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you all get a doodle 😊

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Why does this never happen in real life?

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people who say 'just write for yourself' (me) have never met the absolute demon that lives in my head (also me) and judges every single word i put on the page. i am writing for myself, and let me tell you, the audience of me is a tough critic. she’s like, 'this sentence is fine but not groundbreaking,' and 'are you really gonna use the word 'suddenly' again? pathetic.' like ma’am, i’m trying my best.

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Kim and Chay have started things up again, are more or less officially together and finding their way forward. There's a lot to talk about, and Kim still has trouble with the words "I love you," but maybe that's not a problem. Roughly equal parts talking and making out/sex. Could be read as a follow-up to Make Me Remember, Make Me Forget (the vibe is different enough that I decided to post it standalone). Author is never sure when to use the Explicit rating, erred on the side of caution.

This started out as a completely different fic in which Chay got his ears pierced (I might still go back and write that one?). It took me so long to write and it's three whole scenes. IDK I like them being sweet and working things out with each other I guess.

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Fort getting jealous of Peat's new(?) partner

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Joong Archen as Fadel The Heart Killers, ep. 5

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Kim and Chay have started things up again, are more or less officially together and finding their way forward. There's a lot to talk about, and Kim still has trouble with the words "I love you," but maybe that's not a problem. Roughly equal parts talking and making out/sex. Could be read as a follow-up to Make Me Remember, Make Me Forget (the vibe is different enough that I decided to post it standalone). Author is never sure when to use the Explicit rating, erred on the side of caution.

This started out as a completely different fic in which Chay got his ears pierced (I might still go back and write that one?). It took me so long to write and it's three whole scenes. IDK I like them being sweet and working things out with each other I guess.

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Seriously though, the character work that's being done by Vic Michaelis as host!Vic on Very Important People is so incredibly impressive, and it's better than what we get from a lot of traditional narrative shows. I think it's particularly impressive because the format of the show, in terms of both the fact that it's improvised and that everything we see, all of the information we get about them, their life, and their personality, comes entirely from what happens and what is said in the interviews. Vic's Ex-Step Grandmother is the only episode so far where the guest is someone that Vic knows, who is tied directly to their life and their past and where the interview itself gives us a significant amount of information about them. With most of the others episodes we still learn a lot about host!Vic, but everything we learn about them in those interviews is sort of indirect. It comes in not just the questions they ask, but how they ask them. It comes from their response to the answers. It comes from seeing the bits where they interact with the crew. From the small tidbits of info they drop about their husband, their step daughter, etc. in response to something the guest has said or done. From the way they relate to the guests and the relationships they develop with them.

And even within those things, it's still done in really subtle, indirect ways. So much of it comes from Vic's facial expressions, or their tone of voice.

Think about the way we'd usually learn these kinds of things about characters in more traditional narrative shows. There would be a lot of scenes of them interacting with people close to them. We'd see them doing different things that are specifically relevant to whatever the writers want us to know about them. There would inevitably be some level of expository dialogue about their life, their past, the personality, and their issues.

We get very, very little of any of that with Very Important People. We have to learn everything about host!Vic from what happens during these interviews. We don't even, so far anyway, and aside from the episode with their Ex-Step Grandmother, have an outside perspective on who host!Vic is, what they're like, etc., at least not from anyone who actually knows them. We'll sometimes get comments from the guests about what they're observing in the moment, and occasionally Vic will say something that other people, usually the crew, have said about them. But we have yet to get any kind of outside perspective from someone who really knows them (again, outside of the one episode with their Nana), to tell us "they think they're like this, but they're really like this" or "they always do this when they feel this way or that way", or even to inform us of what Vic might be like just based on how they act around them. That is so often in storytelling an incredibly important part of how we learn about a character: seeing and learning about how the other characters who really know them see and feel about them. So far, that has not really been an aspect of how we learn about host!Vic. It's pretty much all come entirely from Vic's performance and the choices they've made.

Honestly, really thinking about it, I'd say that if I had to compare it to a more traditional narrative series (in terms of this specific topic), I'd say the closest one would be In Treatment. I'm only referring to the 2008-2010 run with Gabriel Byrne. I have not seen the more recent reboot, nor have I seen the Israeli original. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the show, episodes run about 30 minutes long, and they take place pretty much in real time, with each episode covering a therapy session between Byrne's character, the therapist, and a patient. The series was almost entirely limited to those sessions, so pretty much everything we would learn about both the patients and Byrne's character came from the discussions that happened in those therapy sessions.

It's still quite different though, for several reasons. With VIP, Vic doesn't interview the same character twice (at least not so far), so the relationship built between them is limited, so the information that we can learn about Vic (and the character who is being interviewed) is also limited. With In Treatment, Byrne's character sees the same patients every week. So we do get to see relationships develop between them and as those relationships grow we learn more about the characters based on those relationships. Also, the fact that they're therapy sessions kind of inherently means that we're going to get some real digging into the characters. And that goes for Byrne's character, too, because the last episode every week is always his session with his therapist. A whole episode every week to deeply explore his character, his relationship with his patients, etc. We get nothing like that for host!Vic. Nothing where they can examine their feelings or actions, nothing where we can deeply dig into the things that happened in their life that might be causing the emotional reactions we see, etc.

So while I think that there are some strong similarities between Very Important People and In Treatment in terms of having similar formats where pretty much everything we learn about the characters come from these conversations that happen between two people in a short span of time, by having those conversations happen in the context of therapy sessions, In Treatment is pretty much entirely designed to be able to naturally dig into information about the characters and explore it. Whereas Very Important People almost feels like the opposite. Interview shows like this, in reality, tend to be pretty artificial. Even the ones that do get really personal and really dig into people's lives. Regardless of how personal an interview might get, both the interviewer and the interviewee absolutely, without question, do a ton of prep work and rehearsing. Even when an emotion that's shown is honest, it's unlikely that it's truly a pure, in the moment reaction. So trying to really show who a character is through the format of an interview show, showing us only what happens in the interview and nothing else, is absolutely going to be a challenge. But Vic Michaelis is doing such an impressive job with it. We see their sort of 'host facade', and even with that they do such a really stunning job of making it so clear the image that host!Vic is trying to put forward and why. And then they go so much deeper with the ways that mask is constantly slipping and all of the things they decide to show us underneath it.

I think the most impressive part of it all is exactly what we're shown and when. Michaelis has been really smart about what information to let out at what times, which bits of information or emotion to show with each character they interview, etc. Think about how little of the show, at least when it comes to the guests, so far has directly related to Vic and their life, and now think about how much we already know about them, both their life and their personality/flaws/desires/insecurities/etc. And it's all improvised. This would all be impressive even if this was all scripted and there was a painstaking plan for how and when to reveal each bit of information, but the fact that each episode is improvised and they don't even know who the guest is going to be until the person has been all made up just makes it even more impressive.

And really, I think even just the fact that it is an interview show is so interesting. Because interviews/interview shows are so artificial, so just the choice to use that as the sort of medium through which to explore this character is fascinating to begin with. But the way host!Vic is sort of presented to us in that context is also really interesting. Because the host version of host!Vic is so artificial, and throughout the show so far we've seen them desperately trying to project that artificial version of themself. But the reality of who they are inevitably breaks through. And it usually breaks through more the more they develop a relationship with the guest. Which just brings us back around to how fascinating it is that in this improvised show where they have no idea who they're going to be interviewing that the information we learn about host!Vic really does come down, if not entirely then a significant amount, to who the guest for the episode decides to be and how they may or may not relate to or appeal to host!Vic.

I love all of Dropout's gameshows and such, but I really think that Very Important People is by far the most impressive show they've got on right now. I think it's the most impressive thing I've seen from them. It's so unlike anything else on television and it's using stuff that's so completely unusual for television as it is now to tell character stories that are actually really compelling, and to find different ways to build and explore character.

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the heart killers text posts: part 5

part 1, 2, 3, 4

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I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hiyao Miyazaki

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me but it's actually relevant (to my studies at least) and im so grateful LOL

research is fun until you realize you’ve spent 6 hours learning about a rabbit’s digestive system, and it’s barely relevant.

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: KinnPorsche: The Series (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Porchay Pichaya Kittisawat/Kim Khimhant Theerapanyakun Additional Tags: Praise Kink, Chastity Device, Orgasm Edging, Mirror Sex, Body Worship, Subspace Series: Part 2 of Kinktober 2024 Summary:

Kim refuses to let anyone talk bad about his boyfriend, not even Chay himself. Or: Chay has low self-esteem, and Kim is using sex and praise to bully Chay into loving himself.

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I've been working on the next chapter this fic (Mafia Kim & Conman/Honey Pot Chay), here's a little look at the next chapter 👀