--

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself.                

--

Facebook abstention, like telling someone you grew up in a house with no TV, can all too easily appear to be taste or class related.                

--

We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating, to closely study the ways that media and advertising play upon our emotions, to understand the algorithmic versions of ourselves that such forces have learned to manipulate, and to know when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted into reactions that come not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety.                

--

“In short, when the inattention stimulus falls outside the area to which attention is paid, it is much less likely to capture attention and be seen,” the researchers write. That’s intuitive enough, but it gets more complicated. If the briefly flashing stimulus was outside the area of visual attention, but was something distinct like a smiley face or the person’s name, the subject would notice it after all.                

--

As an artist interested in using art to influence and widen attention, I couldn’t help extrapolating the implications from visual attention to attention at large.                

--

In a post about ad blockers on the University of Oxford’s “Practical Ethics” blog, the technology ethicist James Williams (of Time Well Spent) lays out the stakes: We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

--

In an effort to make the user aware of persuasive design, Nudget used overlays to call out and describe several of the persuasive design elements in the Facebook interface as the user encountered them. But the thesis is also useful simply as a catalog of the many forms of persuasive design—the kinds that behavioral scientists have been studying in advertising since the mid-twentieth century.                

--

Vivrekar lists the strategies identified by researchers Marwell and Schmitt in 1967: “reward, punishment, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking/ingratiation, gifting/pre-giving, debt, aversive stimulation, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altercasting, positive esteem of others, and negative esteem of others.” 

Vivrekar herself has study participants identify instances of persuasive design on the LinkedIn site and compiles a staggering list of 171 persuasive design techniques.                

--

“knowing your enemy” when it comes to the attention economy. For example, one could draw parallels between the Nudget system, which teaches users to see the ways in which they are being persuaded, and the Prejudice Lab, which shows participants how bias guides their behavior.                

--

Or that the woman in front of you in line who just screamed at you is maybe not usually like this; maybe she’s going through a rough time. Whether this is actually true isn’t the point. Just considering the possibility makes room for the lived realities of other people, whose depths are the same as your own. This is a marked departure from the self-centered “default setting,”                

--

Last week, after a meeting, I took the F streetcar from Civic Center to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s a notoriously slow, crowded, and halting route, especially in the middle of the day. This pace, added to my window seat, gave me a chance to look at the many faces of the people on Market Street with the same alienation as the slow scroll of Hockney’s Yorkshire Landscapes. Once I accepted the fact that each face I looked at (and I tried to look at each of them) was associated with an entire life—of birth, of childhood, of dreams and disappointments, of a universe of anxieties, hopes, grudges, and regrets totally distinct from mine—this slow scene became almost impossibly absorbing. As Hockney said: “There’s a lot to look at.” Even though I’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street.                

--

When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to “be yourself,” what it really means is “be more yourself,” where “yourself” is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital.                

--

In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgments: “I like this” and “I don’t like this,” with little room for ambiguity or contradiction.                

--

The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.                

--

(“bland enough to offend no one”)                

--

The professional social media star, a person reverse-engineered from a formula of what is most palatable to everyone all the time.                

--

Everybody says that there is no censorship on the internet, or at least only in part. But that is not true. Online censorship is applied through the excess of banal content that distracts people from serious or collective issues.                

--

Our interactions become data collected by a company, and engagement goals are driven by advertising.                

--

Mastodon... They allow more granular control of one’s intended audience; when you post to Mastodon, you can have the content’s visibility restricted to a single person, your followers, or your instance—or it can be public.                

--

... forming any idea requires a combination of privacy and sharing. But this restraint is difficult when it comes to commercial social media, whose persuasive design collapses context within our very thought processes themselves by assuming we should share our thoughts right now—indeed, that we have an obligation to form our thoughts in public!                

--

A counterexample would be the sparse UX of Patchwork, a social networking platform that runs on Scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt is a sort of global mesh network that can go without servers, ISPs, or even Internet connection (if you have a USB stick handy). It can do that because it relies on individual users’ computers as the servers, similar to local mesh networks, and because your “account” on a Scuttlebutt-powered social media platform is simply an encrypted block of data that you keep on your computer.                

--

In #NeverAgain, David Hogg writes that “[a]nger will get you started but it won’t keep you going.”                

--

Before long, the conference would be over, and I would have missed most of it. A lot of things would have happened there that are important and useful. For my part, I wouldn’t have much to show for my “time well spent”—no pithy lines to tweet, no new connections, no new followers. I might only tell one or two other people about my observations and the things I learned. Otherwise, I’d simply store them away, like seeds that might grow some other day if I’m lucky.                

--

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die—I would know that I spent that day on Earth.                

--

“I would prefer not to.”

[asvli]

&  .   announcing her royal highness  ,  asali dhakiya mwezi  ,  the  31  year old  crown princess of tanzania  .  she is often confused with  laura harrier  .  some say that she is  blunt & obstinate  ,  but she is actually  intuitive & decisive  .

/     BIO   ∙    PINTEREST   .

&   FAMILY   .

all referenced from the adopt post & jelani’s amazingly written intro !

her parents married for love but obviously love, alone, isn’t enough to make a family stay together  !  however since image was everything to them, they stayed together despite the obvious differences that began to form a more than hostile environment in their household  --   it also didn’t help that her brother isn’t her father’s kid  --  and that created even more animosity in the house as asali began to see how different her father treated her in comparison to jelani.  however,  this made her need/want to protect her brother more even if it meant standing up to the big bad man she called dad

but her father relented  ( at times ) because he loved asali and so begins her role as the mediator of the family

her relationship w her dad has been rocky since then since she doesn’t approve of the way he treats jelani but she still somewhat cares / acknowledges him because he’s never treated her outwardly 

other than that she loves her mom and jelani to bits  (  out of everyone she knows,  these are the 2 she’ll ever really be Soft for  )

her mom is her literal role model

while jelani can do no wrong in her eyes,  for her,  as long as he tries or attempts,  she’s like  “oh my god, you’re amazing, JUST AMAZING.”

yes,  she’s biased.  does she care? lmfao no.

&   ASALI TIME   .

even if her father didn’t want to conform to the pressure of his family, he had no problem pushing those same expectations on little asali

at the age of 4, she started at an international boarding school ( haven’t decided which so hmu for boarding school blues! ) and from then it was always about being the best, getting the best grades, going to the best schools, wining the best awards, and undoubtedly going to the best universities and becoming the Best of the Best

not that asali truly minded, she liked the push, and she liked the thrill of winning things, but it did give her an unhealthy ( read: pretentious )  ego boost  /  aka she’s unhealthily competitive 

her father had gotten into an ivy league school,  so obviously asali got in with flying colors

unlike her father who lacked the ambition, asali had that in spades, after her bachelor’s, she got her master’s and immediately began training under her mother to take up more responsibility as crown princess

while others who cracked under pressure, asali flourished under it

however unlike her parents’ love story for the ages, the fall out of such a star-crossed romance only made her jaded, her love life, however filled, left her distant and at arm’s reach  --  you never really knew asali except for what she let you know, you never really understood her except for what she wanted you to understand about her

and if you caught her slipping, no you didn’t

the same goes with her platonic relationships, girlie burns bridges as fast as they are no longer needed. once your purpose was up, so was that relationship (select few were the exception to this) !

#UnbotheredPrincess, she’s not afraid to speak her mind and will call you out on your stupid

because of her home environment, she got really good at picking up non-verbal cues  ;  the slightest ripple of an expression or tick.  while she hates to sugar coat things, she does know how to do it and will do it if it will meet a certain means to an end

CURRENTLY   arriving in tokyo because she got news that jelani got hurt  (read: cuts and bruises)  and she got on the first flight over because she was worried.

&   PLOTS   .

any plots would be great !  i’m honestly head empty rn bc this was Much BUT please like anyways and i’ll send a message ~

[teddy-link-dinkson-blog]

Untitled Project, part 1 ( Call this Maybe, maybe )

“That’s positively preposterous,” I said, absently engaged in conversation with Danny, while trying not to step on icky things. Danny here, is the human equivalent of garbage.

“Nah, man. I think that should’ve been the canon ending,” replied Dan

I said, “Nay, I say.” In reference to an earlier conversation.

With an expression that screamed of murder, Dan said, “Are you joking, man? Seriously? I hate you, you human equivalent of garbage!” in a tone of mock anger.

“Thanks! I hate you as well. Also, don’t quote me.”

“Nay, I say!”

“I’ll break your nose.”

“Nay, I say. What’s wrong? You look weirder than usual”

“I don’t know, man. I just feel off. Like something bad and gut-wrenchingly ugly is approaching us as we speak. Looks like your mom is here.”

“Nah. Your mom’s here.”

“Nah”

“Nah”

“Let’s stop this, Dan. I’m craving sustenance.”

“We’re literally on the way to the Canteen, man. Don’t be pretentious. You know that that does not impress anyone. It gets annoying, you know?”

“I’m not pretentious. I’m not even trying to impress people. I think I’ve said this before, but it is just fun trying to come up with non-conventional ways to say everyday things. Keeps things fresh.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it”

Danny and I walked over to the counter and then stood in line to get the dullest and sad looking food. I picked my plate from the same pile that I always pick my plates from. I went to the cutlery pile and picked my spoon up from the same spot as I always do. This part was always the least favourite part of the day. This monotony got me thinking about what happened to my dreams of being a globetrotting guy eking out a living, and when I had saved enough to move to the next place, go there. This usually went to me thinking about how this was a different kind of monotony - just me masking the thing I disliked (monotony). But not today. I found a fork. For the first time in four years, I found a fork! This made me happier than it should have. Running over to Dan, I shouted “Hey Dan! I found a fork!”

“What?”

“It is exciting because it breaks the norm!” I say, sipping water because my mouth felt strange

“What?”

“Are you daft? It is exciting because it breaks the monotony that is uncharacteristically prevalent in this godforsaken place!”

“Why are you saying blegh over and over?”

“What?”

“Why are you saying blegh over and over?”

“Stop killing my buzz, man.”

“Repeat whatever you just said.”

A nasal and shriller version of my voice spoke from Dan’s phone, “Are you daft? It is blegh because it breaks the blegh that is blegh blegh in this blegh place!”

“This place IS pretty blegh.”

“Wow. You are concerned with this place being blegh, and not that words you said was replaced by blegh. Wow. Just … wow man.”

“That was bothering me.”, I said. Then, I wrote the sentence down and Dan pointed out the words that were bleghed. They were uncharacteristically long.

“There was a blegh after the ‘was’. “

“We’ll have to try and understand what won’t be bleghed, man. I meant that the words being bleghed was weird and I was… troubled by it. Were there any bleghs in what I just said? I think it bleghs the long words.”

“Yeah. There was a blegh after the first ‘and’.”

“This isn’t a big word!” I shouted, pointing at a paper with ‘understand’ in my hand.

“It sounds long.”

“This situation is weird!”

“Second word was a blegh.”

“AAAARGH! Our current state of affairs is crazy. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“Let’s try and find what makes the blegh trigger. Make a note of whatever words trigger the blegh response.”

“How?”

“Try and notice how your mouth moves. If it feels odd, note the words. Don’t make an assumption about the pattern. If you notice a pattern, try to disprove it.”

“I know. I know how pattern recognition works.”

“What?”

I write it down and show it to Dan.

Flustered and bewildered at the maddeningly speech impairing predicament I was in. It’s odd, how I was using long words more often, now that I couldn’t use them.

“I’m feeling angry. Sorry if I was rude. We’ll meet up in the morrow. Bye, Dan!”

“Bye, Brian. Try not stabbing someone with that fork of yours.”

Walking off in a huff, I absently pocketed the fork, mistaking it for a pen.

I took the next bus available to my place. I sat in a seat near the beginning of the bus, and, staring off into the distance, thought about the predicament I was in. I had trained myself to think of unconventional ways of saying everyday sentences. It was second nature to me. This little project that I had undertaken changed my way of thinking. This was like that time I started learning to play a left handed guitar. You have an inkling of what you have to do, but it is all new. But on the bright side, I thought to myself, I’ll probably gain clarity of thought. Not bad.

Late that night, I lay in bed trying to make sense of what had just happened. But what had happened? Was my desire to challenge myself to make my listeners bubble and froth and slobber and cream at titillating language being thwarted by the universe? Was I developing Tourette’s? Was I developing a tumour? Was I too sleepy to properly make sense of this situation? Falling asleep, I nodded to myself. “Maybe”

[whenimawakeandwhenimasleep]

”Hey pest, didn’t I just fucking tell you not to touch that yet?” Ronan says and gently shoves Opal away from the bowl of salad. The rat dodges it nimbly and either way steals the last strawberry. Guess they’re having salad without strawberries, then. He won’t tell Parrish and to him it’s all the same – when they’re just two of them with Opal, they very rarely eat dinner at the kitchen table. Most of the food they cook never make it that far. He can’t really blame her, though, as he is as big of a thief as his dream child is. Ronan just wishes Parrish never gets wind of how irregular their habits are without him, how lost he is with this parenting thing without him.

Ronan breaks an egg and tosses the shells to Opal, who has come to sit on the counter next to the stove. She takes the shells apart and spreads the shards idly on the green marble while looking at their dinner. He glances at her sideways. The shards don’t make up any figures, but he can feel her judgement.

”What?”

”What what?” Opal parrots back and shifts the shards close to the edge of the counter.

”Don’t you fucking dare. Or else it’s gonna be you who vacuums the floor again.” Ronan wouldn’t let her do it and they both know it. The last time he let her help with cleaning, the impossible kid did extensive research on all the materials in the house that would not disappear into the vacuum cleaner. She was able to remove the kitchen screen door of its hinges with it and bring down the living room curtains. He blew the whistle when the vacuum cleaner swallowed a kitchen towel and had to be extracted with pliers. Parrish would have laughed his ass off and days like that make it even harder for Ronan to stand their distance. Miles and miles and hundreds of moments they don’t get to share.

”You don’t like eggs.”

”Parrish likes eggs in his wok.” With a quick sweep, Opal moves the remainders of egg shell away from the edge and squints at him sternly. But it is the truth. Parrish likes shredded omelette in his wok. What a weirdo. But that’s all he is moments before his boyfriend returns from school. The things that Parrish likes. The things that Parrish thinks are important. Things that make Parrish smile.

It’s not a burden, but a warm weight that he carries with him. A pressure that gets Ronan through the days that feel too lonely to bear. And most of the time those things make him change and move forward. Parrish wants him to see his brothers more often now that he’s away, so Ronan makes a monthly trip to D.C. Parrish wants him to keep book of the transactions on the farm, so here he is, with real daybooks and all. Fucker wanted him to quit drinking and he’s been sober for a year.

He might as well carve these thoughts on his chest; they’re burning inside his ribcage and Ronan can’t wait to live the mornings and nights ahead of them.

Opal gives him a final disapproving look and makes a retching sound.

”You’re weak.”

Half an hour later, the headlights of BMW split the dusk that has settled into the kitchen and front door slams open and shut as Opal rushes outside with a violent shriek. It’s exactly how Ronan feels about the return of his boyfriend and is thankful that someone is mediating the longing. He dumps the peaches on the salad, to compensate for the lost strawberries and stomps outside.

It’s dark and the splintering beams of light make it difficult to see anything but vague forms. However, Ronan doesn’t need to see further than his feet to know what the lump in front of the car is. It’s Opal holding on to Adam, bleeding over all her wonderful days and sad days and even the shitty days, trying to convey what phone calls can’t tell. Adam is holding on to her in equal measure and Ronan’s chest is on fire.

The seconds before impact are almost numb and unreal. Months of being apart squeeze into meaningless inches and then restretch to form an ocean. He can’t wait to touch Adam, to reassure himself that he’s back, even for a few weeks. To cross the non-physical distance with something physical. Almost as if reading his mind, the lump grows in height and approaches the yellow glow of the porch.

They talk on the phone sometimes and send messages, but Ronan loathes Skype calls. There’s nothing on the screen that could make him miss the smartass less and after the first ones they unanimously decided not to have them anymore. It makes seeing Adam after months even more exhilirating; to see the changes and everything new and then arrive to a conclusion that it’s still the same person that left him with hot kisses and a promise of return. Ronan dreads the day he cannot recognise Parrish anymore or that Parrish realises that nothing ever moves here.

He extends his hand at the same times as the man in front of him steps into the light.

Parrish has cut his hair, cropping almost everything off of the sides and the back and leaving a soft crown of curls on top. The dark blue of his university sweater is a stark background for his white woolen scarf and pink cheeks. The longer hours of sleep and rowing practice have massed in his shoulders and arms. Ronan regards  all this with a slow wariness. Then Adam smiles and Ronan is pushed into action.

They crash into each other in the middle of the steps. The touch and the scent and the quiet puffs of breath demines his mind and Ronan is aware of how he’s bunching Adam’s sweater in his fists. They stand still and breath each other in, every inhalation setting the atmosphere in the Barns back into its correct arrangement. Ronan leans down to rub his cheek against Adam’s blond stubble and plants a small kiss on his mouth.

”I ate all the strawberries in your salad”, Opal states somberly and hugs Adam’s waist.

 Adam is always a bit quieter the first few days of his return. He walks around in the Barns and looks and analyses. It’s not an inspection, Ronan knows, but they give each other a wider berth all the same. Ronan can’t help but wonder whether Adam’s ever going to be 100% sure about being unconditionally welcome in the Barns. Sometimes, and this he knows for sure, Adam chases the feeling he had a few years back; he prods the house and the farm and the town to see if he feels the dreadful need to run away. So far it hasn’t resurfaced and he has told Ronan a hundred and a hundred times more that he really wants to come back.

Ronan washes the dishes as Adam measures the kitchen silently, running his long fingers along the tables and counters. Whenever their orbits come into contact, Ronan an unmoving object and Adam a shooting star, he kisses the back of Ronan’s neck and smoothes his back. Maybe he, too, is a surface that Adam needs to reacquaint himself with.

When he’s done, he wipes his hands on his shirt, just to elicit a disapproving look from Adam, and leans against the sink. Then he waits.

Adam is moving further away from him only to begin a new circle around the kitchen island. They both know where his route is heading, but Adam slows his pace and looks at him across the room. There’s a small smile that resides in the corner of Adam’s lips and Ronan can’t wait to tear into it and chase it with his own mouth. The blue of Adam’s eyes is taking a darker, hungrier shade with each leisurely step and the fire in Ronan’s chest ignites his skin and settles in his stomach and lower.

Once they meet in the eventual intersection, he grabs Adam by his scarf and drags his body against his own. Adam’s smile spreads into a filthy grin and Ronan knows he has some repenting to do next Sunday. He can feel a set of lean, strong arms settling on his waist and he digs his fingers tighter into the soft wool. There isn’t a communion wine bitter enough to wash away their mingling breaths and wet sighs nor a confessional great enough to contain the pressure of Adam’s fingers below his chest.

 ”This shit is new”, he points out while holding on to the scarf. They have excorcised the worst of the yearning eating their insides since Adam’s arrival and Ronan is sitting on the counter high chair, unable to let go of their proximity.

”This guy knitted it”, Adam says absentmindedly and lowers his hands on Ronan’s thighs that frame him.

The thing about his past distress is that Adam Parrish is still unable to splurge on things that he doesn’t necessarily need. It means that whatever clothes he buys are a newly added layer that Ronan notices compulsorily. However, this scarf is not bought but made and the thought of someone making Adam things turns the soft wool into coarse hemp beneath his fingers. Along with the ugly thought, a prickling sense of shame arises that reminds Ronan of all the things his boyfriend deserves. He shouldn’t need to possess such an exclusive right as making Adam things, but the intimacy of it smarts.

”What guy? Which one of the pretentious assholes?” Ronan wishes he could put out the inkling of jealousy in his voice, but they’ve come too far for him to hide such things.

”This guy in the engineering. A full ride. Rows in the crew.”

One two three, the things he cannot have in common with Adam and someone else can. The sharpest edge of this knife is the significant sense of not being enough.

”I think he’s pretty well built and dresses pretty okay. And is the top of his class.”

Ronan leans forward and presses his face against the softness of Adam’s neck, to hide his face and to hide his uncertainty. At the beginning of their separation, the most vicious fights they had sprung from their insecurities; monstrous things that made them understand each other better than most but that also hurt like hell in the process. He doesn’t want to be the person who rips open old scabs, but here he is, breathing his boiling inadequacy on his boyfriend’s skin.

He can feel Adam’s hand rising to cradle his head and the other pressing on the back of his neck. Warm lips ghost the shell of his ear and Ronan would give anything to be lost in those safe, familiar arms.

”That guy also misses his boyfriend and the kid they have like hell, but most of the time they’re too far away.”

The pit that opened inside him closes almost entirely and he blindly reaches any part of skin to pinch.

”You’re a little shit, you know?”

Adam hums a short, quiet laugh and leans away from him to look Ronan in the eye. It is unbearable to be so bare in front of someone else, to expose all the awful parts and have them weighed and tallied. It’s even worse, and marvellous, to have someone hold such parts gently and forgive each and every one of them.

”You want me to knit you one?”

”Hell no. Looks fucking stupid.”

Adam pulls Ronan to him and the kiss they share is like listening to the words of absolution.

 Next morning, they wake up in a mess of pitch black yarn that’s tangled between their limbs and bodies. Adam smiles like it’s already Christmas and Ronan begins to push him out of the bed, only to realise too late that they’re tied together.

”You’re so desperate for a scarf”, Adam says when they’re on the floor and reaches to laugh three kisses on his cheek. The strange, weightless yarn floats to settle on his shoulder and Ronan caresses it away. If the distance between them feels like a bottomless ocean, the closeness they share in these moments is an event horizon.

 After a long and tedious winding process, the yarn is sorted into neat balls. When the night falls, Adam sits behind him on the couch and picks up needles while Ronan starts a new game. The low click of wooden needles mixes with the tumultuous sound effects and during every loading screen he tugs at the yarn to pull their lips together.

[shirlleycoyle]

Taylor Swift Super Fans Are Furious About a Good Review

Taylor Swift's new album, Folklore, was released to universal acclaim from fans, non-fans, and music critics alike. But some parts of Swift's fandom are upset that music critics don't like it enough.

Pitchfork has had a long, hard road towards legitimacy as a music criticism website. I am old enough to remember a time when we clowned on them for being too earnest. Their effusive praise for Radiohead's Kid A is still hard to read without cringing, even 20 years after the fact. Over the years, Pitchfork's reputation has swung the other way, in line with its image as a "hipster" website. Artists like pop musician Halsey have bemoaned getting low scores from the outlet (a 6.5 out of 10, which caused the artist to unknowingly call for One World Trade Center to collapse), and the perception is that their taste is pretentious, generally favoring white, male, guitar-based music over everything else.

Despite all of that, Pitchfork senior editor Jillian Mapes gave Folklore a glowing review. Mapes compares Swift to the likes of Jane Eyre, and says that the album highlights her talent for storytelling in songs. 

"You can tell that this is what drives Swift by the way she molds her songs: cramming specific details into curious cadences, bending the lines to her will," Mapes wrote. Even with that praise, Pitchfork and Mapes in particular are now targets of Swift's most ardent stans. You see, she gave the album an 8.0, and fans think that this positive review was not high enough.

Although it's been a few days and the furor has died down, the replies to Pitchfork's tweet about the review are littered with demands that the website either take down the review or re-score it. 

"Folklore deserved a 10. Also personally offended by the suggestion she should have 'pruned' seven & hoax. That speaks volumes about the taste of the person writing this review, yikes," one fan wrote. 

Not every Taylor Swift fan feels this way, and some stan accounts have tried to call in their fellow fans, saying that harassing a critic is out of line. Unfortunately, the angrier fans have not calmed down, and if you search Mapes' name on Twitter, or if you search "Pitchfork Taylor Swift," you'll still find Swifties tweeting about how unfair her review was. Mapes has confirmed that her address and phone number were doxed and she has been receiving calls from upset fans, as well as death threats on Twitter and via email. Mapes locked her Twitter account right as the review went live and at time of writing has not unlocked it.

For Swifties, part of the issue is that Pitchfork's 8.0 rating lowered Folklore's score on the review aggregator website Metacritic, taking the album from a 90 to an 89. The way that Metacritic calculates their scores is an opaque science. In their FAQ, they say that it's a "weighted average" but don't provide much clarity on what that means and how different scores are weighed. The intense scrutiny of this critical consensus is similar to the fan response towards any criticism of the video game The Last of Us Part II, which saw the game's director and one of its voice actors lay into critics who had issues with the game.

Right now, this subset of Taylor Swift's fandom are acting out the worst behaviors we've come to accept as routine in video game fandom, which also has an unhealthy obsession with Metacritic scores. In their case, video game fans know that sometimes bonuses for developers are tied to Metacritic scores. In 2012, a developer from the acclaimed studio Obsidian revealed that because one of its games did not reach an 85 on Metacritic, the developers who worked on it did not receive royalties. Marketing teams at big game publishers obsess over a game's final Metacritic score. They'll invite people to play big budget games before release and "mock review" them in order to estimate a Metacritic score before release, and make final adjustments in order to increase it. 

Taylor Swift's continued success does not rely on a high Metacritic ranking. Swift is already a critically acclaimed, popular artist, and multi-millionaire whose work has dominated the charts every time she releases a new album. She is arguably one of the last standing pop stars in the way we understand the term when it was coined, the last one who can dominate our culture with brand deals and sold out stadium tours in an age where fewer people actually buy music. You don't get to that position on hype alone—Swift is a talented songwriter and singer, and music critics have acknowledged her talent even on albums that don't showcase her best work. Pitchfork gave one of her previous albums a 9.0, writing, "In a counterpoint to the musical wanderlust on display, there’s a newfound patience to Swift’s observations, a knowledge that narratives form out of brokenness and frustrated communication more often than they do out of ease or any emotional clarity." They compare her to Joni Mitchell and Pablo Neruda, describing her work with a deep sense of respect.

The issue with this behavior is less the quality of Taylor's work—which is, again, broadly good—but fans stifling any kind of conversation about art unless it is unbridled praise. We should always condemn harassment and doxing, of course, but even the threat of harassment is enough to make both critics and regular ass people pull their punches instead of being fully honest. One particular criticism of Folklore that fans have taken issue with is Mapes saying that she felt that the songs "hoax" and "seven" were filler. I think "seven" is a great song, but not everyone in the world is going to like every song. Hell, I once went to a party where someone turned off "Ride" by Ciara to put on Arcade Fire, and while I'll never understand that it's not illegal to dislike Ciara.

It's important to remember that fandom is a place of love, a community where people can lift each other up and support each other. It feels good to belong, and tweeting at randoms that Taylor Swift is good, actually, can help melancholy teens find that place of belonging. We also can't pretend that it's only young women who act this way. Toxic sports fans get into physical fights in stadium parking lots over their team, living out fandom rivalries in a violent, dangerous way. It's not hard to understand why people do this, though. Yeah, I do think it was really funny that Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly said "nice swing, bitch," to an Astros player that he almost hit with a ball. The feeling of allegiance with Kelly, who lost to the Astros twice when they were cheating, is intoxicating. But that's also why it's so dangerous. I mean, Kelly is truly just being an asshole. Why should I cheer that on?

Maybe it's inevitable that fans will get overly invested in their fandoms. The moniker stan comes from Eminem's song "Stan," released in 2000, about his own experiences of being the subject of a toxic fandom. Little has changed in 20 years. That said, we should all be more introspective about what this obsession is serving. All I can see is a stifling of creativity, of placing an artist's popularity and commercial success far above the actual work that they do. 

That the focus is on the numerical score of Mapes' review and not her thoughtful writing is the most disheartening. Even though Mapes clearly loved Folklore, the number is the only thing the fans can see. These numerical scores breed such toxicity, and have become such a distraction from constructive and interesting criticism, many critics are stepping away from them. Here at VICE Games, for example, we don't put numerical scores on game reviews. The same is true for Kotaku, where I previously wrote reviews. Polygon stopped using numerical scores in 2018, explaining that "focusing on criticism and curation, will better serve our readers than the serviceable but ultimately limited reviews rubric that, for decades, has functioned as a load-bearing pillar of most game publications."

The value of Swift's work will only truly be known once time has passed, when people feel more free to take it seriously and discover its nuances, to highlight her strengths, and yes, to recognize her weaknesses. Stopping that conversation from happening is all but a guarantee that she will only ever be seen as a teenage craze, a flash in the pan, a pop artist with no value.

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