#yeah I know I talk A LOT about my patreon page but it's my main source of income next to commissions so OF COURSE I have to hgdjfhfghgf

[elbdot]

I have only 4 panels left to finish, then you guys finally get a new El's Alolan Adventures update 👀 Patrons will of course be able to read it a week in advance, as always!! OH and you can already read a Badurs Gate 3 comic on Patreon (Yes I started playing the game and IT RULES HOLY CRAP, I'll probably do some more mini comics inspired by my playthrough)

[eastereggie]

woohoo !! didnt except to respond to this whole essay (for more context, im talking about the document jay made about the drama in the kaeloo fandom lol) considering the fact that its basically just 222 pages of insults towards random (and especially her mental state -who tf do you think you are btw) and then pretending to be a saint by randomly saying "b-but ! i dont h-hate you guys 🥺". i knew that this whole "call-out post" would be bullshit, but thats just low. really, really low. i figured that you and your little friends (or should i refer to yall as a cult too ? since we're going in the extremes :)) were mostly just here to insult people and play the victims, but i didnt think it would be that bad. i wont say much about whats in the document because i think its randoms place to do so, since its basically just a long ass diss to her, but i still wanted to write a short response. am i allowed to though ? i mean, as a teen (even if im 18 in a few months, ive been called underage in your document so ill go with that) i can draw and read explicit content to explore my sexuality 🥺🥺 but i cant think for myself right ? :/ thats too bad. i cant agree with my friends because that would also mean that im a yes-man and that im being manipulated or wtv helps you sleep at night lol

this is just to respond to the little part that has been directly adressed to me: if my answers are short when the drama is brought up its because...i actually dont give that much of a fuck about the drama itself. do i think that you guys are gross for writing and drawing porn of children and animals ? yes, i do. would i care if you just stayed in your own server to share that shit to your "safe place" ? absolutely not. you do you. that is none of my problems if you dont bring it up in a space you share with KIDS. thats the whole problem with you. you posted your disgusting content in websites where kids will obviously find. as an adult, you must be really naive to think that they will just read your warning and think: oh yeah !! ill just move on to a new fic :3 !!

they are kids. this is a kid show. obviously, you are sharing your fandom with kids, and you have to be careful about that. that is your responsibility, whether you like it or not. you cannot except to be appreciated and respected when you write porn about kids, in a fandom full of kids. if you genuinely, truly believe that everyone should accept you for that...then man, theres nothing i can do for you. but you know, you could share your things since you cherish them so much in patreon or in your discord server if its too explicit, but ao3 ? wattpad ? the stm ? those are FILLED with young teens. i can't believe you're whining about having to respect rules to coexist in a fandom of a show about kids with kids...wild

again, this is my OPINION. i cannot force you to not like...well, the things that you like... but i can definitely call you out if you're sharing that to kids, even if its indirectly and that you put warnings or whatever. you need to be cautious about the members of the fandom. if you're unhappy about this, then leave the space that isnt for you.

as i said, this happens in many fandoms filled with minors: bunch of adults are weird. they're being called out for being weird. they cry about it and create a group. they call people who call them weird, weird. its really common. thats why the center of the drama isnt new or interesting to me. thats why i dont write essays whenever it is brought up in the main server, or when nsfw fics were posted there. creeps exist in EVERY FANDOMS. do i still think its good to call them out ? totally. but that explain why i:

1. didn't really say anything when jay were posting their fics. since they agreed with us on the topic of kaeloo fics with nsfw but still were posting them, i figured out that there was not point in arguing. i just ignored the weird parts of the stories or simply didnt read anything. i dont like conflicts, and had a lot going on (still do), so i didnt speak about it before. thats my bad though: even if jay wouldnt have cared because they have a different opinion than me about aging up characters apparently, i shouldve said something whenever i had the chance and not only when the subject of fics with porn was brought up, and i take full responsibility. but you must know that i do not support those type of works and never have said that i do. whenever we spoke about it, i made it very clear that it was gross and that i dont agree with it at all. to tlak about jay's fics again, i mostly was enthusiastic about all the parts where sex wasnt involved (about the ss of me talking about jays fic about pregnancy, i loved seeing how mr cat and kae would act as soon-to-be parents ! i think its cute !! do not mean that i agree with writing full scenes about how that child is made).

jay has great ideas, thats why i liked their work so much. i will never pretend that i hate EVERYTHING that they do. theyve wrote and drew great stuff, and just because i dont agree with them as a person doesnt mean that ill ignore that or the compliments that ive given to them. i admire a lot of their work and didnt lie about any nice things ive said to them. this is not all white or all black.

2. didnt write really big responses in the STM. this is a server about kaeloo. the drama isnt really brought up there, except when its important or at the start of it. with college, job, family issues and the start of adulthood soon, i do not have time to be on discord in the first place. either im here for a brief moment, or i can be active when everyone is asleep so they already said everything i had in mind and all i can say is "yes" to messages i agree with and "no" to messages i dont. you do not know me, and if you genuinely believe that this is all i think about what is happening, then you're just extremely stupid...obv i wont talk about everything i think in details in the STM, or rub it in your face.

the only reason why im involved is because you're harassing my friend and i do not want her to suffer alone. its as simple as that. i will always support my friends in public, and correct them in private if i think they did something wrong. is random perfect ? do i think that she does no wrong ? ofc not. i'll always tell her if i think that she's not doing something right, the only difference is that i'll tell her in private, not in a discord server. how do you except anyone to listen to you if you already don't respect them enough to confront them privately and privately only ?

i think ive spoken for my part and i will not speak for any other people involved in this ridiculous drama. i think this is all really a personal issue with random (and also khamil apparently) and i do not believe that it's my place to speak for any of them. as i think your friend said, which i think is true, im not relevant in this drama, and again im just really here to support random but also to express myself when i think that its a general matter.

so ill conclude this by saying that this is a really disappointing document. posting the insults that have been told to my friend, for no reasons other than hurting her, giving her a few really serious and uncalled for diagnosis, posting her vents from when she was a teen to make her feel vulnerable, posting hateful and ableist comments about her publicly, posting comments of people insulting vulnerable members who need to vent and more...that is so, so petty.

jay, i didnt know you for long and we weren't super close, but i still liked you a lot (/p ofc). i know you'd love to think that you're the victim and that we are all just shit talkers who hated you or whatever, but that is not the case. reading the messages of the drama after the drama has been shocking. reading your tumblr posts, reading what your friends said to my friend, reading your document, all of that have been so disappointing. not here to play violins and act dramatic btw, this is just a fact i wanted to share.

theres a lot of things unsaid, but i think that it's really random's place to speak about it, not me or anyone else. id like to respect her opinion in all of this, so ive only really spoken about what i generally think :] !! that being said, i wont post this seriously about whats going on anymore except if i need to, thats why im blocking a few people too. i want to enjoy my post without child porn being rubbed in my face. i really feel like all this other part of the fandom wants is attention, so i wont focus my whole tumblr on them lol, but calling them out is still important to me. i dont except them to change their ways since they look so sure of themselves, but anyone can dream, right ? sorry about how disorganised it is, or if my english is bad and also for my spelling mistakes lmao 🤸🤸 ty for reading this far though !! please check out random's response when it comes out !!

[fullcry]

Update (sort of)

I WILL get around to posting a proper update schedule soon. I'm in the process of trying to get my Patreon page up and running, so hopefully I'll be able to get those two things going concurrently.

Tentatively, updates will probably be in this order: Truth of Memory, Ch 4 (final chapter) > Either "Jacket Fic" longshot or untitled NSFW multichap Ch 1/4 > Love and Peace and Gunsmoke, Ch 2

A note about my Love and Peace and Gunsmoke: part of why an update may be a ways off is... I lost chapter five. 5k words of the hardest stuff to write: difficult conversations, character development, action scenes, multiple locations... I still haven't recovered. The prospect of rewriting it all is DAUNTING. And I need to finish it before I can go back and edit chapters 2-4, since it's the end of the first arc and needs to align properly for the next. So... thank you for your patience while I'm on the struggle bus.

Speaking of the untitled NSFW multichap, please have a WIP sneak peek because I'm hopeless and need to vent excitement. Be sure to subscribe to my AO3 pseud for updates! (because there will be a lot this year, RIP my free time)

UNTITLED NSFW VASH/MERYL WIP EXCERPT (below the cut!)

She had spent the long hours in that room thinking and preparing herself for the eventuality—told herself it was just sex, just a bodily function (albeit an intimate one). She’d spent long enough keeping her feelings for him hidden, and this was just an extension of that. It didn’t need to mean anything more and didn’t need to change their relationship. And at the end… she’d still felt that way. She’d been ready to move on, keep laughing, keep smiling, put the incident in a box and continue being just friends.

She hadn’t been prepared for this, though—this cold shoulder, this painful distance—and she feels unconscionably foolish for not having considered his feelings, for not having considered that just because it needed to happen didn’t mean he was prepared.

Though she isn’t quite sure what specifically his feelings on the matter are since he hasn’t said a word about what happened and pointedly ignored her attempts to do so.

She sighs and trails dutifully behind him. They’ve long since left the dormitories behind, for which she is thankful, and he leads her through a series of dark maintenance tunnels. Like the main hallways these too are lit by emergency lights but given the narrowness of the tunnels and the array of pipes and wires and panels along the wall hiding the light strip from view, it’s significantly dimmer. They move single file and her hands trail along walls on either side for support—the grate upon which they walk is uneven in places, seeming to have bent with the force of the crash.

She can see the brighter light of a hallway ahead and sighs in relief, matching Vash’s quickening pace. But before they get out, her hand snags on something sharp and she jerks it back, hissing. She can feel blood seeping into her glove, trailing down her wrist. Pain pulses sharply along her index finger, and she knows its a deep cut.

“Are you alright?”

Now he talks to her. She refrains from saying something snappy and unkind, and instead says, “Yeah—just a cut. Can you grab some gauze from my pack?”

She turns around to give him access to the bag strapped to her back and holds her finger tightly to stem some of the blood flow. She hears the zipper and can feel him rummaging around, and a moment later he taps her shoulder. She turns back around and pulls her hand away from her finger to take the roll of gauze but he ignores her, reaching for her hand instead. She lets him, holding her breath and watching with surprise as gently disinfects the wound and holds her by the palm as he wraps three layers around the cut, tying it off gently. He still doesn’t look at her.

“Vash—“ she begins, more insistent this time.

“Not… not here,” he says, and she can hear in his voice that just saying those words is an emotional effort. It’s clear he knows what she wants to bring up, and she feels some relief that he has finally acknowledged what happened, even if indirectly.

“When we get back to ship three?” she asks, or rather, requests. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, gently releasing her hand as he tucks the roll of gauze into a jacket pocket. Then, he nods, and turns back around, heading for the hallway.

[ashweather]

Daily RPG Readings

Eureka, Investigative Urban Fantasy, Part 3

If you want to read along with me, you can get the demo copy for free on A.N.I.M.'s official site or head over to their Patreon to get a copy of the latest playtest draft for $5. I'm reading the most recent playtest draft and there are significant differences from the demo copy, just as a heads up.

For day three, I'm reading pages 39-60, up to the "Composure" heading. This section outlines some philosophy of play that the game adopts, and strongly encourages its players to adopt. Eureka as a game is very opinionated about these topics. My understanding is that, to some, this is a controversial section, so lets go over the basics. Once again, I have a lot to say about it.

First, we go over the role of the GM, or Narrator. Essentially, the game wants the Narrator to set up a situation for investigators to interact with, then take a relatively hands off approach. Eureka expects the Narrator to act as an arbiter and referee rather than as a story-teller or the main driver of the narrative. There is also an expectation that Narrators not fudge rolls (yeah this one is going to start a flame war, chief) or bend the logic of the scenario to benefit or hinder investigators, stating the Narrator's role should be closer to simulating how the story logically would go based on the world that was presented at the outset of an adventure.

Personally, I generally agree with this philosophy - its how I try to run most of my games - but I can see where some people might chafe against this. Eureka wants to break certain bad habits that could carried over from other games and play cultures coughD&Dcough. On the other hand, its easy to read this as saying there's "one true way" to play or run Eureka (or any game, if you want to be uncharitable), or that a group who prefers to have lower stakes or a bit of plot armor is "doing it wrong." I could talk about that more in depth, I don't really agree with that interpretation, but ya know what? I'll let someone else open that can of worms.

Oh yeah also there's a note that disruptive or malicious behavior is something to be handled outside the game, on an interpersonal level, and I couldn't agree more.

The role of investigators is to portray everyday people with a strong reason to get involved in the mystery or adventure at hand. It's specifically noted that investigators should usually not be cops, for a few reasons. Having investigators be cops puts them into a position where they would logically have some degree of official support and a whole department to handle evidence, legal consequences, and so on. It also eliminates law enforcement as a source of complications and obstacles for investigators, which can be a potent source of drama. Finally, and most damningly, the players would have to portray cops (shudder).

Next, it is established that investigators should be the primary drivers of the investigation and therefore the story. I think that's great, because having PCs be the ones who have to drive the story forward serves two purposes. First, it gives a sense of agency and accomplishment to anything that does advance the narrative. Secondly, it takes pressure off the Narrator, who is already going to be putting in a ton of work.

It's also noted that investigators can have secrets or secret plans, and establishes that these things should be kept secret and shared with the Narrator privately. This is the first explicit note we've had that Eureka isn't necessarily a cooperative game - more on that later.

Okay, here's a big one. The next section is all about separation between players and investigators. First, we just have a note reminding readers that players and investigators are separate, and then some elaboration on that point. While I would hope that point would be obvious to anyone familiar with TTRPGs, I've been in this hobby long enough to know it can unfortunately be an issue.

Eureka enforces third-person verbiage from the Narrator and players.

I've put that point on its own because it is going to be a massive shift for some people, and likely very controversial. It's a massive shift for ME, in fact. I've been playing characters in first person and GMing in second person for nearly fifteen years. I understand the logic. Third-person verbiage makes it easier to linguistically separate players from their characters, and makes for interesting play that strongly diverges from what the player would themselves do if placed in the game world. I could say more, but once again I'm going to let others talk this one out.

Whew, we're past the biggest stuff. On page 49, we have a discussion of bad faith play and a directive for the Narrator to disallow submitted investigators that are going to become a huge problem in some way. As an extension of the points raised in the previous sections, the players and narrator are encouraged to work together to create a successful game, operating under the assumption of good faith. Malicious behavior isn't something to work out at the table.

Under the heading "Expect to Fail Rolls" we have a discussion that rolling means taking a risk, and risk should always be present in the mechanics where it's present in the narrative. What that means in practice is that careful play and acting within the narrative to mitigate risk means that, well, the investigators are taking less risks. There's also a crunchy breakdown of the probability curves involved in a 2d6 roll versus a 1d20 roll, to encourage players that the Failure result isn't the huge looming threat that it might seem like.

On page 53, we have a section about "bad ends" and not forcing an adventure or mystery to have a happy, clean ending. In Eureka, stories are legitimately risky, which makes achieving a happy ending against the odds feel legitimately triumphant. Furthermore, the game notes that a tragic or bleak ending is, in fact, a good thing and a "win" for the player group if not the characters. The goal of the players should be to create an interesting narrative - and Eureka encourages those narratives to have teeth.

Next, we have a section on PC vs PC interactions, and a further breakdown of the fact that Eureka isn't necessarily cooperative (though it still often is). There is a high potential in Eureka for investigators to have conflicting motives and conflicting goals, and this fact can very easily lead to those characters butting heads or actively attempting to stop or kill one another. I do think this is an exciting element of the game, though I also think keeping PC vs. PC conflict exciting and revealing things at appropriate times requires some amount of skill from both Narrator and players.

Lastly, we have a section on Truth. Truth is essentially a roleplay mechanic - it establishes some fact or characterization that 'is true' about the investigator, and actions in accordance with that truth grants a +1 benefit to up to three rolls once per scene. The mechanical bonus from acting within a character's truth is something that should only apply when relevant. It also gives a way to chart a character arc, as Truth can change in the midst of an adventure, so long as there is a strong justification. Roleplay mechanics (at least ones that grant tangible and immediate benefits) like Truth are somewhat uncommon, but I like to see them, and I think they are a welcome addition to most games.

[mack3030]

Types of Paywall Abuse --- A post...

I think it’s time to tackle a topic that might make a few simmers uncomfortable, but we need to talk about it, because in addition to seeing a lot of people complain about it in general, I’ve also been getting some anons in my inbox talking about it. So let’s discuss this. 

Now, first of all, I would like to clarify a couple of things: 

When I speak of PAYWALLS here, I am talking about custom content that can ONLY be accessed by paying, or viewing an ad through a virus filled ad shortener link (which is just as bad).  Pure early access content, where you pay for it and get it earlier than everyone else who gets it for free IS NOT PAYWALLED CONTENT. 

This is why it is called a pay “WALL” because the wall portion indicates that you cannot access it without paying a fee/toll. 

Second of all, I would like to remind the public at large that this is not hate, it is a critical commentary. I am not going to go for these creators personally, nor do I want to. I, as a member of the community who plays the sims 4, and downloads/uses CC, would like to simply hold some of these creators accountable for actions that are unethical and unsatisfactory to the community in which they serve. That is it. No more, no less. I simply believe they CAN do better and BE better than this. 

Now, let’s get into the meat of this. 

The main type of abuse that I have focused on has been what I call Permapaywalls. 

Permapaywalls:

Content that cannot be accessed ANY other way than either paying a certain amount via patreon or another service, OR viewing a link through a virus-filled ad that puts your computer at risk. 

There are many creators who are well known permapaywall creators, with at least 80% or more of their content being locked behind these permapaywalls. Sometimes they may release a few items for free, but this is very similar to being allowed to test drive a car before buying it. It’s to entice the user/viewer into liking the brand, and then buying in.

I’m not going to delve into this too much because I’ve already expounded on this topic a bit. So let’s go further. 

The next type of abuse is what I like to call “Exclusive Loopholes”. 

Exclusive Loopholes: Creators who try to “get around” EA’s early access policy by offering a majority of their content as early access, but holding back certain items only to those who “subscribe” to their “patreon exclusive” content. 

There are some who are okay with this, thinking of this as a neat “bonus” for those who subscribe and support. However, the sims team made it clear: 

Folks who have a Patreon page are welcome to provide folks with "early access" incentives for their content but it should be made available to the general public within 2-3 weeks of it being given to folks early.

- Simguru Drake, The Sims Forum

Notice nowhere in this answer does it say anything about BONUS CC incentives. Nowhere. This is just a method that certain creators try to use to keep people from decrying them as “big bad paywall creators”. This way they can say “oh look, we do early access, we’re following EA’s rules~!” while still holding content hostage. 

If you want to offer your patreons some exclusives, here’s some ideas:  * Share pictures of your process, or work in progress content coming up.  * Allow them to have input into your process via polls and questions.  * Have an exclusive discord community just for your patreons where they can talk to you easier and share excitement and input about your content with you and each other.  * Have exclusive streams where only you and your patreons have the link to see you go live making content.  * Host a workshop on how to make CC using your process. (I see all of you who steal meshes from other sites sweating over this. ;D)  * Pause billing for a month and say “you know what, since you guys have been loyal and supported me, have a month of patreon on me!”  * Anything that honestly doesn’t involve only giving those patreons CC and not releasing it to the public. 

Let’s talk about another type, and oh my lanta, this type has had some anons messaging me ALL up in arms. I like to call this type “The Donation Disaster”.

Donation Disaster: Someone who CONSTANTLY uses the “downs” in the up/downs of life as excuses to not release content on time, or delay it while still collecting payment from patreons. Bonus “you’re a jerk” points if they then try to use those misfortunate circumstances to beg for even more money from their patreons on multiple occasions. 

Look, we all have junk that goes on in our lives. But when that junk is used as an excuse for you continually delaying content while still charging your patreons (and not using the pause feature), it makes them feel cheated.  In addition, when you then ask for donations to help you during your difficult time, and turn to your patreons instead of the support networks that are around you (ex: friends, family, religious communities, etc.), that can be VERY off-putting. You might be able to get away with it once, maybe twice, without a large chunk of your community turning against you. But the more regular it becomes, and the more they hear about how strapped for cash you are and how you’re asking them to give more than their pledge, and you’ll soon find yourself being called a scammer. Regardless of your intent, or if your problems are reality, you’ll find people’s empathy for your situation will be lacking.

I’ve had a few anons in my inbox talking about different patreon creators that always seem to have an excuse for why updates aren’t coming just yet, or why x is broken, and with their excuse comes a plea for help with bills, and a link to a paypal or venmo. 

Everyone has junk, don’t get me wrong. And it sucks to go through the junk we have in life, but if you’re reaching out to random people on the internet as your first method of support, you might need to be looking someplace else for support first before you come to the people who are already paying you for content you make. A one time “hey I’m in a bind, I need some help” donation thing might not be a bad thing, but when it becomes a constant pattern on your patreon....people aren’t going to take it well...at all. 

And last, but not least, I’d like to talk about the last kind of patreon abuse, which frankly, is really upsetting to me. I don’t even really have a name for it, because it’s literally so much of a “what?” thing in my head. I don’t even understand why it goes on.  Now, this practice involves the black/POC community, and frankly, as a white girl, I don’t feel I should be speaking over the community and what they have to say. Thankfully @xmiramira​ spoke on it, all the way back in 2019. Here’s an excerpt from her fantastic POST:

Even new creators who JUST joined the community sliding up in TBS with locs and braids talking about Patreon only. GTFOH. I’m not okay with creators doing Patreon only CC PERIOD, but my main discussion is focused on NON BLACK simmers making CC catered to US, and making it PATREON EXCLUSIVE IN AN ATTEMPT TO FORCE US TO PLEDGE, and how people are ASSUMING that I’m OKAY WITH THIS, and ASSUMING that I’m letting it FLY in my community. Just because I don’t go off about shit as frequent as I used to doesn’t mean I cannot see and I am not doing what I can to keep the fuckery OUT.“Oh but your friend has a Patreon” I don’t have an issue with what @ebonixsims is doing because it’s all early release. It gets released to the public a few weeks later. It’s not being kept behind Patreon, forcing people to pledge to her. Despite this, she’s still doing really good with it. So don’t get it twisted, I’m not on social media arguing with folks so people just assumed I’m okay with this shit, I’m really not. I’m actually two seconds off dropping Patreon share folders. (That also have my shit in it) Supporting people is one thing, but a lot of these motherfuckers are becoming extremely exploitive, and it’s aggravating. It’s like you goofy motherfuckers sit in DMs like “yeah let’s make some CC for the negros and put it on Patreon” Fuck outta here. And it’s not even just hair, it’s skins and even CLOTHING STYLES. Y’all are really wilding the hell out. African necklaces, black girl magic chains, Juicy Couture sweatsuits. Who the fuck do you think you’re fooling? IM TIRED! Next time someone asks me where I got something and it’s Patreon exclusive I’m dropping a SFS link. FUCK OUTTA HERE!

Here’s the deal. The black community has been fighting for a while to be able to feel represented in this game. Here’s two articles (ONE, TWO) talking about this issue.  But the thing that has me upset is the fact that SO many creators of content that is AIMED at Black/POC simmers are locking that content (or a good majority of it) behind paywalls. And what’s even more shameful is some of those creators are POC themselves! They understand what it’s like to feel that they cannot make themselves or have sims that look like them in this game, yet they still lock their content away and expect people not just in the SIMS community, but in the POC community to pay through the nose for it.  The fact that this is STILL going on, two freaking years after she made this post, and that both NON POC creators and POC creators are engaging in this behavior is honestly disappointing and shameful. I believe black/POC creators should be supported, BUT they should be supported without depriving their OWN community of representation and access. And frankly, if you’re a NON POC creator and you’re specifically targeting this group to make money off of them with paywalls, I have only one thing to say to you:

I’d speak on it more, but frankly, I’d rather let the people who are actually in the black/POC community speak on it, so if any of you want to let loose in the comments about this problem, go wild. I’m happy to sit back and listen, and I suggest others do the same.

[meruz]

Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? 

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha. 

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at isellhotdogs@gmail.com.

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[popculturebuffet]

Goof Week: Goof Troop: Forever Goof Review (Everything’s Coming Up Goofy, Good Neighbor Goof, Gotta Be Gettin Goofy) (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Yahhahhooooeeeey all you happy people!  WELCOME TO GOOF WEEK! Now normally when a character who got their start in theatrical shorts has a birthday, I do a marathon of them. I have since last year with Donald and it’s one of my favorite things: it allows me to explore Disney’s rich history of them I was largely unaware of till Disney+, and allows me to revisit the shorts I grew up with in the case of The Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry while discovering new favorites. SO naturally with Goofy’s birthday in two days I intended to do the same for him, especially since I’d covered Donald and Mickey the same way.

But fate had other ideas. Not thinking about this tradition, Kev, my patreon, friend and the guy who commissions a LOT of reviews from me ($5 an episode if your curious and I WILL make room on the schedule so your commission gets done as soon as possible), suggested reviewing the Goof Troop pilot movie Forever Goofy, later split into the episode Everything’s Coming Up Goofy and Good Neighbor. I loved the idea since I genuinely loved Goof Troop, and decided to do both that week.

It’s then I got a great idea.. why limit myself to JUST doing two things? I hit my 15 dollar patreon stretch goal, so a review of the Goofy Movie was on the Horizon anyway, and for it’s anniversary year Kev has been commissioning House of Mouse Episodes, so it wouldn’t be THAT much of an ask (and it wasn’t) to simply randomly select from a pool of Goofy-Centric episodes instead of all the episodes. 

Thus GOOF WEEK was born, and Kev once again proved vital to all this by suggesting the special Sports Goof from the 80′s. I’d like to give him special thanks as outside of the Shorts Special, which as a patreon he still got to pick one and if you’d like to pick one for Donald’s special, sign on up even one dollar patreons get the honor. , this week is either entirely paid for by him or in the case of A Goofy Movie, is partly thanks to him. I wouldn’t be able to do NEARLY as many reviews nor make money off this without you bud, so thank you. 

So naturally given the idea to do this two parter gave me the idea for this week and that Goofy Movie makes a logical finale for said week, it only made sense to start the week with Goof Troop. Bop-dop-da-da-do-bop, YEAH. 

Goof Troop is the first Disney Afternoon show I ever watched and the only one I watched when I was younger, as Disney Channel used to play it ocasinally when I was younger and Toon Disney would do the same and I even got to Marthoon it when Disney XD did a weekend marathon. Given it starred my faviorite Disney Character, Donald hadn’t worked his way up to tying with him quite yet, I loved what I could grab of it. And as an adult.. it still holds up. It has problems i’ll get into, but it is a real good time so I was exastic to get an excuse to watch some of it and much like with Darkwing wish I had sooner. 

Before I can h-h-h-hit it though, I have to talk about the series history. I ALMOST didn’t find anything: much like the other Disney Afternoon shows there really wasn’t much on the Disney wiki nor wikipedia, google turned up nothing... it wasn’t till I went to the Tv Tropes Trivia Page for the series, where i’d remembered reading about some early versions of the show, that I hit gold: A two part behind the scenes blog post by series co-creator Michael Peraza. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE. It’s a short but fascinating read. 

Speaking of fascenating Peraza himself is someone i’d never heard of till reading this article but damn if he isn’t a legend. Seriously the guy’s career is as an unsung hero, starting work under the Legendary Nine Old Men, and working on some of disney’s greatest films: The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The LIttle Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, along with live action cult classics Tron and Return to Oz via concept art. And concept art is where he’d hit his stride: he did conceptual work for all the big Disney Afternoon shows apart from Gargoyles, being one of the key guys in the early days of Disney Television animation. He didn’t stop at just designing things either as he worked as Art Director for Ducktales, The Proud Family and of course given how vital he was to it’s creation, Goof Troop, and to this days gives lectures with his wife to aspiring animators. He even did some guest work for the 2017 Ducktales Episode “Treasure of the Found Lamp!”. So yeah dude’s awesome

So how did he come to be a key part of this show’s creation? Well he’d just finished up some concept work on some other Disney Afternoon shows, and being a company man was glad to report to the Goof Troop..ers to help as the show was having trouble getting off the ground. The reason for this was the creative exec, who Peraza didn’t name out of kindness as the guy wasn’t a BAD person.. just a clueless one, this being his first job in film and tv.  As such rather than work hard to develop around goofy or focus on his strengths the kid threw out one concept after another: The series got it’s name from a pitch that had Goofy as a scoutmaster, something I was glad to finally know. To quote Peraza

“ Although while I was doodling versions of the show that were destined to never see the light of the TV screen,  the pitch date remained etched in stone and kept creeping closer. Various versions would find their way to the surface only to sink again into the wasteland known as the roundfile (trashcan). One moment Goofy was the Captain of the Fire Department, the next day a detective out of the Maltese Falcon mold, or a swash buckling hero fighting The Flying Dutchman. 

The supporting cast he came up with really wasn't very supportive when you consider they sometimes included alien dragon babies with wings along with a large gorilla. Somebody at Walt Disney Television Animation must have really had a thing for giant gorillas around this time as they were plugged into almost every concept we  assembled.”

It was clear that while Goofy COULD fit into just about anything, this exec was just throwing everything at the wall, nothing was sticking, and rather than try to refine his supporting cast, they kept having to throw them out and start over. And dont’ get me wrong, cartoons go through a lot of development and changes as they go.. but it’s usually born from a concept and usually by this point, they at least have what the show will be ABOUT in stone. While i’ve had the same creative changes and what not when coming up with projects that ultimately never saw the light of day, and currentlly some I hope to but might not, I’m not being paid by a studio to do this nor had a hard deadline. I was just spitballing trying to get something anything off the ground before reviewing gave me a steady outlet for my creativity and thus ballanced me to take my time with stuff. Peraza WAS turning out amazing art, like this concept art for the fireman pitch that honeslty makes me want to see it as a series. Who DOSEN’T want to see 9-11 with Goofy as the main character? Throw in Donald and grown up versions of Max, PJ and PIstol (And even not THAT much for the former two, as they did go off to college and all), don’t forget Roxanne this time out and you have a worthy goofy movie sequel. 

So yeah this wasn’t working and the latest pitch was not great: Putting Goofy in ToonTown as a cabbie driving the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As Peraza TRIED to point out to the exec, putting Goofy in a naturally goofy setting didn’t really play to the characters strength, his whole shtick being a goofus in a normal world. Enough of an every man to root for but also a slapstick joly weirdo. 

The executive’s INCREDIBLY douchey response, especially since Peraza was a Disney Vetran at this point and had spent quite a lot of time on Ducktales, so he knew what he was talking about was “Do it anyway and leave the “Visionary” part to me”

As you can tell by MR. OOC there, this might be one of the most punchable sentences i’ve ever read. 

So Peraza wasn’t in a great place and was naturally terrified when he got a call from Gary Krisel, president of Disney TVA, asking about the show and to see him about it. 

Turns out though Krisel was a nice guy who already had a great working relatinship with Peraza, and genuinely wanted to know what was going on there and wanted his honest opinion. It’s why i’m not AGAINST executives in animation as sometimes they can come in when somethings clearly not working or allow a smooth transition of power if a propelmatic creator has to be booted off their own show so the show and i’ts crew don’t suffer as a result. It’s just more often than not they cause headaches or cancel shows for entirley stupid or self motivated reasons. But I will give credit where it’s do and point out times where there NOT stupid or homophobic or what have you and this is indeed one of those times. 

Peraza was indeed straight with him: pointing out all the concepts they’d gone through, and like with the other guy honestly gave his opinon the ToonTown Pitch wasn’t working.. and he not only agreed but asked Peraza himself, actually respecting his experince instead of yelling at him that he has a vision that wouldn’t last the end of the day probably. 

Peraza was HOPING this was where this was going and gladly gave him a far less high concept pitch and one truer to the character, quoted in full bellow:

“ My spiel went as follows, "Goofy is a recognized star of Disney animation, so why re-invent the wheel? His son is an average kid dealing with many of the usual issues they face: peer pressure, young love, grades, school bullies, and so on. On top of all that, he has the zaniest, wackiest GOOFIEST dad to live down. No matter how insane the situations get though, they will always love each other. They're a family." Gary asked how I would pitch it and I replied, "It's ONE day in  the life of Goofy and son. From getting up in the morning to fixing breakfast, we see their difference side by side as his son tries to distance himself. No matter what though he knows deep inside that his father will always be there for him, whether he likes it or not."

If your wondering if Peraza noticed that that original pitch line is basically the peremise and emotioinal core of The Goofy Movie down pat.. your extremley correct and he notes that the film was based on said pitch even if he had no involvment with it that I could tell. The series would still use this but the whole embarasment aspect was toned down, and honestly fit a teenager better than an 11 year old.. 

So the exec loved it and Peraza shaped the core of the series: the idea of having Pete as his nemisis, pete having a nuclear family including a gorgeous wife, and the show being more slice of life and what not. He made some great sketches, got roaring approval and then pitched it to rousing success and the rest is history. Goof Troop was a moderate success and The Goofy Movie after it is a classic beloved by all. We have this wonderful man to thank for all that and I also thank him , on the offchance he ever sees this, for bringing Goofy into modern times in a way that did the man-dog justice.  It’s thank to you we got this fun series, two great movies, and a goofy the way he is today: the best of everything about him rolled into one. Thanks man, free review.. not htat you NEED It since you’ve worked on things i’ve covered and what not, but I feel like I should offer.  Outside of Peraza, I found one last bit of making of stuff before I get to the premiere proper. These two early concept shots:

The first has Max who both looks older and has red hair like he did in the shorts. Honestly I see a lot of his Goofy Movie self in thiis design, the only diffrence obviously being the red hair which was wisely changed to make the boy look more like goofy, something kept for the movie. 

The more intresting one is this shot of the Pete’s. Starting with Pete he’s more athletic and has a perfectly tacky outfit. While changing him to be a bit more slovenly honestly fit this version of the character better, I do wish they’d kept hte outfit as the tacky gold and green jacket, the gold chain, the open ollar.. it all fits this version of pete so well, as well as his illusion of being a big shot when he is in fact a medium one. Peg is both slightly younger looking and far more doting and is so different I swear this picture looks like Pete remarried after the divorce and got some lipo. Pistol has about the same design but with a vastly different, more Isabella-ish outfit. Finally we have PJ who looks the same, but has a diffrent outfit and a far more sour demeanor, probably meant to be a bully. My best guess is sthis stuff comes from the pitch, and was likely made to simply get the basic premise across before fine tuning the characters for series

So with all of that out of the way i’m calling eveyrone to join in the fun under the cut and report to the Goof Troop. 

Everything’s Coming Up Goofy:

Our first episode opens in a small but cozy trailer, where Goofy’s cooking up lunch as only goofy could: by making osme meatballs then serving them to his son over a game of table tennis, with Max doing the same. It’s really freaking adorable, and a dynamic i’m not used to since i’m more familiar with Teen Max. Seeing Max genuinely get into his dad’s hyjinks and enjoy them.. it just warms the heart and adds weight to The Goofy Movie by knowing there was a time the two really were thick is thieves before the stygian hole that is high school drained all that out of him. 

So the two are like buddies and pals until the Mailman arrives, not even phased at this point. Turns out it’s a Diploma, and with this Goofy can get a job he’s been up for in Spoonerville and plans to move immediately. Max is devisated he’ll loose his friends and runs away to use a magical mystery box to keep them together only to end up in a land full of frogs with an old man who sounds like his dad minus the drawl and two other tinier frogs and ... I may have the wrong show. In fairness you try dislodging a finale where Keith David runs a 13 year old through with laser sword and then talk to me. 

Goofy is sympathetic though: While he seems a tad oblivous to Max’s worries, it’s very clear he’s jumping on this job and this move so far to give his son a better life. Sure he runs through all the cartoon moving away talking points that don’t work in real life or most other cartoons such as there being a nice lake and that max can make new friends, and Max accepts it weirdly fast because this episode is only 22 minutes and they don’t have time for that subplot... but it’s clear the idea of a better paying job, a secure home not in an alleyway, and some stablility for his son is the real reason Goofy’s doing this, and he probably wants to simply give the boy the childhood he had growing up. 

Meanwhile in Spoonerville, we meet Pete. To my shock this is where Jim Cummings took over the roll he was born for and has played since and with good reasons as Cummings is just amazing with Pete no matter the incarnation and excels here  his penchant for playing jerks, hams and gravely voiced guys all coalesicing. Pete is planning on building what modern toxicly masculine weirdos such as himself would call a Man Cave on his lawn, because Pete is a very SPECIAL kind of douchebag. He also plans to stretch it into the neighboring property, tear down the house there and set it up. 

This is news to his wife Peg, played by fellow voice acting Legend whose stillg ot it, April Winchell in her star making role. Peg is Pete’s strong willed wife who dosen’t put up with her husbands crap.. you know that trope that infected sitcoms for kids and adults of the doofy husband whose either a manchild , a skeevy self serving quipy asshole or some horrible combination of the two. The kind that has still been so prevealant the wife from one of said sitcoms helped produce a show about the wife finally doing the logical thing and plotting to kill the bastard. No really.. that’s an actual thing that’s happening. It’s even got a Little Bit of Alexis as Anne Murphy plays the poor, poor wife. 

And why yes the series is called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. And why yes said former sitcom wife was the same one on a sitcom called Kevin Can Wait who was fired because they wanted to retool the show with the wife from Kevin James other sitcom. That also is very really a thing that happened. Payback is a bitch aint it? Fun too. 

But yeah from minute one Pete is a terrible husband: Peg is a realtor and thus is trying to sell the house because it’s her fucking job instead of letting her husband throw their family deep in debt to very likely illegally demolish a house so he has a giant yard to play in. I mean even if this is all played for jokes i’ts just not funny enough to not make him an utter bastard. The fact his response to her VERY valid criticism and subtextual worry he doesn’t’t take her career seriously is to fake a panic attack, from a very REAL tendency he turns out to have giant breakdowns under stress, to try and guilt her into letting him have his giant public man cave just backs this up.. as does the fact she simply glares at the camera as he’s clearly DONE this before. 

Since I have to put up with this version of him for the rest of this episode, the next, AND a portion of the movie, i’m proudly introducing the Pete Sucks Counter. This will carry over to any other appearances of the guy from here on out. So that’s one for his insane plan, one for disrespecting his wife’s career and one for faking a panic attack to try and win an argument Pete Sucks Counter: 3

So because this episode ran short Peg caves and compromises: He can have the property if it isn’t sold by 9. So Pete does what ANY husband would do: uses his spy camera and booby traps he’s set up in the other house to try and scare away prospective buyers. 

Yeah.. while the show TRIES to have Pete not as his old-timey villian self.. they traded in for him being fucking MODOK. I mean he is a grotesque monstrosity who has a nuclear family and spends all his time in a chair thing and can barely function as a Husband or Father. Though at least I can belivie MODOK LOVES his family which not so much with Pete. 

To prove this Pete tries using a fake spider to scare some buyers then CALLS THEM TELLING THEM PEG IS A CON ARITST. I.e. something that if they mention to her bosses could get her FIRED. He respects his wife’s autonomy, what she wants and what she’s asked him for, which is a fair shot to sell the place before he tries to wreck the place, as well as likely what his neighbors want. I mean I can accept breaks from reality for comedy, snakebird is my boy. 

So I can accept pete has this stuff.. I just can’t find it funny when these shenanignas very transparently show that while he surface level loves his wife he dosen’t respect her or actually listen to her except when she gets angry. He IS the villian so he’s still a slight step among monst sitcom dads but i’ts not great. I can find it funny that his den also functions as a super villian lair though. That shit will never not be great. Also Pete Sucks Counter: 6 For the record: one for the spider itself, one for having traps set up in a property hat both isn’t his and his wife is trying to sell and another for threatening her job and her self esteem as she is baffled at what she possibly did wrong. 

So Goofy and Max get on the road, leaving moving the rest of their stuff to an old coot whose a friend of theres. So it’s goodbye Duckburg, Hello Spoonerville! And yes I headcanon this as Duckburg. Goof Troop is one of two shows that very clearly happened in SOME form, the other being Tailspin, the only difference being the time period (Goof Troop taking place in the 90′s and Tailspin in the 30′s or 40′s) and any adjustments for clashes with the 2017 verse. So going off that, we also know Donald and the boys KNOW goofy and didn’t remotely question his presence, as did the rest of the cast. 

So figuring out the timeline, Goofy likely met Donald in college, even if he never finished college as per an Extremley Goofy Movie, which may not happen the same exact way given Goofy still has his old job and may not loose it in this timeline, though i’d like to think he still meets Sylvia. But point is he drops out, possibly to marry Max’s mom, they end up moving to Duckburg for her work, she sadly dies, and Goofy is left raising Max alone. Donald and Goofy likely bonded as single parents struggling in low paying 9-5 jobs. Goofy left here, likely said goodbye to Donald and the 5 or so year old boys offscreen , and left. As for how anyone else knows him that’s simple: he probably visits whenever he can.  He’s a good friend, genuinely loves Donald like a brother in all continuities, and of course would show up with a progressively more then less grumpy Max every time. As for what I think the rest of the cast would think of him: Scrooge would hate him for his disaster area ways, but at least respect him as a hard worker, he just wouldn’t personally hire him which is.. it’s fair. Beakley would be aggravated by him. Webby would of course like him because she’s essentially him but competent and gay, and Launchpad and him .. god that’d be a joy to see. And drive up Scrooge’s insurance. Della would also like him obviously. I”m really disappointed we didn’t get a season 4 if for nothing else the fact we probably would’ve got another Goofy episode. It also feels weird he’s not in the finale in any way shape or form you know? Why have such a big guest spot for him and then just not bring him or Max back? GIVE ME MORE MAX DISNEY DAMN YOUUUUU So they move right along with Goofy excited to get back to where he once belonged, and to call Pete with the good news on his 90′s cell phone. Pete is utterly TERRIFIED finding out Goofy Comin and tries to send him off course to prevent it. Naturally despite nearly running into a truck, Goofy makes it to Spoonerville by evening anyway and we get a delightful bit that shows off BilL Farmer’s comedy skills as he rapidly lists off all the things in town while driving Max through town. It’s so damn smooth. This also is notable since before this farmer had just played the character in some DTV music videos, which stands for Disney not Denton but god I now want Shock Treatment with the Disney Crew. I mean who wouldn’t want Donald as Brad, Daisy as Janet, and Gladstone as Farley Flavors I ask you. Not sure who every one else would be i’m sorting that out. And if you don’t know what Shock Treatment is, here have this trailer with a nightmarish opening. 

Dammit now I want to watch Shock Treatment again... so I am. Found it in full on YouTube, and I feel no shame in sharing that as it’s not on VOD, nor any streaming service, the DVD, which I own, is out of print, and the Blu Ray is a UK exclusive. This film both needs to be seen more and needs another proper US release damn it!

So naturally Goofy somehow finds Pete’s house.. I dunno maybe Peg’s been sending him letters. Can’t blame her for having a wondering eye long as she dosen’t act on it. She’s married to a walking lump of ego, selfishness and cholesterol and likely only held on as long as she did for the kids. Which for the record Peg as a child of divorce whose parents got divorced rather than keep up a sham marriage or anything.. it’s not worth it. I was MUCH happier that way in the long term. 

Anyways Peg and Goofy happily reunited while they awkardly try to get the kids to meet, with Goofy and PJ not warming up to each other at first, likely because Max just lost all his friends, and PJ clearly had none going into the series from context we’ll get later in the pilot. We also get a hilarious bit where Peg alternates between warmly greeting the goof’s and hilaroiusly shouting at Pistol to not play with worms.. in what honestly sounds like a protype for Miss Finster’s voice. 

Meanwhile the kids try to hide a small crack in Pete’s boat.. which he notices as he’s just about to steamroll the house despite NOT having asked Peg if she sold it yet and just assuming, possibly opening himself and her to a lawsuit

Pete Sucks Counter: 7

Discovering his boat is trashed, he has a comical panic attack, which I can forgive since this was 1992 and they weren’t as well known as a serious problem. Seriously while pete is a bastard man.. the animation on him is GORGEOUS as it is HILARIOUS, while Jim Cummings brings the hell out of it. He’s kept the roll for three decades as of next year for a reason. Goofy ends up accidently destroying his boat in the process of trying to help him as you’d expect. 

So Pete reluctantly lets the goofs sup with them.... and by reluctantly I mean he don’t wanna but Peg’s forcing him, which is pretty much the other half of their relationship in a nutshell: When pete isn’t lying and betraying her, Peg is forcing him to do stuff. As you can probably guess by how harsh i’ve been this aspect has aged INCREDIBLY poorly for me. This is your standard sitcom setup: asshole or dumbass or both dad, put upon wife who has to keep him in line.. but it’s just not how a GOOD marriage works and got so damn draining over time. Again and again we got things saying marriage is awful, comitting sucks unless your young, again and again. It’s why i’m REALLY happy we’ve been getting far better sitcom dad’s and marraiges lately. Bob’s Burgers is naturally the example, with the wife being the less sane one but both having their quriks and neither being so entirely dysfunctional you ever question the marriage. The Louds are another good example: Lynn Sr. And Rita NEVER right with each other that i’ve seen, have a perfectly happy relationship despite 11 kids, and wholly support each other, with Rita happily giving her husband the go ahead to quit his soul draining desk job so he could pursue his deream as a chef, and later letting him take a massive fincial gamble and open up a restraunt, purely because she belivied in him. Finally we have the Williams from Craig of the Creek who are easily one of the best married couples i’ve seen in western animation and one of them’s played by Terry Crews so that shoudln’t be a shock. I could prabobly find more but my points made: this trope REALLY ages the show poorly, more than any of hte 90′s specific tech or swinging theme song I just realized I forgot to talk about. Eh i’ll save it for the next episode. 

I have NEVER liked this trope anyway: only simpsons has really made it work for me and Family Guy did until they just stretched it too far, and with Simpsons at least they freqeuently have episodes pointing out how unehalthy it is. It dosen’t help this trope somehow STILL isn’t dead, as evidenced by the fact Rick and Morty has it in spades and for SOME damn reason got them back together.. I mean they don’t fight anymore but it dose’nt fix the problem. So yeah while I’m not holding against the show TERRRIBLY as this trope wasn’t as widespread at the time, it still dosen’t make it GOOD even at it’s core. 

Things get worse for Pete though as while Goofy praises him (And the Pete Kids rightfly wonder if Goofy is from space given the logic of ANYONE being that fond of pete. ) Pete finds out GOOFY bought the house he was going to demolish and will be staying with them till they move in. I have only one response to his misery....

Max also futzes with the tv which you THINK would lead to Peg finding out her husband is the antagonist of a Blumhouse movie but instead just does nothing. 

So then we have Dinner where we find out SUPRISINGLY, Pete actually has a somewhat valid reason for resenting Goofy: Goofy cost him the big game in high school as Goofy and Peg were on the cheerleading squad together and Goofy accidently kicked pete in the face at a crucial moment, which Pete got the blame for. Granted I did say SOMEWHAT: Goofy is genuinely apologetic and says Pete shouldn’t of been blamed and Pete’s apparently been hiding the truth from his kids this whole time. I do call bullshit on that as while admittedly i don’t get into local football or any sportsball, Pete works at a dealership. At least one asshole would bring it up to either rile him up or out of genuine rage at something that happened at the very least a decade and a half ago. Pete hasn’t let go of this footbullshit DESPITE owning a successful dealership, having two wonderful children, an even more wonderful wife, and a friggin nice boat.  But really.. it speaks to Pete’s character in any version: His ultimate undoing is his greed, his tendency to keep going and never settle. It’s something he oddly shares with Donald but Pete lacks Donald’s’s heart or redeeming moments. Pete just wants and wants and wants no matter who gets hurt because he’s inehently selfish and will simply TAKE It if he can’t get it. But it’s why he’s miserable, and ultimately ends up divorced: He can’t be satisfised so he often looses what he has. 

So with Pete on the rampage Peg sends the boys upstairs. It’s here we get PJ’s first Woobie Moment: He has a room FULL of cool toys, comics and what not but his dad is such a greedy asshole he refuses to let the kid actually use them. He even knows this isn’t normal but is just resigned to it. Rob Paulsen is phenomenal as PJ, being funny and energetic, snarky and off to the side or depressed and fearful all with grace and ease and all making this all feel like the same sweet kid. 

I mention this because Paulsen’s action is so good it highlights an issue with PJ: the writers lean way too hard into how much a hardass Pete is, to the point the series, likely intentionally, HEAVILY implies he physically abuses pete and the stuff on screen isn’t over the top enough, at least for tehse episodes, to get away with how he emotionally abuses him either. He talks down to him, doesn’t let him play toys and as seen by various episode synopsis and the next episode, uses mind games to keep him in line. THIS is why I can’t stand this version of Pete. He’s an abusive monster to this poor boy and I won’t stands for it, nor it being played off as a joke, especially since they try to ping pong between using it for comedy and using it seriously which just.. doesn’t work. 

So Max earns his future best pals’ friendship by trying to help him.. and succeeding by pointing out that while he said not to use the Tank anywhere on the ground.. he didn’t mention the celling or walls and has the tank going up the walls. And clearly by the fact PJ is seen sleeping with it later, despite Petes’ss anger at this, Peg presumably ripped him a new one once she found out about the toys thing. 

So that night Pete can’t sleep with Goofy tromping around the house and tries to whack him with a Golf Club. I’d give him another sucks count.. 

But given my brother lives in the basement and I sometimes accidently wake him by tromping overhead without meaning too, I DO get getting a bit fed up with someone clomping around and waking you up, and it is a slapstick cartoon so trying to physically assault someone is less of a crime here and more a setup for a punchline. 

So get an UTTERLY hilarious scene as teh combination fo tripping on golf balls and Goofy singing his family lullabye, camptown races with lyrics

So Pete proceeds to have another freak out this time RUNNING ALL THE WAY TO DUCKBURG, THROWING THE OLD MAN OUT OF THE CAR AND THEN BRINGING IN THE GOOF’S BEDS AND BOXES BEFORE TOSSING THEM IN THE HOUSE. It is truly an amazing combination of Jim’s utter talent as he babbles hialriously and the animators as they just make it sing. It’s a great climax to part one. So with that the goofs are home and Pete semeingly gets to go to sleep.. until they start working on unpacking. 

Final Thoughts On Good Neighbor Goof:

This is an excellent start to the series. The jokes are really well paced, the characters well introduced and the humor top notch> I had my complaints obviously.. but i’ts more systemic issues with the series, and stuff that honestly it dosen’t hamper my viewing experience for the most part. The PJ stuff does, but it’s not as big a deal this episode as he barely interacts with his Dad, but otherwise it’s stuff that just hasn’t aged well and they can’t be faulted for not seeing a deluge of terrible sitcoms a comin. The cast is top notch: I didn’t get to them in the proper review so Dana HIll deserves praise as Max, giving just the right amount of 90′s TV Kid mixed with real honest emotion and i’ts a tragedy she’s gone. She would’ve been right up there with the rest of this amazing cast in history. Though at least she got a worthy succesor.. but that’s not for now. For now we’re taking an interlude to look at the wonderfully 90′s music video that was aired along with this special:

Gotta Be Gettin Goofy:

This was my raw reaction to this video. Now is it bad? No the song has great flow it somehow manages to scratch Bill Farmer’s goofy vocals with the beat, the rapper makes the cheesy lyrics work, and the chorus of “gotta be getting goofy” backs a great bit. It’s not a bad SONG.. but the video is a hilariously insane mess. We have two of the poor dancers forced to wear just.. HORRIFYING looking Goofy costumes that look like the Dog based sequel to cats that thankfully only exists in my nightmares

I pityt hose poor dancers. Meanwhile the rest of the dancers are wearing Goofy Baseball uniforms and letterman jackets for some reason. is it beause Goofy likes sportsball. I thoguth they just had them lying around but now I see the g’s on the uniform. They CHOOSE to do this. Max also does a shredding guitar solo, not the max up there the animated max. Combine that with LOTS OF random clips from the show and you get this thing.. and i’ts worth a watch> it’s just hilarously what the shit.. not the most hilariously what the shit thing i’ve seen.. not even this week... that would be this thing from the Eurovision Song contest...

Your welcome. So moving on because this is already badly behind. 

Good Neighbor Goof:

So our second episode opens with the Goof’s trying to move in and pete being upset their being loud. Now being upset your neighbors are being loud is one thing: Mine set off fireworks all week around fourth of July. Granted Pete would probably be the one doing such nonsense but still, I get it.. but it’s fair to have a lot of noise when your moving in and in Goofy’s case also trying to patch up a massive hole in the place. 

So he does what any reasonable man would do and activates the earthquake machine he hid in the basement. 

I wasn’t kidding about the MODOK comparisons. Granted the thing uses a belt to somehow do this.. but it’s designed to SIMULATE AN EARTHQUAKE AN DDOES SO WELL. The only reason Goofy’s not dead is that pete uses a low setting that instead ends up unpacking everything. IT’s a neat gag but again... PETE HAS AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Which Goofy accidently destroys his boat with. Meanwhile the boys try to talk over tin can phones only for Pete to notice and try to stop it because he’s a dick and doesn’t want his son to be happy because he hates Goofy. So Pete’s idea of a punishment is for PJ to wear the family shoes to go crush cans while wearing a helmet and given Pete mutters to himself about this keeping PJ away from Max i’ts likely something that he made up to torture his son soooo..

Pete Sucks Counter: 8 Max being a good pal agrees to help his friend crush the cans down to recycle for money and comes up with a zany scheme to do so

Meanwhile we get a few scenes of Pete trying to eff with Goofy’s day: Peg is making food for Goofy like a good neighbor/someone planning for their eventual divorce, so Pete makes him some too with tons of hot sauce. By the laws of classic cartoons, naturally Goofy loves it and wonders if Pete has hot sauce, while Pete trying it explodes his head Scanner’s style. 

He then tries giving Goofy a chainsaw loaded with some kind of explosive or something... so yes he’s esclated to MURDER over.. Goofy annoying him a bunch as he’s apparently given up on the whole taking over that lot thing. 

Pete Sucks Counter: 9 But it is hilariously petty and naturally backfires again by cartoon law as Pete ends up starting it for Goofy who can’t get it going. 

Meanwhile PJ and Max inact the plan which is to drop a bolder with a rope on the cans, but end up having to ride the cans down when PJ lets it go too early and it ends up sweeping both boys on top of the box. They have fun though, with PJ actually getting to enjoy life for once and loving having a new friend.

So as his lot in life Pete has to ruin it by yelling at PJ for getting diryt, then for hanging out with max as he can SMELL the goof on him.. which means he’s either exaggerating or he knows what goofy smells like. 

So he forbids PJ to see him insluting max.. while Max is hanging out the window and ends up crying. Oh and Peg never gets involved in any of this across both parts, likely because she dosen’t know.. which makes it even MORE horrifying as it gives off the implication Pete gets away with his abuse of his son because he hides it, like a real world abuser. But even then some things like trying to break up his and Max’s friendship or the toys thing you’d THINK she’d notice. 

So we get more untetionally telling stuff as PJ says he’ll treasure this day and the only time he was happy.

Pete Sucks Count: 14 2 for the last scene, 3 for ALLL this one implies. But Max won’t give up the ghost no he won’t give it up. They haven’t the strength to hold on for long but if they both hold on together they can make each other strong. So he has a plan: have Goofy throw a Luau and invite the petes.

Peg naturally forces him to attend and Pete is a dick about it at first, but eventually enjoys himself when they do a conga line. The pets, Waffles and Chainsaw get into some antics. I do love Waffles because I love a kitty. Chainsaw is okay even though I love me a good doggo. Especially this one.

You are a Good Boy, Good Boy. But eventually while playing a party game about passing coconuts, Pete considers the coconut and considers the trees but dosen’t consider Goofy kicking him in the face AGAIN

So Pete is naturally a dick about this despite it being you know, an accident. But he takes it a step further by insulting Max Pete Sucks Count: 15 So Goofy gets mad. But here’s where a rather sizeable flaw shows up in the episode as Goofy.. acts exactly like Pete does about the insuing feud. He forbids Max to see PJ makes up rules and is generally petty and vindictive. And look Goofy could be in the shorts. He’s endlessly adaptable.. but here nothing about his character has shown he’d sink to this and it feels forced to bring abotu the climax. 

Thankfully said finale salvages thing: That night Max pulls PJ into his room via the cans, and comes up with a plan.. weirdly asking PJ to hit him with a muffin to save their friendship... but it’s not random it turns out. His plan.. is brilliant. While I really don’t like these types of feud between neighbors make our kids suffer by making them not be able to be friends because we’re being petty children plots, this one has a REALLY clever solution to that: Max and PJ FAKE an oversclated fued similar to their parents, starting with insutls and throwing mulch and escalting to taking down each others fences and then throwing food at each other, before injuring their dads with planks and stuff, nothing serious just slapstick stuff, all to get both to settle down and try and get the boys to stop fighting.. it works like a charm, it’s full of great bits like Peg offering the boys pie only for Max to use it as amuination and i’ts just a great way to end one of these episodes. Not that I WANT more of these episodes but if your going to do this stock plot you might as well be creative with it.

So we end on the Petes and Goofs having a BBQ, all friends again, with Pete having his marina and Goofy nearly burning Pete’s house down and us getting a photo to end the episode.

Final Thoughts:

This one was a step down. Pete’s abuse is REALLY highlighted here and the plot is very paint by numbers and forces Goofy to be out of character for the last act for it to work at all. He just strikes me as too genuine and noble to hold onto a grudge this easily. Peg is also reduced from her usual feisty self to being oddly useless, not stepping in at ANY point to stop any of this depsite it being grossly otu of character. There’s a few great gags and a great climax, but the whole product is just okay

Later Today: Goof Week and Goofy’s birthday continue as I complete the trilogy of Shortstaculars with one about my boy! Featuring Goofy’s first apperance, his first short and the first apperance of what would eventually become Max! 

If you liked this review, follow me for more and consider joining my Patreon which you can find RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month helps me keep doing these and more gets me to my stretch goals, the next one up being the two remaining ducktales mini series, a darkwing duck episode a month and a reivew of the danny phantom film the ultimate enemy. And even a buck a month gets you access to exclusvie reviews, my patreon exclusive discord and to pick a short any time I do one of my shortstaculars. My next one is for Donald’s birthday next montha nd there’s only 6 days left to get on that pay cycle so if that sounds good to you get on in NOW while you still can and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[thecleverdame]

Control and Release - 31

Series Masterlist

TEDTalk!Sam x Reader

Summary: After the rest of the staff is caught in a snowstorm, you find yourself acting as a personal assistant to the notorious Sam Winchester. As the arrangement becomes more defined, you and Sam begin a sexual adventure with dangerous consequences.  

Warnings: Dom/Sub, humiliation, embarrassment, sexual objectification, mutual masturbation, spanking, cum play, fingering, anal play, orgasm control, nipple clamps, dub-con, breath play.

Beta: @ilikaicalie

Parts 1-39 are currently available on Patreon for a monthly pledge of $2.50. This includes early access to all my stories, including Patreon exclusive content.  >> CLICK HERE <<

-

“These are all my dirty secrets?” You look in trepidation at the folder on the table in front of you.

 It’s thicker than anticipated. 

“Everyone one of them.” Charlie is a perky, energetic redhead that’s the exact opposite of what you expected. Sam’s talked about her like she’s Sherlock Holmes, and to be honest you assumed she was a man. “Or least what I could dig up. I can confidently say that if I couldn’t find it, no one else will either.” 

Glancing at Sam you open the cover and scan over the top page. It’s a basic list of your personal details, where you’ve lived, who you’ve dated. 

“Is there anything we should be concerned about?” Sam asks. He slides his arm over the back of the couch behind you. 

Charlie hesitates, looking at Sam and then speaks to you. 

“Are you comfortable doing this with him here? I mean, it can get real weird real quick for both of you.” 

“I can leave if you want,”  Sam offers. 

“No.” You swallow the urge to take him up on the offer. “No secrets, right? This is my life.”

“Okay.” Charlie opens her laptop. “There was a polaroid of you in your underwear at a party in your senior year of high school. But we had it taken off Facebook and I was able to purchase the original.”

“It was on Facebook?” You’re both horrified and impressed. You had no idea “How did you even find it?”

“It’s what I do,” she chirps, already moving on. “You’re pretty boring compared to the people I usually investigate. No DUIs or cheating. But you did date a man named Jasper.”

“Oh Jesus.” You want to crawl under the table. Your time with Jasper wasn’t as much a traditional relationship as a hook-up that lasted a year. He never came close to what you and Sam enjoy together, it was all about sex. “I’m sorry.” You turn to Sam who’s throwing you a terrifying, forced smile. 

“Don’t be sorry,” he murmurs, a hand slipping over your thigh and wedging between your legs. 

“Did you make a sex tape with him?” Charlie asks and you choke on your own spit. 

“No, I mean, I don’t think we ever…”

“Is there a chance he recorded you without your knowledge?”

“Maybe.” You search your memory. Everything from that time is hazy, the two of you drank a lot. “I mean, I don’t know. You think he recorded me?”

“I think he has something.” Charlie’s attention switches to Sam and she morphs into all-business mode. “He was interested in why I was asking questions. When I made an initial offer for any videos or pictures he might have he acted like he had something. But I think he realized it was valuable and kicked me out of his apartment.”

“You offered the maximum?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah, he didn’t go for it.”

“Double it and see what he does.”

“Got it.” She stops to make a note.

“He has a sex tape with me in it?” You’re not past this yet. You look to Sam who’s unreadable. “I had no idea. I mean I eventually realized he was a creep but I never thought he would do something like that. What if he posts it?”

“Don’t worry,” he nods, sliding a hand over your knee. “I’ll handle it.”

“Other than Jasper, you and Sam are actually the biggest potential issue. I read Cole’s report. It’s concerning despite your prior relationship. If the wrong person got a copy of his written complaint it would be damaging. I think you can expect the real story to revolve around the fact that Sam intervened when a mad man was shooting up the office. You can choose how you want to spin that. If you decide you want some heroic meet-cute to be the official story then I can erase any trace of your relationship before the shooting happened. If you want me to leave some crumbs confirming you were together prior, I can do that to. And if you want a lid on the whole thing, no problem.”

“People will care?” you ask. 

“Oh, for sure.” She chuckles, looking at you like you’re a moron. “Sam’s personal life has been a lockbox. You’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to him.”

“Wonderful.” This would all be so much easier if he wasn’t so well off. If he hadn’t been quite as successful all these precautions could be avoided. 

“Just tell me what kind of story you want out there and I’ll start planting the seeds.” She grins at Sam with a warm familiarity. Few people interact with him this easily. There must be quite a back story. 

“We’ll talk about it,” Sam answers for you, shifting in his seat. “Anything else?”

“That’s all for her.”

“You have my background as well?”

“I do.” She pulls a thinner file from her bag and you look at him in surprise. 

“She did one on you too?”

“Charlie has been the keeper of my secrets for a decade. She makes sure any possible indiscretions stayed buried,” Sam explains. 

Charlie is looking between you and Sam, asking a silent question. 

“You can say whatever you need to in front of her.” Sam turns to you. “You can leave if you feel uncomfortable.” 

You find yourself suddenly nervous. Sam’s past is largely a mystery and you’re not sure if you want to know. Were there others before you? 

“The woman you had a financial arrangement with is not a problem. It’s Madison I’m concerned about.”

Financial arrangement? That piques your interest but the conversation moves on. 

“It’s been years. You don’t think she’s gotten past it?” Sam shifts beside you, betraying his discomfort for the entire situation. He’s rarely visibly distressed but there’s no covering this up. His reaction may be subtle but it’s there. 

“She still Googles you once a week.” Charlie turns her computer toward Sam. You don’t understand you’re looking at, but he seems to. Sam takes interest in something on the screen and you feel him stiffen beside you. “She’s living in Boston again?”

“She moved back last year,” Charlie confirms. 

“You didn’t tell me.” Sam’s tone shifts to his trademark disapproval but it doesn’t seem to phase the perky redhead.

“I update when I think there’s a concern. This wasn’t a red flag for me. She’s from Boston. Her father is sick. She got a good job at a tech firm. It looks to me like she came home to be near her family...or...”

“Or?” Sam asks. 

“Or she came back to be close to you. It’s hard to tell with her. Madison has always been a wild card. You know how to pick ‘em.” Her eyes dart to you, offering an apologetic grin. “Present company excluded.”  

You just sit there taking in these new tidbits of information. A trail of breadcrumbs that lead to the story that was Sam’s life before you. 

“Do you think she would try to hurt Sam?” you ask and two pairs of eyes look at each other before turning to you. “Or me?”

“She’s not that kind of crazy,” Charlie assures you. “But she would love to embarrass Sam. Make things hard for him. She’s still pissed he cut her off.” 

“I see.” You sit back as they continue talking details. You’ll have questions for him later but right now your mind is swirling. Your ex hook-up has a possible homemade sex tape of you doing God knows what, and Sam apparently hired a hooker.

“And what about Dean and my father?” Sam squeezes your knee, bringing you to attention. 

“What about them?” You lean forward with interest. 

“They’re hard to track.” Charlie closes her computer and sits back. There’s no documentation of this inquiry. Nothing to tie either of them to the wanted Winchesters. 

“That can’t surprise you.” Sam nods. “But you’re good.”

“Yes, I am.” She offers a little bow of her head. “I had to track the weird to find them.”

“What do you mean?” you ask. 

“They like the crazy stuff, ghosts, and monsters. So I kept an eye out for any weird happenings. Some lady in New Jersey claimed a sewer monster stole her baby. And you’ll never guess who popped up in town at some shitty motel the next day.”

Taking out her phone she pulls up a photo and holds it out for you and Sam to see. It’s a grainy security camera shot of Dean with a baseball cap pulled over his face. 

“When was this?” Sam inquires. 

“Six weeks ago. Your brother is staying along the eastern seaboard. Investigating paranormal bullshit in Vermont, Maine, Connecticut. Occasionally he’ll pop up in the midwest, but for the most part, he’s staying close.” 

“To me.” Sam’s not asking, he already knows. 

“Yeah, that would be my guess. I did a sweep of your office buildings, homes and so on. I found a digital hole in your home security cameras. Someone created a backdoor into the system so they could have unfettered access.”

“He’s watching us?” Dean’s been on your mind ever since the encounter in the kitchen over a year ago. But now it seems your concerns were in fact warranted. 

“Maybe,” she continues. “It’s hard to tell with him. He might be watching. Maybe he’s visiting, editing the footage to cover his tracks. Or maybe it’s not Dean at all.”

“Who else would it be?” you ask, afraid of the answer. “FBI?”

“My father,” Sam sighs. 

“It’s a possibility.” Charlie shrugs. “Unfortunately it’s impossible to tell what they’re up to.”

“What’s your gut instinct?” Sam asks Charlie. 

“I think they’re keeping an eye on you...and her.” She looks you dead on. “If you want to know why your guess is as good as mine. They believe some insane stuff, Sam. End of the world, apocalypse wack-a-doo shit. They could just be trying to keep you safe. But there’s always the possibility of something else. Y/N was right to be concerned.”

“Perfect,” Sam laughs dryly, rolling his eyes. “This is the last thing I need right now.”

“I liaised with your new security guy.  He knows what’s going on with your family, Madison, the whole shebang. He’s working on Y/N’s apartment and your house to seal the leaks. I’ll schedule a meeting for the three of us when you get back to Boston.”

“Sounds good.” Sam stands as Charlie collects her things and you stay seated. “Thank you for everything. As always, you’re invaluable.” 

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” She laughs. “Nice to meet you, Y/N.”

“You too.” You wave her off, watching as Sam locks the door after her departure. He shoves a hand in his pocket, the two of you staring at each other in silence. 

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“Oh, more than you wanna know.” Running a hand down your face you categorize the evening. Sex scandals, stalkers, fugitives from justice...where to start. “You paid for sex?”

“Technically, no.” Sam walks over to sit on the couch across the coffee table. 

“What does that mean?”

“It means I never fucked her.”

“Okay, but you hired a hooker?”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t have sex with her?”

“No.” His jaws ticks. He doesn’t want to answer these questions. “She sucked my dick. She allowed me to do things to her, but I never fucked her. Would you like the details?”

“Jesus,” you sigh. “No. God...fuck. And the other woman, Madison, she was your girlfriend?” 

“No. She and I had an arrangement. The same as you and I had when this started. She worked for W & S. It only lasted a few months. She became attached, somewhat obsessive. She believed we were more than our arrangement and I put an end to it.” He stares at you, still as a statue. 

“Okay.” You hate the very idea of him with someone else. The thought of another woman makes you angry, but he’s being honest, and honesty is everything so you swallow the urge to take it out on him. “What are we going to do about your family?”

“I’ll give you the details as soon as I have them,” he offers. “We’ll have increased security.”

“Good.” Racking your brain you try to make sure you’ve covered everything. “Oh! Jasper, are you sure Charlie will be able to get that video...if there is one, I mean.” 

“She has her ways and I have money. Everyone has a price. We just need to find his.”

You’re both quiet again. Things feel unsettled, awkward for the first time in a long time. And you only know one way to reset this feeling. There are times when having Sam in complete control makes you feel the safest. 

“Sam,” you start, watching him sigh in response. He’s expecting more questions. 

“Yes?” he asks, looking at you expectantly. 

“I’d like you to spank me now.” This request makes your cheeks hot with anticipation. His face morphs from controlled irritation to pure lust, eyes narrow, a grin pulling at his mouth. “With your belt.”

“Take off your clothes and lay across my lap,” he instructs, already working at his buckle. “Get the gag. We can’t have you making too much noise.” 

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook - Endnote 4: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship - is a little different. This installment was presented live at Solidarity Lowell, and includes a bonus Q&A section. This video expands on the ideas put forth in How to Radicalize a Normie.

If you would like more videos like this to come out, please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

He is intriguing, yet unpredictable. He demands unconditional loyalty. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of what people want to hear but no actual empathy; he treats others as simply bodies or objects. And he’s surrounded by a network of subordinates but the personnel is always changing.

Does it sound like I’m describing The President? Because these are, according to Alexandra Stein, qualities of a cult leader.

Hi. My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, the flagship endeavor of which is currently The Alt-Right Playbook, a series on the political and rhetorical strategies the Alt-Right uses to legitimize itself and gain power. And, if that sounds interesting to you, and you haven’t already, please like share and subscribe.

The most recent episode of The Alt-Right Playbook is about how people get recruited into these largely online reactionary communities like the Alt-Right, a subject which, as it turns out, is real fuckin’ hard to research.

What I want to talk about with you today is how I go about studying a population that is incredibly hostile towards being studied. It involves finding the bits and pieces of the Alt-Right that we do have data on - the pockets of good research, the outsider observations, the stories of lived experience - as well as looking at older movements the Alt-Right grew out of, that have been extensively researched, and spotting the ways the Alt-Right is continuous with them, and trying to extrapolate how those structures might recreate themselves in the social media age.

So it’s… a lot. And, in the process of researching, I found a wealth of interesting perspectives that, by focusing the video on recruitment specifically, I barely dipped a toe in. All that stuff is what I’d like to get into with you today. But I’m trying to thread a needle here: you don’t need to have seen my video, How to Radicalize a Normie, to follow this talk, but, if you have seen it already, I will try not to be redundant. This talk is one part making my case for why I think the conclusions in that video are correct, one part repository for all the stuff I couldn’t get into, and one part how I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right as a result of this research, including some pet theories I wouldn’t feel right claiming as truth without further research, but I do think are on the right track.

This talk is called Isolation, Engulfment, and Pain: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship. We’re going to cover a lot of ground, from information processing to emotional development, but we’re necessarily also going to cover racism and violence and abuse dynamics. So this is an introduction and a content warning: if some of these subjects are particularly charged for you, no offense will be taken if you at any point leave the room. I have to research this stuff for a living, and it is rough, and sometimes I have to step away. We don’t judge here.

Now. Requisite dash of self-deprecation: don’t give me too much credit for all this. I am proud of the work I do and I think I’m genuinely good at it, but much of this video was compiling the work of others. Besides research I had already done and my own observations, the video had 27 sources: three books, five research papers, six articles, one leaked document, three testimonials, four videos, four pages of statistics, and one Twitter joke. I also spoke to four professional researchers who study right-wing extremism and one former Alt-Righter.

Without all their hard work, I would have nothing to compile.

OK? Let’s begin.

We’re gonna center on those three main texts: Alt-America by David Neiwert, a history of the Alt-Right’s origins; Healing from Hate by Michael Kimmel, about how young men get into (and out of) extremist groups, be they neo-Nazi or jihadist; and Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein, about how people are courted by and kept inside cults and totalitarian regimes.

I began with Kimmel. The premise of Healing from Hate is that extremist groups tend to be between 75 and 90% male, and that you cannot understand radical conservatism without looking at it through the lens of toxic masculinity. Which makes it all the more disappointing that Kimmel has been accused by multiple women of bullying and harassment. I found the book incredibly useful, and we’re still going to talk about it, I just need to caveat here that retweets are not endorsements. Also, if I spoil the book for you then you don’t need to buy it, give your money to someone who isn’t a creep.

Kimmel’s argument is that extremism begins with a pain peculiar to young men. He calls it “aggrieved entitlement.” I call it Durden Syndrome. You know that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden says, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rockstars, but we won’t, we’re slowly learning that fact, and we are very, very pissed off”? Yeah, that. As men, the world promised us something, and the promise wasn’t kept.

Some men skew towards social progressivism when they realize this promise was never made to women, or men of color, or queer or trans or nonbinary people, and recognize the injustice of that. Some men skew towards economic leftism when they realize that every cishet white man being a millionaire rockstar movie god is mathematically impossible. But they skew towards reactionary conservatism when they feel the promise should have been kept. That’s the life they were supposed to have, and someone took it from them.

Hate groups appeal to that sense of emasculation. “You wanna feel like a Real Man? Shave off your hair, dance to hatecore, and let’s beat the crap out of someone.” Kimmel notes that the greatest indicator someone will join a hate group is a broken home: divorce, foster care, parents with addictions, physical or sexual abuse. The greater the distance between the life they were promised and the life they are living, the more enticing Real Masculinity becomes. Their fellow extremists are brothers, the leaders father figures.

The group does give them someone to blame for their lot in life - immigrants, feminists, the Jewish conspiracy - but that’s not why they join. They’re after empowerment. According to Kimmel, “Their embrace of neo-Nazi ideology is a consequence of their recruitment and indoctrination process, not its cause."

But once an Other has been identified as the locus of a hate group’s hate, new recruits are brought along when the group terrorizes that Other. Events like cross burnings and street fights are dangerous and morally fraught, and are often traumatic for a new recruit. And experiencing an emotional or physical trauma can create an intense bond with the people experiencing it with him, even though they’re the ones who brought him to the traumatic event in the first place. The creation of this bond is one of the reasons some hate groups usher new recruits out into the field as early as possible: the sooner they are emotionally invested in the community, the faster they will embrace the community’s politics.

This Othering also estranges recruits from the people they are supposed to hate, which makes it hard to stop hating them.

So there’s this concept that comes up a lot in my research called Contact Hypothesis. Contact Hypothesis argues that, the more contact you have with a different walk of life, the easier it is to tolerate it. It’s like exposure therapy. We talk about how big cities and college campuses tend to be liberal strongholds; the Right likes to claim this is because of professors and politicians poisoning your mind, but it’s really just because they’re diverse. When you share space with a lot of different kinds of people, a degree of liberalism becomes necessary just to get by. And we see that belief systems which rely on a strict orthodoxy get really cagey about members having contact with outsiders. We see this in all the groups we’re discussing today - extremists, cultists, totalitarians - but also religious fundamentalists; Mormons only wanna send their kids to Brigham Young. They are belief systems that can only be reliably maintained so long as no one gets exposed to other people with other beliefs.

So that’s some of what I took from Kimmel. Next I read Stein talking, primarily, about cults.

Stein’s window into all of this is applying the theory of Attachment Styles to what researchers calls totalism, which is any structure that subsumes a person’s entire life the way cults and totalitarian governments do. Attachment is a concept you may be familiar with if have, or have ever dated, a therapist. (I’ve done both.)

So, for a quick primer:

Imagine you’re walking in the park with a three-year-old. And the three-year-old sees a dog, and ask, “Can I pet the dog?” And you say yes, and the kid steps away from your side and reaches out. And the dog gets excited, and jumps up, and the kid gets scared and runs back to you. So you hold the kid and go, “Oh, no no no, don’t worry! They’re not gonna hurt you! They were just happy to see you!” And you take a few moments to calm the kid down, and then you ask, “Do you still want to pet the dog?” And the kid says “yes,” so they step away from you again and reach out. The dog jumps up again, but this time the kid doesn’t run away, and they pet the dog, and you, the kid, and the dog are all happy. Hooray!

This is a fundamental piece of a child’s emotional development. They take a risk, have a negative experience, and retreat to a point of comfort. Then, having received that comfort, feel bolstered enough to take a slightly greater risk. A healthy childhood is steadily venturing further and further from that point of comfort, and taking on greater risks, secure in the knowledge that safety is there when they need it. And, as an adult, they will form many interdependent points of comfort rather than relying on only one or two.

If all goes according to plan, that is Secure Attachment. But: sometimes things go wrong when the kid seeks comfort and doesn’t get enough. This may be because the adult is withholding or the kid doesn’t know how to express their needs or they’re just particularly fearful. But the kid may start seeking comfort more than seems reasonable, and be particularly averse to risk, and over-focus on the people who give them comfort, because they’re operating at a deficit. We call that Anxious Attachment. Alternately, the kid may give up on receiving comfort altogether, even though they still need it, and just go it alone, developing a distrust of other people and a fear of being vulnerable. We call that Avoidant Attachment.

Now, these styles are all formed in early childhood, but Stein focuses on a fourth kind of Attachment, one that can be formed at any age regardless of the Attachment Style you came in with. It’s what happens when the negative experience and the comfort come from the same place. We see it in children and adults who are mistreated by the people they trust. It’s called Disorganized Attachment.

According to Stein, cults foster Disorganized Attachment by being intensely unpredictable. In a cult, you may be praised for your commitment on Monday and have your commitment questioned on Tuesday, with no change in behavior. You may be assigned a romantic partner, who may, at any point, be taken away, assigned to someone else. Your children may be taken from you to be raised by a different family. You may be told the cult leader wants to sleep with you, which may make you incredibly happy or be terrifying, but you won’t be given a choice. And the rules you are expected to follow will be rewritten without warning.

This creates a kind of emotional chaos, where you can’t predict when you will be given good feelings and when you will be given bad ones. But you’re so enmeshed in the community you have noplace else to go for good feelings; hurting you just draws you in deeper, because they are also where you seek comfort. And your pain is always your fault: you wouldn’t feel so shitty if you were more committed. Trying to make sense of this causes so much confusion and anguish that you eventually just stop thinking for yourself. These are the rules now? OK. He’s not my brother anymore? OK. This is my life now? OK.

Hardly anyone would seek out such a dynamic, which is why cults present as religions, political activists, and therapy groups; things people in questioning phases of their lives are liable to seek out, and then they fall down the rabbit hole before they know what’s happening. The cult slowly consumes more and more of a recruit’s life, and tightly controls access to relationships outside the cult, because the biggest threat to a Disorganized Attachment relationship is having separate, Securely Attached points of comfort.

And at this point I said, “Hold up. You’re telling me cults recruit by offering people community and purpose in times of need, become the focal point of their entire lives, estrange them from all outside perspectives, and then cause emotional distress that paradoxically makes them more committed because they have nowhere else to go for support?”

Isn’t that exactly how Kimmel described joining a hate group?

Now, these are commonalities, not a one-to-one comparison. A cult is far more organized and rigidly controlled than a hate group. But Stein points out that this dynamic of isolation, engulfment, and pain is the same dynamic as an abusive relationship. The difference is just scale. A cult is functionally a single person having a very complex domestic abuse situation with a whole lot of people, #badpolyamory.

So if we posit a spectrum with domestic abuse on one end and cults and totalitarianism on the other, I started wondering, could we put extremist groups, like ISIS and Aryan Nations, around… here?

And, if so, where would we put the Alt-Right?

Now, I have to tread carefully here. There are reasons this talk is called “How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship” and not “How the Alt-Right is Like a Cult,” because the moment you say the second thing, a lot of people stop listening to you. Our conception of cults and totalitarianism is way more controlled and structured than a pack of loud, racist assholes on the internet. But we’re not talking about organizational structure, we’re talking about a relationship, an emotional dynamic Stein calls “anxious dependency,” which fosters an irrational loyalty to people who are bad for you and gets you to adopt an ideology you would have previously rejected. (I would also love to go on a rant puncturing the idea that cultists and fascists are organized, pointing out this notion is propaganda and their systems are notoriously corrupt and mismanaged, but we don’t have time; ask me about it in the Q&A if you want me to go off.)

So I started looking through what I knew, and what I could find, about the Alt-Right to see if I could spot this same pattern of isolation, engulfment, and pain online funneling people towards the Alt-Right. And I did not come up short.

Isolation? Well, the Alt-Right traffics in all the same dehumanizing narratives about their enemies as Kimmel’s hate groups - like, the worst things you can imagine a human being saying about a group of people are said every day in these forums. They often berate and harass each other for any perceived sympathy towards The Other Side. They also regularly harass people from The Other Side off of platforms, and falsely report their tweets, posts, and videos as terrorism to get them taken down. (This has happened to me, incidentally.) I found figureheads adored by the Alt-Right who expressly tell people to cut ties with liberal family members.

We talked before about Contact Hypothesis? There’s also this idea called Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. A parasocial relationship is a strong emotional connection that only goes one way, like if you really love my videos and have started thinking of me almost as a friend even though I don’t know you exist? Yeah. Parasocial relationship. They’ve been in The Discourse lately, largely thanks to my friend Shannon Strucci making a really great video about them (check it out, I make a cameo, but… clear your schedule). Parasocial Contact Hypothesis is this phenomenon where, if people form parasocial feelings for public figures or even fictional characters, and those people happen to be Black, white audience members become less racist similar to how they would if they had Black friends. Your logical brain knows that these are strangers, but your lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between empathy for a queer friend and empathy for a queer character in a video game. So of course the Alt-Right makes a big stink about queer characters in video games, and leads boycotts against “forced diversity,” because diverse media is bad for recruitment.

Engulfment? Well, I learned way too much about how the Alt-Right will overtake your entire internet life. There was a paper made the rounds last year by Rebecca Lewis charting the interconnectedness of conservative YouTube. (Reactionaries really hated this paper because it said things they didn’t like.) Lewis argues that, once you enter what she calls the Alternative Influence Network, it tends to keep you inside it. Start with some YouTuber conservatives like but who’s branded as a moderate, or even a “classic liberal.” Take someone like Dave Rubin; call Dave Rubin Alt-Right, people yell at you, I speak from experience. Well, Dave Rubin’s had Jordan Peterson on his show, so, if you watch Rubin, Peterson ends up in your recommendations. Peterson has been on the Joe Rogan show, so, you watch Peterson, Rogan ends up in your recommendations. And Rogan has interviewed Gavin McInnes, so you watch Rogan and McInnes ends up in your recommendations.

Gavin McInnes is the head of the Proud Boys, a self-described “western chauvinist” organization that’s mostly known for beating up liberals and leftists. They have ties to neo-fascist groups like Identity Evropa and neo-fascist militias like the Oath Keepers, they run security for white nationalists, and their lawyer just went on record that he identifies as a fascist. And, if you’re one of these kids who has YouTube in the background with autoplay on, and you’re watching Dave Rubin? You might be as few as 3 videos away from watching Gavin McInnes.

There’s a lot of talk these days about algorithms funneling people towards the Right, and that’s not wrong, but it’s an oversimplification. The real problem is that the Right knows how to hijack an algorithm.

I also learned about the Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral from a piece by Mike Caulfield. Caulfiend uses the horrific example of Dylann Roof. You remember him? He shot up a church in a Black neighborhood a few years ago. Roof says he was radicalized when he googled “Black on white crime” and saw the results. Now, if you search the phrase “crime statistics by demographic,” you will find fairly nonpartisan results that show most crimes are committed against members of the perpetrator’s own race, and Black people commit crimes against white people at about the same rate as any other two demographics. But that specific phrase, “Black on white crime,” is used almost exclusively by white racists, and so Roof’s first hit wasn’t a database of crime statistics, it was the Council of Conservative Citizens. Now, the CCC is an outgrowth of the White Citizens Councils of the 50’s and 60’s which rebranded in ‘85. They publish bogus statistics that paint Black people as uniquely violent. And they introduce a number of other politically-loaded phrases - like, say, “Muslim fertility rates” - that nonpartisan sites don’t use, and so, if Roof googles them as well, he gets similarly weighted results.

I have tons more examples of this stuff. I literally don’t have time to show it all. Like, have you heard of Google bombing? That’s a thing I didn’t know existed. The point is, the same way search engines tailor your results to what they think you want, once you scratch the surface of the Alt-Right they are highly adept at making it so, whenever you go online, their version of reality is all you know and all you see.

Finally, pain. This was the difficult one. Can you create a Disorganized Attachment relationship over the internet with a largely faceless and decentralized movement? I pitched the idea to one the researchers I spoke to, and he said, “That sounds very plausible, and nearly impossible to research.” See, cults and hate groups? They don’t wanna talk to researchers anymore than the Alt-Right wants to talk to me. Stein and Kimmel get their data by speaking to formers, people who’ve exited these movements and are all too happy to share how horrible they were. But the Alt-Right is still very young, and there just aren’t that many formers yet.

I found some testimonials, and they mostly back up my hypothesis, but there’s not enough that I could call them statistically significant. So I had to look where the data was.

My fellow YouTuber ContraPoints made a video last year - in my opinion, her best one - about incels (that’s “involuntary celibate,” men who can’t get laid). Incel forums tend to be deeply misogynistic and antifeminist, and have a high overlap with the Alt-Right. If you remember Elliot Rodger, he was an incel. Contra’s observation was that these forums were incredibly fatalistic: you are too ugly and women too shallow for you to ever have sex, so you should give up. She described a certain catharsis, like picking a really painful scab, in hearing other people voice your worst fears. But there was no uplift; these communities seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for optimism. She likened it so some deeply unhealthy trans forums she used to visit, where people wallowed in their own dysphoria.

And I remembered the forums I researched five years ago in preparation for my video on GamerGate. (If you don’t know what GamerGate was, I will not rob you of your precious innocence. But, in a lot of ways, GamerGate was the trial run for what the Alt-Right has become.) These forums were full of angry guys surrounding themselves with people saying, “You’re right to be angry.” And, yeah, if everywhere else you go treats your anger as invalid, that scratches an itch. But I never saw any of them calm down. They came in angry and they came out angrier. And most didn’t have anywhere else to vent, so they all came back.

I found a paper on Alt-Right forums that described a similar type of nihilism, and another on 8chan. What humor was on these sites was always shocking, furiously punching down, and deeply self-referential, but it didn’t seem like anyone was expected to laugh anymore, just, you know, catch the reference. I found one testimonial saying that having healthy relationships in these spaces is functionally impossible, and the one former I talked to said, yeah, when the Alt-Right isn’t winning everyone’s miserable.

So I think it might fit. The place they go for relief also makes them unhappy, so they come back to get relief again, and it just repeats. Same reason people stay with abusers. I wanna look into this further, so, I’ll just say this part to the camera: if there are any researchers watching who wanna study this, get at me.

Finally, I read Alt-America by David Neiwert, a supremely useful book that I highly recommend if you wanna know how the Alt-Right is the natural outgrowth of the militia and Patriot movements of the 90’s and early 2000’s, not to mention the Tea Party. Neiwert also does an excellent job illustrating how conspiracism serves to fill in the gap between the complexity of the modern world and the simplistic, might-makes-right worldview of fascism.

Neiwert also provides an interesting piece of the puzzle, suggesting what people are actually looking for when they get recruited. He references work done by John Bargh and Katelyn McKenna on Identity Demarginalization. Bargh and McKenna looked at the internet habits of people whose identities are both devalued in our society and invisible. By invisible, what I mean is, ok, if you’re a person of color, our society devalues your identity, but you can look around a room and, within a certain margin of error, see who else is POC, and form community with them if you wish. But, if you’re queer, you can’t see who else in a room is queer unless one of you runs up a flag. And revealing yourself always means taking on a certain amount of risk that you’ve misread the signals, that the person you reveal yourself to is not only not queer, but a homophobe.

According to Bargh and McKenna, people in this situation are much more likely to seek online spaces that self-select for that identity. A fan forum for RuPaul’s Drag Race is maybe a safer place to come out and find community. And people tend to get very emotionally tied to these online spaces where they can be themselves.

Neiwert points out that the same phenomenon happens among privileged people who have identities that are devalued even as they’re not actually oppressed. Say, nerds, or conservatives in liberal towns, or men who don’t fit traditional notions of masculinity. They are also likely to deeply invest themselves in online spaces made for them. And if the Far Right can build such a community, or get a foothold in one that already exists, it is very easy to channel that sense of marginalization into Durden Syndrome. I connected this with Rebecca Lewis’ observation that the Alternative Influence Network tends to present itself as nerd-focused life advice first and politics second, and the long history of reactionaries recruiting from fandoms.

So I can see all the pieces of the abuse dynamic being recreated here: offer you something you need, estrange you from other perspectives and healthy relationships, overtake your life, and provoke emotional distress that makes you seek comfort only your abuser is offering. And I found a lot more parallels than what I’m sharing right now, I only have half an hour! But the thing that’s missing that’s usually central to such a system is, an abusive relationship orbits around the abuser, a cult around the cult leader, a totalitarian government around a dictator. They are built to serve the whims of an individual. But I look at the ad hoc nature of the Alt-Right and I have to ask: who is the architect?

I can see a lot of people profiting off of this structure; our current President rode it to great success, but he didn’t build it. It predates him. It’s more like Kimmel’s hate groups, which don’t promote an individual so much as a class of individuals, but, even then, their structure is much more deliberate, designed, where the Alt-Right seems almost improvised.

Well… one observation I took from Stein is that cult recruiters often rely on two different kinds of propaganda: the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche. The diatribe is when someone talks at length, sounds smart, and seems to know what they’re talking about but isn’t actually making sense, and the thought-terminating cliche comes from Robert Jay Lifton’s studies into brainwashing. So, I went vegetarian in middle school, and, when I would tell other kids I was vegetarian, some would get kind of defensive and say things like, “humans aren’t meant to be vegetarian, it’s the food chain.” Now, saying “it’s the food chain” isn’t meant to be a good argument, it’s meant to communicate “I have said something so axiomatically true that the argument need not continue.” That’s a thought-terminating cliche; something that may not be true, but feels true and gives you permission to think about something else.

Both these techniques rely on what’s called Peripheral-Route Processing. So, I’m up here talking about politics, and, Solidarity Lowell, you are a group of politically-engaged people, so you probably have enough context to know whether I’m talking out of my ass. That’s Direct-Route Processing, where you judge the contents of my argument. But if I were up here talking about string theory, you might not know whether I was talking out of my ass because there’s only so many people on Earth who understand string theory. So then you might look at secondary characteristics of my argument: the fact that I’ve been invited to speak on string theory implies I know what I’m talking about; maybe I put up a lot of equations and drop the names of mathematicians and say they agree with me; maybe I just sound really authoritative. All that’s Peripheral-Route Processing: judging the quality of my argument by how it’s delivered.

Every act of communication involves both, but if you’re trying to sell people on something that’s fundamentally irrational, you’re going to rely heavily on Peripheral-Route tactics, which is what the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche are.

I noted that these two methods mapped pretty cleanly onto the rhetorical stylings of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. But here’s the question: cults use these techniques to recruit people. But can I say with any confidence that Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are trying to recruit people into the Alt-Right?

The thing is, “Alt-Right” isn’t a term like “klansman.” It’s more akin to a term like “modernism.” It’s a label applied to a trend. In the same way we debate the line between modernism and postmodernism, we debate the line between Right and Alt-Right. People don’t sign up to be in the Alt-Right, you are Alt-Right if you say you’re Alt-Right. But the nature of the Alt-Right is that 90% of them would never admit to it.

So are Peterson and Shapiro intentionally recruiting for the Alt-Right? Are they grifters merely profiting off of the Alt-Right? Are they even aware they’re recruiting for the Alt-Right? Part of my work has been accepting that you can’t know for sure. It would be naive to say they’re unaware; when they give speeches they get Nazis in their Q&A sections, and they know that. But how aware are they? I suspect Shapiro moreso than Peterson, but that’s just my gut talking and I can’t prove it. Like 90% of the Alt-Right, it’s debatable.

I don’t know if they’re trying to be part of this system, I just know they’re not trying not to be.

A final academic term before we say goodnight that’s been making the rounds among lefty YouTubers is “Stochastic Terrorism.” There’s a really great video about this by the channel NonCompete called The PewDiePipeline. Stochastic Terrorism is the myriad ways you can increase the likelihood that someone will commit violence without actually telling them to. You simply create an environment in which lone wolf violence becomes more acceptable and appealing. It mirrors the structure of terrorism without the control or culpability.

And I hear about this, and I look at this recruitment structure I see approximated in the Alt-Right, and I remember something I learned much earlier in my research, from Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians. Altemeyer has been studying authoritarianism for decades, he has a wealth of data, and one thing he observes is that authoritarianism is the few exerting power over the many, which means there are two types of authoritarians: the ones who lead and the ones who follow. Turns out those are completely different personality profiles. Followers don’t want to be in charge, they want someone to tell them what to do, to say “you’re the good guys,” and put them in charge of punishing the bad guys. They don’t even care who the bad guys are; part of the appeal is that someone else makes that judgment for them.

So if you can encourage a degree of authoritarian sentiment in people, get them wanting nothing more than to be ensconced in a totalist system that will take their agency away from them, putting them in the orbit of an authoritarian leader, but no leader presents themself… can you just kind of… appoint one?

Like, if you don’t have a leader, can you just find yourself an authoritarian and treat him like one? And, if he doesn’t give you enough directives, can you just make some up? And, if you don’t have recruiters, can you find a conservative who speaks in thought-terminating cliches just because he thinks they win arguments; find a conservative who speaks in meaningless diatribes because he thinks he’s making sense; and then maneuver those speeches and videos in front of people you want to recruit? If you’re sick of waiting for Moses to come down the mountain with the Word of God, can you just build your own god from whatever’s handy?

Every piece of this structure, you can find people, algorithms, and arguments that, put in sequence, can generate Disorganized Attachment whether they’re trying to or not, which makes every part plausibly deniable. Debatable. You just need to make it profitable enough for the ones involved that they don’t fix it. This is a system created collaboratively, on the fly, with the help of a lot of people from hate movements past, mostly by throwing a ton of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. The Alt-Right is a rapidly-mutating virus and the web is the perfect incubator; it very quickly finds a structure that works, and it’s a structure we’ve seen before, just a little weirder this time.

I’ve started calling this Stochastic Totalism.

Now, again, I’m not a professional researcher; I do my homework but I don’t have the background. I have an art degree. This isn’t something I can prove so much as a way I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right that makes sense to me and helps me understand them. And I got a lot of comments on my last video from people who used to be Alt-Right that echoed my assumptions. But don’t take it as gospel.

Mostly I wanted to share this because, if it can help you make sense of what we’re dealing with, I think it’s worth putting out there.

Thank you.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 46: Social dance of phatics

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 46: Social dance of phatics. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 46 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about phatics, the parts of conversation that we use for their social meaning rather than their literal meaning. First, exciting book news! The paperback version of my book about internet language, Because Internet, is out in the world very, very shortly or possibly after if you’re listening to this more than a few days after it came out.

Lauren: If you’ve been thinking about buying Because Internet and you’re like, “I just need it to be cuter,” the paperback version is officially 200% cuter. It is so tiny and cute.

Gretchen: Or if you’re a person who likes to have the spines of books bend between your pages as you read them, I understand. You can now get that in paperback. This is a book all about various aspects of language on internet. We did a whole episode last year when it came out in hardback about various aspects of internet language when it comes to emoji. We’ll be talking a bit more about internet-y things in this episode as well. If you like thinking about how we text and how we email and how we use memes and all of these types of things, or if you wanna know how other people are doing these things, this is a useful book for you.

Lauren: You can still buy the hardback or listen to the audiobook if, for some reason, you are not into adorably cute, very bendable paperbacks.

Gretchen: Yes. People have been saying very nice things to me about the audio recording, which I did myself, so if you like hearing my voice on this podcast and you would like to hear my voice for nine hours straight without any Lauren, you can also do that with the audiobook.

Lauren: I should record a little backchannel track for people who just want to pretend it’s an extended version of the podcast. “Hm, that’s interesting!”

Gretchen: Like a ten-second loop, “Oh, how interesting!” so you can just stick it in wherever you want in the audiobook.

Lauren: “Yeah!” “Ooo!” “Ahh!” “Uh huh.”

Gretchen: This sounds like a brilliant plan. We need to work on that.

Lauren: Yes. This month’s Patreon bonus episode is about music and language. It’s our 41st bonus episode, which means you can get that and 40 other bonus episodes of the show, if you’ve listened to all of the main episodes, at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Lots more lingthusiastic content out there for you to enjoy.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hey, Lauren!

Lauren: Hey, Gretchen!

Gretchen: How’s it going?

Lauren: No bad. How are you?

Gretchen: Pretty good.

Lauren: It’s nice weather today.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s pretty hot here actually.

Lauren: Ah, yeah, right. I forgot it’s summer for you.

Gretchen: Oh, right. You guys must have your sweaters out by now.

Lauren: It’s a bit chilly in the morning.

Gretchen: Yeah, well, okay.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Yeah. All right.

Lauren: I better let you go.

Gretchen: Okay. Great to see you.

Lauren: Have a nice one.

Gretchen: Yeah, you too.

Lauren: Bye!

Gretchen: Bye!

Lauren: See ya!

Gretchen: Bye!

Lauren: You hang up.

Gretchen: Click noise. Insert special effect here. I don’t think we decided whether we were having an imaginary street-side conversation or an imaginary phone conversation because I feel like the beginning of that was imaginary street-side conversation and the end part of that was imaginary phone conversation.

Lauren: The best thing about it was that was a conversation where we ostensibly didn’t say anything meaningful, but we had a whole conversation.

Gretchen: It’s a conversation that most people have probably had in some form or another. It’s extremely familiar. It’s very ritualised.

Lauren: That’s because the language that we use in greetings, in leave-taking, is something that is less about the literal content of what’s being said and it’s more about the social meaning of starting a conversation or ending a conversation or just acknowledging each other’s presence by talking about the weather.

Gretchen: Acknowledging the world – it is a bit hard to talk about the weather over the internet, as we’ve discovered, because we don’t necessarily have the same weather, which is the version that you have when you’re meeting someone on the street. In many cases, it’s less about the specific words that’s being said and more about the social function of “I’m acknowledging that you’re here. We’re having a ritualised exchange.” It’s like doing a little social dance. We have a couple steps of a waltz, or a macarena, or whatever your dance of choice is, and then we move on with our day. It doesn’t have to be a conversation that has a lot of content to it. We still have this acknowledgement of each other’s presence.

Lauren: This dance-move ritual speaking is known as a type of speech called “phatic” or “phatic expressions.”

Gretchen: “Phatic” is one of those great words that I find myself telling people about a lot because it’s like everyone’s encountered phatic expressions – there’s these things like “How are you?” and “Hello,” like the first thing you learn in a language class. Yet, the word “phatic” itself – it’s P-H-A-T-I-C – it’s less familiar even though these things are so very familiar.

Lauren: We’re so used to these phatic interactions that until something jars with them, we don’t often notice them. We can go through our day using many phatic greetings and leave-takings, but we don’t always notice them until they maybe go off the rails or we’re trying to do one set of dance moves and someone else is doing another.

Gretchen: Especially, sometimes you get a phatic expression that starts changing – it goes according to certain fads, I guess, not that kind of “fad-tic.” One of these examples is with what you say in response to “Thank you.”

Lauren: See, I always get in a little bit of trouble because my first reaction is always to be like, “No worries.”

Gretchen: Right. That’s the very Australian response, right?

Lauren: Yeah. In fact, someone was like, “Well, you say ‘You’re welcome.’” It’s just like, “Ah.” Yeah, I guess that is an answer as well, but it’s not my first, informal default.

Gretchen: I feel like “You’re welcome” is the version that shows up in the English language learning textbook not so much the version that I actually say on a regular basis.

Lauren: What do you normally reply to a “Thanks” with?

Gretchen: I think I would say, “No problem,” maybe also “No worries” sometimes. I think it’s spread here. But “No problem” is definitely one of the defaults for me. This can create some tension because if all of these are accomplishing the same thing – they’re the thing that you say in response to “Thank you” – they’re all fitting in the same function socially. But because if you’re used to one and you hear the other, you might interpret it more literally. That can sometimes make people start over-examining and questioning the individual words in that. “What do you mean ‘No problem’? Of course it’s not a problem! What do you mean? Of course it’s not a ‘worry’!” Or like, “Well, you are welcome. Are you not welcome?” People can get very caught up in the literal meaning of phatic expressions when something’s undergoing a change, like changing from “You’re welcome” to “No problem” to “No worries” or these kinds of things and think that somebody, therefore, in this interaction must be doing something wrong, when it’s really just the like, okay, language changes sometimes. This is one that’s undergoing a particular change. People are using it phatically.

Lauren: I think when everyone is joining in a square dance, you don’t really notice that you’re all seamlessly participating in the same dance. Then, if someone pulls some other moves, it can feel very disconcerting.

Gretchen: It’s like, oh, now I’m doing the chicken dance in the middle of the square dance.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: There is an interesting example of this that came up for me when I was in UK. I think I was specifically in Canterbury. I was going into various shops and, you know, people do – like, you say “Hello” when you go into the shop. People were saying to me, “You all right?” And I was like, “What do you mean? Is something wrong?” Because to me “Are you all right?” is like “Are you okay?” That’s what you say to someone who’s fallen down in the street and you need to know if you need to call an ambulance or something.

Lauren: Or you’re just checking whether you’re bleeding from the head or something.

Gretchen: Right. Like, “Are you gonna be able to get up by yourself or do you need some assistance from a passers-by?” Right?

Lauren: Oh, no. You were getting too sucked into the literal meaning. They were just saying, “Hello. I’m starting this interaction.”

Gretchen: Exactly. They were really saying the equivalent of where I would say, “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” Once I started going to the second and the third and the fourth shop, I started figuring this out. The first one I was like, “What’s going on?” But then you hear it again and you’re like, “It must be me. I am the outsider here.” Whereas, the inverse – I think if you say, “What’s up?” to at least some British people, they interpret that as like, “What’s wrong?” The same passer-by fell down in the street and you’re asking if they need assistance. Like, “What’s up?” some people interpret that way. Whereas, to me, it’s just like, “Oh, how’s it going? What’s up?” they all mean the same thing.

Lauren: I like when people get very distracted by what the “it” is in “How’s it going?”

Gretchen: “How’s what going?”

Lauren: Which in Australian English can be completely reduced to /haʊz gɑ̃/.

Gretchen: “How’s goin’?”

Lauren: Yeah. Just to show that it really is ritualised, you don’t even need to clearly articulate it.

Gretchen: I had this fun experiment that I would do in high school on my poor, unsuspecting classmates.

Lauren: I love a good Gretchen proto-linguist story.

Gretchen: I’ve now memorialised this story in the pages of Because Internet because I was leading into discussing phatic expressions on the internet and I was like, “Oh, I need an offline example, so I’ll write this down.” So far, no one has contacted me about this. I don’t know if they noticed at the time. What I would do is there was this thing that people would do which, you know, is possibly the case in any high school, I dunno, where you’re walking down the hallways between classes and you see your friends who aren’t in the same class as you. You’re like, “Hey, so-and-so, what’s up?” “Hey, what’s up?” And you just keep going as you’re passing each other in the hallway between one class and the next. I realised, because I was a budding linguist, that sometimes people would say, “What’s up?” “Not much.” “Nothing much.” Sometimes, people would say, “How’s it going?” “Good. How are you?” These were accomplishing the same thing. I didn’t know the word “phatic expression,” but I was like, “These are accomplishing the same thing.” So, what I did was if people said, “What’s up?” I would say, “Good. How are you?” And if people said, “How’s it going?” I would say, “Not much. What’s up with you?”

Lauren: I do like it when people do this unintentionally because they’re both on autopilot for their own dance moves. I’m not surprised that you of all people decided to use this as an opportunity to try that out.

Gretchen: Look, it’s very typical. I will grant this.

Lauren: What was the response? What was the early data collection?

Gretchen: The thing is, is like, people wouldn’t notice. This is why I think no one from my high school has emailed me to be like, “Hey, I read this thing in your book and I remember you doing this.” Because I just didn’t say anything. As long as you do it without missing a beat and just kind of as if it’s totally normal and natural to say, people don’t notice because they’re both accomplishing the same thing phatically. It’s when you catch yourself and you’re like, “Oh, what’s up? No. I mean, how’s it going with you?” Then, people – like, “Oh, no! Something’s broken” because they’ve recovered the literal meaning. But as long as you just treat it as a dance, it’s kind of like when I was learning how to do swing dancing for a while. When I was learning how to do it, the most important thing was just to not stop. If you stopped and were like, “Oh, no. Did I get that step right?” Whereas, you could just keep going and, even if the steps weren’t perfect, you could figure it out.

Lauren: This is basically me when it comes to dancing, yeah.

Gretchen: I feel like we should specify that we’re not talking about the kind of dancing that you do when you’re alone at home in your pyjamas and you’re just rocking out in front of the computer. We’re talking about the social dances that require you to take into account other people and how they exist and move together without people in some fashion.

Lauren: As long as you move some limb on every beat of the macarena, you can pretend to be keeping up.

Gretchen: I wonder how much you could mess with the macarena and still have people think of it as a recognisable macarena. This sounds fun.

Lauren: I feel like high school corridor Gretchen would approve this experiment.

Gretchen: How badly can I misspell the YMCA dance? Just wondering.

Lauren: Other than people mis-stepping or deliberately mis-stepping, the other time phatics can break down and people get a bit unable to navigate them is when the literal context breaks this ritualisation. If everyone’s going through a bad patch at the same time, and you call someone up and you’re like – the default to start that conversation is “How are you?” It’s just like, there’s also this second layer of the dance where you can all be like, “Yeah, look. Fine, I guess,” where the tendency to just wanna say, “Yeah, fine. How are you?” is at loggerheads with the fact that we all know we’re going through a bad phase at the moment. It’s like, “Ugh.” But I also really appreciate that if you are going through a bad phase, it’s still completely fine as part of the ritualised dance to be like, “Yeah, I’m fine.” You don’t actually have to engage with someone if you don’t want to.

Gretchen: Exactly. There are non-responses you can give, “Not too bad” or “Oh, well, it’s a day” and just keep going with that, which means you don’t have to give maybe strangers in a café or something this great insight into your interiority because you’re not actually friends. You can just do the ritual dance and you have done the dance at the ritual level and it can be okay to stay there with other types of acquaintances.

Lauren: The other time I really notice the ritualised nature of phatic expressions is when I’m learning a new language because they’re often, like, Day 1 Chapter 1 of a textbook. You learn how to say “Hello, how are you?” “Good-bye. Have a nice day.” You also just have to use them a lot if you’re speaking a language or if you have a good language teacher who makes you use these in every class. They often are also the things that stay in your brain the longest.

Gretchen: They have that ritualised response – it’s like one person yawns and so you need to yawn. One person says, “How are you?” and you can’t help but reply, “Good. How are you?” even if you’re not thinking about it too hard.

Lauren: Once you learn the steps to the dance in a particular culture or language, in Nepal, for example, instead of “How are you?” or talking about the weather, the opening move of the dance is “You eaten?” And you reply with, “Yeah, I’ve eaten” or “Haha, not yet.”

Gretchen: That’s great.

Lauren: But until I really got the hang of it being a ritualised dance, I’d take it really literally and be like, “Oh, well. I had breakfast a little while ago, but I’m not that hungry now, so maybe I’ll eat later.” People would just be like, “What is happening?”

Gretchen: “Why are you doing this?” Because of course you’ve eaten at some point in the past, but maybe it was too – yeah.

Lauren: They were just like – I was just moving the conversation on. I am actually calling to ask you about going out this afternoon, and I’d been stuck on eating still.

Gretchen: It’s also funny. I’ve noticed this especially doing radio interviews for the book actually is because when you’re on the radio, they want you to do a mic check. To do a mic check, they usually just talk for 30 seconds about anything. The standard question that they ask you is what you had for breakfast. They don’t care what you had for breakfast. They don’t care if it was healthy. They don’t care if you just had coffee. They really don’t care what you had for breakfast. They just need you to talk for 30 seconds. The first couple times I went into a radio station and they asked me what I had for breakfast, and I’d be like, “Uh, you know, oh, did I have eggs or cereal this morning?” and really have to think about it very hard.

Lauren: They’re just asking you a very function question and you are taking it way too literally. You’re like me in Nepal.

Gretchen: Exactly. This is like the “Have you eaten?” question in a couple different places that people can do this. I also noticed this in Montreal when I moved here because sometimes you learn a phatic expression in a textbook that’s not actually the current phatic expression anymore or in a particular area.

Lauren: “Ah, thank you.” “You’re welcome.”

Gretchen: Right. If you learned “You’re welcome” and then show up in an English-speaking area and everyone’s saying, “No problem” and “No worries” and you’re like, “Oh, no! No one prepared me for this.” I remember shortly after I moved to Montreal, and I had learned my language textbook, like, the way you say, “My name is” is “je m'appelle Gretchen” or whatever.

Lauren: Even as someone who speaks no functional French, I know that is how you say that in French.

Gretchen: The literal translation of it is like, “I call myself.” It’s using the verb “to be called” like an “appellation.” Whereas, the vernacular way that people actually say this, at least in Montreal, is generally “Moi c’est Gretchen.” This means literally “Me, it’s Gretchen.”

Lauren: Translating these things literally never works well.

Gretchen: Right! The literal translations never work particularly well. Completely different words, same social function. I remember I was at a crowded party or something. I think I might’ve actually been trying to swing dance.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: It was a bit of a loud environment. And somebody gestured to themself and was like, “Moi c’est” whatever this person’s name was. I was like, “What? What am I supposed to say to this? What do you want in response?” It was clearly this ritualised thing. Then, if you wanna ask someone else’s name, you could say, “toi,” like, “you,” which, again, is not how I have learned to do this in the language learning classroom sense.

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. You had to learn new dance steps and new social dance steps at the same time. What a champion.

Gretchen: I know! It’s so poetic. What a metaphor we have going.

Lauren: I love cross-cultural examples of phatics and ritualised speech. I’m actually very disappointed in the lack of examples on the Wikipedia page for these. If people want to share examples – but even more excitingly, if you want to edit the Wikipedia page so there’s more than English and then a couple of Japanese and Persian examples because there is a lot of cross-cultural variation.

Gretchen: That’s so public-spirited of you, Lauren. It’s always really interesting to hear people’s examples and it’s very salient to you when you trip into something that’s not the phatic expressions you’re used to. The ones you are used to are so non-salient until something happens. It’s a really fun area of stories in different languages or different cultural circumstances.

Lauren: Another place I really enjoy people playing around with phatic expressions is in fiction, especially because we’re both big sci fi and fantasy readers. Being set in different worlds or different times, it’s such a great opportunity to play around with these rituals and create norms that are very different to ours.

Gretchen: Absolutely. One example that I really like is from The Just City by Jo Walton, which is set in an ancient Greek-esque fantasy world where one of the characters is fictionalised Socrates. The characters all say to each other when they greet each other, “Joy to you,” in English.

Lauren: Oh, that’s nice.

Gretchen: Yeah. Which is this different greeting from, you know, “Good morning,” “Good night.” It very clearly has this function of a greeting and a farewell, I think, they also say when they’re leaving. I asked Jo, because she’s a Montrealer and I know her, if this is a translation of something. She was like, yeah, this is a translation of a greeting “χαίρετε,” which gets used both in Homer and Plato and all the way up to Modern Greek that people used, sometimes translated as “Rejoice” but also “Joy to you” is a reasonable English translation.

Lauren: Cool. So bringing a set of phatic rituals from one culture and language into the fictionalised world as part of giving it a bit of an authentic flavour.

Gretchen: Right. This explanation isn’t in the text anywhere. You don’t need to provide this additional context to a reader because they can figure out that the characters are arriving and leaving and greeting each other. It just helps emphasise it is a bit of a different world. Especially probably saying something like, “Good-bye,” which in etymology is “God be with you,” might strike you as kind of weird in this context where there is Athena and Apollo and not a god that is the form of the one that’s the etymology of “Good-bye.” It provides a useful little nugget of world building to have the phatic expressions also be different.

Lauren: It’s one of the things I really enjoyed about working with P. M. Freestone on the language construction for her Shadowscent duology is that she thought really hard about plausible in-world phatic expressions. So, the leave-taking ritual is “Stars keep you,” which is related to the star wheels, which are related to destiny but also navigation and a few spoiler-y plot points that I won’t mention from those books. It’s just one of the little things that really situates you in a world outside of our own. I always really appreciate that.

Gretchen: It’s that extra thing that indicates something in the book. There’s also the classic “May the force be with you” Star Wars leave-taking expression.

Lauren: Which always rubs up against the phatic expression of “And also with you” from Catholic church excursions in my childhood.

Gretchen: Yeah. I definitely had enough exposure to this that I am like, “And also with you?”

Lauren: It’s like, oh no, we’re mixing up two dances here.

Gretchen: I think that speaks to the power of the phatic expression as a dance that often has a call and response or a first part/second part – or multipart – thing where you do have this impetus to respond in a particular way, the same way if someone just lets “How are you?” hang. You’re like, “No, no, no. I need to resolve that.”

Lauren: I’ve actually been very pleased in my elaborate multi-year Star Trek television-watching deep dive that I’ve been on to discover the response to “Live long and prosper” is “Peace and long life.”

Gretchen: Oh, that’s very nice. I know the first part but not the second part.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, you can just reply with the gesture. You can reply by repeating. But there is actually a call and response option there which really fits with that phatics as dances where you’re both making moves.

Gretchen: There’s the new world-building task of make a two-part phatic construction. It’s not just phatics in face-to-face communication. It’s also there are written phatics. One of my favourite kinds are these letter-writing conventions where you have these very elaborate greetings and farewells. This is not as common in the modern-day email. There’s this great example of that in the musical Hamilton where in the archival records between these two characters – well, real people, I guess – they have exchanged a bunch of letters that culminate in them fighting a duel. But they sign each of these letters, that are clearly very angry because it ends in a duel, with “Your obedient servant” even though they’re really annoyed at each other.

Lauren: I feel like that is an even more extreme version of the saying that you’re fine when you’re not fine.

Gretchen: Right! Clearly, you’re not an obedient servant. This irony is so noticeable to the modern reader that there’s a song in the musical about them fighting the duel which has as the chorus the obedient servant part because the dramatic irony is just too tempting for a modern reader. Although, back in the day, it’s not particularly ironic because this was just a stock phrase.

Lauren: They were just signing off their letters as they were taught.

Gretchen: That’s just what you put. That’s kind of like saying, “Sincerely.” Sometimes, you can send someone a really nasty letter and still say “Sincerely” and you’re like, “Ha ha ha! I hate you but sincerely.”

Lauren: Yes. I feel like we maybe are more attuned to the dissonance in writing because we, just like with writing as a practice itself, have to learn it very overtly, often at school. I still remember having lessons in how to set out a letter. There is a lot about learning phatics that happens throughout your childhood years, which I find interesting because we tend to think about language learning as this thing you get out of the way by the time you’ve gone to school. You can speak but learning the more elaborate dances of these phatic turn-taking expression dances, we do it our whole life as we move through different places where we need to practice them.

Gretchen: There’s this really brilliant example of this from Winnie the Pooh.

Lauren: Oh, excellent.

Gretchen: Which, I think, children’s literature often illustrates this literalness because adults find it very funny. It goes, “‘And how are you?’ said Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore shook his head from side to side. ‘Not very how,’ he said, ‘I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time.’ ‘Dear, dear,’ said Pooh, ‘I’m sorry about that. Let’s have a look at you.’”

Lauren: Oh, bless poor old Eeyore.

Gretchen: Poor Eeyore.

Lauren: Poor Eeyore not feeling very well and not realising that he was just meant to say, “Fine. How are you?”

Gretchen: Or even, “Not so great,” but – there’re ways to say, “Not so how,” but it’s not the “How are you?” “I’m not how at all.” Or “How are you?” “How do I what?” which was one of my favourites as a kid.

Lauren: That’s a good one. In Nepali, one of the informal ways, instead of saying, “Have you eaten?” is to just say, “How’s it?” I definitely need to say, “Tik chha.” I definitely like, the first many times that was said to me, was just like, “How’s what? What am I meant to be replying about? I don’t even know what I’m meant to be talking about let alone how it is.” I feel for Eeyore on many levels there.

Gretchen: I think “How do you do” is a really good example of one that’s gotten older and become more deprecated. I wouldn’t expect anyone to say that now. I had one teacher in school that would say, “How art?” whenever he would see us in the hallway. It was just the thing that he said.

Lauren: That is the person who still practices Medieval court dances while we’re all doing the macarena.

Gretchen: This is like, yeah, you’re doing a different dance, but it was still very clear in context, right?

Lauren: That is an adorable affectation.

Gretchen: Sometimes, I say, “how goes” and I don’t know where I got it, but people seem to understand it. Maybe it is a semi-literal translation from French because in French “ça va” is like “goes it” or “it goes.” I think another part of the child language acquisition bit that happens at an older age is also acquiring things like phone scripts like, what do you say when you’re on the phone? Because it’s not quite the same as when you’re greeting someone in person.

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. I used to hate the phone. My mom used to – I remember being overtly coached by my mom in what I should say, and she was like, “And then the person will say, ‘Hi, this is blah. Is your mom there?’” I just used to be like, “Okay. Are you sure they’re gonna say that?” I just hadn’t got the dance moves down pat and it felt like a lot more effort. My mom was like, “I already know exactly how this phone call’s gonna go. It’s fine.”

Gretchen: I find as a kid I really hated trying to pick up the phone, too. Even as a young teenager I really hated picking up the phone, especially once I sounded old enough that people thought I might be my mom, but I still clearly wasn’t. Now, as an adult, I find myself using the scripts that I overheard my parents use. If I need to spell my surname over the phone, I spell it the same way my mom spelled it in the same groups – M-C-C, U-L-L, O-C-H. You pick up those ritualised bits of conversations. It’s easier for me to do it as an adult because I’m able to just directly access the adult rituals rather than try to do this weird child-mediated ritual of like, “Is your mom there?” I never heard my parents do that half of the conversation.

Lauren: You’ll be shocked to know that once I got the phone script down pat, I used to enjoy messing with it.

Gretchen: [Laughs] Of course you did!

Lauren: Which used to happen a lot because, as I’ve probably talked about in the naming episodes, both of my parents are called “Chris” for short. So, people would be like, “Hi, is Chris Gawne there?” And the only acceptable moves usually are, “Yes, I’ll get him for you” or “No, he’s not in at the moment. Can I take a message?” No one expects the, “Which one?”

Gretchen: Because, especially if they only know one of your parents, I guess then they think they know unambiguously who they’re asking for.

Lauren: Very satisfying. Once you get comfortable with the script, the power that it allows you to have is very satisfying.

Gretchen: One of the things that I was fascinated to find when I was diving into the research on this for Because Internet is that when the phone was introduced as a piece of technology, this didn’t just stress like you and I and probably a lot of people out as kids, this stressed out the whole society.

Lauren: That is actually really reassuring.

Gretchen: Right? People were really unsure about what you should say when you pick up a phone because how do you say, “Good morning” if you don’t know if it’s morning where they are or, like, I dunno. There were a couple options that were proposed for things that one could say on answering the phone.

Lauren: Was one of them “Hello”?

Gretchen: One of them was “Hello.”

Lauren: Okay. Good.

Gretchen: One of them was “Ahoy hoy.”

Lauren: Oh, Gretchen, we have squandered an opportunity that was presented to us as a society.

Gretchen: The thing is, is that now “Hello” is this general-purpose greeting, but it wasn’t at the time. It was a thing you said, like, “Hallo” to summon dogs and stuff.

Lauren: Oh.

Gretchen: “Hello” was not a greeting at the time.

Lauren: Right. It’s not like they were just like, “Well, we’ll take this thing we use face-to-face and use it on the telephone.”

Gretchen: No, no, no. This was like, “We’re gonna invent this new greeting.”

Lauren: Ah.

Gretchen: For a while it was like this telephone thing that one said and people who said “Hello” face-to-face were a little bit gauche. It’s kind of like some people get worried now if people say “LOL” or “OMG” face-to-face, and you’re like, “I don’t know. That’s an internet thing. Can you actually say that out loud?” Then it was like, “But you’re saying ‘Hello’ and you’re not on the telephone.”

Lauren: “Ahoy hoy.”

Gretchen: “Ahoy hoy.” Another suggestion which I’m pretty glad this one didn’t catch on was “What is wanted.”

Lauren: Oh, that sounds very – that is a very aggressive first move.

Gretchen: It’s very abrupt. One of the suggestions for what you said when you finished your phone conversation was just “That is all.”

Lauren: And just hang up?

Gretchen: Just hang up.

Lauren: I mean, I think it would’ve been better for everyone to stop us from the endless good-bye loops if we had just, as a society, accepted that that was the phatic conclusion.

Gretchen: Well, I think there’s actually something really useful about those good-bye loops though because when you say good-bye to someone in person, you get to watch them pull away from you, if necessary, you know, very Mr. Darcy-esque like, oh no, I’m gonna watch them pull away from me. You have this gradual leaving. Whereas, when you hang up the phone or when you hang up a video call for that matter, the rupture is very final. You hang up and then it’s over. You need more steps to have happen so that you don’t just feel like, “Well, that’s over and that’s done.” You need a longer turn-taking or leave-taking process. I think about the same thing doing video calls where you have a whole group of video-called people. Everyone’s waving at each other as you’re leaving. That’s kinda that signal, when everyone’s doing the wave in the video, that now you can click on the X and you won’t be missing anything because you’ve all synced up on the waves, which is a lot easier to do in the video space than it is in audio only.

Lauren: For sure. The anxiety about phone greetings reminds me a lot of the almost annual put it in your calendar discussion about anxieties over how to start and end emails. As a society, we still haven’t collectively agreed on a “Hello” equivalent.

Gretchen: Yeah. There’s several and it depends on which subculture you’re in. It’s interesting because in text messages the norm is very much in the other direction. You often don’t begin a text message or a chat or something with like, “Hey, how are you?” I think people often view if you just send someone an instant message or a chat message, some of them it’s like, “Hey, how’s it going?” without any indication of what you want from them. It’s sort of weird. If you’re gonna start a conversation with someone in chat, you have the responsibility to introduce a topic because that way they know what they’re getting into when they send that first reply. They can judge if they have time to respond. It’s more like, “Hey, just have this question about this thing” or “I just saw this link and I thought you might like it.” Then, the person knows when they start replying what kind of conversation they’re trying to enter into. But in email, it’s the inverse. You get this sort of, people making fun of grandparents texting of like, “Hi, so-and-so. How’s it going? Here’s this thing. Love, Grandma and Grandpa” in the text message. Whereas, in email, the inverse is the case where you do wanna have these greetings and people who don’t send the greetings, sometimes they’re the ones that occasion angst or which greetings you pick occasion a lot of angst.

Lauren: I think we should go back to “Your obedient servant.”

Gretchen: One of the examples that I actually had in Because Internet of these elaborate phatic expressions in letters was, “To the right noble and valorous Sir Walter Raleigh” from this letter from Edmund Spenser. I cited this as an example of like, nobody does this anymore. Then, there was a class who was reading the book as part of their internet linguistics/digital media communications class, and one of the students sent their professor an email with “To the right noble and valorous Professor so-and-so” because of the book. I was just so pleased about this. They told me about it. I was just so delighted. Maybe we should go back to this. It’s also one of these cases where as long as someone isn’t actually sending you a nasty email where they call you nasty names, which is definitely they’re definitely trying to be very rude if they’re doing that, but if the case is like, “Is this person using a comma or not?” “Is this person using ‘Hi’ or ‘Hey’ or ‘Dear’ or something,” like everyone here is trying to be polite. Those are all things that people are trying to be polite or someone is signing off like, “I hope you’re well” or “Hope you’re bearing up” like, “Hope you’re doing as well as possible under the circumstances.” There’re all these different variants that one can use and they’re all trying to be polite. I think that thinking of them as part of the unified class of phatic expressions can help us relax a little bit about trying to read too much into the messages that we’re getting or getting really worried about the messages that we’re sending other people because it’s a reflection that, ultimately, everyone’s trying.

Lauren: I really like thinking about phatics as this more abstract attempt at a cultural dance because it makes me far more relaxed about when these friction points happen, and people maybe don’t use the forms you expect. It allows me to reflect on my own choices and how I am maybe doing social politeness. It also just makes me really satisfied when you and someone else get all the dance moves right in a little interaction in a shop and you can think about it more in terms of the social interaction it’s achieving rather than the specific steps that you’re taking.

Gretchen: I think this is one of the things that attracts a lot of people to linguistics is having this stuff of like, “Oh, here’s this thing I took for granted that I haven’t thought about and here’s actually what’s going on” or “Here’s this overt description of what I’m doing” and this can make it easier to do the dance and not worry that, oh, maybe it’s inauthentic because the authenticity is doing the dance. We’re participating in a particular dance, and you’re seeing someone who’s doing this dance, and there’s still space to have the deep heart-to-heart conversations. But not all the conversations that we have need to be that heart-to-heart. There’s a space for both kinds of interactions.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, schwa badges, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, my book about internet language, now available in paperback, is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. You’ll see me make a small cameo in Chapter 5 of Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and wish there were more? You can get access to 41 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk to other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping keep the show ad free. Recent bonus topics include music, linguistics for kids, and linguistics and numbers. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their lives.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is Ancient City by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[herpronuonsarefemslash]

Do Not Tap the Glass - TEASER

Enjoy an ABO Supergirl / Jurassic Park (barely) crossover where Alex is a scientist for the Luthor Institute studying a mysterious "creature" that was found in the arctic ice, her wife Maggie definitely thinks pregnant Alex is sexy Alex, they go to a sex club together, and Lex throws Lena in with the beast...that maybe isn't a beast at all. Chapters 1-5 are public and Chapter 6 is Patreon exclusive.

Chapter 1 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qpiYG0XLyuUU79_P2YTwG6IYR6GISse3/view?usp=sharing Chapter 2 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EJlb75hUbGXdNAkkwPzW691XFS9AXx-d/view?usp=sharing Chapter 3 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jE-f6E4McfFWKUXCX-ZhJWAg0XvHn1el/view?usp=sharing Chapter 4 -  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HEcDBzNaB6qmZ2JkzInx46INWOyawfdC/view?usp=sharing Chapter 5 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQaoF7H2aG1kVyhA35zFfQ5ZfK86lU3Z/view?usp=sharing Chapter 6 - https://www.patreon.com/posts/54672610 Alex has a ritual when she starts a new job: ride the bike in for confidence. Sadly, the list of 'required tools' she was asked to bring would never have fit in a bike. It would never have fit in Maggie's beloved 'princess plug' either, that silver Subaru with a bedazzled back hatch and two surfboards eternally attached to the rack.

Hence, renting a small U-Haul that drives like a dead whale. Maybe the Luthor Institute isn't really hiring her for her mind, maybe they just want her and her mom's research and devices. Lex Luthor has a scary rep in the academic community. He's probably just going to have someone shoot her as soon as she's buzzed in the gate.

Still. It's an interesting job because the not-interesting jobs don't come with 200-page non-disclosure agreements she signed, being watched by lawyers so clenched a punch-press and a vat of KY couldn't help them. It's a lot of money. It's enough money to put aside a million for their daughter by the time she graduates college. Once she finishes developing a spine, organs, and nervous system, that is. Alex was too busy puking to nickname the fetus, so Maggie stepped in.

Regrettably. Cervix-Kicker is just not something Alex can tease her slowly-swelling belly with, at least in public. Maggie's turn, next time. She's pretty sure there will be a next time. Alex suspects that pregnancy sex makes the case for the pregnancy itself, in Maggie's view.

Her phone lights up and a bonobo's shrieking voice comes out. Eliza recorded it during the early days of her fieldwork. Alex taps answer.

"Hey, Mom."

"Morning, sweetie.  How's the new job?"

=====

Nia rolls her eyes with such exaggeration it makes her fairy-dusted eyeshadow sparkle a bit in the sun.

"Come on, new girl," Nia teases. "I'll show you around."

"She will. She's basically in charge of the pep squad here," Frank teases. "When I started, I gained five pounds from all of the bonding lunches Nia organized."

"Did you complain?" Nia demands.

"I did not. And I do not regret a moment of it, kid. Someone will come unload the truck, doc. Thanks for bringing all your gear."

Frank tips his ball cap at Alex and goes back to the main group by the door.

"My mom's designs too." Alex mumbles. One accidental touch and she's blubbering out self-deprecation to near-strangers.

"Right," Nia chuckles. "The infamous Doctors Danvers. So is your kid going to be a world-renowned psych researcher does the third generation end up a bunch of losers who like, found the next Google?"

"Um, not sure. I have to meet them first."

"Shut the front door!" Nia exclaims. Her smile just went up about fifty thousand watts. "I was just joking but you're actually preggers."

"How ca-"

Alex glances at Nia's nametag. In the lower right is an omega symbol with an F beside it. Curiously, it even has the sub-status there even though that's unnecessary in the case of female omegas given the extremely low variation rate. Alex has never heard of subtypes being used outside of therapy or a doctor's office. Using them at work is legal--probably--but it's also downright bizarre. As an omega, Nia can not only smell the tiny changes in Alex's scent indicating she's pregnant, she can probably tell Alex what soap Maggie uses, along with her age, ethnicity, and most recent rut.

"They categorize us by status?" Alex asks. "How 1890s."

Nia sighs.

"Well, it's actually not so bad. There was a dude in maintenance who I thought was taking notes on my heat cycle. I mentioned something and the next thing I know there was this absolute unit of a woman from HR sort of shadowing me. Eating lunch, printing stuff to the copier we use, so on. Being obvious about it to, making sure he knew she had her eye on him. So they do use the information for the right reasons."

Any competent HR department could handle all that. Nia must realize that too.

"The creature. The creature can sense human genera and reacts to them."

Nia makes finger guns.

"Bingo. Got a nose like a bloodhound, that one. Even with the enclosure being vacuum-sealed and using completely different air, the creature catches it somehow."

=====

She nods towards the ruined hard drive, which has been ground and punctured and shaved to produce the bearings.

"I'm afraid I never made a backup."

"Fuck," Lex snarls.

She got Lex to curse in front of his men. Victory enough for one lifetime.

"Take her."

She lets the goons cuff her.

"Oh, and I injected myself with an agent that reacts violently with truth serum drugs. Violently and fatally."

"Which ones?" Lex demands.

"All of them. And I put an implant in my teeth with 2 grams of high explosive. So electrocuting me is out. We'll have to make a deal the old-fashioned way, brother."

Lex's pained bellowing is so sweet. ===== Lena's gurney is tilted back vertical and she's wheeled down a long hallway. A pair of armored doors buzz open.

It's a goddamned zoo enclosure. Gorilla enclosure, from the look of it. It reeks of alpha. Almost human. Almost sweet, even. A scent she wouldn't mind nuzzling into at night if she didn't know it was a beast's. Lex himself unclips her and tilts the gurney forwards, spilling her onto wood chips.

"Quite the specimen, I hear. She's used up three omegas so far," he sighs. "Maybe you'll fare better. Maybe you'll live long enough to get a pup in you. When you are ready to talk, press the red button."

Classic good old boy alpha thinking. Like many a single omega, Lena has guiltily indulged in rut non-con fantasies. So that's not quite the threat he thinks it is. Loss of control over the body and second-guessing whether it was consent or just surrender to the heat is Female Omega 101. She could maybe power through that. Close her eyes. Remember boarding school. Andrea and her flashing blue eyes and her exquisitely shaped cock -- ladylike, somehow -- long enough to slam the breath from Lena's lungs and her long hands closed over Lena's neck. Her affected machismo. Taking Lena like she was a mafia boss and Lena was some worthless whore from the back streets. Fulfilling that and any other roleplay Lena wanted.

This is a goddamned gorilla though. That's beyond the realm of kink.

She's in a puddle of light but the rest of the enclosure is dark. Too dark to see anything past her ankles.

That's when she hears it. Huffing. Panting. Too loud and to big a noise to be human lungs. Squelching. Grunting. Moaning.

A face spills out of the dark into the light. Matted blonde curls. Blue eyes glazed over with orgasm, drugs, or maybe in shock. The grunting increases in pace.

"So good, so good..." the blonde mumbles, throwing her head back and forth.

"Hi, Lena."

"Eve Tessmacher? Fuck. I thought you got fired."

=====

"Hey, Nia?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you go to my desk..." Alex begins before shame clamps her jaw shut. She's going to have to say it. Say it to a friend who is her employee and she wonders if the fancy toilet can be reprogrammed to drown her.

"Go to your desk and?" Nia prompts.

"Target bag. Sweatshirt and pants," she huffs.

"Copy that."

Alex catches her breath, then spanks the toilet paper roll over and over. She starts cleaning up. Nia's a good kid. In both the psychological and physical sense had painful days herself--phantom ruts colliding with her desired heat cycle--and she and Alex worked out a system. With it, Alex could sneak her pot chocolate from the cooler in Nia's car, sign it in on her behalf at security, hit the vending machine, and meet her in the breakroom like it's nothing.

Their friendship started out the way a thousand five-minute friendships do in bars. Nia asked for an opinion and Alex assured her she looked cute and that her blind date would love it. The guy turned out to be a moron but the resulting debrief cemented their dynamic.

She's not sure how someone can go from acquaintance to best friend, to kid sister in less than a month. She only knows Nia did.

=====

The member lot is small and the gold member lot is smaller still. Perhaps thirty stalls and mostly full.

Maybe when you spend this much on VIP access to a sex club, it makes sense to spend every weeknight there. Eliza didn't volunteer a number for the membership she bought Alex and Maggie but both she and Alex assumed that down payment on a house would be Eliza and Jeremiah's contribution. She probably went with this out of fond memories of her own years studying at UC National City. If she and Jeremiah ever shared an omega playmate, it would've been somewhere like here. Somewhere deniable.

"Look, babe," Julia whispers, pointing at the engravings in the concrete of the marked stall that Maggie is gradually working their Prius into, sliding it between a Range Rover and a Suburban.

"AD and MS, sponsored by EG?" Alex mumbles.

"Founder sponsored," Julia adds, pointing out something in smaller print and filling the right half of Maggie's vision with creamy cleavage and her lungs with candy-sweet scent of a willing omega.

"I fucking knew it," Maggie chuckles. "Your mom was one of the people that started this place."

"No!" Alex squawks. "Absolutely fucking no!"

"You park," Julia chuckles. "I'll distract her from herself."

[pebblysand]

[writing rant - on the monetisation of fanfiction]

a couple of months ago, when i updated my long fic, one of the people on the comments wrote to me the nicest possible review (one of the ones that you keep in your feel-good 'saved' emails - you know the ones), which, amongst other things also said: 'If I could pay you for this...believe me, I would.'

in the moment, i kind of smiled and laughed, and thanked the person for their kind words before moving on with my life. yet, since then, i have to admit that this sentence has kind of been living rent-free in my head. i think it is also because since diving back into fandom a few months ago, i've noticed something that kind of shocked me at first: more and more fanfiction writers seem to be monetising (or attempting to monetise) their craft.

now, back when i started writing fanfic, we wrote fanfic on ffnet and livejournal. it was accepted that thou shalt never (ever) charge money for your writing or else the author and their mean, angry lawyers will come after you for damages and you will die a slow and painful death. we wrote disclaimers at the start of all of our posts and thanked the gods every day when we did not get sued.

i have seen this change gradually over the years. first, in the mid 2010s, the disclaimers went. then, i noticed that people were getting 'tipped' for fanart, sometimes even charging commission. from what i understand (though, don't quote me on this, i'm not an ip lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice), this is because the way the concept of fair use is framed under us law makes it easier to monetise fanart than it does fanfiction. maybe this is why visual artists came first on this trend. later still (and more recently) i've noticed fanfic writers, doing the same thing.

to be fully honest, the first thought i had when i saw this trend, considering the fear of god (and his lawyers) that was instilled in me in the past, was: how on earth is this even possible? (i'll come back to that in a bit). the second, though, was: fuck, i wish i had the guts to do that, lol.

because, yeah, i will admit, the idea of getting paid for writing what i love to write does appeal, to a certain extent. i won't lie. dear fanfiction writers who've tried to do that recently: i one hundred per cent get it.

looking back at the last fifteen years, i would say that for me, writing fanfiction has been (in terms of time commitment and energy consumed) the equivalent of having an on-and-off part time job. a job that i have held for one or two years at a time, then quit for a while, before coming back to it when i needed (wanted) it again. i obviously can't realistically give you a number re:the actual total of hours i have spent at this since i started out, but i can give you an idea. recently, i started clocking my hours out of interest and calculated that a chapter of my current long fic takes roughly between one hundred to two hundred hours to produce (and they're around 10,000 words). at that rate, i'm probably working 20 hours a week-ish? sometimes more, sometimes less? something as small as a three-sentence fic (like this for instance), takes roughly two/three hours. i'll be honest, i have cancelled plans to write fic. when i'm working on a long project, i do tend to organise my life to give myself the time to write, so i opt for socialising after work during the week rather than on weekends, as i've found this is when i write best. i won't lie: it is - for me (i know some people write quicker, bless them) - a huge time suck.

so, yeah, i understand, in the capitalist society we live in, wanting to make that time count. our world has unfortunately, repeatedly taught us that time is money and getting more does seem like a nice bonus (as long as you have an audience for your art that's willing to pay, obviously). after all, year after year, i've seen a lot of my friends try and monetise their passions as side hustles, with varying success. at first, glance, i look at the time i spend on writing fanfiction and think: man, i wish i could get a bit back from that too. i couldn't even draw a stick figure to save my life but i assume that the time commitment and energy put into that kind of work is roughly similar for visual fanartists as well. i thus very much understand the sentiment, both with fanart and fanfiction.

additionally, though i appreciate this is a bit tangential, the fact that fanfiction is free, i would argue, hinders its potential to be as representative as it could be. it's a bit sad because on the one hand, the fact that it is free makes it completely accessible to the masses but on the other, it makes fanfiction quite exclusive to rich, privileged people who can afford to spend the time and energy putting content out for free. if i spend this much time writing fanfiction, just because i like it and it makes me happy, it's because my full time job pays me enough to cover my bills. if it didn't, i probably would have to forgo writing and get a proper side gig. if you look at my periods of inactivity on ao3, those also kind of coincide with the times in my life when i had to have more things going on to put food on the table.

so, now, assuming that monetisation is a thing that, as a fic writer, one might want to look at, the next question is: how do you go about monetising it? obviously, the law hasn't changed since the days where we were all terrified of getting sued (although enforcement has been quite lax over the years) so it's more about finding workarounds around the law as it is, rather than actively seeking payment for fanart.

from what i've seen: two main solutions seem to exist.

first, there's the tipping/buy-me-coffee technique. as i understand it, this involves either setting up a page on one of the dedicated websites or just putting up your paypal account link on your tumblr posts. with these links, people can then send you however much money they want (however much money they can afford/think you deserve?) on a one-off basis. they're not actually paying for fanfic because there is no actual exchange of services, it's basically like them giving money to charity, except that charity is a fanfic writer/ fan artist whose work they enjoy.

there are two main issues i see with this: one, legally, i'm not sure how much ground this actually holds. assuming you're quite prolific/successful, if every time you're producing new content, you receive dozens of tips, although you're not actively charging for your fanart, making the argument that your content isn't what these people are actively paying for seems hard. imo, the fact that this method sort of holds is that realistically, you're going to make very little out of this. even if you're really good, you might make what? a couple hundred dollars. now, sure, that's a lot of money for a lot of people but in the grand scheme of things, no one sues anyone for such a low amount. as long as you're not making 'proper' money from it, it is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you.

this being said, the second issue, from my perspective, is that this is not in any way, shape or form, a reliable income. it also does not represent, at all, the cost of the time and investment actually put into said fanfiction (or fanart, i assume). for example: if you're going to tip someone who's worked on something for, say, fifty hours, ten dollars, that's very good of you, but that isn't going to be 'worth' their time. it is only worth their time if tipping is done at as scale, which imo is quite unlikely considering you're putting your content out for free anyway. there are kind souls who will tip you, but not that many, meaning that ultimately, you're not working for free anymore, but you're still working at a huge loss.

additionally, because this income is not even reliable on a monthly/weekly basis, it isn't something that anyone can actually rely on, even if only to fund their coffee habit. it's nice to have, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, is the legal risk outlined above worth the trouble for the $20/30 tips i'd get every once in a while - not really. such low amounts also don't help diminish the class issue that i talked about earlier. again, if you're going to spend fifty hours on something, you might as well work a minimum wage job - even that will pay you more and will be dependable.

second, there's patreon (and patreon-like sites). here, the income is monthly, people pledge on a subscription basis, which does solve the last point above. it might not be much, but at least it's regular.

the main issue i see with patreon is that it is contingent on the author providing more services on top of what they already provide. in most cases, the author will keep putting their usual content out for free + provide their patreons (depending on tiers) with more content, specifically for them. this, to me, makes this scheme even less appealing than the previous one because a) if i can't provide fanfic to potential patreons (again, you can't sell fanfic), i'm not sure what on earth i could give them (original content? that's not really the same market) and b) that's even more work on my plate. honestly, considering the amount of time i already spend writing fanfic, i have neither the energy nor the willpower to provide extra content for an amount that, regardless, will probably pay me less than a part-time job would. again, you'd have to scale this (i.e. have enough patreons) to make it all worth your while, and even in very big fandoms, even for someone waaaaay more successful than me, i doubt it would be likely.

lastly, as a side note, both of these "methods" are solely accepted if they occur on tumblr/writer's own website, rather than on the writer's ao3 page/fic. there was a post going around explaining why that is (nutshell: it endangers ao3's status as a non-profit archive) but as with all things, i seem to have lost it. [if you do have the link to that post/know what i'm talking about, hit me up and i'll rectify this]. this, regardless, supposes driving traffic from wherever you post your fics towards tumblr/your own website which, again, decreases your chances of scaling this.

so, in the end, where does that leave us?

i think, at this point, we've kind of reached a crossroad. ultimately, i see two ways to look at this:

option one: if you believe that fanfiction writers should be paid for their art, you also probably agree that the methods outlined above, while they do offer some sort of solution, are less than ideal. the ideal solution (for this option) would obviously be to allow fanfiction authors to be properly paid for the publication of their work through 'normal' publishing/self-publishing deals, without the need for a licence from the author (bar - perhaps - the payment of royalties). that would create a proper 'market' for fanfiction, treating it as any other form of writing/art form. it would mean a complete overhaul of the laws currently in place, but why not? ultimately, in a democracy, laws are meant to be changeable.

this being said, though, while my personal knee jerk reaction would be to shout 'hurray!' at this solution, i do not actually think i want this. or, maybe, only part of me does. the part of me who has been writing fanfiction for free for fifteen years is like 'hey, yay, maybe i could get paid!'. but then, there is another part of me that would like, maybe, one day, to write more original fiction (i already do a bit, but not much). that part of me is feels frankly a bit icky about giving up her ip rights.

would i be comfortable with people writing fanfiction of my original work? hell yes. that would be the dream. imagine having your own ao3 fandom, omg. however, would i be comfortable with people profiting from writing fanfiction of my work? honestly, i'm not sure. to me, the answer to that is: it depends (how much time investment was put in? how original the concept is? etc.) which, in fact, kind of brings us back to the current concept of licensing. and yes, maybe the current frame imposed by copyright law has also shaped the way i view the concept of property, and maybe i should be more of a communist, free-for-all kind of person, but unfortunately, i'm not that revolutionary.

also, and slightly tangentially, i find it interesting how profiting from fanficition/fanart is seen as more acceptable i certain fandoms rather than in others. taking the hp fandom for instance, even prior to jkr expressing her views on transgender rights, i often read things like: 'ah, she's so rich anyway, she doesn't need the money.' now, that argument has not only gained traction but is also reinforced by: 'ah, she's the devil and i don't want to fund her. it'd rather give my money to fanfic authors/buy things on etsy.'

while i completely understand the sentiment and do not, in any way, shape or form, support jkr's views, i do find that argument quite problematic. if you set the precedent that because someone is too rich, or because they've expressed views you disagree with, you don't believe that they should be entitled to their own intellectual property rights, i do wonder: where does this stop? this being justified for jkr could lead to all sorts of small artists seeing other people stealing/profiting from their original work without authorisation. 'i don't pay you 'cause i disagree with you,' would then act as a justification, with i find highly unfair. the fact of the matter is: jkr created hp. knowing that, the choice of buying hp products, regardless of her opinions is completely and entirely yours, but buying the same stuff unlicensed, from people who are infringing on her copyrights seems, to me, very problematic as this could potentially be scaled to all artists. either we overhaul the entire copyright system or we don't, but making special cases is dangerous, in my humble opinion.

option two: we choose to preserve copyright law as it is, for the reasons outlined above. this means that most people will not get paid for the content they put out and that the few that do will operate on a very tight, legal rope, and work for tips that are a 'nice bonus' but not a proper pay. this sort of perpetuates the idea that fanfiction is 'less than' other art forms, because in our capitalist society, things that don't generate money (things often made by women, may i add) are not seen as being as valuable as things that do.

for me, personally, while getting paid to write fanfiction sounds lovely (and makes my bank account purr) in theory, i think i side to preserve the current system. as an artist, i think that intellectual property protects us and our concepts from being ripped off by others, including by big companies who might find it handy to steal a design, a quote, anything, without proper remuneration. this is even more important for smaller artists who wouldn't necessarily have the means to defend their craft otherwise.

this being said, i do appreciate that it depends on why you're writing fanfiction. i think that topic probably deserves a whole different post in its own right but ultimately, most people write fanfic because it's fun. we know it's for fun, and not for profit. and if that's the case, then we're okay to receive compliments, reblogs and sometimes, for some people a little bit of an awkward tip for our work. for me, fanfic has been a space to make friends, to get feedback, to learn and to experiment without the pressure of money being involved. that's why i don't particularly mind doing it for free, and wouldn't even bother setting up a patreon or tip-me jar. i love being able to do it just for the enjoyment of myself and my five followers (lol), without worrying about scaling it, or making it profitable. not every part of our lives, not every passion has to be profitable. as we say in ireland, you do it 'for the craic' and nothing else.

this, though, as i already said, also depends on your means and level of privilege. to me, writing for free is fantastic and a bloody relief - it means being able to do exactly what i want. original fiction writing is full of rules, and editors, and publishers. in fanfic, i can write whatever i feel like, and i'm willing to forgo a salary in exchange of that freedom. again, i have a full time job that covers my bills. this does mean, though, that i don't have as much time to dedicate to writing as i would like to.

and also, the thing is: i'm a small author. i happily write in my own little niche. bar that one comment, it is highly unlikely that anyone would actually want to pay me (or even tip me) for my content. but when you look at very successful people, like the author of all the young dudes, i could see how they'd want to get paid for their art, and why they'd feel differently.

bottom line for me is: the flaws of the current systems of remuneration combined with my strong belief in copyright law as a means to protect small, original creators, means that i don't really think it would be right for me to get paid for fanfic, even if i was the kind of person who had the market for it. whilst it would be nice, this very long rant has, hopefully, explained why.

[tonyglowheart]

@imaginaryelle replied to your post:*me sipping tea* (x)

I would really enjoy seeing more of your thoughts on this, if you ever want to share them.

:’) a lot of my thoughts are salty rants and I’m TGCF on main right now so uhhh not at the moment but if you wanna hmu on like a chat thing of some sort I probably will eventually rant about my dislike of The MXTX Antis and the Problematic Culture people and the purity culture wank :’)

actually you know what, since I’m a parody of myself and I’m like always mood of "and another thing,” I’m just going to. go for it ig

so my biggest thing, is with the MXTX antis/MDZS wank/MXTX wank. is like....god it FRUSTRATES me so fckn much lmfao in so many ways and on so many levels.  like listen. I’m not saying there isn’t stuff to critique in MDZS. But there’s people who are first off: critiquing the writing quality, when I’m like “there’s like a 90% chance you’re reading the EN translation, and probably from ExR, and honestly I know it’s not fandom etiquette to critique fan content bc we’re all doing this for free out of passion, BUT I do, in fact, have some major issues with ExR’s translation quality, and also I lowkey feel like they have a strong traditional yaoi bias and sometimes it leaks through in how they handle certain things.” Big mood of this twitter thread about how when you’re reading in TL you can’t be criticizing the writing bc you’re already reading it filtered and like. you gotta consider things like the TL’s own personal biases or takes, etc. Which I feel like some people don’t in their critique, or at least they don’t take the time to acknowledge it and instead start spinning off into more and more impassioned reactions to perceived slights or faults.

The other thing is like. I admit when I first read MDZS - which I did while simultaneously watching bc I was kind of using CQL as a vehicle to get into MDZS, I had the HARDEST time trying to read ExR’s translation when I was going into it cold many many many moods ago rip - I was also squicked out by the explicit scenes shown. It did remind me a lot of traditional yaoi tropes, and I wasn’t into it. HOWEVER I was also a psych major, and I want to point out that the T/N’s do read to me as having a strong yaoi bias, and also before ExR redid their site they had large “SERVING YAOI AND BL” banners on EVERY page lol. And I think that also primes people to see things a certain way. (I just. am :/ about ExR also bc like... their whole vibe as a “yaoi scanlator” and also I. can’t be sure the TL wasn’t 17 when they were tl’ing it lmfao,,  and they did the whole rant - which fine they apologized for, but I think sort of reflects on a general attitude still w/ the team - about how some other TL had bad quality or something, but their existing TL has a lot of clunky English phrasing and actually a lot of editing issues, too, I was creating myself a back-up copy from their site and like google docs was already catching a bunch of typos and tense issues and such :’) and that’s beyond clunky EN translation phrasing. I just am like. they have a patreon lol, so I can’t say ExR is doing it wholly not-for-profit/dollars, and also like... it’s not like they’re licensed? I get that within scanlation circles, there’s an etiquette of “first come first serve,” but with translation, I think fans are only served with more translations? but I also care about the original work lol, I mean I get the vanity of “I want MINE to be the AUTHORITATIVE tl” bc I feel that mood too, but also I’m like. fam you didn’t bid for a license lmao.)

But yeah like. My petty gripes with ExR aside lmfao, I think when you look at WangXian, the whole “it’s yaoi tropes” gets really strawman. Like from a Watsonian perspective, I mean like... both WWX and LWJ really ARE useless virgins, lol, WWX’s first kiss was stolen by LWJ and his whole idea of sex comes from porn; LWJ is GusuLan and like. yeah. Who is teaching them about lube? certainly not porn. (but this also gets into the whole. like people saying explicit material is “problematic” because it doesn’t show “realistic” sex and I’m like. fam it’s smut, not a sex manual.) And like... they’re both kinky and WWX has a pregnancy kink, and like... good for them I guess?

From a more Doylist perspective..... I think for me, I’m like. well why not? gay media doesn’t have to be uwu to be “Valid,” and like, the people who start attacking mxtx personally because of the way she chose to write WangXian, or saying she’s homophobic because of WangXian or she doesn’t have the range... I already Know they didn’t read TGCF or SV lol. (and yeah SV is more “problematic” but I also think it’s VERY genre aware and both satirizes and also plays with and subverts some of the typical genre “problematic” things. not everything, but like. again the whole idea that non-mainstream media needs to be held to a higher standard to not be cancelled? I don’t hold by that). [But more on the Doylist thing: it’s dumb to me that people react like it’s a moral failing of non-straight works if they don’t fit EXACTLY their personal idea of what a thing should be. And this comes up EVERY time there’s some new thing. hell it’s not even just lgbt-related stuff; Hamilton, Crazy Rich Asians, etc all had nitpicking. Which again, isn’t invalid! but also like. :/ because we DON’T have enough representation right now to pick, and my take is always: the solution is to get to the point where we can pick and choose and can afford to have bad media just like the straights/whites do :’)]

The thing about WWX and LWJ is neither of them, as they’re written in canon, fit within “traditional yaoi” seme/uke stereotypes. The kiss I see people rail against as “dubcon” and also their sex scenes but I’m like. yeah I think it’s fine to say it’s not your cup of tea but to say that that makes them traditional yaoi rapey tropes I’m like. Fam that’s not it lol. LWJ is shown as being SO incredibly responsive and attentive to WWX’s wishes and desires. I mean that’s examples of his passion exploding out, but we consistently see LWJ being respectful of WWX’s wishes and autonomy even when it like. fucks him/them over :’) like when WWX was so hell-bent on hurtling down the mo’dao route :’)

plus also WWX literally fantasizes about them retiring as farmers and he’s the one out working the fields and LWJ is staying at home weaving lol, like c’mon, ya wanna talk gender roles, let’s talk about this.

the other thing is the whole mxtx anti stuff about “she’s homophobic” and “she’s a filthy fujo” and I think there’s issues that people aren’t considering, which I don’t know as much about but I feel like it informs my consideration of mxtx - such as like... not everyone’s internet is as wide open as, like, the West. I don’t know so much about Chinese censorship other than it exists, but I’m like. I think this would affect people’s access to resources which would inform them about how things work/where people are with LGBT thought? It reminds me of when young tumblr kids trash talk older queer people for using terms they see as “problematic” now, and I’m like “you really gotta pause a moment of (1) have some empathy (2) consider the person’s individual personal and cultural context.” MDZS wasn’t made for a Western audience in mind lol, it’s not going to reflect Western values! And China has a different history with its LGBT progression and it’s m/m media, which I don’t know enough about to comment specifically, but I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to judge it based on Western standards. A lot of people probably don’t realize they are! in that it doesn’t even occur to them, which is why they feel so free with their judgment! But also I’m like. lowkey THAT’s a problem for me bc of like. cultural imperialism lmfao. and also reflective of EN-language imperialism, when people are judging EN tl’s they’re seeing on face value without realizing or considering that they’re...reading... a translation... and that translations are NOT in fact direct one-for-one and that there’s a LOT of considerations that go into both translating and reading a translation of a work.

I think the points antis pull up against MXTX is like... stuff she’s said before in interviews - and I don’t know from when, but I imagine years ago at this point - where she was asked about shipping the other characters in MDZS, and she said something I think about how to her, she wants to write in a way that “preserves realism” or maybe she believes in (I only read a TL of it, so I hold the exact phrasing with a grain of salt), and for her, not everyone is gay so she doesn’t write all of her named characters gay. and I’m like. whatever that’s her prerogative as the author. And I think there’s also something that I don’t know if it’s an official “rules”/”guidelines” she wrote bc again I’ve only seen secondhand/thirdhand sources, but it’s something mxtx-antis also quote, where she said to not break up the main couples and also don’t “reverse” them. but again when we’re getting into the shou/gong dynamics, that’s where I don’t feel comfortable commenting because I don’t know enough about the sociopolitical implications of these terms and how they interact within that fandom/community subset. But I do think people need to be taking the stuff they read - ESPECIALLY if they’re only reading it in EN - with a grain of salt. or like a big ol pinch of it. 

edit: I know more about this now lmao and I know exactly which question people use piecemeal of vilify her. Here’s a recent-ish translation someone did. Read it through - the WHOLE thing, and think about the wider context.

But also in general I just don’t think anyone is valid when we start getting into ad hominems lol. Especially when I feel like they’re not really taking a moment to consider what wider contexts and influences might be at play and instead are playing Tumblr telephone with outrage and virtue signalling

sidebar: I also fucking HATE CQL purists lmfao. I don’t feel like I’ve seen or encountered anyone saying CQL fans are less valid than novel fans except in the sense of CQL fans getting defensive about their dislike of the novel - which, whatever, people have opinions - or decision not to read the novel and saying anyone saying they HAVE to read the novel is gatekeeping - which I hold to less but mostly bc I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of fan language, some of us say you HAVE to read it not in a neckbeard way but in a I’m so desperately passionate and I want more people to know about this way, kind of like how the “I hate you” in fan language GENERALLY means “I love it so much and I can’t stand it”? - but I HAVE seen people say the novel “ruined” wangxian, or CQL people who seem to be like... purity-wanking, like idk if you were around but god after Infinity War and the number. of fckn ironstranges. posting in the tags. about “love how healthy our ship is” and I’m like. this is still anti culture/purity wank but the other side of the coin 8). I encounter sometimes this lowkey attitude of CQL (or other adaptations) “redeeming” MDZS from the author, and I’m like. y’all are wack lmfao. There’s people wiht MDZS or even TGCF main, and they hate mxtx? and they say shit like “mdzs was only good on accident”? and I’m like. can you just leave lmfao. if you hate her then why are you here. (bc they’ve mental gymnastics this into a virtue ethics thing about “o the work is good and therefore morally fine but the parts I don’t like are because mxtx is morally bad and unworthy and tainted it, and CQL with its Purity has Redeemed it” but I’m like. this is because of censorship lmao. The team did a FANTASTIC job working the character dynamics and story, but like it also is directly because of censorship.)  

like I... have more thoughts than this lmfao bc ofc I do, but anyway, here’s... some of them lol

[pepperstrawberry]

Heavy post...*waves to frens*

Warning: Long post... but not putting it under a cut because I specifically want new followers to read this. Mutuals and long time followers? Nothing new here, feel free to hit that page down button a few times XD

So, over the last few weeks, I’ve gained a lot of new followers... and lost some too. Now of course, I generally don’t worry too much about it (or try not to). I know some folk unfollow maybe because it’s been a while and their interests have changed, or maybe in some cases they were dealing with some frustrating things that I happen to be also talking about at the time and so they wanted to get away from it all for a while and it wasn’t really a personal thing. No judgement on that stuffs...

But, I do want to make some things clear for those that have recently followed me and might have followed just because of a cute image or two I made for magic stuffs with the new set dropping:

First: I am a trans woman. I support the full LGBTAQ+ spectrum. Yes, this includes Non-binary, Asexual, Aromantic, and all. I’m not going to argue with folks on the inclusion. It’s just that way. Oh yeah, and Bisexual, both being and supporting. This means even when a couple is not with who you think they should be with (a straight person seeing a ‘bi’ with the same or gay seeing ‘bi’ with different, you know that whole thing... no matter who a bisexual person is with, they are still bi)

Second: I’m anti-capitalist. Yes, I live in a capitalist world, and have to abide by the current machinations of it. I mean, consider things like Patreon, Go Fund Me, and the like. Those are not ‘capitalist’ (though can and have been used in that way), but are a way a community can help creators make a living without having to worry about making every product ‘marketable’. (which is why I’m against the recent shift that Patreon is doing for it’s creators, but that is a whole other post).

Third: I am a supporter of things like Black Lives Matter and other inter-sectional things. Look, the same sort of oppressive arguments, and often even the same people, are used against both people within the LGBTQA+ community AND people of color. It just makes sense to back them up as much as my fellow lgbt friends.

Fourth: Which leads me to being Feminist. 3rd wave specifically. Yes, there are crap folk that claim to be feminist, but that is the case with any group. I mean there are lesbians that are against trans woman, soo... Anyhoo, the bottom line of 3rd wave Feminism is inter-sectional support. Women, LGBT folk, People of Color, and everything like that. And before you go ‘but what about white males?’, consider that that is who holds the power right now. Well, White, Male, and Rich. But many of the things that real feminism fights for also covers things that would help out men as well. Things like better therapy and psychological help. The idea of ‘toxic masculinity’ isn’t the idea that ‘masculinity is toxic’, but that there are ways that being a ‘guy’ has been pushed that are toxic in nature, both a danger for others as well as the men themselves. Remember the idea of ‘real men don’t cry’? That’s toxic. It teaches men that being sad isn’t a manly thing, but to express anger is okay. Which is why we get a lot of these shooters doing what they do.

Fifth: I’m... I guess I’m agnostic? I used to be christian, but I have found that some threads within that faith are... problematic lets say. But I find ANY system of belief (or non-belief in the case of Atheism or however you want to define it) has fringe folks that are... problematic as it were. I judge less on religious affiliation and more on how that religious faith is expressed. I would have more to say on that, but really that is the bottom line. If your faith is more about proving others wrong/judging others over just living the best life you can and helping others, then your faith is garbage. end of story. Don’t matter which god, gods, or even no gods at all you follow.

Sixth: I tend to be a bit of a critic about things. Sometimes I blow things out of proportion, sometimes I don’t go quite far enough. But in the end, I try to be as honest as I can and as clear as my rambly nature lets me. Though, as I always emphasize, I never mean to judge a person on their love of a thing. There are rare exceptions of course. Like, I will judge you if you love “Birth of a Nation” or “Triumph of the Will’ as they are both KKK/Nazi movies and white supremacist in nature. There is nothing in either to be lauded save that they were likely the first movies in their era to pull together several film elements that had already existed (really they were more a triumph of budget then of talent). If you like Game of Thrones because of how ‘realistic’ it is to do -that- to so many women (you know what that is), then yes, I’m judging you. But If you like Game of thrones for all the other reasons -in spite- of -that-, then no judgement at all. Those moments shouldn’t be enjoyed. At best, they should effect you will a visceral disgust as the moments are intended.

I used to (and sometimes still do) reblog the heavier, more ‘polictical’ posts to my other blog @pepperolitics, but after the purge messed up my adult blog, it’s harder to bother with a side blog these days. So there are times where my more direct political aspect comes to play on main.

And really? That shouldn’t be that much an issue when you think about it.

I mean, I try to stay positive and light on my main blog. That usually means the heavy subjects get put to my other blogs. Adult subjects to my adult blog (which is now effectively gone even if I haven’t actually deleted it yet) and the POLITICS go to the political blog...

But that would be the seventh thing on the list of getting to know me:

NOTHING IS EVER NON-POLITICAL.

Nothing.

Now, I will say there is a difference between ‘political’ and ‘POLITICAL’, that is to say: we are human, the way we interact with each other is inherently political. How we agree, disagree, compromise on a day to day basis is political. Manners are political.

All ART is political.

But then there is the capital ‘P’ POLITICAL, where we are talking about government, the big policies, the big moments, the major events.

Where we switch from political to POLITICAL is when we go from things that are inherent, inferred, or basically subtext to straight up text and direct.

In otherwords: I refuse the idea that me suddenly talking about politics is me “becoming” political. I have always been political, we all are. it’s just sometimes, you have to make your politics clear.

Or in other other words: White, capitalist, hurrah! jingoist soilder of things like C.O.D/battlefield is just as POLITICAL as a Woman with a girlfriend and a trans side kick or something... it’s just we have been so surrounded by the former over the latter that we think of it as the accepted norm rather then one flavor of story hero among so many others...

...okay, I’m getting extra rambly and tangental... But that was kinda the point of this post.

Some of you will disagree with some of my points for one reason or another. Sometimes in shades, and sometimes in full... But my base point is, many of my long time followers already know this about me, but some of the new folk might not. And if you are going to stick around, this is the sort of lady you are following.

Hi. I’m Anita Priscilla Barton. Many call me Strawberry, or Pepper, or even just Pep. I am a Bisexual Trans Woman, I love magic the gathering, coffee, and all my wonderful friends and mutuals. And yes, I am a political entity who’s beliefs,  shape her art and critique. Just as all of ours do.

[popculturebuffet]

Green Eggs and Ham: Here (Patreon Review for Emma Ficci)

Hello all you happy people! And I have my first fully paid for comission and patreon review all in one! Yes my good friend Emma became a patreon and you can too, go to patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even one buck a month helps and 5 a month nets you a review of whatever of your choice a month. An episode of any tv show I have acess to. It feels good to have more than one person paying my salary, though I sitll want to thank Kev, my other patreon for helping with that. 

So with that all in order, let’s talk about this thoroughly weird, thoroughly wonderful show from a couple years back. Green Eggs and Ham is modern adaptation of a Dr. Seuss book..... and I bet those of you who haven’t heard of this series before or it’s reputation just had your bowls clinch a bit. Yeah while I haven’t seen illumination’s takes on the maestro of children’s books, I haven’t heard the best things and the trailers and odd and counter productive marketing tie ins for the Lorax have made me want to stay 30 feet away from it at all times. Seriously you get certified Legend Danny DeVito.. and you waste him on “Dat’s a woman” a joke that I don’t have time to unpack all the ways it sucks. My point is Seuss really hasn’t had the best time with adaptations latey.  But leave it to Warner Animation and Netflix to pull out a great one. Yeah I wasn’t too excited about a tv adaptation of one book at first due to all this and even a celebrity cast wasn’t a good sign. They roped Danny DeVito into the Lorax. So even with a whopper cast containing Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton, my boy Adam Divine, Ilana Glazer, Kegan Michael Key,  Jeffery Wright, Eddie Izard and JIllian Bell.. I wasn’t convinced. But word of mouth was really good, and the animation looked downright gorgeous, perfectly mimicking suess’ work and feeling like an unabashed love letter. 

So I did what I tend to do.. and sat on it for several years because I simply forgot to watch it till my friend comissioned it and here we are. And off the bat.. the reputation.. is not remotely overblown. This is easily the best Dr. Seuss adaptation i’ve seen in some time taking the best of his ideas and whimsy, with what little behind the scenes stuff I could get saying they specifically took art design from his art of book, with a modern and intresting story behind it and an all star cast that this time around are used well instead of just being there for Name Recogntion. Not only that but it takes inspriation form, of all things, Planes Trains and Automobiles, but does so well so far, getting the oddcouple dynamic down perfectly. 

So join me under the cut as I cut this bit of green eggs and ham into bite sized pieces for you all and go into why it’s so delecitable. 

This episode’s mostly broken up into bits to introduce all the main players, so as I tend to do when there’s multiple plots, I will be covering each one at a time. 

Guy and Sam: The Failed Inventor and the Animal Thief

So our story begins with.. a ninja breaking into a zoo to steal the rare Chikaraffe. 

Neither was the narrator, played by Key.. and the narrator naturally for a work like this delightfully interacts with things and is one of the best parts of the whole episode. But this already shows how well the series updates things. There’s one or two things like Ninja Sam or a family making ducklips during a photo, there’s even a fairly obvious trump stand in we’ll get to.. but none of it’s SO overdone it takes you out of things or dates the projects. The tech is kept to about the 70′s or 80′s with cameras still used instead of camera phones, crt tv’s, and what have you, and most inventions seens are susian. It feels wholly in line with his books while still nudging it into our current decade here and there. In other words.. how you SHOULD do it: add in a few things here or there but no overt pop culture refrences and at most a take that at something Seuss would gladly take aim at. 

So we meet our other hero the next day, Guy-Am-I. Guy is the show’s version of the nameless harassment victim from the books, with a bit of a darker fur and hat, likely to help better distingish him from sam as well as sell him being older than his co-star. It’s a good change, and helps sell Guy as what he is.. a grumpy middle aged man who keeps failling in life as demonstrated by his way to the inventions: he falls in a puddle, signs no on a pettition because he’s in a hurry, reminds me of man in a hurry from hatchefield but I couldn’t find a good image of him saying that in time and takes a picture of the family “Say runing my life” “ruining your life!”. We later see after some of the following scenes Sam do the same.. but he hops over the puddle then dives ino for fun, signs an entire page of the pettition, and takes tons of pictures. It’s a nice establishing scene for both. 

Guy is presenting his invention for Snerzco, your standard megacorp given a delightful Seuss twist with LITERAL pencil pushers and beancounters, to present his invention, with other inventors presenting, witht he hopes of presenting to Snerzz himself, having such delightfully bonkers and seussian inventions as a reverse umbrella (it rains on you) and an automatic fingercrosser. It’s touches like this that really tell me the series really loves Dr. Seuss. 

Sadly things don’t go well for guy as he’s hoping his invention dosen’t explode, his invention being a backpack made of hands to help people fly. Most people are imprestted apart from Michelle a bean counter who.. randomly snarks she wouldn’t let her daughter fly on it.

Yeah it’s not a great introduction for one of your major characters to have her randomly mock something that hadn’t exploded yet, and to for no reason bring up what a paranoid and unfun parent she is. We’ll get to her more in a bit. But yes it does explode and Guy’s dreams are ruined. 

And this whole picture.. shows who guy is. He’s someone whose kept trying agian, and again and again only for it not to work, and to get laughed at by the public and spat on by god themslef. It’s easy to see WHY he’s such a bitter curmudgeon: life hates him, so why shouldn’t he hate it back. That’s a self defeating prophecy of course but this is episode one and tha’ts probably the point of the series: to explore this. That being said I could see this coming from a mile away and felt it to be the most unupsired bit of the episode. 

Guy enters a diner to get some Oatmush “The Sadmans Special” after the bus leaves before he can get to it because again, God hates him personally.  No the sadman’s special is a famous bowl from KFC. I should know as a professional sadman. Regardless Guy is miserable.. and in enters sam, whose fascenated their “Breifcase Buddies” because thier briefcases match.. and unlike the above I like how they call attention to them being identical. We know wha’ts going to happen there but the lampshading helps it go down easier and makes us wonder if they will swap. Sam is a regular, being friends with Donna the waitress and ordering his usual green eggs and ham.

So we get the expected bit: Sam asks Guy to try them, he says no, but the show makes a good choice. Instead of just.. stalking guy for the next 11 episodes to get him to try it.. he simply asks if he’s actually tried it, Guy says no and makes a great poop joke, and Sam leaves it. He apparently asks once an episode, but it’s made more into a character thing; Guy refuses because he hates to try new things outside of his inventing and that’s hit a wall. It’s also a nice suprise that Devine and Douglas just play perfectly off one another. The two are from vastly diffrent generations and backgrounds acting wise, but they just work perfectly together and it’s what makes their interactions work. 

Sam does leave it and the other inventors having ALL got the golden ticket, arrive and Sam treats them.. only to notice Guy’s paper and the fact guy failed, and asks donna politely to get guy his mush as he ordered first. It’s good setup for Sam. We saw him be nice and free and what not, but we also see that while he can be insietive (He asked guy what broken dream he had earlier in the scene) he does geniunely care and it isn’t just surface level. He loves people and helping them and getting to know them. 

Of course while Guy is greatful, showing that beneath his own exterior he’s not a bad guy just one made miserable by life, he’s not going to be best friends or anything.. that’s a lot to ask they just met and takes his case after gulping down his oatmush. 

That night Sam prepares to leave, having given Donna his adress.. multiple times. in the hopes someone comes over and hangs out. Can relate even if i’d never go that far. He does however reveal himself as the ninja and prepare to take the chikaraffe with him for whatever reason. 

Guy goes to his hotel room to sulk, not helped by the other inventors partying outside, and full of misery and self loathing throws his suitcase in the fire.. until it makes a noise. He quickly pulls it out to find the Chickaraffe. Will he surivive? I mean probably. We have 12 episodes left. And a full second season. God this is going to take a few years.. regardless, let’s move onto the subplots. 

MIchellee and E.B.

We meet Michelle’s daughter EB who just wants to live but her mom dosen’t let her have toys or shenaniagnas.. and comes off untetionally as really abusive. She’s SUPPOSED to be overprotective, but saying “I detect a hint of whimsy.. i’ll allow it” really just paints you as an overcontrolling psycho. Their headed on a trip and while EB wants to catch the chickaraffe for herself dosen’t have the time and her mom gives her a magnetic friendship bracelet.. that shackes her to her. Just... yeah Michelle has made me  hate her in one episode and she’s played by Diane Keaton. How do you do that? Hopefully she’ll get better but hearing about these two characters was part of the reason I procastinated so long. The other is my brain being kind of a forgetful swamp. 

Snerz: We meet Snerz himself who has someone bringing him the chickaraffe. Snerz is a cold, mean man with trump hair.. that in this case is a literal being he’s forcing to be his hair, has everything gold plated and keeps animals in a wall forcing them to stand on the other side and put their heads through like he mounted them because he’s a sociopath. And this is the refrence I meant. Snerz has many comparisons to trump, the hair, the gold platings, but it dosen’t really date the thing as Trump has been around since long before this and will sadly probably be around till his inetivitible jail sentence. But it’s not so overt or over the top that it takes you out of it it works. Okay one more. 

BAD GUYS:

Two mysterious agents, one old and one on her first mission, go to the zoo and interogate the guy running it holding him over a slapping turtle exhbit. Their after the chickaraffe and depart.. with the yougner agent accidently dropping him. Whoops. At least he gets to get hit into space by a turtle. Some of us never will “Sigh”

Final Thoughts:

This was an excellent first episode. It fleshes out the characters well, sets up the story without feeling too slow, and the show strkes the right ballance of being it’s own thing while still feeling Seuss. It’s a wubusoully wonderful good time and I recommend checking it out. I look forward to the rest of the series over the next year. 

Next on this blog: Sleepover time as Shadow into Light, my Lena Saberwing retrospective resumes. 

[darklightsworld]

Okay, so once again a Lanyon book is keeping my mind busy… The fourth book in The Art of Murder series was released a few days ago, I devoured it immediately, and now I’m trying to figure it out while dreading the fact that the final book will take more than a year. Below is a long (I mean loooooong) gushing and rant with spoilers, and it doesn’t really make sense for non-readers, so the J key is your friend. I just want to get this out of my system XD;

I like The Art of Murder series, I like hot-and-cold behavioral analyst Sam Kennedy (45-46) and not-just-a-pretty-face, devoted-to-protect-art Jason West (33-34), I like them together, I like how they try to make their relationship work (when they do), I like how they change. Sure, there are still a lot of reasons for shaking my head, like Jason doing stupid things, being too stubborn and irresponsible, and being really angry with Sam usually makes him pretty blind and prone to more stupid actions. And Sam is just Sam, set in his ways, lone ranger, totally inept at making a relationship work, even fights it with all he has, black and white views, great at his job but unable to understand his and Jason’s feelings in many conflicts and prone to shut off completely. But I love them nonetheless.

Now, how does it look like as a series? The first book, The Mermaid Murders, was amazing! Intriguing crime and mystery, it had to do with Jason’s past, so we got to know him a bit, while Sam was a mystery and generally a difficult guy. Dislike at first sight for both, but they can’t keep their paws off each other, and regardless of how Sam fights it, it does not end in his usually “catch and release”. The way they got closed was fascinating. All round a gripping read from the first pages till the very end.

The second book, The Monet Murders, was equally exciting. Interesting mystery, we learned more about Jason, his work and also his family. The mystery/crime was interesting and complex, and the overarching plots were set in motion. Relationship-wise it was an intense book. The boys had a long-distance phone relationship for eight months (wow 0_0), but Sam decided to end it - without telling Jason about it ^^;;; The boys weren’t together in the first half of the book, but it was still interesting, because regardless of Sam ending it, he couldn’t let go at all, and he’s willing to go at great lengths for Jason - even when he claimed he wanted to break up. He’s reactions are so telling - except for Jason ^^; (Best quote in relation to that: “Dōmo arigatō, Mr. Roboto” XDDD) Extra fun: the story runs parallel to Winter Kill (I still have some grievance about how that book and the Roadside Ripper case was wrapped up - especially because it was important for Sam too)

Third book, The Magician Murders. It was different, but still very good. The murder case of the book wasn’t all that exciting, but the book was more relationship centric. The boys were together a lot, and despite the problems they and their relationship grew a lot, and most importantly we got to know more about Sam, his family, background, motivations and his tragic first love. The overarching stalker plot had important twists and an evil, goose bump-inducing ending. There were two main conflicts: Jason not realizing/admitting, that he’s under shock and his judgment is not the best. The other is that Sam withholds some information and tries to make decisions about Jason without consulting him - which is mostly because he’s aware of Jason’s limited abilities after his trauma, so the main point was that he could not communicate it. I always thought Jason was overreacting to this (”It feels like I don’t know you” - WTF?!), but they resolved it and they came out stronger.

So how was the fourth book, The Monuments Men Murders after these? Interestingly after reading I liked it (although it was clear it was by far not as good as the previous ones), but the more time passed the more confused I was about it. The good: the boys are happily together in the first half of the book, it’s totally loving, nice, Sam is happier, totally deredere, it’s just right - although the sex scene is a major lackluster and only two pages long, which is a huge change from the previous books. Okay, we get cuddles and talking in bed, sleeping together and stuff, but still, it’s not enough. I only realized after skimming through the previous books again, but there are a lot of references to previous things (aside from the outright mentioned first sex and others), like now Sam leaves a note when he goes jogging in the morning, and he also won’t bother trying to wake Jason with knocking, because he’s a deep sleeper. Sam was also once again expecting Jason to call him when he was in a dangerous situation regardless of the catastrophic state of their relationship, and once again he didn’t understand why Jason didn’t want his help XD;;;; They have come a long way... and not XD;;;

The problem even with the happy first half is, that everything is overshadowed by Jason’s idiotic actions, because you know it from the first pages that it will blow up. It’s like watching a train wreck... Jason’s current case implies his grandfather might have had been part of a crime, and instead of pulling out of the case, he takes the morally and ethically wrong choice and investigates himself compromising the case. Tbh this time I could not sympathize with Jason on any level. His reasoning to himself, the way he convinces himself it’s okay what he does, the way he doesn’t see he’s wrong even when it blows up with Sam is irritating, and I have no understanding for him - except for the fact that his judgment might be influenced by the stress from the ongoing stalker issue. But yeah, that would be an exaggerated repetition of the third book’s conflict. All in all this whole thing made me like Jason less, and I kind of hope he gets his ass kicked for everything he has done.

I could totally understand that Sam was very angry and disappointed, and also that he didn’t want to see him for a while (although it was a bit extreme that he questioned the foundations of their relationship - we got a deja vu for the “It feels like I don’t know you“, and it didn’t make more sense this time either). On the other hand what I couldn’t really understand was how Jason assumed Sam was shutting him out and turning his feelings off again when Sam was clearly suffering??? And how he was once again eager to throw the relationship away saying they can’t go on like this - like, heh??? You fucked up, but you’re fed up, when you only gave Sam one-two days to tackle it??? And Sam has to come to you and literally beg you??? The thing is, we already had all this before, and it didn’t make any sense to do it once again. Of course they will be even stronger after another crisis like this, but it was completely unnecessary.

The case itself was also a lackluster. For instance it was just one murder, not murders, and it was very simple, not like the complex (or seemingly complex) cases from before. Sure, the art rescuing tidbits and the Vermeer stuff was interesting, but there should have been much more. Btw, the book was very short, less than 200 pages, so that also explains the simplicity, but it does not make it good. More pages, more complex case. Since the previous books all allowed us to learn more about the boys and their pasts I was expecting the same here, for example many memories about Jason and his grandfather, but we got nothing, and this was a problem with the book too. And speaking of investigation... that was a wreck too. Many important facts were found off screen by JJ, and more often than not Jason was absentminded and preoccupied with clearing his grandfather’s name to really do the investigation (so yeah, Sam was right). Yeah, this whole thing was not necessary, or it would have been better if Jason has a breakdown or something to explain or give it a reason, but in the end his issues aren’t even mentioned in relation to his blowup. It was also a pity/mistake that Sam and Jason did not take part in each others cases in any way, also because Sam wasn’t even there for solving a case...

A pleasant surprise was JJ, though, ongoing asshole since Winter Kill, but here he redeemed himself quite a bit, and it was nice to see the partnership between him and Jason getting better. Unpleasant surprise was one of Sam’s previous “mission only“ bed partners. Yeah, we knew he had many of those and it was unavoidable, but aside from the meeting and talking about it with Sam once it was unnecessary. Jason knows, we know Sam doesn’t care, there was no dangerous development, so further mention was useless.

All in all, while I liked to have more about Sam and Jason, because I love them (I don’t do patreon but I’m considering to pay one month for their extras...), this book was not really necessary for them, and yeah, it could have, should have been much-much better. After reading it I skimmed over the previous three books, and once again I re-confirmed just how amazing they are and re-readable all the time - while I’m less inclined to re-read the fourth one. Now I only hope the final volume will be a good one. No more relationship crisis, and I want to have a solution for the stalker issue, the forgery case (tbh one of these should have been resolved in the fourth book, preferably the forgery one) and a realistic plan for Sam and Jason’s future.

Btw the images are from the sample of the Japanese edition of The Mermaid Murders. First it seemed strange, but it grew on me. I would love to see he other illustrations as well *__*