#A lot of interesting things about this movie that I should try to communicate eloquently but like it was also funny

[things-methinks]

Nosferatu is such a little freak, not for the blood or the rats, but for being OBSESSED with an emo girl plagued by visions

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TECHNOBLADE (or A Narrative Analysis of the Dream SMP Doomsday Event) - Script

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! I am planning on doing a big dumb, way too long analysis video on the Dream SMP which will – at my current pace – come out in five years. I am already way too late on this one.

Spoiler Alert for the Doomsday Event that took place on the 6th of January in the Dream SMP. Surely the worst thing to take place on the 6th of January 2021 … I’m sorry, what’s this about the Capitol?

In case you don’t watch the SMP and need context: The Dream SMP is a Minecraft Multiplayer Server, that, throughout the last year, has transformed from a normal Let’s Play to an ongoing new-media series streamed by multiple high-profile streamers such as Dream, TommyInnit or Technoblade. It comes complete with script – by which I mean loose bullet points – and story events. It has attracted a large fanbase specifically invested in the story and less so in the actual gameplay content. Like I said before, I will probably do a big video on the Dream SMP at some point in the future.

The storyline is long and complicated and trying to explain it all would take up the majority of the video and there are other channels who have already done a much better job than I could ever hope to do, so give them a watch. I’ll try to summarize all that is pertinent to what I will talk about in this video.

Okay, let’s speedrun this summary. Cue the music!

Major Players here are TommyInnit, a founder of the independent nation of L’Manburg, Technoblade, an anarchist who was deep in conflict with L’Manburg, Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend and current president of L’Manburg, and Dream, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dream SMP (even though he is not the king, but we’re not going to get into that right now). Tommy had in the past been exiled by Tubbo for endangering L’Manburg’s shaky peace with the Dream SMP. Tommy had then teamed up with Technoblade, who was hellbent on destroying L’Manberg after some prior altercations – more on that later.

Tommy and Tubbo came into conflict during a festival set-up to celebrate the friendship between L’Manburg and the Dream SMP. After punching out their feelings, Tommy came to the realization that his friendship with Tubbo was more important than his vendetta against Dream and those who exiled him. Techno took that change of heart badly and teamed up with Dream to destroy L’Manburg … and that’s exactly what happened.

Techno and Dream, with little to no opposition, obliterated L’Manburg with no hope for recovery leaving its inhabitants stranded hopeless and alone.

… And that’s what you missed on Dream SMP!

Okay. So, usually I just put whatever thought slime drips out of my mouth hole into your subscription box. But then I asked myself: “Am I not taking this a largely improvised nonsense story from a bunch of 16–24-year-olds a little too seriously?”. And then I remembered. I’m a pretentious bitch. I made an 18-minute video explaining why the popular commentary YouTuber memeulous is secretly the time travelling Anti-Christ, REASON HAS NO SWAY OVER ME!

So, like the English Major drop-out that I am, I will present you with two theses, which I will then combine into one … supratheses! That word doesn’t exist, I just coined it, it’s mine! I am very smart!

[I know words, I have the best words!]

 Thesis #1: The Fandom focuses too much on Character Analysis in Favour of Narrative Analysis

The Dream SMP is truly something special. It is uniquely singular in how it tells a story of this scope through its chosen medium. While there is an overarching script that lays out the plot points of the future, each of the 30+ streamers on the SMP are their own cameraman, director, writer and actor. You cannot watch “the Dream SMP” – if you attempted that, you would be 80 by the time you caught up to the Doomsday Event. You have to choose whom to watch. You have to choose your focal point character.

Because by the way the story is told and consumed – aka in such a compartmentalized fashion; you watch one streamer and get one character’s perspective – it has sort-of unintentionally conditioned fans to look at the SMP and its characters less as one coherent story with messages and themes and more as sports teams they can root for. You’re Team Techno or Team Tubbo or Team Tommy or Team JackManifoldTV (formerly known as Thunder1408) and every other side is in the wrong! It’s like Twilight for a decade old children’s game about virtual Lego!

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the amount of discourse perpetuated by and revolving around so-called “apologists” – a terrible term that unfortunately has caught on – is really not something that I think is good for how we interact with the story of the Dream SMP.

The Dream SMP is discussed a lot on character-based level, which is, like I said before, hugely advantaged by the way the story is consumed by its audience. With traditional, visual media such as film for example, the audience can be made more aware of what messages the narrative might try to communicate on a narrative level without the need for an explicit narrator to tell you the moral.

As an example, in a movie you could have a smash-cut from the Butcher Army’s discussions about neutralizing the danger Technoblade poses to Techno being nice around villagers or taking care of animals. This would communicate on an extradiegetic level, that the Butcher Army is in the wrong with their assumptions. Alternatively, you could contrast Techno’s declarations that power corrupts and that Tubbo’s administration is cruel with Tubbo choosing not to punish Ranboo for his association with Techno – thus the narrative would communicate that Techno’s view of Tubbo and by extension the government is one-sided and not true to reality.

Stuff like that helps the viewer understanding a story holistically and manages to communicate stuff like themes and morals without having to solely rely on in-character logic and argumentation, which, as Ghostbur put it so eloquently, is comprised of a bunch of unreliable narrators.

Character analysis is great if we want dive deep, if we really want to give a character flavour and understand their motivations. It helps make the universe feel like it is alive, like it’s real. But – and this might be a shocker for you – it’s not real. It’s written. It is construction – and as such, in its construction, it has messages and themes and morals, intentionally or unintentionally.

By being so focused on specific characters and their individual journeys, viewpoints and motivation we really run the risk of not looking at the bigger picture and fail to see what the overarching narrative is actually communicating. And we may also fail to understand how characters might or might not fit into the overarching narrative.

Speaking of which …

 Thesis #2: Technoblade experiences very little Meaningfultm Thematic Conflict

Okay, let’s talk about Technoblade. I’m sure I’m not going to get any hate for this one.

I want to preface by saying that I don’t watch Technoblade’s streams; I catch up though clip channels and summaries. I’m mainly watching Tommy, Tubbo and Quackity – which is honestly already more than I can handle – but I want to be clear that while I’ll try to be as even-handed as possible – like I explained previously – the way I consumed the storylines will undoubtedly leave me with some bias.

Also, needless to say, I’m talking about the character Technoblade, not the actual content creator, unless I specifically say so. That should be obvious.

Now, I’m not doing a Technoblade character analysis, because that would be hypocritical of me – seeing how I just bitched about the overwhelming amounts of character analyses in the fandom – but I’ll try my best to summarize what is necessary.

Technoblade’s interesting in that he is a very static character – at least inwardly – he doesn’t change much. He is very steadfast in his beliefs and ideals and has very little introspection. He doesn’t question himself; he doesn’t waver, he is never in a bind about whether what he’s doing is right or wrong. He is very much a parallel to early TommyInnit – who, of course, famously said “I’m always in the right”.

And I want to emphasize that I mean this in no way as a critique of Techno’s character. A static character provides a nice contrast to more dynamic characters and can balance them out. It can also be utilised by the writing as a character flaw – which is what I hope content creator Techno is going for.

Like Techno doesn’t have a lot of empathy in the sense that he is particularly skilled at or interested in trying to see the viewpoints of others. There is never an attempt to reconcile, for example, the goal of the Pogtopians to reclaim L’Manberg and install another administration with his desire for an anarchist society. This is also compounded with his overreliance on violence as the only tactic for conflict resolution – Techno has a whole thesis statement about violence being the only universal language. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote.

And lastly, what really drives this all over the edge, is his all-or-nothing approach when dealing with the enemy – he is not so much eye for an eye as he is – to use another biblical example – you make fun of me for being bald and I’ll sic two bears on you that maul and kill you and 41 other children.

There’s also the open and completely unacknowledged hypocrisy of a self-described anarchist working together with a man that installs and dethrones Kings with his every whim – someone who – and I cannot stress this enough – hits about every box when it comes to the definition of tyrant.

So, what I’m saying is that Technoblade is the Dream SMP equivalent of Dick Chenney. C’mon you know it’s true! He will bomb that freedom into your country whether you want him to or not. That’s some cogent political commentary in the year 2021.

Okay, so now that I’ve outlined his character, what kind of conflicts does Technoblade face. Well, it’s mostly physical or external. He fights a lot whether it’s against Quackity or Sapnap or bodying Karl Jacobs five times in a row. And – with the exception of maybe Sapnap – none of it is challenging. Technoblade is the best PvP-Player on the server – there really isn’t much tension to be had from a purely physical fight.

So, how are these fights supplemented emotionally. Well, internally there is not a lot going on. As I said before, Technoblade isn’t really an introspective character. Even during his shouting match with Tommy there’s not a sense that Technoblade is wavering or unsure of himself in the way that Tommy is. He exposits that one of the reasons, he acts like he does is that he feels dehumanized; that people only use him like a weapon and then discard or even try to neutralize him once he’s no longer useful.

But that is not something that Technoblade has to grapple with – it’s not conflict for him, it’s more conflict for Tommy. Technoblade is self-assured in that he’s a person and not a weapon – it’s almost like there was a character arc there, where Technoblade self-actualizes and breaks away from the people that want to use him. But we didn’t see any of it. Technoblade unleashes the withers; then he goes into retirement because he wants to be, I suppose, and then he returns to violence as a reaction to the Butcher Army. There is a story of vengeance here, but not any conflict about being used. There is never a point where we see Technoblade come to this realization or comes to assert himself.

In season 1 there’s never a push from Pogtopia where the narrative frames them as exploiting Technoblade. He fights with them of his own volition, he gives them weapons and armour of his own volition. Nobody pressured Techno into procuring their inventory for the fight. And in Season 2, he’s the one to approach Tommy about their potential partnership – he is in the position of power here, explicitly not Tommy.

Like, I’m sorry, if this ruffles some feathers, but I really don’t see this arc where Technoblade is being used. There’s a story of misunderstanding and maybe co-dependency – but not of dehumanization. This entire line of thought seems to solely reference that moment, where Tommy says to Sapnap “I have the blade” during one of their wars – which, to base an entire emotional arc around that without any further set-up, is, and I’m sorry to say that, incredibly flimsy.

Okay, so we covered physical and emotional conflict? But what about conflict on the narrative level? Well, that leads me to my suprathesis …

 Suprathesis: The Narrative is Unclear on how it treats Technoblade … and that’s Not Good.

Here’s a Hot Take: The narrative of Season 1 treats Technoblade way less sympathetically than that of season 2.

Let me explain. The narrative of Season 1 revolves mostly around Wilbur and Tommy. The emotional fulcrum of the overall narrative is Wilbur’s rise and fall from Grace – and Tommy succeeding him as symbol of L’Manberg’s “special”-ness. Now I will talk about all that more in detail, when I talk about Season 1 of the Dream SMP. So, you’ll just have to go with me on this one for now.

Technoblade, by contrast, doesn’t really have much going on thematically in Season 1. He mostly exists as a sort-of utilitarian character – he is an accessory to make story beats happen. Like him executing Tubbo doesn’t open up any sort of thematic conflict involving him – on a character level it sets up antipathy between him and Tommy and it grants us some insight into how he operates with his violence speech – but on a larger-scale narrative level it really just shows how far Wilbur and Tommy have drifted apart in how they react to the event.

His biggest contribution is during the Season 1 finale, but even there he plays second fiddle to Wilbur. Not just because Wilbur does way more destruction with his explosion than Techno does with his Withers, but also because Wilbur had an emotional and thematic climax to his arc and by extension the entire storyline. Like Techno’s is a cool moment and very epic visual but in terms of thematic relevance, his Theseus-speech is really more set-up for Season 2.

And Season 1 is very unambiguous about L’Manberg being good and Tommy’s ideals ultimately being morally justified – I mean, they have a whole speech about it in the end and it was built-up throughout the entire Season – Techno is cast in a … less than sympathetic light. He is, if not a villain, then definitely an antagonist.

But with Season 2 the narrative is either uninterested in or not very clear on exploring Technoblade’s flaws.

Like ask yourselves: is Technoblade’s character ever consciously challenged by the narrative? Are his actions ultimately shown to not be in the right? Are his beliefs about government and power ever called into question? Are the negative consequences that his actions cause ever shown to be larger than the “good” he does?

I think what exemplifies this the most is how the Butcher Army event played out on December 16th. Now, during that event, the Butcher Army, which was comprised of Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo, managed to apprehend Technoblade, who at that point was living the quiet retirement life, and tried to have him publicly executed – without trial.

Now, smarter people than me have pointed out that the Butcher Army had a bevy of in-character reasons that can justify or explain their actions. And that’s definitely interesting, but as I said before, I want to get away from that and look into how the Butcher Army is treated on a narrative level. Because this is one of the few instances where the otherwise grey-loving Season 2 has some very clear narrative intent when it comes to morality.

The Butcher Army is very deliberately framed as almost cartoonishly corrupt and violent. They very forcefully investigate Philza, mock him and then put him under house arrest – and there’s just no remorse in the script even from normally sympathetic characters like Tubbo.

Compare and contrast with the Tommy-exile scene, which is also an act of moral ambiguity and is treated as such. And things get even worse once the Army arrives at Technoblade’s abode and attack him after he softly tells them that he has left that live behind him. They then proceed to take his horse hostage, mock him and execute him without fair trial – and I haven’t seen it but from live commentary I gathered that Techno really played up the whole softie-schtick before the Butcher Army arrived. I mean, before the big Technoblade vs Quackity fight, Quackity had whole villain monologue for Christ’s sake.

And even afterwards, the Butcher Army really plays up the corrupt angle with Tubbo proposing a festival as a guise to publicly execute someone. And again, I know that on an intradiegetic there’s nuances and it’s not really comparable to the Red Festival, but in combination with what the audience has seen up until that point and with how much it feeds into the already established themes of history repeating itself and becoming like your predecessors, it really does not paint a pretty picture of the Tubbo administration.

You can feel the heavy hand of the script on your shoulder, which is a feat seeing how – as discussed before – that’s not something that can be easily accomplished in this medium.

And that is what I mean when I say that Technoblade is not really challenged by the script and is in this case even emboldened by it. Because after this whole ordeal the thought of Technoblade taking revenge by destroying L’Manberg doesn’t seem like such an extreme response to the viewer – even though in my opinion, it is.

As of right now it is too early to say how the narrative will judge Technoblade’s actions in the future. Will they be framed as extreme but ultimately justified or perpetuating a cycle of ever-escalating vengeance? Will we ever see a government that’s not just at best misguided and at worst completely awful?

Ultimately, I believe and hope that Technoblade will be challenged by the narrative, mostly because a character that cannot, believably, be physically challenged, who doesn’t have any meaningful internal conflict about what he’s doing; and who does come out on the other side having everything he always believed in be proven completely in the right by the narrative, would be incredibly boring. Not just to watch but also to play as.

As it stands now, if the destruction Techno, Phil and Dream inflicted upon L’Manburg is framed as ultimately in the right, I would find it personally a distasteful message to send. I would ultimately say that the “correct” way to counter corruption in government is to completely obliterate the entire country. Like we’re not talking simply disbanding the government – that’s not what Doomsday was – we’re talking complete and utter annihilation. And that would be cynical and depressing. Like, call me a big softie, but even bothsidesing this argument would be bad.

Like, I’m not calling for Technoblade to be transformed into or treated a monster like Dream. But I personally feel like the narrative needs to acknowledge that the Doomsday was something that was taken way too far and that it ultimately brought more harm than good. And Technoblade needs to held accountable by someone who is not a cartoonishly corrupt government-official or who is in conflict with him anyway, like Tommy.

I thought Philza or Ranboo could do that but seeing how their storylines are progressing I don’t believe that will be the case. But who knows, maybe Captain Puffy will come through for us. We stan a Queen.

 Conclusion

So, yeah, I made this entire video just to air out my grievances with how one-sided the mode of analysis is in the fandom, because no person actually involved with the production of Dream SMP will ever see this.

But after everything I am cautiously optimistic, that content creator Technoblade knows what he’s doing. He has talked in the past about how his character is a bad guy and he loves his Greek myths. After all what’s more Greek myth than hybris being rewarded with punishment? [Technoblade never dies] That bodes well for him.

Also, this isn’t the video I promised at the end of the last one!

[letterboxd]

Careful How You Go.

Ella Kemp explores how film lovers can protect themselves from distressing subject matter while celebrating cinema at its most audacious.

Featuring Empire magazine editor Terri White, Test Pattern filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford, writer and critic Jourdain Searles, publicist Courtney Mayhew, and curator, activist and producer Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View collective.

This story contains discussion of rape, sexual assault, abuse, self-harm, trauma and loss of life, as well as spoilers for ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘A Star is Born’.

We film lovers are blessed with a medium capable of excavating real-life emotion from something seemingly fictional. Yet, for all that film is—in the oft-quoted words of Roger Ebert—an “empathy machine”, it’s also capable of deeply hurting its audience when not wielded by its makers and promoters with appropriate care. Or, for that matter, when not approached by viewers with informed caution.

Whose job is it to let us know that we might be upset by what we see? With the coronavirus pandemic decimating the communal movie-going experience, the way we accommodate each viewer’s sensibilities is more crucial than ever—especially when so many of us are watching alone, at home, often unsupported.

In order to understand how we can champion a film’s content and take care of its audience, I approached women in several areas of the movie ecosystem. I wanted to know: how does a filmmaker approach the filming of a rape and its aftermath? How does a magazine editor navigate the celebration of a potentially triggering movie in one of the world’s biggest film publications? How does a freelance writer speak to her professional interests while preserving her personal integrity? How does a women’s film collective create a safe environment for an audience to process such a film? And, how does a publicist prepare journalists for careful reporting, when their job is to get eyeballs on screens in order to keep our favorite art form afloat?

The conversations reminded me that the answers are endlessly complex. The concerns over spoilers, the effectiveness of trigger warnings, the myriad ways in which art is crafted from trauma, and the fundamental question of whose stories these are to tell. These questions were valid decades ago, they will be for decades to come, and they feel especially urgent now, since a number of recent tales helmed by female and non-binary filmmakers depict violence and trauma involving women’s bodies in fearless, often challenging ways.

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, in particular, has revived a vital conversation about content consideration, as victims and survivors of sexual assault record wildly different reactions to its astounding ending. Shatara Michelle Ford’s quietly tense debut, Test Pattern, brings Black survivors into the conversation. And the visceral, anti-wish-fulfillment horror Violation, coming soon from Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, takes the rape-revenge genre up another notch.

These films come off the back of other recent survivor stories, such as Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking series I May Destroy You (which centers women’s friendship in a narrative move that, as Sarah Williams has eloquently outlined, happens too rarely in this field). Also: Kata Wéber and Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman, and the ongoing ugh-ness of The Handmaid’s Tale. And though this article is focused on plots centering women’s trauma, I acknowledge the myriad of stories that can be triggering in many ways for all manner of viewers. So whether you’ve watched one of these titles, or others like them, I hope you felt supported in the conversations to follow, and that you feel seen.

Weruche Opia and Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

Simply put, Promising Young Woman is a movie about a woman seeking revenge against predatory men. Except nothing about it is simple. Revenge movies have existed for aeons, and we’ve rooted for many promising young (mostly white) women before Carey Mulligan’s Cassie (recently: Jen in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, Noelle in Natalia Leite’s M.F.A.). But in Promising Young Woman, the victim is not alive to seek revenge, so it becomes Cassie’s single-minded crusade. Mercifully, we never see the gang-rape that sparks Cassie’s mission. But we do see a daring, fatal subversion of the notion of a happy ending—and this is what has audiences of Emerald Fennell’s jaw-dropping debut divided.

“For me, being a survivor, the point is to survive,” Jourdain Searles tells me. The New York-based critic, screenwriter, comedian—and host of Netflix’s new Black Film School series—says the presence of death in Promising Young Woman is the problem. “One of the first times I spoke openly about [my assault], I made the decision that I didn’t want to go to the police, and I got a lot of judgment for that,” she says. “So watching Promising Young Woman and seeing the police as the endgame is something I’ve always disagreed with. I left thinking, ‘How is this going to help?’”

“I feel like I’ve got two hats on,” says Terri White, the London-based editor-in chief of Empire magazine, and the author of a recently published memoir, Coming Undone. “One of which is me creating a magazine for a specific film-loving audience, and the other bit of me, which has written a book about trauma, specifically about violence perpetrated against the body. They’re not entirely siloed, but they are two distinct perspectives.”

White loved both Promising Young Woman and I May Destroy You, because they “explode the myth of resolution and redemption”. She calls the ending of Promising Young Woman “radical” in the way it speaks to the reality of what happens to so many women. “I was thinking about me and women like me, women who have endured violence and injury or trauma. Three women every week are still killed [in the UK] at the hands of an ex-partner, or somebody they know intimately, or a current partner. Statistically, any woman who goes for some kind of physical confrontation in [the way Cassie does] would end up dying.”

She adds: “I felt like the film was in service to both victims and survivors, and I use the word ‘victims’ deliberately. I call myself a victim because I think if you’ve endured either sexual violence or physical violence or both, a lot of empowering language, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t reflect the reality of being a victim or a survivor, whichever way you choose to call yourself.” This point has been one many have disagreed on. In a way, that makes sense—no victim or survivor can be expected to speak to anyone else’s experience but their own.

Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell on the set of ‘Promising Young Woman’.

Likewise, there is no right or wrong way to feel about this film, or any film. But a question that arises is, well, should everyone have to see a film to figure that out? And should victims and survivors of sexual violence watch this film? “I have definitely been picky about who I’ve recommended it to,” Courtney Mayhew says. “I don’t want to put a friend in harm’s way, even if that means they miss out on something awesome. It’s not worth it.”

Mayhew is a New Zealand-based international film publicist, and because of her country’s success in controlling Covid 19, she is one of the rare people able to experience Promising Young Woman in a sold-out cinema. “It was palpable. Everyone was so engaged and almost leaning forwards. There were a lot of laughs from women, but it was also a really challenging setting. A lot of people looking down, looking away, and there was a girl who was crying uncontrollably at the end.”

“Material can be very triggering,” White agrees. “It depends where people are personally in their journey. When I still had a lot of trauma I hadn’t worked through in my 20s, I found certain things very difficult to watch. Those things are a reality—but people can make their own decisions about the material they feel able to watch.”

It’s about warning, and preparation, more than total deprivation, then? “I believe in giving people information so they can make the best choice for themselves,” White says. “But I find it quite reductive, and infantilizing in some respects, to be told broadly, ‘Women who have experienced x shouldn’t watch this.’ That underestimates the resilience of some people, the thirst for more information and knowledge.” (This point is clearly made in this meticulous, awe-inspiring list by Jenn, who is on a journey to make sense of her trauma through analysis of rape-revenge films.) But clarity is crucial, particularly for those grappling with unresolved issues.

Searles agrees Promising Young Woman can be a difficult, even unpleasant watch, but still one with value. “As a survivor it did not make me feel good, but it gave me a window into the way other people might respond to your assault. A lot of the time [my friends] have reacted in ways I don’t understand, and the movie feels like it’s trying to make sense of an assault from the outside, and the complicated feelings a friend might have.”

Molly Parker and Vanessa Kirby in ‘Pieces of a Woman’.

* * *

A newborn dies. A character is brutally violated. A population is tortured. To be human is to bear witness to history, but it’s still painful when that history is yours, or something very close to it. “Some things are hard to watch because you relate to them,” Searles explains. “I find mother! hard to watch, and there’s no actual sexual assault. But I just think of sexual assault and trauma and domestic abuse, even though the film isn’t about that. The thing is, you could read an academic paper on patriarchy—you don’t need to watch it on a show [or in a film] if you don’t want to.”

White agrees: “I’ve never been able to watch Nil by Mouth, because I grew up in a house of domestic violence and I find physical violence against women on screen very hard to watch. But that doesn’t mean I think the film shouldn’t be shown—it should still exist, I’ve just made the choice not to watch it.” (Reader, since our conversation, she watched it. At 2:00am.)

“I know people who do not watch Promising Young Woman or The Handmaid’s Tale because they work for an NGO in which they see those things literally in front of their eyes,” Mayhew says. “It could be helpful for someone who isn’t aware [of those issues], but then what is the purpose of art? To educate? To entertain? For escapism? It’s probably all of those.”

Importantly, how much weight should an artist’s shoulders carry, when it comes to considering the audiences that will see their work? There’s a general agreement among my interviewees that, as White says, “filmmakers have to make the art that they believe in”. I don’t think any film lover would disagree, but, suggests Searles, “these films should be made with survivors in mind. That doesn’t mean they always have to be sensitive and sad and declawed. But there is a way to be provocative, while leaning into an emotional truth.”

Madeleine Sims-Fewer in ‘Violation’.

Violation, about which I’ll say little here since it is yet to screen at SXSW (ahead of its March 25 release on Shudder) is not at all declawed, and is certainly made with survivors in mind—in the sense that in life, unlike in movies, catharsis is very seldom possible no matter how far you go to find it. On Letterboxd, many of those who saw Violation at TIFF and Sundance speak of feeling represented by the rape-revenge plot, writing: “One of the most intentionally thought out and respectful of the genre… made by survivors for survivors” and “I feel seen and held”. (Also: “This movie is extremely hard to watch, completely on purpose.”)

“Art can do great service to people,” agrees White, “If, by consequence, there is great service for people who have been in that position, that’s a brilliant consequence. But I don’t believe filmmakers and artists should be told that they are responsible for certain things. There’s a line of responsibility in terms of being irresponsible, especially if your community is young, or traumatised.”

Her words call to mind Bradley Cooper’s reboot of A Star is Born, which many cinephiles knew to be a remake and therefore expected its plot twist, but young filmgoers, drawn by the presence of Lady Gaga, were shocked (and in some cases triggered) by a suicide scene. When it was released, Letterboxd saw many anguished reviews from younger members. In New Zealand, an explicit warning was added to the film’s classification by the country’s chief censor (who also created an entirely new ‘RP18’ classification for the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which eventually had a graphic suicide scene edited out two years after first landing on the streaming service).

“There is a duty of care to audiences, and there is also a duty of care to artists and filmmakers,” says Mayhew. “There’s got to be some way of meeting in the middle.” The middle, perhaps, can be identified by the filmmaker’s objective. “It’s about feeling safe in the material,” says Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View film collective, which curates and markets films by women in order to effect industry change. “With material like this, it’s beholden on creatives to interrogate their own intentions.”

Filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford is “forever interrogating” ideas of power. Their debut feature, Test Pattern, deftly examines the power differentials that inform the foundations of consent. “As an artist, human, and person who has experienced all sorts of boundary violation, assault and exploitation in their life, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about power… It is something I grapple with in my personal life, and when I arrive in any workplace, including a film set.”

In her review of Test Pattern for The Hollywood Reporter, Searles writes, “This is not a movie about sexual assault as an abstract concept; it’s a movie about the reality of a sexual assault survivor’s experience.” Crucially, in a history of films that deal largely with white women’s experiences, Test Pattern “is one of the few sexual-assault stories to center a Black woman, with her Blackness being central to her experience and the way she is treated by the people around her.”

Brittany S. Hall in ‘Test Pattern’.

* * *

Test Pattern follows the unfolding power imbalance between Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) and her devoted white boyfriend Evan (Will Brill), as he drives her from hospital to hospital in search of a rape kit, after her drink was spiked by a white man in a bar who then raped her. Where Promising Young Woman is a millennial-pink revenge fantasy of Insta-worthy proportions, Test Pattern feels all too real, and the cops don’t come off as well as they do in the former.

Ford does something very important for the audience: they begin the film just as the rape is about to occur. We do not see it at this point (we do not really ever see it), but we know that it happened, so there’s no chance that, somewhere deeper into the story, when we’re much more invested, we’ll be side-swiped by a sudden onslaught of sexual violence. In a way, it creates a safe space for our journey with Renesha.

It’s one of many thoughtful decisions made by Ford throughout the production process. “I’m in direct conversation with film and television that chooses to depict violence against women so casually,” Ford tells me. “I intentionally showed as little of Renesha’s rape as humanly possible. I also had an incredibly hard time being physically present for that scene, I should add. What I did shoot was ultimately guided by Renesha’s experience of it. Shoot only what she would remember. Show only what she would have been aware of.

“But I also made it clear that this was a violation of her autonomy, by allowing moments where we have an arm’s length point of view. I let the camera sit with the audience, as I’m also saying, as the filmmaker, this happened, and you saw enough of it to know. This, for me, is a larger commentary on how we treat victims of assault and rape. I do not believe for one goddamn minute that we need to see the actual, literal violence to know what happened. When we flagrantly replicate the violence in film and television, we are supporting the cultural norm of needing ‘all of the evidence’—whatever that means—to ‘believe women’.”

Ford’s intentional work in crafting the romance and unraveling of Test Pattern’s leading couple pays off on screen, but their stamp as an invested and careful director also shows in their work with Drew Fuller, the actor who played Mike, the rapist. “It’s a very difficult role, and I’m grateful to him for taking it so seriously. When discussing and rendering the practice and non-practice of consent intentionally, I found it helpful to give it a clear definition and provide conceptual insight.

“I sent Drew a few articles that I used as tools to create a baseline understanding when it comes to exploring consent and power on screen. At the top of that list was Lili Loofbourow’s piece, The female price of male pleasure and Zhana Vrangalova's Teen Vogue piece, Everything You Need to Know about Consent that You Never Learned in Sex Ed. The latter in my opinion is the linchpin. There’s also Jude Elison Sady Doyle’s piece about the whole Aziz Ansari thing, which is a great primer.”

Sidney Flanigan in ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’.

Even when a filmmaker has given Ford’s level of care and attention to their project, what happens when the business end of the industry gets involved in the art? As we well know, marketing is a film’s window dressing. It has one job: to get eyeballs into the cinema. It can’t know if every viewer should feel safe to enter.

It would be useful, with certain material, to know how we should watch, and with whom, and what might we need in the way of support coming out. Whose job is it to provide this? Beyond the crude tool of an MPAA rating (and that’s a whole sorry tale for another day), there are many creative precautions that can be taken across the industry to safeguard a filmgoer’s experience.

Mayhew, who often sees films at the earliest stages (sometimes before a final cut, sometimes immediately after), speaks to journalists in early screenings and ensures they have the tools to safely report on the topics raised. In New Zealand, reporters are encouraged to read through resources to help them guide their work. Mayhew’s teams would also ensure journalists would be given relevant hotline numbers, and would ask media outlets to include them in published stories.

“It’s not saying, ‘You have to do this’,” she explains, “It’s about first of all not knowing what the journalist has been through themselves, and second of all, [if] they are entertainment reporters who haven’t navigated speaking about sexual assault, you only hope it will be helpful going forward. It’s certainly not done to infantilize them, because they’re smart people. It’s a way to show some care and support.”

The idea of having appropriate resources to make people feel safe and encourage them to make their own decisions is a priority for Bays and Birds’ Eye View, as well. The London-based creative producer and cultural activist stresses the importance of sharing such a viewing experience. “It’s the job of cinemas, distributors and festivals to realize that it might not be something the filmmaker does, but as the people in control of the environment it’s our job to give extra resources to those who want it,” says Bays. “To give people a safe space to come down from the experience.”

Pre-pandemic, when Birds’ Eye View screened Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a sharp condemnation of workplace micro-aggressions seen through the eyes of one female assistant, they invited women who had worked for Harvey Weinstein. For a discussion after Eliza Hittman’s coming-of-ager Never Rarely Sometimes Always, abortion experts were able to share their knowledge. “It’s about making sure the audience knows you can say anything here, but that it’s safe,” Bays explains. “It’s kind of like group therapy—you don’t know people, so you’re not beholden to what they think about you. And in the cinema people aren’t looking at you. You’re speaking somewhat anonymously, so a lot of really important stuff can come out.”

The traditional movie-going experience, involving friends, crowds and cathartic, let-loose feelings, is still largely inaccessible at the time of writing. Over the past twelve months we’ve talked plenty about preserving the magic of the big screen experience, but it’s about so much more than the romanticism of an art form; it’s also about the safety that comes from a feeling of community when watching potentially upsetting movies.

“The going in and coming out parts of watching a film in the cinema are massively important, because it’s like coming out of the airlock and coming back to reality,” says Bays. “You can’t do that at home. Difficult material kind of stays with you.” During the pandemic, Birds’ Eye View has continued to provide the same wrap-around curatorial support for at-home viewers as they would at an in-person event. “If we’re picking a difficult film and asking people to watch it at home, we might suggest you watch it with a friend so you can speak about it afterwards,” Bays says.

Julia Garner in ‘The Assistant’.

But, then, how can we still find this sense of community without the physical closeness? “It’s no good waiting for [the internet] to become kind,” she says. “Create your own closed spaces. We do workshops and conversations exclusively for people who sign up to our newsletter. In real-life meetings you can go from hating something to hearing an eloquent presentation of another perspective and coming round to it, but you need the time and space to do that. This little amount of time gives you a move towards healing, even if it’s just licking some wounds that were opened on Twitter. But it could be much deeper, like being a survivor and feeling very conflicted about the film, which I do.”

Conflict is something that Searles, the film critic, knows about all too well in her work. “Since I started writing professionally, I almost feel like I’m known for writing about assault and rape at this point. I do write about it a lot, and as a survivor I continue to process it. I’ve been assaulted more than once so I have a lot to process, and so each time I’m writing about it I’m thinking about different aspects and remnants of those feelings. It can be very cathartic, but it’s a double-edged sword because sometimes I feel like I have an obligation to write about it too.”

There is also a constant act of self-preservation that comes with putting so much of yourself on the internet. “I often get messages from people thanking me for talking about these subjects with a deep understanding of what they mean,” Searles says. “I really appreciate that. I get negative messages about a lot of things, but not this one thing.”

Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

With such thoughtful approaches to heavy content, it feels like we’re a long way further down the road from blunt tools like content and trigger warnings. But do they still have their place? “It’s just never seemed appropriate to put trigger warnings on any of our reviews or features,” White explains. “We have a heavy male readership, still 70 percent male to 30 percent female. I’m conscious we’re talking to a lot of men who will often have experienced violence themselves, but we don’t put any warnings, because we are an adult magazine, and when we talk about violence in, say, an action film, or violence that is very heavily between men, we don’t caveat that at all.”

Bays, too, is sceptical of trigger warnings, explaining that “there’s not much evidence [they] actually work. A lot of psychologists expound on the fact that if people get stuck in their trauma, you can never really recover from PTSD if you don’t at some point face your trauma.” She adds: “I’m a survivor, and I found I May Destroy You deeply, profoundly triggering, but also cathartic. I think it’s more about how you talk about the work, rather than having a ‘NB: survivors of sexual abuse or assault shouldn’t see this’.”

“It’s important to give people a feel of what they’re in for,” argues Searles. “A lot of people who have dealt with suicide ideation would prefer that warning.” While some worry that a content warning is effectively a plot spoiler, Searles disagrees. “I don’t consider a content warning a spoiler. I just couldn’t imagine sitting down for a film, knowing there’s going to be a suicide, and letting it distract me from the film.” Still, she acknowledges the nuance. “I think using ‘self-harm’ might be better than just saying ‘suicide’.”

Mayhew shared insights on who actually decides which films on which platforms are preceded with warnings—turns out, it’s a bit messy. “The onus traditionally has fallen on governmental censorship when it comes to theatrical releases,” she explains. “But streamers can do what they want, they are not bound by those rules so they have to—as the distributors and broadcasters—take the government’s censors on board in terms of how they are going to navigate it.

“The consumer doesn’t know the difference,” she continues, “nor should they—so it means they can be watching The Crown on Netflix and get this trigger warning about bulimia, and go to the cinema the next day and not get it, and feel angry about it. So there’s the question of where is the responsibility of the distributor, and where is the responsibility of the audience member to actually find out for themselves.”

The warnings given to an audience member can also vary widely depending where they find themselves in the world, too. Promising Young Woman, for example, is rated M in Australia, R18 in New Zealand, and R in the United States. Meanwhile, the invaluable Common Sense Media recommends an age of fifteen years and upwards for the “dark, powerful, mature revenge comedy”. Mayhew says a publicist’s job is “to have your finger on the pulse” about these cultural differences. “You have to read the overall room, and when I say room I mean the culture as a whole, and you have to be constantly abreast of things across those different ages too.”

She adds: “This feeds into the importance of representation right at the top of those boardrooms and right down to the film sets. My job is to see all opinions, and I never will, especially because I am a white woman. I consider myself part of the LGBT community and sometimes I’ll bring that to a room that I think has been lacking in that area, when it comes to harmful stereotypes that can be propagated within films about LGBT people. But I can’t bring a Black person’s perspective, I cannot bring an Indigenous perspective. The more representation you have, the better your film is going to be, your campaign is going to be.”

Bays, who is also a filmmaker, agrees: representation is about information, and working with enough knowledge to make sure your film is being as faithful to your chosen communities as possible. “As a filmmaker, I’d feel ill-informed and misplaced if I was stumbling into an area of representation that I knew nothing about without finding some tools and collaborators who could bring deeper insight.”

Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham in ‘Promising Young Woman’.

This is something Ford aimed for with Test Pattern’s choice of crew members, which had an effect not just on the end product, but on the entire production process. “I made sure that at the department head level, I was hiring people I was in community with and fully saw me as a person, and me them,” they say. “In some ways it made the experience more pleasurable.” That said, the shoot was still not without its incidents: “These were the types of things that in my experience often occur on a film set dominated by straight white men, that we're so accustomed to we sometimes don’t even notice it. I won’t go into it but what I will say is that it was not tolerated.”

Vital to the telling of the story were the lived experiences that Ford and their crew brought to set. “As it applies to the sensitive nature of this story, there were quite a few of us who have had our own experiences along the spectrum of assault, which means that we had to navigate our own internal re-processing of those experiences, which is hard to do when we’re constructing an experience of rape for a character.

“However, I think being able to share our own triggers and discomfort and context, when it came to Renesha’s experience, made the execution of it all the better. Again, it was a pleasure to be in community with such smart, talented and considerate women who each brought their own nuance to this film.”

* * *

Thinking about everything we’ve lived through by this point in 2021, and the heightened sensitivity and lowered mental health of film lovers worldwide, movies are carrying a pretty heavy burden right now: to, as Jane Fonda said at the Golden Globes, help us see through others’ eyes; also, to entertain or, at the very least, not upset us too much.

But to whom does film have a responsibility, really? Promising Young Woman’s writer-director Emerald Fennell, in an excellent interview with Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastién, said that she was thinking of audiences when she crafted the upsetting conclusion.

What she was thinking was: a ‘happy’ ending for Cassie gets us no further forward as a society. Instead, Cassie’s shocking end “makes you feel a certain way, and it makes you want to talk about it. It makes you want to examine the film and the society that we live in. With a cathartic Hollywood ending, that’s not so much of a conversation, really. It’s a kind of empty catharsis.”

So let’s flip the question: what is our responsibility, as women and allies, towards celebrating audacious films about tricky subjects? The marvellous, avenging blockbusters that once sucked all the air out of film conversation are on pause, for now. Consider the space that this opens up for a different kind of approach to “must-see movies”. Spread the word about Test Pattern. Shout from the rooftops about It’s A Sin. Add Body of Water and Herself and Violation to your watchlists. And, make sure the right people are watching.

Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill in ‘Test Pattern’.

I asked my interviewees: if they could choose one type of person they think should see Promising Young Woman, who would it be? Ford has not seen Fennell’s film, but “it feels good to have my film contribute to a larger discourse that is ever shifting, ever adding nuance”. They are very clear on who can learn the most from their own movie.

“A white man is featured so prominently in Test Pattern as a statement about how white people and men have a habit of centering themselves in the stories of others, prioritizing their experience and neglecting to recognize those on the margins. If Evan is triggering, he should be. If your feelings about Evan vacillate, it is by design.

“‘Allies’ across the spectrum are in a complicated dance around doing the ‘right thing’ and ‘showing up’ for those they are ostensibly seeking to support,” Ford continues. “Their constant battle is to remember that they need to be centering the needs of those they were never conditioned to center. Tricky stuff. Mistakes will be made. Mistakes must be owned. Sometimes reconciliation is required.”

It is telling that similar thoughts emerged from my other interviewees regarding Promising Young Woman’s ideal audience, despite the fact that none of them was in conversation with the others for this story. For that reason, as we come to the end of this small contribution to a very large, ongoing conversation, I’ve left their words intact.

White: I think it’s a great film for men.

Searles: I feel like the movie is very much pointed at cisgender heterosexual men.

Mayhew: Men.

White: We’re always warned about the alpha male with a massive ego, but we’re not warned about the beta male who reads great books, listens to great records, has great film recommendations. But he probably slyly undermines you in a completely different way. Anybody can be a predator.

Searles: The actors chosen to play these misogynist, rape culture-perpetuating men are actors we think of as nice guys.

White: We are so much more tolerant of a man knocking the woman over the head, dragging her down an alley and raping her, because we understand that. But rape culture is made up of millions of small things that enable the people who do it. We are more likely to be attacked in our own homes by men we love than a stranger in the street.

Mayhew: The onus should not fall on women to call this out.

Searles: It’s not just creeps, like the ones you see usually in these movies. It’s guys like you. What are you going to do to make sure you’re not like this?

Related content

Sex Monsters, Rape Revenge and Trauma: a work-in-progress list

Rape and Revenge: a list of films that fall into, and play with, the genre

Unconsenting Media: a search engine for sexual violence in broadcasting

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

If you need help or to talk to someone about concerns raised for you in this story, please first know that you are not alone. These are just a few of the many organizations and resources available, and their websites include more information.

US: RAINN (hotline 0800 656 HOPE); LGBT National Help Center; Pathways to Safety; Time’s Up.

Canada: Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers—contacts by province and territory

UK/Ireland: Mind; The Survivors Trust (hotline 08088 010818); Rape Crisis England and Wales

Europe: Rape Crisis Network Europe

[bellasweetwriting]

Fix His Broken Heart

Jess Mariano x f.reader

(not my gif)

masterlist

request: Hiii, i want a jess fic🥺 theres not enough jess mariano fics here, how about after rory goes to visit him at truncheon he meets the reader and she helps him move on from rory and he falls in love with reader. 💞💞

requested by: @beautiful-thinking

note: I’m a big literati shipper so this was hard but also fun to write I really love this

warnings: movie references, drinking, gilmore girls s2,s3 and s6 spoilers, some fancy vocabulary, Logan hate

word count: 1,7k

reading time: 7 min

And he saw her walk away to his arms. She found comfort in another guy. She moved one.

He hated himself for realizing that after all these years of knowing this person, still, it isn't enough. He and Rory evolved separately, they don't have the same goals or the same resources. As much as they try, it seemed like destiny didn't want their paths to cross one another.

He realized that he lost her as soon as she walked out of that door. She was gone. What now?

He'll probably see her again at Luke and Lorelai's wedding; hell, he'll even see Logan there also. The way he despited that guy. He cheated on her, and still, there she was, madly in love with him.

Logan is better than him in Rory's eyes, and he couldn't do anything to change that. He was a forgotten part of her story, an item locked inside a box that she opens when she feels lost. She probably doesn' think of him anymore like she used to.

But he thinks of her at least once a day. When he walks through the bookstore and notices the new edition of Dawn Powell's My Home Is Far Away, or when his friends bring coffee and offer to him, reminding him of her slight coffee addiction. Who's he kidding? There's nothing "slight" about Rory Gilmore's coffee addiction, it's concerning.

Any little thing reminded him of her and the fact that now he's sure she doesn't think of him anymore... saddens him.

Everyone was celebrating the success of the event that day, while Jess drowned his sorrows in a cold beer, also glancing over the girls that walked past him.

"I should warn you that if you are planning to Kurt Cobain on my bar, don't." That expression provoked an immediate reaction on Jess's face. "Not a fan of dark humor?"

"Not when it comes from the mouth of a stranger, not," he replied, making the girl chuckle. "Do you always attend your costumers like that, Rick Blaine?" Asked Jess naming the main character of Casablanca, who happened to owned a bar/restaurant in the 1940s.

"Rick Blaine? Don't tell me you are one of those guys who listen to The Clash on repeat and think they are better than the rest of the world because they know references from black and white movies and have read at least one book by Bukowski in the last three months." Jess drank from his beer, making the girl opened her mouth widely. "Oh, God, you are! A living Danielle Steel novel main character drinking alone in my bar." He laughed.

"I used to be that guy," Jess corrected her. "I've changed."

"A girl?"

"A breakup with a girl, to be fairer. I work at a little bookstore called Truncheon. We are all independent writers, and to give you some credit, some of us do look like Danielle Steel's characters. Not that I have read anything by her, though."

Jess wasn't like that. He didn't tell people he doesn't know about himself or his personal life, but for some reason, probably the effects of the alcohol in that beer were making him loosen up a bit with this complete stranger. Yeah, a significant event has happened in his life. The girl he thought he was going to be with forever decided to be with someone else rather than him, and he hasn't thought of anyone else romantically. He's so used to being alone, so used to not having anyone to actually talk to, that, maybe, liberating his internal thoughts and regrets with someone he isn't going to see again is probably for the best.

Not a therapist or a friend, just, someone external who isn't going to dig dipper in his subconscious to understand his situation and actions or someone who is involved in the story; someone who just―listens.

"You read one, you read them all." She commented. "Independent writers, huh? Have you published anything I have written?"

"Probably not," he said with that typical modesty he has earned through the pass of the years. "I just have one book out, is a self-published, so..." She nodded. "I actually did a little road trip, trying to make independent bookstores like mine to put them in the store. Probably, by the end of the month, I'll have twenty bucks and a sticker that says: «keep trying, champ.»"

"How poetic," the barista murmured, and both chuckle.

"Do you have a copy of your book?" She asked, and he nodded, giving it to her. "The Subsect, by Jess Mariano. Truncheon Books," she read before turning it around and reading the back cover. "«A self-published, prominent and dark-humored coming of age short novel following the unique life of J., a seventeen-year-old with no place to call home.» That's dark. How much for it?"

"Twenty bucks and a sticker," she chuckled, "or, a free beer."

"Sounds like a fair deal, Jess Mariano." He smiled at the mention of his name. "I'm Y/N."

"Nice to meet you, Y/N." She placed the book inside her apron with a tiny smile. "So you work here."

"Oh, you said that because of the apron and the fact that I'm behind the counter? No, I'm just a big fan of... college bars in Philadelphia." The sarcasm in Y/N's voice made Jess grin. "My brother owns the place. He lets me live upstairs while I go to college, and I pay rent by working here. The books you see behind me are mine. I study on my break."

"What are you studying?"

"English. I want to be a screenplay writer." He sighed before shaking his head. "What?"

"A film writer? Why?"

"I love films. I love watching them, reviewing them, analyzing them. I want to write masterpieces. What's wrong with that? At least I'm not writing coming of age short novels."

"It's not a coming of age novel, that's just the hideous synopsis that my poet friends come up with for the book. It's actually a lot deeper than that."

"The only way of finding that out is reading it, right?"

"Right."

Both looked at each other for a few seconds before she asked for his glass to refill that free beer she offered him.

"How about... if I come tomorrow, take you out, and you buy me that beer? How about that?" Y/N chuckle before agreeing.  He didn't believe it actually worked. He had tried to ask girls out in the last two years, but they've always said that they weren't interested. But there was something different and intriguing about Y/N that had caught the young writer's attention. "At what time do you finish class?"

"Pick me up at eight here, I'll wait."

"Cool."

"Cool."

...............................................................................................................................

He was nervous.

A date. Jess has never even been on one before. Not even with Rory. He never took Rory on a date like a dinner or a movie before they started going out. He used to tease her, and she fell for him, God knows why.

He took Rory on dates when they were dating, although if you count the car ride as a date. No, it wasn't a date. She was Dean's girlfriend at the time, and he crashed her car.

Why did she even like him? He crashed her car for God's sake. If he was Rory, he would have hated himself.

He hated himself already.

It wasn't like in books. Girls are complicated, and the male writers he is so used to reading about usually don't talk about dates and how to get a girl; the girl is already in love with the main character.

She did mention Danielle Steel. Did she read that kind of dramas, like Nicholas Sparks and John Green, where the characters just die in each other's arms like a shoddy Shakespeare tragedy imitation? Did she like that? He didn't know how to be a "romance" kind of guy. He still used the "bully her because you like her" technique, and maybe that's the only part of him that hasn't changed with the years.

He still didn't know how to communicate and express himself. He still wasn't used to talking about his emotions or being in a healthy relationship where there's no such thing as privacy. He wasn't born to assist to cotillions and balls, wear tuxes like James Bond and use fancy words gentleman-like, such as "Farewell," "Luxury," "Eloquent," and "Hope you had a marvelous evening, thanks for joining us in our humble and splendid gathering."

But that was Rory's world. Probably Logan used words like that without even knowing the meaning of them.

He quickly noticed that thinking about his ex-girlfriend before a date wasn't a good sign.

Maybe he should stand her up? No, that is an old Jess move. He is a changed man, he doesn't treat girls like that anymore. He is better, he is more mature, he wants to achieve something, actually becoming a better and selfless person who thinks about the consequences before acting. He wasn't going to stand Y/N up.

By a quarter past eight, he was standing on the bar's entrance, making eye contact with the barista from the previous day. Y/N smiled at him before saying goodbye to the guy next to her, grabbing her purse and walking towards Jess.

"Thought you wouldn't show up, Romeo."

"Can't believe you took me for a coward."

"In my defense, I saw you drinking your problems away yesterday." He nodded before putting her coat on her shoulders for her, making Y/N smile. "What a gentleman."

"There are so many things you don't know about me. You would surprise yourself."

"Oh, let me guess: you've never been on a date before."

"What? Why would you say that?"

"Well, because we are walking instead of driving."

"I have a dark past with cars and girls. You wouldn't want me to be behind the wheel while you are inside the car after you hear it, believe me."

"Good to know." Both laughed as they walked under the streetlights of Philadelphia. "I've never been on a date either," she admitted, taking him by surprise, but not as much to make a comment about it.

Jess has never felt more comfortable. Next to her, he felt like he was free of judgments. Starting a new story, blank page, blank notebook. He felt safe, and he hasn't felt safe in another person's arms in such a long time.

This was good for him. To finally... move on.

And who better than her to fix his broken heart.

[heroes-fading]

Why Veronica Mars Won’t Have a Season 5

My introduction to Veronica Mars came in the midst of my father’s death. I watched episodes in hospital waiting rooms before it happened, and holed up in my room afterwards. I found a lot of comfort in the strength that the characters provided. The scene of Logan at his mother’s funeral - maniac and trying to find the humor in it - is exactly what I felt at my father’s. I, like Logan, made jokes and tried shrugging it off. I was certain that this was some sort of cosmic joke, and I was on the receiving end. Veronica’s personality shaped most of who I was in high school - my dad passed away two weeks before I started. Her snark, intelligence, and resilience inspired me so much then. I found a wonderful community with fans of the show, and to this day as a semi-adult I love and adore so many people I met through the show.

When the movie was announced, I was ecstatic. I remember rushing to a bathroom stall at my high school so I could eloquently keyboard-smash about it with my friends, donating to the Kickstarter, wearing my t-shirt, going to the theater with my friend to watch it and livestreaming it the night of its release with my online friends. In a sea of horrible feelings and helplessness, Veronica Mars helped me feel empowered and supported.

That’s partly why all of this stings so badly and feels so much like a betrayal.

Logan Echolls fits into a lot of tropes I’ve grown to hate as a self-identified feminist who has zero time for bad boys. Men who “atone for their sins” to get with a leading heroine are ones I often find boring - so often they’re executed poorly and their past mistakes would be absolutely unforgivable in a real context. Chuck Bass, Damon Salvatore, Spike, et. all are characters I’m tired of seeing in fiction. Logan Echolls organized a bum fight, took out Veronica’s headlights, burned down a community pool, made a series of racist comments to Weevil, and generally had moments of being the absolute worst. But for some weird reason, I have a massive soft spot for Logan and he’s become one of my favorite fictional characters.

Maybe it’s because we’ve seen him go through much, change so much over the course of the show. Maybe it’s because the show actually held him accountable (as well as Veronica) so the redemption didn’t feel cheap or unearned. Or maybe it’s because I’m just a weak heterosexual hypnotized by Jason Dohring’s abs and my feminism only goes so far as who I think is hot. I hope it’s not the last one, but I’m sure some would argue it is! The point is -- healthy, going-to-therapy Logan feels earned after the deaths of his parents, his abusive dad killing his girlfriend, numerous beatings, and too many near death experiences to count. Logan went from being an obligatory psychotic jackass to a fairly well-adjusted boyfriend in a way that made narrative sense.

His offscreen death right after getting married to the love of his life? Not so much.  

The thing that stings about Veronica Mars’ final episode is not just Logan’s death - it’s what it means for the show going forward, especially its titular character. What made Veronica lovable was not her toughness as Logan’s final voicemail details. As season 3 Logan reminds us, Veronica isn’t invincible and she isn’t always right. What made her such a compelling character was what was underneath that toughness, and the people around her that highlighted that warmth buried underneath layers of trauma. In other words, what made her a marshmallow. Burnt on the outside, but gooey on the inside, as Wallace describes her in the pilot.

When we meet Veronica in the pilot, she’s been through a litany of traumas: her best friend’s death, a breakup, sexual assault and drugging, social ostracization, her mother’s addiction and swift exit from her life, a swift drop in socioeconomic status, and routine humiliation at the hands of her peers. But in spite of all of that, she’s still the girl that cuts Wallace down from the flag because it’s the right thing to do. She’s still the girl that worries about her father, has sympathy for Logan after his mother’s death despite all of his cruelty, defends and comforts Meg Manning after she endures the same bullying Veronica did, cares (often, initially unwillingly) about the people whose cases she takes, and bakes cookies for her friend after his basketball game just because. Even as recently as the books, Veronica bakes a cake for her terrible, abandoning mother on her birthday in spite of her replacing her and Keith with another family. She looks after her half-brother Hunter, even if he’s a painful reminder of her mother’s foibles. Veronica isn’t nearly as tough as she pretends to be, and that’s a good thing. That’s what makes her interesting and stops her from being like every other cynical hardboiled detective trope.

The people around Veronica - who support her, evolve with her, and serve as contrasts to her - are what help make her story so compelling. People who can tell her when she’s wrong (Logan, Keith, Weevil, et. all), who remind her of her soft side (Keith, Wallace, Mac, Logan), who can stop her from turning into a noir stereotype and cement her as Veronica Mars. People aren’t tuning in just to see Veronica snark at random side characters. Her personal journey in moving past her trauma and her relationships with other characters are what really makes the character who she is. 

Her journey, from the pilot episode to the movie, is realizing that she can’t just shove down and run away from her trauma. Over the course of her show, we see her form bonds with people in spite of her attempts not to - Wallace, Mac, Logan, and a variety of others. They help her, support her, and challenge her in ways that only serve to make her story more interesting. In the movie, we see Veronica realize she can’t keep running and she doesn’t want a cushy life as a New York lawyer with a boyfriend who doesn’t understand why she cares so much about what happens in her hometown. Neptune, as corrupt and corroded as it is, is her hometown. 

That’s why it’s such a spectacular slap in the face for the end of season 4 to offer the exact opposite. Veronica loses her husband (after finally evolving from the Veronica in the pilot who swore she was never getting married because she was so cynical about relationships) immediately after marriage. She leaves behind Keith, Wallace, and everyone else to chase unknown cases with unknown people in unknown places. As Rob has said, he saw this as the only way for Veronica to continue to be interesting - roaming the world solo as if she’s Sherlock Holmes.

This is not character progression. This is not driving the plot forward. This is regressing to a character to a point even before the pilot episode - a hardened Veronica who pretends she doesn’t care, who uses her trauma as an armour, and keeps people away from her. It undermines the central message of the movie - that Neptune is her home and in spite of her problems, she’s willing to fight for it. By killing Logan, Rob wanted to kill Veronica’s ties to Neptune. This isn’t an evolution - it’s a devolution. 

Rob Thomas has offered this option before - a Veronica exit vehicle sans everyone else, including only Kristen Bell snarking at a camera - in the form of the last-ditch FBI pilot. It was not well received by fans nor networks, and unsurprisingly not picked up or seen anywhere other than a reposting on YouTube. I think if he sincerely expects any other result from a similar future attempt, he’s lying to himself. 

If Rob Thomas wanted the male character-centric P.I. noir he initially planned on writing rather than Veronica Mars, he should have written that rather than allowed it to take over the Veronica Mars universe. Writing a woman with the same elements of toxic masculinity as male characters (a complete disregard for their own feelings, ripping themselves away from personal connections, framing “toughness” as superior and emotional development as a waste of time) is not feminism - it’s just lazy. “Strong female characters” don’t have to be made strong by undergoing trauma after trauma and shutting down until they’re a shadow of their former selves. Their male counterparts aren’t expected to have to deal with rape, death, ostracization, and every other possible form of trauma  - women sure as hell shouldn’t. 

Furthermore, the way that Rob Thomas has framed his fanbase is shameful. Veronica Mars fans aren’t just deranged fangirls too obsessed with Jason Dohring’s abs to care about the health of the story. This isn’t “not what we wanted, but what we needed” - we’re not an audience too stupid to know what’s good for us. We’re an intelligent audience when we’re giving the showrunners money, but when we’re disagreeing with the writing choices we’re just too invested in romance to “get it”. Predictably, these fans (who make up most of Veronica Mars’ fanbase that the showrunners claim to adore so much) are women. For decades, women have been stereotyped as media-consumers that only care about romance and thus can’t care about depth as if the two are mutually exclusive. This stereotype is incredibly sexist, especially given what this fanbase in particular has done for this franchise, and the continued insistence that these fans just don’t know what’s good for them or the show is incredibly condescending and transparent.

This fanbase poured $6 million dollars into a Kickstarter for a money, maintained energy for a revival and actively lobbied streaming services and networks for a continuation, and kept the fandom twelve years after the finale episode of its original incarnation aired. As much as some may resent how fan energy encouraged writers to see Logan evolve, or Logan and Veronica to sort out their issues, or anything else - these were choices the writers made and stood by for years. A sudden U-Turn in storytelling to go from “the fans were right, this dynamic is wonderful and we’re going to base our advertising around it!” to “well, it was never supposed to be about that” is a kick to the teeth to a fanbase that (literally!) gave so much. 

It’s not as if this is the first time the fanbase has been disappointed by a writing decision. Speaking for myself, I was heavily disappointed by the way sexual assault was handled on the original incarnation of the show. Veronica’s rape was handled by at first not framing it as a sexual assault at all in “A Trip to the Dentist” - Duncan Kane (her ex-boyfriend/potential half-brother at some point in time) having sex with her while she was unconcious was framed as just “feelings and nature taking over” because he was under the influence. In season 3, the writers decided that framing women protesting sexual assault on campus as deranged feminists who sexually assault men by inserting them with Easter eggs was a good choice. That Easter egg part was played for laughs by the show, writers, and leading cast member. 

Even the inclusion of Dick Casablancas for laughs - whose GHB was intended for his girlfriend and ended up in Veronica’s cup - doesn’t feel right. Ryan Hansen’s charm explains a lot of it, but the show seems to place a lot more blame on Madison for Veronica’s rape despite the fact she narrowly escaped the same fate at Dick’s hands. I was disappointed then, and I’m still disappointed with it now - far away from any romantic concerns of the show.

And my biggest problem with the ending of season 4 isn’t just that Logan is dead. I’m incredibly crushed and disappointed to see all of that character development be met with an offscreen car-bomb, but it doesn’t bode well for Veronica’s characterization and ultimate arc either. I fell in love with Veronica’s character first, and I don’t even recognize her anymore.

If the movie was a thank you to the marshmallows (both the fans and Veronica’s inner softness), the ending of the show was a middle finger to both. If the lesson from the series and the film is that you fight for things because they’re worth it and not because they come easily (whether they be relationships or towns), then the lesson from the revival is that the best thing to do is leave and take your bags. So much of the narrative was set up around Veronica accepting who she was and where she’s from - and the revival’s Veronica has finally been traumatized so much she’s packing her bags and giving up. That’s not toughness. That’s not strength. That’s certainly not saving the show or the character. 

That’s selling a grim story because you think it’s edgy. That’s trying to be subversive and failing, too focused on shock value to care about the characters. There’s a reason shows like Game of Thrones, Dexter, and How I Met Your Mother got such backlash -- they just don’t make narrative sense and the endings are far from satisfying. Making the fans happy isn’t a mark of bad storytelling, especially when the survival of your franchise has been so contingent on it. Sometimes, they actually do know what they’re talking about! And if you want a season five, maybe don’t alienate your fans to a point they don’t recognize the show anymore. Rob mentioned, “...I will have made a really bad bet if, en masse, the fans turn on the show. That would certainly be a tough lesson to learn.” -- I think he accomplished that! 

I wish the Veronica Mars that got me through the toughest parts of my life was still around. But I’d rather say goodbye to her forever than be faced with a cheap imitation. 

[cinaed]

Red vs Blue Season 3 Rewatch

Slowly making my way through my DVD collection of Red vs Blue!

"You can't die! I'm bored!" Donut is so ruthless in the earlier seasons and I love it. 

We really needed more Tex and Sheila girltime, talking about gender inequality and workplace harassment. 

Simmons actually calling himself Simmons 2.0 manages to be both hilarious and sad.

Yes, Sarge and Caboose team up! Season 3 has some of my favorite odd couples, and Sarge and Caboose is one of my favorites. Sarge being furious that Doc has a higher body count than he does, Caboose's dedication to nap time. 

I love Caboose's moral boost! He's great at compliments even if Sarge doesn't appreciate them. 

I know these zealots were like a mostly one-off joke, but also like...they could be a creepy potential experiment in making soldiers that can't die, which I wouldn't put past anyone in the Halo universe. 

I love the blame game of who came up with the plan that ended up with everyone scattered across the galaxy. Sarge: "My only choice is to blame Grif, for coming up with such a flawed plan. Stupid, stupid Grif." Grif: "I should have never listened to Donut's stupid fucking plan." 

Church and Grif in jail is one of my all-time favorite things. 

Simmons is such a tech savvy guy, reworking the teleporters to make them communication devices as well! He just wants some love and support.

Caboose getting angry. I mean, who wouldn't get angry at kittens with spikes that you couldn't cuddle?

"Simmons, you get an F in efficiency. But I have to give you an A+ in dramatic timing."

I do love O'Malley and Doc's dynamic. The Do Not Call list!

I love Tex's half-truths about the Freelancers. 

Also love Sarge calling Caboose a little rascal and Simmons just seething with jealousy. And he's also jealous about Donut! 

Church: There's no "I" in team, Grif. Grif: Yeah, there's no "U" either. So I guess if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, nobody's on the God damn team. The team sucks!

I may or may not quote that to myself on a weekly basis. 

Again, just Church and Grif together in that prison cell is sheer perfection. As is Church going "Wait, the people outside sound like they're winning, that can't be our teams."

Tucker likes Sheila so much! And she packed them food! Well, the AI equivalent of food, but it's the thought that counts! Just the sheer affection in Tucker's voice as he promises her they'll be back gave me emotions. 

And another good moment of Simmons being the one to suggest they track down Grif, because no one else was going to. 

In retrospect, Grif has clearly watched some prison pornos. Like... Buddy.

Wyoming calling Tex Allison has so many interesting implications. 

Simmons re-engineers stuff, Sarge makes a weather control device. Where's the AU where Sarge is a mad scientist.

Simmons asking Grif if he's okay after prison. Just loving the slow build of friendship between them.

Also big parallels of Church's "Misery loves company" and his willingness to let the bomb blow them all up together to later seasons stuff.

I still love that everyone's go-to explanation for stuff is "time travel."

Donut is too thin-skinned about criticism for his play. He'd never survive on Broadway, lol. But I love everything about the time travel show.

How is Tucker the smartest person in this group? But also Tucker being so worried about Church. I am having a lot of Tucker feelings this season. 

I love Grif's devotion to cheesy disaster movies. 

Caboose: Look what I found. Donut: I found it! Caboose: Look at what I took credit for finding.

Poor Donut! A grenade to the head and now his hand got chopped up.

Grif: Hey, what're you doing? Simmons: What does it look like I'm doing, I'm getting in the jeep. Grif: What're we, on a date? Get in the back. Simmons: Oh you're so insecure.

I would've watched an entire season of Doc and O'Malley and Lopez's Lair Improvements. And when Doc mentions a real estate agent all I can think of is an AU where Doc meets Kai because she's running her business on the side while in the military. But also Doc's motivational powers in the living room, O'Malley's belief that the cat won't hang on until Friday, it's great.

The iconic jeep conversation is still good now as it was back then. Re-enacting Dukes of Hazzard! "I can tell you what we weren't doing." 

Grif's mind immediately going to gay stuff as a favor from Tex. Between this and his prison conversation with Church, someone is protesting way too much.

Sarge's plans are so amazingly terrible. I love them.

Grif getting choked up over hating Blue Team and Tucker and missing the days where they all just stood around and talked a lot.

Tex sounding genuinely concerned when Tucker falls into the hall. Luckily he gets a cool sword out of it!

Tex's conversation with Simmons about shooting Lopez's head is a great example of an eloquent helmet look. Tex doesn't even say a word and you can feel the disbelief and rage when Simmons implies she may have missed.

Church: Caboose, I know you're there. I'm leaving this message from two thousand years in the past. Whatever you do, don't, touch, anything. Apparently you're this culture's version of the apocalypse. You're going to destroy this building, and somehow bring about doom for their entire race. Caboose: Mmmmmmnooo... that doesn't sound like me. I like people. And buildings also.

Time for some actual time travel or at least a simulation. But I do love Butch Flowers, haha. Whose greatest enemy is apathy! Love watching Church just make his own life worse. Also love the bit about Sheila having been made in Mexico. 

"Man... First I kill myself, then I realise I'm a honkin' dork. Not a very good day to be me."

Church: I learned a very valuable lesson in my travels, Tucker. No matter how bad things might seem- Caboose: They could be worse. Church: Nope, no matter how bad they seem, they can't be any better, and they can't be any worse, because that's the way things fucking are, and you better get used to it Nancy. Quit yer bitching.

Grif and Simmons and Sarge talking about the Blues, and Simmons saying he's not looking for friends and doesn't like his current crop AKA he just accidentally admitted Grif is his friend. Grif just didn't realize it.

Between the warthog and monkeying about discussions, Church and Grif really are on the same wavelength. 

I love the scheming versus plotting conversation.

Ugh, the arrival of Andy. I hate him so much.

Haha, Simmons lying about his math skills is great.

Uuuugh, Andy. :/ Freckles is SUCH a step up as Caboose's AI murder buddy.

"Do we really have to seize destiny? Can't we just invite it to join our online circle of friends?"

I love Lopez's little rebellion-- he might be under O'Malley's control, but he's also going to sabotage O'Malley as much as possible. And tricking O'Malley into insulting himself in Spanish.

I really forgot that Tex straight up tried to steal Tucker's sword. 

Military law is very clear in regard to the "not it" methodology for making decisions. Sorry, Donut. 

I forgot that Donut can speak Spanish. In fairness, so did the show. 

Hello, Crunchbite! 

Next up, the PSAs! 

Some of these have aged poorly... Like, uh, jokes about 2004 politics do not land well in 2020. And uh jokes about colds and flus. ...Okay, the Christmas PSA where Church destroys the Reds' Christmas tree, tells Caboose the truth about Santa Claus, gives everyone knock-off coal, convinces Church that Santa is now wearing blue and working only for the Blues, and scams Tucker out of a $350 gift is pretty funny though.  

I enjoyed Burnie playing himself in the outtakes by putting words he can't pronounce in his own script. And Grif singing Happy Birthday to Church in prison. Also poor Geoff being told to adlib and immediately having Grif start to tell Church "You're looking buff, man, have you been working--" and being immediately booed by everyone, and someone says they'll use it for an outtake and Geoff is like "It's funny! And I didn't even get to finish!" And everyone trying to figure out Tucker's sword and him accidentally killing everyone in various outtakes. And in the deleted scenes Tex keeps making fun of O'Malley's plans to rule the universe, haha. Also the deleted scene that's just another Simmons' self-insert fanfiction, just as a video instead of a fake game in the Fan Guide.

It also gave us character profiles! I'm sure a lot of this has since been contradicted in canon, but interesting that we got specific hometowns for a few people: Donut in Leggatt Plains, Iowa, which doesn't seem to be a real place; Moscow, Iowa for Sarge, which actually does; Tucker's from Detroit, and Delta Commune for Doc. Oh, is this where we get Caboose grew up on the moon, with his hometown being labeled as Low G Colony, Moon? And hey, I always had him be a middle child, I like that this one did too. Tex likes money and scars and dislikes Donut. Okay I know that's definitely not real, but the idea of Allison growing up in an orphanage hurts me a little. Okay, and I know for sure that Simmons would die of happiness at the fact that Sarge's likes are battles, fringe science, and Simmons. Lopez likes oil and unions, and hates capitalism. My kind of guy. Last but not least, I actually really like Simmons as the son of a bunch of right-hand stooges (who probably wanted power for themselves).

[brookecirone-blog]

Reading Responses

do it yourself murder: social and moral responsibilities of designi’d like to start by saying how incredibly annoying it is that every article / book / journal / you-name-it, that i read about the designer, the designer is referred to as “he”. always. i have only come across ONE book that refers to the designer as “she” and that is Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko. that is the single book i have been able to read that referred to the designer as someone like me. a female. i won’t talk too much on this because the article was actually really interesting and i don’t want that to blind me for the richness of it, but it is exhausting to never, EVER be recognized within your field during conversation, text, anything. the designer is always, always, “he”.i thought it was kind of nice how he described his client reminding him of his obligations and responsibilities as a designer. sometimes it may feel like our responsibilities aren’t that grave, but when you put it into the perspective of others’ lives and jobs and families, it becomes important.I’ve also never considered the design of microcomputers as anything other than bad because i don’t know much about the inner workings of them, but the questions being asked (such as type color % size & key arrangements) are interesting.i am SO happy to read that the author touched on the fact that design can and does live in an elitist state. are designers, we don’t even get to touch most of the real problems and i think there is a lot that can be said about that. he touches on this when referring to the second triangle involving country.As far as the minority conversation goes, what i am understanding is that he is claiming that the minority is the majority, which insinuates you are in fact not designing for the minority? i didn’t really follow the logic but some interesting ideas in there.I think the idea of giving 10% of our time to designing to mankind is absolutely doable and a reasonable request. personally, i like numbers and schedules and plans, so i like having the 10% to think about when thinking of my time.I really think we should watch “objectified” in class. It is by the same creators of “helvetica” and a lot of what the author is talking about concerning the hart hats and safety glasses is 1:1 related to the movie. It would be great for everyone to see.toward the end, when he is talking about the ways to design for a community that isn’t yours (another country in his example), i felt like we talked about most of those things but i found “move the designer to the underdeveloped country and have him teach designers there” which is a really interesting notion. politics please, we’re social designers.i thought it was interesting that the author touched on the fact that designers are in fact redesigners. they continue to say that designers cannot claim to be originators of the innovative ideas. i think this does a good job of acknowledging that there is a system in place and that it isn’t “bad” or “good” but that the design is to be redesigned. i found it REALLY interesting that the author brings up the western northerners attempting to solve the “wicked” problems of central/south. this makes me think of the conversation we had last, where everyone in the class (except me, but i wasn’t going to say that out loud), agreed that it was a better decision to try to manipulate a section about donald trump to minimize it, in other words, remove someone else’s voice because you don’t agree with it or it offends you. personally, i think the author addresses this directly in saying: if you are not from there, how deep can your empathetic design thinking of the situation be? which is precisely my question on the topic we had in class, which is: how are you able to understand trump voters and empathize with why they believe what they do, if you think that your voice is bigger, morally better, more important and more powerful? wouldn’t it be best to try to actually understand a trump supporter, than to shut the voice down? it is not and never will be anyones right to not be offended. i think it’s a mistake for designers to be shutting other voices down because they don’t agree, they are offended, or think their opinions are more justified. this is a toxic way of thinking.personally, i find nothing wrong with deciding you want to stay out of politics with design and i think the author would disagree with me. and it is absolutely, completely, 100% okay that we wouldn't agree, because we don't have to. are humanitarian designers imperialists? project h respondsi like that not far into the article, the author says, we have made the mistake of being disconnected to our audience in the past. that’s a big thing to own up to and i admire it. i love that the organization learned from its mistake and decided that its project from then on would be local, as in, ran by designers calling the place home.but mostly, i enjoy the eloquent way that the author is able to correct the Mr. Nussbaum, who had his information wrong, and i absolutely love seeing passion like this from designers. readings like this inspire me with the amount of passion put into designing for the good of people.

[talesfromthefade]

from the texts from last night prompt list: “[text] DO NOT READ THE LAST MESSAGE IT WASN’T MEANT FOR YOU” preferably someone drunk-gushing over their unrequited crush to their bff ;)

This turned into more of a messenger of some sort than a text. Or maybe this Hawke is just borrowing from the writer and sends novellas via text message, but once the idea took hold it wasn’t letting go. Hope you enjoy!

Hawke x Varric Tethras (High School AU), for @dadrunkwriting

It’s not funny, Varric reads curiously after opening his inbox to find a message from Hawke. Which is patently ridiculous, really, because well apart from himself, Hawke is probably the funniest person he knows. I’m just… he’s always so cool. Calm, collected, and just… cool. Alright, so maybe not always the most eloquent, but hey, they always find the right words eventually and they’re still not as bad as that hack that wrote Hard in Hightown 2 and tried to borrow from his success. At least Hawke can spell properly.

He’s smart and funny. And I’m not an idiot, but… ugh, I always feel like one around him. I seem to be good at making him laugh, and that’s great and all, but I do that with a lot of people. I just… I’d love to do more than that. To be more than that. We’re good friends. He’s probably my best friend, the message continues and Varric frowns slightly. He and Hawke share a number of good friends, but he supposes he always thought he was their best friend. It’s- well, it doesn’t have to be mutual, it’s not the end of the world, but Hawke is definitely his.

I don’t want to screw that up. He’s probably never even looked twice at me that way, but lately I just… I dunno. I’m lonely. I know that’s stupid. I know I said the dance was stupid. And it is. Is it some kind of right of passage that every class has to have an “Under the Sea” themed dance before they graduate? But I’d like to go. To at least one dance before we’re out of this place. I want that cliche high school movie moment. An awkward dance that’s mostly just tracing a square on the floor beside each other trying not to step on each other’s feet. The punch someone’s definitely spiked. All of it. I want him to ask me. I want him to kiss me. Except it’s never going to happen.

Varric shifts a little uncomfortably in front of the screen as he continues reading. It’s not that Hawke doesn’t confide in him with things like this, but it’s usually something they do in person, and with more than a few drinks put away between them. Their conversations are usually subtext, jokes just shy of the mark and counting on the other to fill in the blanks. This is… well, a hell of a lot more confessional than he’s come to expect from them. It’s a little worrisome. Maybe more than a little.

“Evening,” Varric greets with a slight bow, tipping his hat to the matron as she opens the door a short while later.

“Hello Varric,” Leandra nods letting him in. “They’re downstairs,” she offers with a gesture towards the door to the basement.

“Hey, Hawke.” He makes a point of keeping his tone light, but between the message and the way they’re sitting with their face buried in their hands, all but tearing their hair out on the old couch definitely seems to justify his concern and the twilight hike over rather than waiting until he sees them in school tomorrow.

“Varric,” Hawke exclaims, voice breaking a little with something he hasn’t quite figured out yet. “Maker, you scared the life out of me. What are you doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you-” they begin to add hastily, as Varric waves his hand dismissively. He knows what they meant. He always does. Perhaps that’s why the message troubled him. Lonely, they had said. Hawke is his best friend, he should probably have noticed that. And this crush, whoever they are, is obviously eating at them. How is it he’s only just hearing about it? And who in their right mind wouldn’t be interested in Hawke? Most of their circle of friends has some level of admiration or crush on them.

“I got your message, and I… I thought maybe it would be better if we talked in person,” Varric offers with a shrug. “Are you alright Hawke?” Hawke collapses back onto the couch, head dropping between their knees with a muffled string of curses.

“Hawke,” Varric ventures again, even more concerned as he quickly crosses the room to sit beside them on the couch. He reaches out to place a reassuring hand on their shoulder because Hawke always seems to appreciate touch, the sensation of being physically grounded when they’re upset, but Varric thinks he must have miscalculated because if anything they stiffen still worse.

“You weren’t supposed to read that,” Hawke mumbles, ears going pink beneath the fringes of their sandy blonde hair.

“Huh?” Varric pulls his phone from his pocket to find a missed call, and a frantic caps locked message he must have missed on his way over here. DO NOT READ THE LAST MESSAGE IT WASN’T MEANT FOR YOU. PLEASE VARRIC. ANDRASTE’S FLAMING ASS PLEASE DON’T READ THAT. “Oh.” Varric bites back a chuckle because laughing now almost certainly won’t help anything, but if Hawke wasn’t clearly so miserable and distressed he might point out that a message like that would all but guarantee he’d read it. He’s nosey. And a writer. He’s never pretended to be anything different. And it’s not like he’s going to just ignore a message from his best friend. Whatever the content may be.

“C’mon Hawke, it can’t be that bad.”

Blue eyes peek out from between their fingers to shoot him an incredulous look, before hiding once more with a rather pitiful whimper.

“Just getitoverwith,” Hawke exhales, words spilling out in a rush. Varric frowns softly feeling frustratingly helpless and off-balance. Not once in all the time he’s known them can he recall Hawke being like this. It’s disquieting.

“Well, if you tell me which one of the peanut gallery it is that’s caught your fancy, maybe we can talk our way through this. Have you tried pulling their hair yet,” he teases, grasping for some way to lighten the mood a bit. Surely it can’t actually be this bad. “Is it Choir boy, because I don’t know you’ll get very far physically, but he’s definitely a little bit in love with you.” Hawke’s head lifts to stare back at him for the first time since he’s got here looking utterly bewildered. So, not Sebastian then. “Blondie,” Varric tries again. Anders is possibly one of the busiest guys in school with his commitments to various causes and community service projects, but surely not so impossible as to justify this level of despair. Hawke’s really not dramatic like this. Well, unless they’re being ironic about it. “Daisy,” he guesses. Hawke’s never made a secret of being equal opportunity when it comes to admiring people, whatever shape or gender they come in, but maybe they’re not so open about it with their siblings or Leandra? Hawke shakes their head, swallowing, brows still furrowed.

“You said you read my message,” Hawke manages finally.

“I did,” Varric nods. “Well, not all of it. But it was…” he stumbles, trying to find the words to explain exactly why it had felt important to come see them before he’d even finished getting through their note. “It didn’t sound quite right. Not like you, somehow. I- as your friend, I was worried,” he admits, feeling a slight flush to the back of his neck at the unusually earnest confession. Hawke, though, looks if anything even more crushed. Damnit.

He thumbs his phone for a second where he holds it in his palm considering. Hawke hadn’t wanted him to read it, but they’re not saying much, and he just seems to be making a hash of all of this. He unlocks it, pulling up his inbox and scrolling.

… I want him to ask me. I want him to kiss me. Except it’s never going to happen. Varric would never think of me like that.

Varric manages to tuck the phone back in his pocket, but it’s a near thing as fingers fight the urge to tremble. He’s pretty sure his heart is beating hard enough it may just break his ribs.

“Yeah,” Hawke whispers miserably, hanging their head and once more avoiding his gaze.

“Hawke,” Varric ventures finally, hand questing and carefully prying theirs from where it nervously grips their knee to thread his fingers through theirs. Surprised blue eyes dart upwards, but they don’t pull away. “Would you go to Homecoming with me?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Hawke replies, shaking their head with a frown. “I know you think it’s stupid.”

“So do you,” Varric points out. “But you still want to go.”

“Not just because you feel sorry for me.”

“Now you’re being stupid.”

“Hey,” Hawke protests, even as they laugh softly, turning back to stare at him. Varric shrugs then smiles.

“Hawke, I already think of you like that,” he admits as Hawke’s eyes go impossibly wide. “You aren’t the only one who was worried about fucking everything up with our friendship.”

“I- It still might,” Hawke whispers softly, biting their lip.

“I’m pretty sure we’re both too stubborn for that,” Varric replies, patiently trying to coax a smile and earning the first genuine laugh from them since he arrived. “So, go to the dance with me? We can dance, spike the punch with something that’s actually good… if it’s mind-numbingly boring we can sneak out and wander the halls and classrooms and see what trouble we can get into after-hours.”

“That- That sounds perfect,” Hawke smiles.

“Yeah,” Varric nods. “It does.” Any time spent with Hawke always is.

[aprilrichardson]

I Know It’s Over

There are people to whom music doesn't matter. I often envy these people. My mom is one of them -- she's not really concerned with music, poetry, movies, or anything in popular culture. She considers herself a whole, satisfied person without these things in her life, free from any aesthetic crutches. I am not one of those people. I needed music. I need music. From a very early age, I needed music to tell me I was okay. I needed it to tell me I was normal, I needed it to tell me I was weird, I needed it to confirm that I'd be fine either way. I needed it in a dramatic way. I needed it in a mundane way, playing all the time in the background like wallpaper with a pattern you've stopped noticing. I needed to identify with it, I needed it to make me feel complicated emotions I'd never felt before; it could comfort me or repulse me, soothe me or force me to look outward, echo my own sentiments or expand my mind to fit new ones. Music (and the bands/people who made it) served as my mentor, my older sibling, my voice of reason and, at times, bad influence. When you're an only child from a fractured family, you spend a lot of time in your room. Your hobbies can become your closest friends. Music became my savior and my most time-consuming, all-encompassing, money-draining pursuit. My savings account would be at least triple its current amount had I not been so obsessed with seeing bands and collecting their records. Perhaps I would have created more things of my own if I'd not spent so much time fawning over the creations of others. My personality would have been entirely different if, early on in my youth, I had not blatantly lifted the clothes and mannerisms and styles of those I looked up to or had not read the books and watched the movies they had championed. For better or worse, art -- this specific form of art, music -- has been and continues to be a transformative force in my life. At the very center of this were two bands, R.E.M. and The Smiths, and specifically two people: Michael Stipe and Morrissey. My first two real heroes, with now only the former still on the pedestal I built when I was around 11 or 12. I moved to a new neighborhood and school district when I was in second grade, and became fast friends with a boy my age who lived one street over. Nathan and I shared a lot of the same interests, and as we started middle school, a deep obsession with those two aforementioned bands and frontmen (and, also, Depeche Mode and Dave Gahan). Nathan was gay before either one of us knew what that meant, and was often mocked for this -- I was made fun of, too, but for reasons far less difficult for me than coming to terms with my sexuality as an adolescent. But, for our own reasons, we were outcasts, seeking comfort in our chosen art. This was conservative Georgia in the late '80s/early '90s, a time well before the Internet, before easily accessible media, when role models were fought for tooth and nail, with plans having to be made on how to save enough allowance for cassette tapes, older friends or siblings bribed to purchase things with "parental advisory" labels we'd smuggle into our rooms later. I can barely put into words what hearing (and seeing!) Morrissey for the first time did to us -- did FOR us! For Nathan, in such an environment, Morrissey became a blueprint for queerness, the very first peek into the very POSSIBILITY of life as a grown man who wasn't either an alpha male jock, like all the ones at our school, or stern businessman with a briefcase, like all of our (step)dads. He was the first person to, with his mannerisms and his very existence, communicate to Nathan that it was perfectly fine (and cool even!) to, in the words of the bullies, "act like a girl." And the magical thing is, he somehow simultaneously did the exact opposite for me! As a masculine tomboy, I saw in him a person so easily blurring the lines of both! He made me feel better about the qualities I had so often been told "weren't ladylike." We talked about him constantly. We dressed like him. It goes without saying that his music was playing in the background nearly every time we hung out. I remember my mom allowing me to stay up late to watch Johnny Carson the night Morrissey was on -- I was 12, and I absolutely remember my mom getting angry, watching alongside me as Morrissey fans screamed over Bill Cosby (gulp) as he tried to talk. The next year, Morrissey was on Saturday Night Live, and my mom let me go over to Nathan's house to watch it (our parents became very close friends as well). He taped it on their VCR as we watched, and we immediately played it back. We watched it probably every day for months. We didn't have the money to buy all of his back catalog, so an older kid in my youth group at church let me borrow his Smiths CDs, and I dubbed copies on my tape deck for us. I sat and hand-wrote the lyrics down on notebook paper, carefully transcribing from the liner notes as the tape recorded. It's difficult for me to be eloquent here, and I always find it hard to convey these feelings to people who are, well, normal, who can hear a song and go, "That's nice!" and not have to immediately know its backstory, who wrote it, why they wrote it, what inspires them, what books they read, etc. Who don't feel their insides twist into knots when a turn of phrase meets a melody and the combination makes them feel understood in a way they never have, sets them at ease in a way that even the kind words of the closest relative couldn't do. That is absolutely how I felt the first time I heard The Smiths. When you're 12, at least when I was 12, the last people you feel like you can talk to about your feelings are your parents; and for Nathan, doubly so, as I don't think he could even articulate his until Morrissey's lyrics shed some light on what he'd been going through. So, for us, this guy was so far from "just a singer" -- he was a beacon, a mentor, he told us it was okay to be effeminate and okay to be masculine and okay that you didn't get invited to the parties because staying in your room reading books was more glamorous anyway. The world wasn't made for people like us and that should be worn as a badge of honor, not shame. Such a message was REVELATORY for a girl whose every male role model had let her down or left entirely and a boy who didn't want to play football or shoot guns. The obsession continued and deepened, and in high school, became full on reliance. Who better to help me navigate the emotional minefield that is the teen years than Morrissey? I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't do drugs, I didn't "party," I didn't even so much as hold a boy's hand until I was a couple weeks shy of 16 years old -- all of the things that kids considered fun and did on a regular basis were so foreign to me, until I got home to my bedroom and was soothed by the voice of a guy who also did not participate in any of the above. I didn't really know anyone in real life who seemed to understand my plight more than the man whose voice was blasting out of my speakers. To me, Morrissey was always absolutely the voice of the underdogs. The weirdos. The outcasts. The disenfranchised. Anyone who felt left out, let down, misunderstood, too sensitive, too sad. He was there to comfort us, understanding and empathetic to our needs while giving the finger to the system and the people therein who were keeping us down, shoving us into lockers, ripping the glasses off our faces and stomping on them in front of their domineering friends. When someone writes songs as seemingly personal as Morrissey's, you tend to think you know them. And in my case, having read so many books about him (and now some BY him), I felt that way, to a degree. I like to think of myself as a rational person (perhaps after reading this far, you disagree), but I definitely felt a bit like I "knew" him in the sense that I'd picked up on words he'd frequently used ("vulgar" and "vile" were personal favorites), had working knowledge of the causes that were important to him, and certainly knew his favorite bands and movies and authors. I'd even been lucky enough to meet him quite a few times, especially after moving to Los Angeles, where I'd see him at restaurants and shows, and he was always cordial (if not downright sweet) to me every time we spoke. Of course I'd heard stories about him "being a dick," but that never bothered me, truly, only because I think that's kind of relative, and perhaps a lack of manners or catching someone on a bad day is a bummer, and the "temperamental artist" archetype exists for a reason. Sure, it's ideal that someone you admire is nice to you should you ever interact, but a surly encounter would not cause me to write someone off completely. So, because of this, well, perhaps delusion, I was able to explain away certain statements, such as calling Chinese people a "subspecies" while addressing animal rights, because I knew of his history of exaggeration when trying to get his point across about that subject in particular, the one perhaps dearest to his heart. (And I won't pretend that white privilege didn't play a part; it's undoubtedly and shamefully easier to conveniently ignore something when you aren't the target.) This person's main place in my life thus far was almost as a therapist, so the possibility of him having anything other than the best of intentions seemed so unlikely. But the words became harder to parse, excuses harder to make. Playing the contrarian for the sake of it isn't helpful (or even entertaining) in times like these. You aren't at the Algonquin Round Table. You're courting Stormfronters. It's not funny or charming. I don't expect every artist I look up to (or even every friend or acquaintance in my life) to share my exact same views, but when your band wears T-shirts supporting the Black Panthers yet you voice your support for the likes of Nigel Farage, how does the cognitive dissonance not paralyze you? You change lyrics to songs to slam Trump, yet you basically share his views on immigration? You imply that a gay teenager -- arguably the demographic most deeply affected by your art -- is at fault for the predatory behavior of an adult? You've told anyone who will listen that you were raised on feminist literature, yet you claim the female victims of Harvey Weinstein -- a man who hired fuckin' BLACK OPS to spy on his accusers to make sure they never came forward, so calculated were his plans -- were just "disappointed" that their RAPES didn't result in career advancement?! WHO ARE YOU. Who is this person saying this? The very person who gave me the strength to stand against the establishment has become the establishment! The person whose voice soothed with empathy and compassion for outsiders like me has become someone I would have crossed the street to avoid. The bullied has become the bully. He has, for years now, exhibited the very closemindedness I thought he was trying to free us from. Is it just an inevitability that the spoils of success will change a person? If you isolate yourself and invite no one into your circle who will ever question you, is this the result? Contempt for the very people who supported you for so long? A quality I used to admire in Morrissey was his obstinance, but I've found as I've aged myself, standing by opinions for the sake of it, refusing to allow yourself to grow and change as more information becomes available, to never soften your heart and swallow your pride and apologize when you've realized you might have been wrong about something -- that's not admirable, that's cowardice. I appreciate it more when people admit they don't know enough about a subject to comment on it instead of making a statement just for attention. My heart is broken. The man I looked to as an oasis of sensitivity in a desert of toxicity seems, well, just plain mean and vengeful now. I refuse to be cynical, and I refuse to be someone who says, "That's what you get for having heroes." Perhaps the lesson here is just knowing when to let go. And that it was indeed the songs that saved my life, not the man.

Fifteen-year-old me in my bedroom.

[kazzmcsass]

Journalism with the Boys

Chapter 2: Artist Statement

Word Count: 1203

The next club meeting wasn’t until a week later and it was still boring as hell. Because Jack was president now he had to do the incredibly monumental task of writing down “Name” and “Email” on a scrap piece of paper for members to sign in. The same three people as last time came again. Harlow seemed optimistic that new people would come, but no one did. Jack wasn’t surprised, as the club sounded completely and utterly boring. So far it had lived up to being a total waste of time.

Mister Harlow also suggested he sit up in the front with everyone else. It wasn’t a radical change, but Jack still prefered sitting back where he had enough personal space. Dakotah scooted his chair over politely, giving him a bit more space in the seat next to him. Jack just sat and slouched down in his new spot.

The first half of the meeting wasn’t very interesting. Mister Harlow gave more concrete dates for future service events and talked about what the events would entail. Most of them just listened and nodded along, but Dakotah legit pulled out a pen and started taking notes. Was this dude serious? Even the way he wrote was uptight. He couldn’t believe this guy.

After getting through the exceedingly boring part they got to the somewhat less boring part.

“So. What is it that every journalist should have on hand?” Mister Harlow asked.

Courtney immediately spoke up, his energy radiating across the room, “Something to write down stuff in!”

Mister Harlow nodded, “Yes, but what else?”

“Integrity?” Dakotah guessed like an absolute loser-ass bitch.

“Yes to that too, but I’m looking for something else more important,” Mister Harlow said.

Hugo raised his hand tentatively, “An artist statement.”

“Yes!” Harlow confirmed, “If we’re going to create articles for this year’s Reverence journal you should all have an artist statement ready to use.”

He went on to explain what they needed to have in the statement, writing on the whiteboard his points until he let them loose to get to work. Jack and Hugo just started writing on their phones, like sensible folks, while the other two decided to go for their laptops. Courtney pulled out the fanciest looking MacBook Pro with disgustingly colorful stickers plastered all across it while Dakotah pulled out practically the exact opposite. His laptop had to be on its last legs and Jack was surprised when it turned on at all. Jack just rolled his eyes and minded his own business.

After half an hour of typing Harlow urged them all to share what they wrote. He had created a group on the website their school used for homework which would allow them to share posts among each other privately.

__________

Hugo Vandyr, a student at South Central Community College, is currently working towards his associate degree in journalism. From a young age he enjoyed reading video game reviews from the margins of magazines and eventually found his home in online reviewing communities. Hugo now spends much of his time finding new materials to review for his modest size of growing followers. His subjects of review are unpopular movies and indie video games, though has spread his interests to further reach the popular culture of today.

_ _ _ _ _

Dakotah Deligar - Hello, Hugo. You did an excellent job on your artist statement. Perhaps you could specify more on your pop culture interests, as now it is left rather vague. Perhaps giving examples could help.

Courtney Dodger - I love your post! What’s your blog name? I’d love to read your stuff!! I think it's good you have a variety of interests to write about.

Jack Taffety - Good post. You write very descriptively, which will be useful in the club’s future.

__________

As a student of South Central Community College, Courtney Dodger is soon to graduate with his associate in science before transferring to pursue a career in STEM. He participates in many clubs and helps the community through SCCC’s Art Club, SCCC’s Gaming Club, South Charlon Civitan, and now SCCC’s Journalism Club. After having a health scare at a young age he decided to live life to the fullest and has spent much of his time trying new things and exploring new places. Courtney enjoys writing about a variety of things, though enjoys many subjects specifically in the fine arts and STEM fields.

_ _ _ _

Hugo Vandyr  - Your artist statement gives a good view of who you are and what you’re interested in. I’m not sure if the “After having a health scare at a young age” part is integral to your post, though.

Dakotah Deligar - Hello, Courtney. Your personality comes out through your post very well. I think it will be best to not put “SCCC” in front of every club and instead say “through SCCC’s Art, Gaming, and Journalism Club as well as the SC civitan.”

Jack Taffety - Your post is a bit wordy and could use with being more to the point. Other than that, it touches on good points.

__________

Dakotah Deligar is soon to be a graduate from South Central Community College (SCCC) with his Associate in Business. He is very business-oriented and never had much time for hobbies outside of academics. Developing a strong work ethic at a young age, he can get work done quickly without becoming distracted. While he doesn’t have experience as a journalist, he rather enjoys reflecting on historical subjects and seeing how past events could still show their effect in the modern day. He particularly enjoys early 1900s US history.

_ _ _ _ _

Jack Taffety - Your post sounds more like a resume than an artist statement. Loosen up and talk more about your interests.

Hugo Vandyr - Your writing is very professional, but I think it could use some more personality in it. Perhaps talk about the specifics of history you enjoy?

Courtney Dodger- Oooooh, you sound so thoughtful! I think you’d be GREAT with doing historical research stuff.

__________

Jack Taffety will graduate from South Central Community College in the coming spring. His interest in politics has shaped his life and predominates most of his interests. His interest encompasses not just US politics, but also the politics of local government and foreign countries. Aside from politics, Jack also appreciates the history of wars and the weaponry used to win them. Journalism is a natural field for Jack to enter as he can use the medium as a way to share his political ideas and spread them to others.

_ _ _ _ _

Dakotah Deligar- Hello, Jack. Your post is very eloquently structured. You come off as very aggressive in the latter half of your statement, which may turn away some readers.

Courtney Dodger- Yooo you’re interested in cool weapons too? I love to learn about BOMBS and it’s part of what got me interested in STEM. I used to want to be a chemist because I didn't know what mustard gas was lol.

Hugo Vandyr - Your artist statement is well written and I think it benefits from your bluntness. You also say politics a lot, I suggest finding another word to replace some of it sometimes.

[adorkablephil]

Some Author’s Notes for “Listen” Readers

I keep meaning to include some of this stuff in Author’s Notes on individual chapters of my Deaf AU fanfic “Listen,” because I thought it would be overwhelming to readers if I put it all in one place, but I finally decided to just make one post, since I’ve been storing it all this stuff in one file on my computer.

deaf vs. Deaf

Some people may notice that in this fic I sometimes write “deaf” and other times write “Deaf.” The difference between deaf (with a lower case “d”) and Deaf (with an upper case “D”) is significant. Generally, the term “deaf” with a lower case “d” refers to a person’s sense of hearing, whereas the term “Deaf” with an upper case “D” refers to deaf culture. There’s an interesting article about the difference between the two terms here.

My fictional Deaf Phil identifies as “Big D” Deaf because he grew up in Deaf schools, surrounded by other Deaf students, using sign language as his primary means of linguistic communication, and being concerned with issues surrounding deafness. He is most comfortable in the company of other Deaf people, or at least people who sign and are sensitive to Deaf issues, such as his family (who you will meet in chapter 8) and his childhood friend Craig (who appeared in chapter 3 and returns in chapter 7).

Rikki Poynter made an interesting video about what it’s like to be raised “mainstream” deaf (speaking orally, not learning sign language, going to school with all hearing kids, etc.) and to discover the Deaf community later in life. You can watch it here.

A very easy, accessible, mainstream way of learning about Deaf culture is the tv show “Switched At Birth,” which is available on Netflix streaming. One of the two central characters is Deaf and attends a Deaf school, has primarily Deaf friends, etc. Most of the characters in the show use ASL at least part of the time. There’s even one episode of the show that has no spoken dialogue at all, conducted entirely in ASL with subtitles. I found the show really inspiring when I discovered it (and binge-watched it) a few years ago, and it’s been praised highly by many in the Deaf community for its representation of their culture. My favorite character on the show inspired this fic’s Phil a little bit—in fact, that Deaf character even eventually becomes a film director, which is something I could totally see my Deaf Phil doing someday. (Here’s a quick scene focused on that character, exploring relationships between Deaf and hearing people.) He also does the same thing education-wise that my fictional Phil does: going from a completely Deaf schooling background to a mainstream hearing university.

I am quite certain that I occasionally mix up d/Deaf and use one where the other would be more appropriate in my writing. I’m doing my best and apologize if I offend anyone. I am open to advice from those who know more than I do!

ASL vs. BSL

A quick note about sign language. You may have noticed that this story refers frequently to BSL. That’s British Sign Language, which is a completely different language than ASL (American Sign Language), though they have some signs in common (just as French and English have some words in common, for example). Basically, “sign language” is not one language—it’s a type of language, using the hands instead of the voice—so a deaf person who grows up knowing sign language can’t magically communicate in that same language when they encounter other deaf people in another country. Andy Signs made a funny video from the perspective of an ASL user trying to learn BSL. (He does tons of ASL covers of songs and even got to perform with Twenty One Pilots in February! He literally rocks!)

If you’re interested in deaf YouTubers who specifically use BSL (as opposed to ASL), I recommend you check out Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, who makes a wide variety of different videos, including stuff about hair and make-up (she is GORGEOUS), movie reviews, LGBTQ+ issues, chronic illness, and a wide variety of other topics … which just happen to include tutorials on BSL as well as BSL videos to popular songs. (Though she speaks orally, she often also simultaneously signs in BSL.) I kind of imagine my fictional Deaf Phil being like this: making videos about all kinds of topics, with his deafness not being the primary focus but just one part of who he is (though I of course imagine him always signing instead of speaking orally as Jessica does). I especially recommend Jessica’s video “Name That Tune Challenge: The Deaf Lesbian Version!” which is both funny and adorable (and also the kind of silly creative content I could imagine my fictional Phil making).

Learning More About Deaf Culture

If you’re interested in sign language and/or Deaf culture generally, you should check out Nyle DiMarco, who won America’s Next Top Model in 2015 and Dancing with the Stars in 2016 and is a big activist for the Deaf community. The story of his experience on Dancing with the Stars—learning to dance beautifully without being able to hear or feel the music at all—is amazing (you can learn a bit about his process here), and I especially recommend watching his performance of the paso doble, in which he performed a section of the dance in complete silence to give the audience an idea of what dancing is like for him. He’s a really incredible person who is proud of his Deaf identity without letting it define his capabilities. He doesn’t put a lot of stuff on his YouTube channel, but there is some interesting stuff there (including some anti-Trump content, as he’s very actively anti-Trump) & he’s done some cute collabs with Tyler Oakley (such as this one) and appears in tons of videos elsewhere on YouTube (like Entertainment Tonight and stuff like that) because he’s so mainstream. He’s more active on Twitter than YouTube. He’s not only incredibly inspiring, but also gorgeous and funny as heck, and I’ve become a huge fan.

For a completely different approach to learning about sign language and Deaf culture—almost the opposite approach—I also recommend Don Grushkin, who makes simple videos in ASL, just him sitting and talking pretty much exclusively about Deaf topics. He has strong opinions and articulates them eloquently, but he’s sort of the social opposite of Nyle DiMarco’s very purposefully approachable, relatable persona. Where Nyle DiMarco may be the charming ambassador for the Deaf community, Don Grushkin is more of a cranky political commentator. He has a lot of important and interesting things to say, but he doesn’t cater to a hearing audience at all. I found his videos an acquired taste, but ultimately really interesting.

There are actually quite a few d/Deaf YouTubers out there! The ones I mentioned here are just the few whose videos I found most helpful/interesting/useful while researching for this fic: - Rikki Poynter - Andy Signs - Jessica Kellgren-Fozard - Nyle DiMarco - Don Grushkin

Lastly, I do not in any way intend to present myself as any kind of expert on deafness or Deaf culture, but I thought people reading my Deaf AU fanfic might be interested in some of the stuff I’ve learned and just wanted to share what I can with you guys in case any of you are interested to learn more.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Interconnect (ao3 link) - Chapter 5 Fandom: Flash, DC Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: Fate has decided that Leonard Snart and Mick Rory are soulmates.

Yeah, okay, they’re good with that.

(for @coldwaveweek2017)

A/N: Instead of doing different fics for coldwave week, I decided to do one with multiple chapters, each based on the various days.

Chapter 5: Hurt/Comfort

—————————————————————————————–

"Just a bit longer now, Lenny," Mick says. His hands are clammy and his knuckles are white where he clutches at Len, Len notes absently. "We're almost there."

Len's not sure where they're going.

He's not sure about - well, a lot of things. Not since they put him in the room.

He feels his gut twist at the mere thought of it, the nausea rising in the back of his throat.

"Not far," Mick says encouragingly. His voice is scratchy and rough, almost like he's been shouting for a long time.

Len reaches out and touches Mick's throat.

Mick makes a small, strangled noise. "Yeah, don't worry about that," he says. "You always did worry about the damnedest things."

Len suddenly notices that his other arm is draped over Mick's shoulders, and they're walking - well, staggering - somewhere through a forest. And he's not being helpful.

"I can walk," he says, or tries. It comes out a bit slurred.

"What?"

Make that very slurred.

"I can walk," Len enunciates.

"Don't even try," Mick says immediately. "Just keep helping me."

"Where we going?"

"Somewhere safe," Mick says.

Len thinks about himself - barely walking, slurring, scarcely feeling Mick's warmth pressed by his side - and asks, "Shot?"

"What?"

"I get shot? Stabbed? What?"

Mick gives him an incredulous look.

"Shock," Len points out, defense and rationale both.

"You're bleeding pretty bad," Mick confirms. "I bandaged you up, though, a while back; you didn't notice. That ain't the issue, though, or not most of it. It was the room."

Len shudders.

"Heard about that fucking room," Mick says savagely. "They used to use that sort of thing for medical experiments. Volunteers didn't last four days in there. Anyone left in longer just broke. Made them barely human."

That sounds about right.

It was such a simple room for such horror. A simple room with nothing in it.

But that was the worst of it. The walls were carefully padded, neither firm nor soft, and deadened all noise; there was no light, no sound, no feeling, nothing.

Absolutely nothing and, worse than that, no one.

"Why," Len manages to ask.

He's a thief, yes, and even sometimes a murderer, but that - that was too much. Far too much. For anyone.

"The curse," Mick says. "Fucking neo-Salemist Doc wanted to know if we'd last longer, what with our connection."

We? Len clutches at Mick. They couldn't have gotten Mick. Len won't know how to deal with it, if they did. He'd have to kill them all. No, worse. He'd -

"He didn't get me," Mick assures him. "Just you, but it was bad enough. No objects around, nothing for you to grab onto."

That sounded terrible.

"I could talk to you, but you couldn't perceive anything but yourself in the room," Mick continues. He makes a face. "I spoke to you, but you only screamed."

"Sorry," Len says apologetically.

Mick rolls his eyes, but his face is strained. "Don't. Just - don't."

"Where are we going?" Len asks, belatedly realizing he hadn't asked.

"You're in shock, you're bleeding, you keep going in and out of consciousness, and we've had a version of this conversation three times now," Mick says sharply. "We are going to a goddamn doctor."

Len squints. They are, as far as he can tell, in the middle of nowhere, with forest all around.

"...when?"

"Oh, shut up," Mick grumbles. "It's not as far as it looks."

Good, because it looks pretty damn far.

Except, of course, Mick is right and it isn't, because when they get to the next clearing, a familiar figure in red is there.

"Oh, crap," he says when he sees Len.

Eloquent as always, Barry, Len thinks fondly. Finding out that the kid they'd met at what Len always liked to call the Group Therapy of the Cursed had grown up to be a superhero had definitely been a fun trip.

Not as much of a surprise as it should've been, of course. Barry Allen is afflicted with the most ancient of curses, after all.

'You will live in interesting times.'

Now that's a proper curse.

Of course, Len and Mick also had what people thought of as a 'proper' curse, or they did after that movie about a soulmate curse gone horribly wrong won an Oscar. That's probably why they got paired with Barry by the court therapists.

Len hadn't ever really thought much of the court-mandated therapy sessions, but Mick really liked them - he loved Sung-hui, but he had a tendency to shop around that didn't surprise anyone. After all, Mick had no choice about one of the biggest decisions in his life - namely, Len - unless he wanted to break the curse once and for all, which he obviously didn't (most of the time), so he liked some ability to choose the rest of the time.

Even Mick was surprised when they were assigned to be Barry Allen's mentors for that short time. Maybe they thought they'd be able to bond over visiting Iron Heights a lot, albeit through very different methods...?

Len abruptly realizes that Mick and Barry have been talking while he's been lost in memory.

"- yeah, of course," Barry is saying. "I'm just sorry I can't run you both at the same time."

Wait. He's going to separate them?!

Len must make some sort of distressed noise, because Mick turns to him right away. "I'll be there in under a minute," he promises. "But you need a doc, boss."

Len doesn't want to go. He knows it's childish, but...

"Please, Lenny."

Mick sounds legitimately distressed.

Sung-hui says that Len - who isn't always the best at reading emotions, and Mick, who isn't the best at showing them - should really make an effort to give in when Mick is that upset.

"Fine," Len sighs.

A heartbeat later, he's moving through lightning.

Len keeps his hands grasped tightly on Barry's shoulders and his mouth firmly shut. If he doesn't ask for Mick, he won't have to deal with no one answering. Like in the room. He's not in the room.

He's not in the room -

They're at STAR Labs, and Len's in a hospital bed, hooked up to half a dozen things.

He's not sure if it's a result of Flash speed or if he passed out, and he doesn't really want to know.

"Mick," he croaks. His throat is dry. Has he been screaming again?

"I'm here," Mick says immediately, and so he is, in the chair right by Len's bed.

“What happened?”

Mick pauses.

“I remember the woods,” Len clarifies. “And the Flash. And the room. But – before that…?”

Mick sighs and rubs at his face. “Some asshole neo-Salemists,” he says. “Doctors. Fifty percent ‘witchcraft is just unexplained science’, fifty percent ‘the Christian God when mistranslated says you shouldn’t suffer a witch to live so I won’t’ and one hundred fucking percent bullshit. They’ve been working with General Eiling, you remember him –”

Oh, boy, does Len ever remember him. He kept trying to kidnap Barry under the pretenses that he needed to be kept away from other people for their own safety, but Len broke into his office and planted bugs, and they’d figured out that Eiling was hoping that taking Barry to various troubled parts of the world would result in the ‘interesting times’ curse striking there and starting wars that Eiling hoped to benefit from.

Asshole.

Somehow Len’s unsurprised that he was willing to affiliate himself with the neo-Salemists.

“– and, anyway, you don’t want to hear the whole stupid story,” Mick says. “They got the jump on you, threatening Lisa –”

As a child, Len convinced Brittany, Lisa’s mom, to take her to a witch, even though Brittany didn’t believe in any of that. It’d been mostly lying about the odds of getting a good spell because the world felt it had to balance out Len’s never-specified-around-his-dad curse, which he’d totally made up, but maybe the world did work out that way because Lisa got the gift of grace: perfect balance, agility, and the ability to swan into a room and have everyone stare in awe.

Maybe the last one was just Lisa.

“Anyway, you paused for just long enough for them to hit you with some sort of knock-out gas –”

“I remember that,” Len says. He hadn’t been expecting them to use it on themselves and counting on their allies outside to do the collection job.

“And that’s all she wrote,” Mick concludes.

“What happened to the doc?” Len asks. He has vague memories of faces, of sterile rooms, of the room, but not much. But he knows his Mick.

“Flash got me in,” Mick says. “And I made him crispy.”

“Bet Barry didn’t like that,” Len muses.

“He saw you in the room and helped pull you out,” Mick says grimly. “He knew what it was, told me about all the studies that’d been done and what it did to people, told me exactly how illegal it was and how it gave all scientists a bad name. And then he went for a walk.”

Len’s eyebrows go up. That’s – severe.

“You were in there a week,” Mick says. “Barry says the only reason your brain is still intact is because you were aware of me in some way, thanks to the curse.”

Okay, yes, that’ll do it.

“It was just for science?” Len asks, going back to a far less disturbing subject than Central City’s superhero’s somewhat-greyer-than-most-people-think moral system.

“Not just,” Mick says. “Neo-Salemist scientist. Hates witches, but damn would he like to utilize its benefits.”

“Benefits?” Len echoes, confused.

“Wanted to figure out how to apply the curse to other people,” Mick clarifies.

“But it’s a curse.”

Len loves Mick, it’s not that he doesn’t, but never being able to escape the man for a single moment is sometimes a bit much. You can love someone and still want to shoot them in the face (albeit non-permanently).

Not that the room was better.

Mick squeezes Len's hand. "I got you," he says.

It's a meaningless statement, but it makes Len feel better anyway.

"Doc thought being able to communicate over long distances would be useful," Mick says, his voice still gentle. "Probably thought he could eliminate the bits where it's only one person, you can't pick who it is, and you can't turn it off."

Len nods. He can see the benefit, but the way they went about it...

"I'm here," Mick says again, probably in reaction to Len's face. "I got you."

Again, meaningless. Again, remarkably efficient at making Len feel better.

"So, the bleeding?" Len asks, swallowing a little in order to wet his suddenly dry throat. He's not one for overly long touchy-feely moments, and neither is Mick, who gratefully sits up straight again. "How long's that gonna take to fix?"

"It's stitched up, so a few weeks at least. Also, I called Sung-hui and she's agreed to make house calls."

"To STAR Labs?" Len asks skeptically.

"She arrived a while back," Mick says dryly. "She's already ushered Barry into a private room for one-on-one therapy. He just came out to get her a glass of water, and he looks like he got hit in the head with a two-by-four. In a good way."

Len smirks. "And are the others next on the list?"

"You know how Sung-hui is about people who feel like they can't get therapy because of their terrible law-breaking secrets," Mick replies, which Len takes as a sign that Team Flash will be finally seeing to its mental health needs from now on.

"What about the city?" Len asks, the question occurring to him. He's got a good reputation, a scary one, occasional punctuated with absences, but a long one followed by a hospital stay? The Families will capitalize on that to expand back into the areas he'd cleaned them out of. And he can't rely on the Flash for cover - Barry couldn't be seen actually allying with a crime lord, not for the crime lord side of the business, and anyway he wouldn't really strike the right vibe.

"Lisa's covered," Mick says. "And I'll be backing her, now that I know you're safe."

Len's hand clenches involuntarily. Just because he sometimes wants to shoot Mick doesn't mean he wants him to leave.

"No help for it," Mick says regretfully. "Not till Lisa's established herself, though she's on her way."

Len understands the necessity. It doesn't mean he likes it.

"In the meantime," Mick says, leaning over to grab something from the floor, "I got you something that'll help."

Len frowns. He's not sure what could possibly help. Really, he's out of the room, that ought to be enough for him. He's a grown man. He has a soulmate. He's in a hospital bed, surrounded by useful objects he can use to talk to him, his presence all around. All is well. He might be irrationally unhappy with the fact that his soulmate is leaving, but he can get over it, and at any rate, nothing will help for it.

Mick straightens up and proudly presents Len with –

Mick.

Not the living one, his stubborn, infuriating, wonderful soulmate; but rather the stupid shaggy plush animal that Len had loved the stuffing out of as a child, before he'd fully realized that Mick was Mick and not the dog. It even had the singe marks from Lewis' little lessons-by-proxy.

"You're joking," Len says, his lips twitching uncontrollably. "I thought I lost that."

"We've been raiding your dad's stashes," Mick says. "Him being dead now and all. Lisa found him, said she remembered being jealous of all the time you spent with him before your dad took him away, then she just felt bad."

He offers the plush to Len.

"I'm a grown man," Len protests. "In a public place - in front of our sometimes-enemies!"

Mick doesn't say anything, just keeps holding it out.

Len looks at that ridiculous snarl, the one that he always thought tried so hard to be ferocious but only came off as protective.

"Oh, fine," he says, and snatches Mick away from Mick, settling him comfortably into his arms.

It's not quite the same as having the living Mick in his arms, but it'll do.

Mick grins.

"I'm getting you a polar bear from the zoo," Len warns.

"The brand I got isn't being made anymore," Mick shoots back, knowing exactly what Len's referring to.

"Yeah, yeah," Len says. "Ever heard of eBay?"

Mick blinks.

Len smirks.

One terrifying arsonist-slash-supervillain carting around a polar bear plushie, coming right up.

[tinkdw]

Hi! I love your meta, especially Destiel. I just came out to my mom as bisexual, and I was trying to explain to her why canon bi!Dean and canon DeanCas is so important to me, and so important as representation for the LGBTQ community. I am not eloquent with words like you are, so I don't think I got my point across very well. How would you describe the importance and value in canon representation in media, whether supernatural or other TV shows/movies? Thanks and have a lovely day!

Hi! 

Congratulations on coming out :D

I didn't mean this to get long but it kinda did so under the cut!

I mean...I’m not really an LGBT+ blog, I’m just someone who loves stories and fell in love with the love story between Cas and Dean and then fell into learning more and more about the LGBT+ community through tumblr and my general feeling about life in general is that everyone should be free to do as they choose and be who they are as long as they don't hurt others so... I’m not the ideal person to ask regarding really the value of canon representation in media as I’m literally just someone who loves stories rather than an active member of the community or an activist / journalist.

However, I do have STRONG feelings about equality and all love being valid and how it is such a positive thing that representation for ALL kinds of people is getting much better these days, though there is still a long way to go.

Could we imagine a female doctor even 5 years ago? A heard of hearing love interest for Sam? That SPN might even show us, shock horror, a male queer couple who are gruff hunters and their queerness having nothing whatsoever to do with their story and they are badass big strong “manly men” who DON’T DIE?

So yeah, I may not be the best person to really delve into this but it totally has all my support, I’m just someone who loves their love story for the love story, has no issue with it being between two men (albeit one isn't even a guy anyway and the other has been bi since the pilot so there literally isn't an issue anyway storywise so the only issue is a homophobic one and that can fuck right off).

I’ve personally never sat down and thought about my own sexuality really until I came on tumblr and it led me to think hey, I wonder what I am, other than that I really like sex with men, a lot, but wouldn't be adverse to sex with a woman, I just never really had the opportunity or thought about it... but I do think I’m probably aromantic, which I never even heard of before but makes so much sense and has really helped me face it, knowing I’m not a freak or just horrible sometimes when my husband is being super clingy and needy...

Learning about these things in a space that is comfortable and open and shared with the world is SO IMPORTANT. I’m so much happier for knowing this about myself and I could have spent DECADES thinking horrible things about myself it I wasn't aware? I imagine this is how people who have no representation feel like when they realise late in life that they are queer. It must be so hard, representation can really help people realise things about themselves that they never even contemplated because no-one ever told them it was an OPTION!

I grew up in an International school, therefore I have NO PRECONCEPTIONS of race, stereotypes or thinking people who look or sound different are weird. This is how stuff like this works, seeing kids of different races, genders, sexualities, backgrounds etc on tv would help so many people grow up thinking that this is totally normal and open their eyes to so much more.

It is people who grow up in a closed environment who are homophobic/racist etc a lot of the time because the natural reaction to DIFFERENT is to be SCARED by it and therefore be AGGRESSIVE about it, that’s the way humans work, so we have to make things seem less different, less strange, more common and more normal in order to be less scared and aggressive about it.

That’s why it’s important for me. The more we see it the more it is acceptable. 

Just like how women can now show their ankles whereas in the 1800s that was scandalous, how we are now much more used to seeing two people of the same gender holding hand in the street or kids playing with smartphones... it’s just a cultural shift that needs to take place organically but sometimes it needs a SHOVE in the right direction because bigots and people who don't want change are at the top and they need to be shown they are on the wrong side of history.

Anyway yeah we just this morning had a thread that may be much more useful and of interest to you here regarding the canonisation of Destiel and why it has to be textual and visual based on what we have had from the other canon romantic couples on the show:

http://bluestar86.tumblr.com/post/163133259788/heres-a-genuine-question-for-all-of-the-destiel

Lots of love and congratulations again! 

Tink xxx

[lordofsunshadowandsailor]

replies (long)

These include some replies from months ago, the last one added just before I left on my vacations. Sorry for having taken so long to answer.

Also, four attentive friends have alerted me in PMs about Apollo Tim/Jim being a probable misspelling mistake -- I’ve already explained them, and make it now public, that it is his professional name and he alternates between both -- we still don’t know his real name yet.

For the new followers, I do try to reply at least every end of the month, or after each update, and offer the most thorough answers I can -- so please to ask and comment!

declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “Tobio’s rude command slapped Alvar, his spitted words like sharp...”

Oh my god! I knew this would be how it would end for that day :/ I love how you made Alvar the proud shameful one here who regretted it all after being such a forceful partner earlier ^^

Alvar, pretty much like Tobio, got carried away by the heat of the moment -- and they are both now reflecting about what has just happened, what has been done -- and mostly, how, and where. To Alvar it seems properly bestial, and he deeply regrets it. For Alvar, it would have been fine if it were in the privacy of one of their bedrooms -- but then, Tobio, who wants no commitments, who can’t bear the idea of being homosexual, wouldn’t have been talked into making it in a love nest... They are a complicated pair, going opposite directions in their longings and desires.

simblu replied to your photo “Tobio’s rude command slapped Alvar, his spitted words like sharp...”

I love how eloquently you capture their internal conflicts.

Thank you! Because this is mostly what the story is about -- and all of my stories, I should say. Though I’m planning to have a whole bit more of action in LoSSS, with crimes and mysteries to be solved, it is always the characters’ inner lives and internal conflicts I write mostly about. My stories happen inside, and not outside, more in thoughts than in actions (that are often contradictory), and relying a lot on flashbacks. 

declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “In that parting moment it seemed prophetic enough, though – the...”

I would say "Poor Alvar!" but then I would be reminded how he acted like a virgin all innocent and unknowing which in itself sort of felt like a trap for Tobi. 

Maybe that is Alvar’s way of seducing guys? 

He doesn’t do it consciously, though, I guess. It’s like -- after sex, during which he really opens up and wide, but once it is through he closes himself again, not just his legs but his sexuality. It’s always a somewhat long way back into sex for him each time, as if he truly were a virgin every occasion he has to get into doing it again...

declarations-of-drama replied to your photo “In that parting moment it seemed prophetic enough, though – the...”

Also - I love the description here - makes me want to tell Alvar to go and bathe :D lol

I hope it is not too graphic or shocking, but it sounds true and probable to me, a few nasty details thrown in that add verisimilitude to the scene.

declarations-of-drama replied to your post “story replies”

Looking forward to more from your story - enjoy your holiday! X

Thank you, dear. And after wonderful vacations in which I wrote just one paragraph of a different story, we are back at LoSSS!

simblu replied to your photo “Still, though Tobio turned his head to look in Alvar’s direction, he...”

Good questions...

I am pretty much asking these myself, and sharing them with he reader, since it took so long between updates...

tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Tobio!” He exhaled the name more than called it, and finally seemed...”

How much I love these icarus scenes! Interesting how you play with the two levels of storytelling : Victorian and greek fantasy

Thank you dear! I started planning this to be a steampunk story, having that as the fantastic element of the story -- but in the end it’s a style I know very little of, and before I realized it I had included Greek elements in it, or the idealized -- and often kitsch -- Victorian ways of regarding classical Greece. It is of course an even stronger tendency once I’ve again vacationed in Greece. :) I’m glad you enjoy it, and be prepared for more!

tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Perusing the room, Alvar did notice a shelf full of flasks, and...”

Classy decor!!!! Adorable style

Thanks! I admit it is not a style I am familiar with, so it involves a lot of references to make it appropriately dated... So thankful, really, to all the wonderful CC creators who enable it!

tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “The portrait, though having captured both her unique beauty and spirit...”

Recently you wrote your own writing skill's development surprised you: As no native speaker I am always fascinated. Don't think I could write that fantastic in English. Praise to you!!!!

Thank you for you kindness and support! It really comes as a surprise each time I read my own text. How did those words come together, I ask myself? But it is as if they have a need of their own, and I just obey it and write as they like.

And yet, there you are, writing your own beautiful version of Romeo and Juliet! Praise to you too! :)

willky12 replied to your photo “Perusing the room, Alvar did notice a shelf full of flasks, and...”

What man indeed.

This is my perception from what I’ve read and watched about the period following the end of WWI. It damaged irreparably an entire generation of men -- and women! I believe the stats say that only one in ten women did marry after the war, the rest having remained singletons, and widowers. This is actually one of the themes of LoSSS.

willky12 replied to your photo “The portrait, though having captured both her unique beauty and spirit...”

I agree entirely, you write like an Englishman! The second paragraph in post #11 was really well done I thought.

Thank you dear! I am indeed trying to give a British accent to this story, but how could I really differentiate? Of course I had to reread the paragraph you mentioned to try to understand what you perceived... Your feedback is beyond important to me, and I am so thankful really!

willky12 replied to your photo “I hadn’t seen him until this morning.” Alvar sounded out of breath,...”

This is a surprise!

It is! 

I was going to hold it for later, but decided the story needed some shaking. Thing is, now I recall why I was going to introduce it only later, and shall have to modify some future scenes I had planned having now shared this information. My problem to solve only, though. :)

jepensedoncjesims replied to your photo “With a sharp sting across his chest, Alvar deposed Apollo Jim on the...”

The second paragraph very wonderfully expressed. Such vivid images of the warm colors of Autumn with the anxiety or death lurking about. Beautiful work.

Thank you, dear. I oscillate between letting the image speak for itself or describing it and pointing at specific details... I tend to think not many people have seen Death hanging there on the other side of the window, right behind Alvar. Thanks for having noticed it!

simblu replied to your photo “With a sharp sting across his chest, Alvar deposed Apollo Jim on the...”

You do write so beautifully.

Thank you for your kindness, dear. I do try my best to honor a language that is not mine and that therefore I respect even more.

simblu replied to your photo “Tobio could tell why, but he wanted to listen it from Alvar. Lost Boys...”

So well told, really.

Thank you! Since it is a long post, I did pay special attention to the flow between sentences and paragraphs, and it seems to have turned out well.

simblu replied to your photo “You are taking him to your ancestral lands? To live under the same...”

Wow, Tobio is rather harsh in his assessment of that Lost Boy, isn't he?

According to the post you mentioned just above, he seems to be well versed in Lost Boys, having frequented parties where they were the main attraction -- and maybe even having hunted them in Pennington Park. He must know better -- certainly better than Alvar!

tyrellsimsoficeandfire replied to your photo “Tobio could tell why, but he wanted to listen it from Alvar. Lost Boys...”

It's always fascinating how deep you go into character building and how developed yours settings/backstories are. That's pure realism with every nasty detail included. It interests me, how much of research you do and how?

Thank you for asking.

This passage, specifically, demanded some research, yes.

I Google a lot, I read lot, and I even try to watch movies or documentaries on the themes I am writing about -- so that it is not just fun, but entertainingly learning at the same time. I do have many boards of references of images and links to texts on Pinterest, and not just a few file collections in my own laptop. 

What I don’t want with this story, though, is to be specific about dates and places, otherwise I’ll have to be specific about facts and events -- and that is beyond this project.

danjaley replied to your photo “The boy stood clearly not for a sailor, though the hat could have been...”

I wonder if Alvar has the remotest idea how his attempts to be distant and reserved make Tobio imagine the most colourful scenarios.

I really don’t think so, since they don’t communicate a lot, do they? There are entire paragraphs for their thoughts and perceptions, that they keep to themselves though sharing it with the reader, while only a few lines with dialogue. They each live in their own world, and see things from very different perspectives and through diverse experiences and backgrounds.

[polandspringz]

I Started Trying To Replicate “What’s In A PV?” and I Ended With An Essay Comparing “Neo Yokio” and “Children of Ether”

I wish I could post this on /r/ anime but I’ve never posted on their before and after a brief rundown of the rules it seems like this would most likely be removed for not fitting their definition of anime. Still, I’d like to make everyone aware that when I call this property an “anime” I am referring to the fact that it is a part of the anime-inspired movement as defined by Mother’s Basement. (See his video titled “Avatar is an Anime: Fuck You, Fight Me)

So, “Neo Yokio”, a very obvious and not so clever allusion to Neo Tokyo. Where to begin? Well, within two days, this trailer has not received much attention, and those who have been talking about it are split on not whether it will be terrible, but whether it will be terrible in a good way, or terrible in a bad way, and by that they are referring to being nonredeemable, even through memes. After jumping into this two days late, I was only able to scan the comments underneath the trailer on Youtube, and I saw this split very prominent. However, I was surprised to find a few people who saw some worth in this series, that it may in fact be good- in a trashy but comedic way.

I think the main thing many people are missing from this show is that it’s a parody. If you do any few seconds of research, hell- even simply typing the show title into Google- you’ll instantly be shown several articles that all include the word “parody” in the title. So, we should already be aware the show won’t be taking itself seriously, which I think is good. The last time Netflix tried to make an anime inspired thing, which was less than a month ago, it turned out badly, almost as bad as everyone fears this series will be, un-memeable (I tried to avoid typing that, I really did) However, with what the trailer shows, I think this series will offer plenty in terms of comedy, as I don’t think the lines of dialogue we heard in the trailer in context will be as similar to Jaden Smith tweets as we are being led to believe. At the very least, there is hope that when put into context, they won’t intentionally sound cringey and forced as if to replicate the hilarity of his most famous tweets.

So, now I’d like to jump into the trailer, stealing a bit of Mother’s Basement’s “What in A PV?” format, although I am not as eloquent as him, and I’m not being sponsored by the network this series is being hosted/licensed on. Now, if I’ve learned anything from the Anime Youtube community, it’s that sometimes one shot can encapsulate a whole show. In Made in Abyss, the opening scene that drags the camera vertically up from the bottom of the abyss has been analyzed by many this season as a key example of this. The shot right before the title drops, I believe is this show’s rather crude version of that. When we are shown the two girls playing tennis, the reaction of the girl breaking her racket is supposed to be seen as strange and over dramatic to the extent that our curiosity is awakened. We are immediately supposed to be led to believe that the rest of the trailer will show us a rather over the top reactions made by characters, and the entire show will be similar in nature. But, when the shot freezes and starts playing Studio Ghibli like music over top the brush stroke stylized title drop, the contrast is supposed to leave us with more questions than answers.

This show is a parody, so it’s going to be packed with references. These two contrasting shots that follow one another are very much that, references. The mecha robot seen throughout the trailer does not imply that the show will be attempting to invoke the mecha genre in anyway, but it exists for purpose of being an allusion to that genre, as well as a spin on the robot butler trope. When I found people stating that they thought this show had no direction and was plain cringey, I was a little surprised. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this was a passion project, as I am not familiar with Ezra Koenig’s works or interests, but another Google search has revealed to me the show’s intent is to be “a postmodern collage of homages to classic anime, English literature, and modern New York fashion and culture”, as stated by Netflix themselves. This explains how we got from Neo Tokyo to Yokio (New York + Neo Tokyo, although some of the narration about the city reminds me more of New Orleans, but I digress)  But, I feel as though people are fearing this is going to end up being like this season’s “THE REFLECTION” in nature rather than something like a comedic “Children of Ether”.

For those of you who went to Anime Expo this year or attended one of the Anime Movie Night screenings or encore screenings during the summer, I can hear some of you finding disgust with my comparison there. For those who are unaware, “Children of Ether” is a Crunchyroll original series created by LeSean Thomas and animated alongside the help of Japanese studio Satelight. An ONA is available on Crunchyroll and was premiered at the aforementioned events, and it too pays tribute to classic animes, but ones close to Thomas’s heart in terms of their animation, storytelling, and representation. The most notable and prominent influence on the work being Michiko & Hatchin, a series I thoroughly enjoyed and found to be a beautiful action and crime road trip story. Now, I would like to make it clear I am in no way saying that I think “Neo Yokio” is going to be an equivalent to “Children of Ether”, but I am saying it is possible to pay tribute to anime in your story in a multitude of ways. (Once again, see Avatar is an Anime, Fuck You, Fight Me). When I watched “Children of Ether”’s ONA short in theaters, I found it to be a rather interesting story that I looked forward to seeing more of. It had an art style similar to the works it had been influenced by, as the character designer was the same one from Michiko & Hatchin, and it’s voice acting for the main cast was well done and the world was fleshed out enough that it distanced itself from every other post-apocalyptic story we had seen in both eastern and western media. The only fault I had with the real short was the way the character’s mouths and bodies moved in accordance with their voices was always slightly off, both in mouth flaps and general motion. It ended up making some scenes very awkward to watch. Now, that can be explained away by problems with mixing Japanese animation and English voices, but the strange thing is, “Neo Yokio” doesn’t have that issue.

To be more precise, I understand that’s not enough to give Neo Yokio a leg to stand on or to place it above or on par with “Children of Ether” in any way. (I just figured it would be a good way to break paragraphs) “Neo Yokio” might have a better production team than “Children of Ether”, or at best one that has more experienced animating for another language, and as it would seem, that is Production I.G. But if you’re confused on why “Neo Yokio”’s art style has turned so many people off at the same time, it is being co-produced with Studio Deen. (So…) Yet, I feel it is unfair for people to treat “Children of Ether” so well when one can hold hope for “Neo Yokio” in the same way. The art style certainly does not have the same realistic edge as “Children of Ether” does, nor does it have KyoAni or A-1 Picture’s eye candy animation or anything like you would expect to see in “Ping-Pong: The Animation”, “Mob Psycho 100”, or “Tatami Galaxy”. In many ways, I think many people are forgetting what a lot of children’s anime or even mediocre anime looks like- it looks like “Neo Yokio”. It’s not trying to be anything special in that regard, and the typical art style one might see in a Pokemon episode is expanded upon by its western edge, which makes it into its own little mish-mosh creation. I understand it may not be pleasing to some, but it’s not trying to do what “Children of Ether” did where the production company literally was able to snag the exact designer of the work it was influenced by to create something equal. If anything, I think if “Neo Yokio” was given any sort of mainstream style (yes, at this point, I’d say even the oddballs with mixed media styles have enough to be grouped as a collective mainstream style decision) it would be worse off, because then it would be seen as trying too hard to be an actual anime. It would come off as obnoxious and be insulting.

“Children of Ether”’s purpose is to be its own work that visibly shows off the works that preceded it and influenced it in hopes of creating a compelling action and adventure story in a fresh post apocalyptic world. It also hopes to inspire more works to help increase the number of stories in anime that include diversity and representation amongst its cast. The tone of the serious is going to be serious but not melancholy, being able to build exciting suspense in fight scenes without ever falling too far away from the ability to turn a sad moment into a hopeful, but not heartfelt scene. “Avatar: the Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra” both are established in Mother’s Basement’s video essay as being a part of the anime community for their obvious art style and storytelling. While western media is meant to make people laugh first, Japanese media is always meant to make you feel for characters before you laugh at them, and although these two series often are known for their comedic scenes, they never break their emotional moments for comedy, they let them set in and simply be emotional and heart wrenching. Even shows like “Steven Universe” can be seen as not a direct western-anime equivalent, but have its moments where it allows itself to replicate Avatar and Korra it’s emotional scenes, but it plays more to the western cartoon art style. Yet, the idea of the story itself is not far from what would be found in Japanese media. And then there’s “Neo Yokio”.

Even though it is true that Japanese animation aims for emotion over comedy, there are countless animes that exist for the pure purpose of making you laugh. “Neo Yokio” is going to be much different than any other western anime purely because all of the aforementioned ones ended up following two main things: art style and storytelling. “Neo Yokio” is a parody though, so both of these are actually secondary. If it were to try to follow the storytelling style, it would end up being “edgy” with all its references being seen as though it was trying too hard to replicate anime that it would be cringey- as many proclaim it will be. The lines hashed out by Jaden Smith should be enough to explain away that, but the main point is that because this series is trying to include a variety of anime references (mechas, demon hunters, etc.) the story is going to be certainly original but not original enough that it can survive in a serious tone and not been called out as a blatant copy. By taking the parody route, the series will most likely be able to be consumed as a sort of an anime abridged video, but not to improvisation level and chaoticness of “Ghost Stories”. I deeply believe that by deciding to make this series a parody instead of your typical western anime, it will be much more successful and much less cringey than it is being expected to be.

(Here are two of the articles I referenced for some of LeSean Thomas’s comments about “Children of Ether”, besides my own viewing of the ONA:

https://goo.gl/NDeUub

https://goo.gl/UZRk7P

Thank you for reading this! Let me know if you want me to ramble/review about any series in particular!)

[phantasyprone]

The Memeing of Life - A pretty extensive philosophical critique

Hey everyone, I’m just gonna take another break from writing my graduate thesis to briefly run through some of the points (???) made in Dan’s video. I’m pretty tired and stopped watching Supernatural to type this up so this is incredibly informal so yh, excuse the rambling nature of this. I’ll type what he said in the video then provide my thoughts.

 ‘‘Born too late to explore the earth, born too soon to explore the galaxy, born just in time to browse dank memes.’ Also a phrase that defines the purpose of our existence at this point in human history. Do you ever find yourself wishing for a different life, that your weren’t just a kid at school, or you weren’t just a young adult trying to work out what to do, or a person stuck in a job, but instead a person with a calling – a mission to go on adventure bigger than the life we know’ – OK, I have so many issues with this. 1. Only white males get to say that they wished they lived before this point. 2. ‘just’ a kid, and ‘just’ a young adult? Mate, Dan my man, no one is ‘just’ anything. Every single person is a complex, awesome human being capable of so much. No one is just anything and you say that like everyone out there thinks so little of themselves? Yeh of course, some people are on a journey to try and work out their life’s purpose but some people aren’t? For some people their purpose is to have close friends or family, or theyre on the career path they want, or some people are not in their mid twenties and just wanting to enjoy/get through the hell that is school. If I was 14 and watching a video where someone was telling me that ‘we’ all spend life trying to find our calling or mission I would have been like ‘fuck no. I just wanna pass my exams and get to uni mate, stfu.’ Or many teens, as actually was the same when I was young and super into philosophy, liked to think about this stuff on occasion, but in an informed manner not some chill youtube video they used to escape flinging an existential crisis at them.

  ‘our boring time’ – No, Dan. Our time isn’t boring. It’s exciting, amazing, there’s so much good in the world. Yo, have you even seen videos of baby pandas? Have you read the amazing things activists and progressive politicians, and inspiring children, and wonderful artists, and artists and non white cis straight amazing people are doing to make the world fucking awesome are doing? Nah mate. Not having it.

 (this shit got long so more under the cut)

‘well this is your life and its probs the only one youre gonna get’ – WHY DO YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING??? The fact that we only have this one life is such a beautiful thing to cling to and whilst sometimes things may seem shit, theres no need to go saying that phrase in that way like our lives are bad and we should just accept that? Yeh I could be Hermione Granger if I was in the Harry Potter books but would I want to be? NO. Yo, I wouldn’t give up my best mates for anything. And Hermione couldn’t play the guitar but I can. And Hermione didn’t laugh so hard she cried when my mate and me were out walking with huge rucksakes and my mate got stuck between two trees and couldn’t get out, then heaved herself through and fell flat on her face in the mud. NO, I saw that. – a wonderful moment. Yeh, this IS my life, and it’s the only one I’m gonna get SO GREAT. Things can be shit but yo, my mate got stuck in a tree so pffffft, this shit can be pretty awesome sometimes.

 ‘this reality could be a computer simulation talk’ – erghhhh, don’t throw stuff like that out so flippantly. That shit is actualy worrying to some people. I had a breakdown which took me 3 full months to get over that ONE thought, so cheers for saying that so casually. But it’s fine because if this is a computer simulation (which I highly doubt cause I did research, a lot of research) then this is what life is and it’s pretty great anyway so lets just not think about that and enjoy life if we can.

  ‘it’s a lot more difficult for us to find a quest that will give us the big answers’ – who are these people needing quests? Why do we need these big answers? You talk like there is some great, intrinsic meaning to everything and we should all be searching for it? Nah mate. Just enjoy what we have, don’t spend your life constantly searching for answers you’ll never find. Enjoy the now. What’s my big quest? To try and be kind to myself and kind to others. And to try to love myself and love others; there we go – big quest sorted. Don’t go giving people this existential crisis where they feel as though they wont be satisfied if they never find this ‘one true purpose’. You will have many different purposes and many different paths and missions and journeys and you will change and its OK to go in varying directions. There may not even be this idea that everyone has or needs ‘one big quest’ – just do what makes you happy and be kind, and if what makes you happy changes over the years then that’s cool. Don’t ever go thinking that you need to spend your whole life trying to find your purpose and you wont feel fulfilled unless you’ve found that purpose. Why only ‘one’ mission anyway? Do everything that makes you happy and live now instead of waiting and searching your whole life for something that you don’t find because you simply search for it.

 The whole discussion about contributing to science so that only a few people can go to mars – No dan, the amount of incredibly important advances in science, medicine, and technology that was discovered BECAUSE we funded space missions and people tried to find answers in the universe is staggering and I wish I could remember them all, but tust me – the amount of cool stuff in our lives that wouldn’t have been invented if it wasn’t for space exploration is seriously cool and y’all go try and be astronauts because you might change the world even if you don’t get to space.

 ‘reality is slow and painful’ – ergh, I mean, it’s cool if you sometimes think that, I do too! But you cant just say that without any context, or like ‘reality is slow and painful sometimes. But not all the time’. – like, of course we all feel this way sometimes but if you’re making a video you cant just announce that without also saying life is fast and amazing and wonderful. You have a certain responsibility here Dan. So no, reality can’t be defined by that wholly pessimistic and way too sweeping statement that it is ‘slow and painful’.

 then goes onto explain how cool, but not really cool books and film realities are. - yeh, but our lives are pretty cool. I mean, over half all movies and books are based on our reality... so i mean, it gotta be kinda interesting. Which it is...

Good bit being aware of this being a first world problem

 ‘you may say that there are many meaningful missions you could go on from perusing personal passions to politics, science or even changing the world to being a better place by doing charity work, and yep, that is all true but its not something that we can completely escape to, leaving what we know behind. I know, pretty disheartening right.’ – I mean, yay, finally some optimism but it was all ruined when you said that basically no matter what you do, you cant escape this reality. Eergh. No, Go do all those amazing amazing things and there is no way that any of these things are lessoned by the fact that they’re still within our reality. Escapism isn’t necessarily the best thing? Sometimes we gotta look at our reality and see how awesome it can be amongst the shit. And we should do all these amazing things to make it even better because if you could escape to a different world would you? If everyone who had something to give to society left then what state would humanity be in? A shit one. I for one am glad we can’t escape and I wouldn’t want to. Changing the world and making it a better place, whether that’s through charity work or by being a generally nice and lovely person, is awesome and the fact that we cant leave this reality isn’t disheartening.

 ‘But what do we have… is a world that might never do anything particularly amazing apart from destroying the world; memes’ – No, just no. People now are doing pretty fucking awesome things. Like, I don’t really need to say any more. Have you seen how far we’ve come? How much societal progression has occurred for minorities and women and the LGBTQIA+ community, and those who are disabled? Of course we have so so so far to go, but things are slowly progressing in general.

 meme discussions – they are relatable and show us how we all have relative experiences – but like no, memes are a cultural artefact which can be alike to Dadaist and surrealist work pointing out the absurdity of our time and how meaning can be warped and blah semantics, existentialism, satra, kafka, keikergaard, Joseph Heller, (I can’t be asked right now to go into a discussion of memes and existentialism and meaning because it’s interesting but long and tbh Dan should’ve covered that so I’m salty he missed this great and obvious discussion)

 ‘it’s what we do all day, and perhaps, that is us attempting to find meaning within ourselves in a time when the universe isn’t providing any easy answers’ – ergh, why do we always have to be searching for this true meaning you’re talking about? Maybe we just shouldn’t search for an intrinsic meaning? Look for love and kindness and humanity because who can argue with that, and let’s just not give your entire audience an existential crisis, or if you did want to discuss existentialism then please do so in a balanced, well researched and UPLIFTING WAY. This shit is serious and I’ve had so many breakdowns because of it but through YEARS AND YEARS of reading am I good and OK and not in that deluge or worry for meaning anymore. If you wanted to discuss such deep and truly worrying stuff as this, you needed to be more eloquent, less ‘ergh life is shit’ and just generally more optimistic (which I know you can be so, like, why was this so dreary and ergh)?

 so go reach for your dreams because what is important is that it’s your choice – erghhhhhh where did this argument go? We’ve missed so many steps in your discussion of finding one ‘true mission’ into you having a choice? Mate, I know how you could jump between these but you haven’t explained how you got here or how this all links up and whaaaaa? You need to back up WHY peoples choices make sense within the existentialist discussion youre basing all this on. You cant just say it and expect people to know?

 Sorry guys, that was my incredibly messy discussion of this video which was not at all eloquent because my brain is fried and I paused my rewatching of Supernatural to type this stuff up.