#ALSO unrelated to the point here but the depiction of addiction is so out of touch it’s unbelievable

[macbethz]

I think hazbin hotel is part of a common trend recently where things call themselves “adult” to mean like saying bad words but still have the themes of and are structured like children’s shows

[bayrut]

Themes in Habit (Louis Tomlinson) vs CHANGES (blackbear) 

Both songs have very similar themes, Louis wrote on both songs, but Habit was written in 2018, and CHANGES in 2019. Even though the topics are the same, it’s interesting how they are discussed in different ways. 

Both songs discuss leaving a relationship, and the singer (i’m referring to them as ‘the narrator’) feels guilty and responsible for the falling out, 

I always said that I'd mess up eventually I told you that, so what did you expect from me? It shouldn't come as no surprise anymore

[...] I'm sorry I let you down

It's sad but true, can't be in love with you

And I worry [...]

while the other person (i’m referring to them as ‘the s/o’ does not feel guilty, even though they have been lying in this relationship.

I know you said that you'd give me another chance But you and I knew the truth of it in advance 

You tell lies and you cry just a little Don't feel bad you shouldn't know that

The s/o is framed by the narrator as being ready and willing to forgive the narrator, to give them a second chance, but those second chances are actually conditional, and false. The s/o has already made up their mind.

I know you said that you'd give me another chance But you and I knew the truth of it in advance That mentally, you were already out the door

On the phone like it's now or it's never

It seems that the narrator was almost passive about the relationship ending, when it happened. They did not fight for the s/o to give them the promised second chance.

That mentally, you were already out the door

Never thought that giving up would be so hard 

I told lies could've tried just a little Could've tried didn't fight for you

The narrator expresses they look back on the relationship and think about it: how hard it was, and they question what happened.

Never thought that giving up would be so hard

Guess that I know what I already knew I was better with you, and I miss you now

It's sad but true, can't be in love with you [...] And it's been on my mind, way too often I can't understand, where we went wrong 

In both, the narrator mentions that they ‘changed’, which is what eventually led to the falling out. But it is clear to the narrator that the change is good, and ‘changing’ is actually what they wanted and needed all along. In Habit, the narrator, doesn’t ‘have to choose anymore’ about being someone they’re not, they decide to be truthful to themself. Also, notice how in CHANGES, the sentence goes from ‘you’ll wake up and you won’t know me’ which refers to the s/o physically waking up, an action, to ‘I’ll wake up and you won’t know me’, here ‘wake up’ does not refer to the physical action of waking up, but rather to ‘realise’ something. I think this distinction is important to make, because it emphasises that the narrator is changing.

[To explain my point above a bit more, it’s like in Walls: ‘nothing wakes you up, like waking up alone’: the first wake up means, ‘to realise something about oneself’, while the second is the physical action of waking up.]

I took some time 'cause I've ran out of energy Of playing someone I heard I'm supposed to be But honestly, I don't have to choose anymore

But I've been going through changes [...] Going through changes without you [...] And I worry one day you'll wake up and you won't know me And I worry one day I'll wake up and you won't know me, anymore

The reason why the narrator feels guilty seems to be that they made a mistake.

I was out of control

You went left, I was wrong and I know that I I did you dirt Couldn't fix this with just words

In Habit, the narrator is ready to take the full blame for the falling out. The narrator is mistaken/illusioned to think that the s/o is innocent, as they are claiming to be. The narrator puts the s/o on a pedestal, and makes it seem that the s/o is not capable of making mistakes. The s/o was the solution for the narrator, they ‘fixed’ the narrator, who was better when part that relationship than alone. In CHANGES, although the narrator feels guilty, they make sure to note that both them and their s/o should take blame for the falling out.

I always said that I'd mess up eventually I told you that, so what did you expect from me?

You gave me the time and the space I was out of control and I'm sorry, I let you down Guess that I know what I already knew I was better with you 

I can't understand, where we went wrong

In Habit, there’s this sense that the narrator really misses the s/o, and keeps coming back to them, even though the relationship depicted in this story seems rather toxic [I think this is a good moment to remember Back To You]. Vs, in CHANGES, there are no regrets about leaving this relationship. Sure, the narrator thinks about the relationship, but it’s only to make sense of it, to understand what happened. The narrator is fully aware that the relationship was toxic, and that both them and the s/o are responsible for the falling out. The narrator has changed, does not mention wanting to go back to this relationship, and is still changing. Whereas in Habit, the narrator mentions that they’ll always need the s/o, despite having changed. 

Never thought that giving up would be so hard God, I'm missing you and your addictive heart

I'll always need ya In front of me, in front of me

You're the habit that I can't break You're the feeling I can't put down You're the shiver that I can't shake You're the habit that I can't break You're the high that I need right now You're the habit that I can't break

Guess that I know what I already knew [...] I miss you now 

And it's been on my mind, way too often I can't understand, where we went wrong

But I've been going through changes Going through changes without you

In summary, both songs are about a break-up. The narrator has realised some things about themself and the relationship, which led them to change and decide to become truer to themself. The main difference is that, in Habit, the narrator thinks that they are fully guilty, and sings about wanting to go back to this toxic relationship; whereas, in CHANGES, the narrator realises that both them and their s/o were guilty, and does not express wanting to go back to this toxic relationship. It’s interesting the changes (pun intended) that a person can go through in the span of a year.

[One final slightly unrelated note, maybe the ‘side girl’ from CHANGES and the ‘second wife’ in Louis’ Fearless refer to similar things...]

[wakraya]

Epilogue Content Warnings

So as I said! Let me just. Pull these up real quick and talk about what each of them may mean for the Epilogue as a whole.

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE EPILOGUE BENEATH!

And let’s start with the characters actually!

John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Jane Crocker, Roxy Lalonde, Jake English, Dirk Strider, Karkat Vantas, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Calliope, Caliborn, Lord English: Obviously they would be here. 

Aradia Megido, Tavros Nitram, Sollux Captor, Vriska Serket, Gamzee Makara, Eridan Ampora, Feferi Peixes: Also likely to be either mentioned or to have Ghost Shenanigans. It’s quite the Troll the Meowrails aren’t around though- Equius is not around I guess because he IS a Heir of Void after all. Nepeta not being there though, come on Hussie. that is just you Trolling us with another Dead Nepeta joke.

Aranea Serket, Meenah Peixes: Makes me think we’re not going to see the Dancestors at all. They’re the two more prominent ones, and part of the whole plan to defeat LE, so they would easily be mentioned.

Davepetasprite^2: Please come back, Birbcat.

Barack Obama: This is almost DEFINITELY Dave rapping.

Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s): Likely to be any new resident of Earth C. Honestly, just the Salamanders and Carapaces already fill this.

So now let’s go for the warnings! It should be noted, while all of these do appear, a lot of them are juxtaposed to be humorous with the more heavy-seeming ones, so let’s get into it.

Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Alternate Universe, Death, Incestuous Undertones, Meta, Manipulation, Rapping, Furry, Anthropomorphic Characters, Power Imbalances, Blood, Trickster Mode, Interspecies Relationships, Guns, Murder, Black Romance, Existential Crisis, Xenophilia, Daddy Issues, Robots, Gore, Aliens, Assassination,  Theft, Ghosts, Mind Control, Teenagers, Possession, Kidnapping: This is just Homestuck 101.

Eating, Food, Clown Dynamics, Fridging, Feet, Early 20th Century Dance Movements, Clown, Honk, Faygo: These seem largely peppered in for the fun factor, and to break the... Concerning nature of some of the other ones.

The Economy, World War, Political Intrigue, Genocide, Political Rebellion, Fascism, Religion, Capitalism, Reality Television, Propaganda, Super PACs, Prison Camps, Gerrymandering, Revolutionary Rhetoric: This in general seems like it’s gonna be societal commentary talking about either Alternian or Earth Society, and perhaps some talk of stuff that’s happened in the past of Earth-C. With how messed up Alternia is and the stuff Condy did... Yeah it all checks in.

Xenophobia, Speciesism: The Snapchat Updates hinted at the possibility of anti-Human Trolls, and likely of anti-Troll Humans in the same vein, for literal Xenophobia and Speciesism, or grouped with the prior category for... You know. Sadly truthful commentary on social issues.

Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia, Misgendering, Gender Transition, Nonbinary Character(s), Identity Questioning, Detransitioning: These are likely some of the ones that people are the most worried about- Specially regarding the one about ‘Detransitioning’. However... Honestly my two bets here are that, John is going to bump into Davepeta and have a brief moment of misgendering them before being corrected and some talk about gender identity, and that Dave may give John a big talk regarding identity and fucked up societal stuff.

Sexual Abuse, Rape, Non-Con, Dubious Consent, Slut Shaming: These may easily tie in with the previous one too, as V mentioned, these aren’t things we’re going to see at all, but they are going to get briefly discussed. So no one’s going to get coerced into anything. Bad themes but, stuff to talk about.

Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Abuse, Unhealthy Relationships, Domestic Abuse, Bad Parenting, Toxic Masculinity: I’m going to be honest. This. This just sounds like Dave’s gonna talk about Bro again.

Body Horror: This could be MANY things. Some awful wound described in full detail, it is gonna tie in with ‘Gore’ for certain. Maybe talking about Gamzee being split in half.

Alcohol Use, Drugging, Drug Use, Chronic Illness, Vomit, Addiction: The drug mentions already happened with Rose, and she’s medicating herself. Thankfully I trust she’s not falling in any sort of addiction, but the ‘Vomit’ tag could imply it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Or maybe it’s entirely unrelated and Gamzee just barfs blood again.

Mental Illness, Depression: Someone get all of these Kids to a Therapist. Honestly.

Starvation, Suicide, Funerals: These are the ones I’m the most... Worried about. Suicide there could be talk of their Immortality, hell maybe it’s even a morbid but still joking thing that’s not serious, but I’m kind of concerned it may be more. Starvation though, I can’t... Think of anyone who could Starve, except perhaps Terezi having been outside searching for Vriska for so long, and I worry... And Funerals, please just talk about Mutie’s and Rose’s Funerals, please no one die. :I I mean except John, which I’m assuming may die, but I’ll talk about that later.

Poisoning, Pica: Another possible alternative for the ‘Vomit’ warning? It may also tie into some assassination attempt. There’s no ‘overdose’ tag, so I am ruling out the idea that Rose IS gonna start going too far. Like straight up. Pica is also a disorder in which someone eats non-edible stuffs, which could cause poisoning and vomit? But. Honestly? I think... Pica is just going to be Terezi eating chalk.

Friends to Lovers, Polyamory, Infidelity, Marriage, Cuckolding: Now BEFORE any of you crucify me for putting Polyamory and Infidelity together. I know. I’m not implying anything. BUT while it’s possible that like. Rose or Kanaya had some talk about their marriage. I think it could be quite hilarious if John saw Jade, Dave and Karkat like. Making out amongst themselves at different points and assume that they’re cheating on each other, or worse, that they tease him for having that come to mind immediately. ‘wow karkat i cant believe youre cucking me with jade im hurt’ ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP STRIDER, OH MY GOD-’

Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, Breastmilk, Diapers, Children, Babies, Milking: I know everyone’s IMMEDIATE thoughts is that someone’s gonna get pregnant. But honestly it could just be pregnancy talk and... Breastfeeding and Milking that’s just. That’s just gonna be ARquius isn’t it.

Eggs, Alien Biology, Ovipositioning: No! Stop! There’s not going to be any weird Troll Stuff! Shame on all of us. This is most likely regarding the Mother Grub, although I wouldn’t mind hearing more about Canon Troll Anatomy.

Cannibalism, Vore: I am. I am going to go ahead and think this is because of the drawing of Roxy eating a baby??? Honestly who even KNOWS at this point. Is Caliborn going to try to VORE anyone like a god damn snake? Good lord.

Mind Break, Rough Sex, Light BDSM: Remember that there’s NO sexual content in the Epilogue. Confirmed. So uh... Yeah. Okay I added ‘Mind Break’ here for humorous effect but honestly it may be better suited for some of the messed up warnings above, maybe alongside Mind Control? Oof. Rough Sex... I can imagine someone joking about it? Maybe someone gets really shameless with the innuendos. And Light BDSM I’m just going to say we’re going to see Clover. Or... Gamzee DID get tied up. Does that count?

Bimboification: This fucking one. This one is the one that throws me out for a limb the most. It may be relating to the Trickster Mode? It may also be related to Caliborn and him like. Objectifying the characters or something, but that isn’t as ‘ification’. Another thing that’s got me wondering is ‘Bimboification’. As FAR as I understand this term to go, the correct way of saying it is ‘Bimbofication’? So either it’s a typo, OR ‘Bomboification can apparently be used some times for specifically males? What I’m saying is, I can’t believe Lord English really is a Himbo.

Redemption: V... Vriska? Maybe. But also I kinda hope not. I’m really wishing ‘Redemption’ comes from everyone working their shit out together and being a big bunch of friends again.

Canon Compliant, Canon Divergent, Self-Sacrifice: Finally! The last ones! This is both Canon Compliant and Canon Divergent, which should be easy enough to parse through the Meat-Candy choice (And what I believe will be a split-path with the next update). Self-Sacrifice... Yeah that is what’s going to happen with John isn’t it? At least in the ‘Meat’ path. But I’ve talked already too much and gotten too Spoilery, ssssh!

So hey! These warnings don’t look so intimidating when you realize 90% were already things that happen in Homestuck proper, and the rest can be discussed in an adult manner without having awful things happen to people.

I’m mostly worried about people dying and getting hurt.

[halfgap]

Some extensive, tangly headcanons / extrapolations of canon regarding Beau and her parents under the cut... extremely wordy and still not Complete (I always have more to say about this kid!)

I doubt her family is anything akin to nobility or aristocracy. Sure, they own a winery in Kamordah (a town renowned for its fine wines) but from Beau’s comments about her father’s desperation to impress the Empire higher-ups, I get the sense that Beau’s parents are sorta the Wildemount equivalent of ‘New Money’. They accrued their wealth through being very industrious and growing their business into something presumably quite successful, but despite being financially secure her father more than anything still wants very badly to gain the respect of More Important People.

Beau says her father “made a lot of sacrifices” in an effort to impress those people, and tbh that could mean anything from “devoted his time to brown-nosing and working instead of to his family” to “literally selling out close friends/family to the Reapers to gain Empire goodwill.” He also probably let the Crownsguard deal with some of Beau’s law-breaking in the past instead of bailing her out, considering Beau’s strong personal reaction to Toya being left with the Crownsguard.

I’m thinking her father is a very intelligent guy who values book smarts a lot. Marisha’s implied on Talks that he made Beau study a lot of crap (even before the Cobalt Soul) which he insisted would be valuable, and Beau is kind of pissed whenever that education actually does come in handy during her adventures today. I think her knee-jerk rebellion against All Things To Do With Her Father is why Beau insists that she hates studying, hates books and history, is TOTALLY a jock and NOT A NERD AT ALL, even though it’s become apparent that her natural curiosity does extend to a lot of nerdy things and she retained a lot of useful stuff from her studies. She loves learning, period, but it’s that thing where you don’t want to enjoy something that your asshole parents forced on you since a young age.

From a meta perspective, abusive parents are too often depicted as ignorant & uneducated with nothing of value to offer to their kids. In reality, perfectly intelligent + highly educated people can still VERY MUCH be abusive. They can have good taste in books or music, they can instill some savvy business acumen in their kids, etc.. Beau likely owes a lot of her education & cunning to her dad. Part of him probably did have her best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean he’s any less of an abusive shithead.

As far as I remember, Beau’s never actually said she hated her parents. There’s clearly a lot of resentment & anger there, but she also makes a lot of excuses for her parents: she says her father’s “not a bad person,” says he could have even been a good father if he made different choices, repeatedly calls him “protective” (as opposed to “horribly controlling and overbearing,” which I think is more accurate tbh), and admits several times that she herself was “a rebellious dick” and how that contributed to her parents’ rejection of her. Beau doesn’t hate her parents and hasn’t claimed to hate them; I’d wager instead that she cares about them despite everything and *still* craves their acceptance and approval (something Marisha supports on Talks). The bulk of Beau’s feelings toward her parents are HURT, not HATRED.

That just makes her whole situation a lot sadder, imo. In ep.1 she comes off as a rebellious drifter who ran away from her rich asshole parents, but in fact she’s a rebellious drifter w/ nowhere to go because she was utterly rejected by her parents *twice*. She disagrees with everything they stand for & won’t change herself any more for them, but she no doubt still cares about them (god, it’s her very nature to care deeply about Everything she touches); she’s just utterly convinced that they don’t give a single damn about her.

Somewhat related- as a child, at least, Beau did try to be what her parents wanted. This is made apparent by Marisha’s playlist commentary and some of her TM answers. Moreover, Beau has the ‘Prodigy’ feat, which I bet only stoked her parents’ expectations of her, expectations that kid!Beau would naturally strive to meet. But as Marisha rightly points out, when someone’s held to an impossible standard like that of the “The Perfect Daughter,” eventual rebellion is inevitable. From personal experience, I can say after trying so hard for so long, failure is addictive. Once Beau gave up trying to be the perfect, obedient kid who was still never enough, she probably found comfort in and clung deeply to her new role as the Problem Child, the Disappointment, the Slacker.

This always confused me but... Beau was only w/ the Cobalt Soul in Zadash for a few months. It’s possible she was at some other training monastery prior to that, but from Marisha’s early-campaign TM comments about “suddenly & recently becoming a monk” and a lot of other confusing shit Beau’s said, it sounds like Beau was only with the Cobalt Soul during that short time she was in Zadash...? And I can’t imagine it’s been THAT long between her running away, and her meeting Fjord and Jester in Game 0. Zeenoth still seems familiar enough with her when finding her in Ep.4 that I think Beau probably only ran away a few months to a year ago, at most? (Enough time for Beau to have wandered through a lot of places in the Empire at least, since she says in Ep. 8 or so that she’s traveled a lot within the country.) Beau is currently 22 or 23, so working backwards, that means Beau was abducted by the Cobalt Soul when she was probably 20 or 21. A young adult. Not a rebellious teen getting sent to boarding school.

I guess it might make sense that an unmarried young daughter is still in the authority of her parents at that age (although gender politics in Exandria have always been ‘???’ and sorta inconsistently represented so...) But it’s more significant that Beau stayed, living under her parents’ roof, doing the bookkeeping for the winery... I don’t know if she was staying purely to continue profiting off her bootlegging operation w/ her family’s wine, or if because even after all that Teen Rebellion she never fully escaped her parents’ influence over her and her own buried desire to earn their respect/affection. I’d say it’s leaning towards the latter, with her using the former as an excuse to herself (or maybe the thought of leaving just. Never even really occurred to her. Which I wouldn’t be shocked by tbh.) Either way I think it’s interesting that she herself never left that small town she hated & that family she resented, until her dad blatantly kicked her out via monk abduction.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than saying that Beau is a twisty, painful mess of contradiction who nevertheless makes deep sense to me (& hopefully others) in a way impossible to articulate...?

uh I meant to talk more about her mom but prior to more recent episodes the only thing we knew of her is when Beau said “My mother always said nothing in life is free.” Now we also know she gave birth to a son Very Late & once wouldn’t let Beau have a pet rat, but Beau’s overall difficulty with/reluctance to talk about her mother can mean a lot of different things. Two possible interpretations are : a) in some twisted way Beau was a lot closer to her dad, as in... he was a bigger influence on her, more involved in her life and thus in more conflict with her, and her mom has always been more a footnote.. or b) maybe Beau actually had a more.. tender relationship with her mom than she did with her dad (not saying much tbh) which only made her ultimate rejection sting 100x worse to the point that Beau hates even thinking or talking about it.

You could go a lot wilder with the theories here (maybe her mom was the ‘bad direction’ that misguided her dad..? etc) but I think the above two are most reasonable and what I usually go with right now for the sake of simplicity

As for Beau’s personal hang-up with tarot cards, and the (possibly unrelated, but probably related) Mysterious Beliefs of her dad that made him so “protective” and intent on isolating her... that shit is too open-ended and I can’t land on a solid theory yet asjdjsljfjf

Also very conflicted about the whole MY PARENTS WANTED A SON thread but I won’t get into that here

I’m Very Behind on CR and have only caught clips and tidbits of episodes 43 onwards so please talk to me about Beau and let me know if there’s any other interesting hints she’s dropped in recent episodes or if any new info has contradicted these long-held, rambly inferences I just listed

[valjar]

Some thoughts about JASPER and Ignys Jasper  -Part 1- JASPER

So here I am, at 10 pm. I can´t sleep and as usual, Ignys Jasper and our big beefy warriorgem, JASPER fly through my head. Those who know me, will know that this is pretty normal, but enough rambling. 

When I first wrote about Ignys, it started out as a character study on Jasper. Yes, JASPER, the ultimate quartz. The first time I saw her was in chille tid. I saw that huge, buff as all goodness warrior gem, but in a really bad place. 

Not just generally, but especially for her. Her gem and energy type. As we can guess from Amethyst and Jasper respectively, Quartzes, especially those we met so far, are fire AND earth type gems (compared: Ruby as a fire type). Now we see this fiery earth gem in a place that is REALLY awful for her. You can probally guess it.

Exactly! It´s water. Lapis Lazuli´s type. Jasper is trapped there, in Malachite. Fighting, fighting, fighting, but also exhausted to the core, but unrelenting and I was dumbstruck. How chille tid was pulling that off. Showing that whole thing as both gems being in a stale mate that is depicted as vaguely resembling drowning. (Note: Gems are unbound. They have no dependance on any kind of breath in any way nor other organic needs, Still the situation looks like they feel like in a out.of.breath-stage-near-drowning-situation.) You see that especially in Jasper. Before she can do anything after popping to the “surface”, she is on all fours and pants heavily. It goes through the whole form and her “breath” sounds laboured, ragged and heavy. Same for Lapis, but not as bad. 

That Jasper still fought in this bad place dumbstrucked me and I went on a journey to find out more about this gem, that was like a diamond´s worth of willpower and resolve in the shape of a Quartz. I found the return and jailbreak and of course the Jasper fandom and the fandom as a grand total. 

I analyzed every episode with Jasper in it and watched the discussions and discourses around Jasper, Lapis and Malachite and I got inspired and in this fandom I found an amazing friend, who I rambled sometimes for hours about this with. We kept on watching the development of Jasper in both, fanon and canon. The first result from this was my first Jasper AU: “Dragon Gem - Rise of Orange Diamond”, the result of “What if Jasper became a Diamond and so she would become on the outside as her will is on the inside?” I found several “dragon” themes in Jasper, of which some got confirmed, like her unbreakable will and her stamina. We see her again in Malachite, in Superwatermelon Island. At that point, almost one year of being trapped in your counter.element later, both personalities, of Jasper and Lapis, were still there. That made me even more hyped, but then, after Malachite was unfused, Jasper just fell into the chasm. 

Several episodes later we see her again in Alone At Sea. Physically in perfect condition, but mentally heavily impaired and wounded from what looked unsettlingly like Stockhold Syndrome. She begs for Lapis to fuse with her again. Interesting here is the addiction like symptoms and the despair. Worlds away from the cool and level headed commander we saw in The Return and at the beginning of Jailbreak: Someone who looks down on those who are less in power than her. Only when Steven uses the shield, she recognizes him as a powerful opponent worthy of her attention. Same with Lapis. In Jailbreak AND The Return, Jasper grabs Lapis around and is like the asshole cop yanking around someone much “weaker”. That ends with Lapis revealing herself to Jasper as the Riptide Queen she really is, the gem who can steal THE ENTIRE OCEAN!! A gem with goddess level power. Malachite had them, too. So Jasper experienced them in and against herself, giving her a huge power high. That she wants back and is denied.

Later, in Gem Hunt, Jasper tries to assemble an army by collecting corrupted gems, she can assert power and dominance over. She walks off.

In Crack the Whip we see Jasper coming out of the ocean (remember: Her BAD place) on the back of a gem monster. She demolishes Amethyst, while flaunting her superior strength and fighting skills; poofing Amethyst in the process. It takes Stevonnie to defeat Jasper or at least drive her away. Jasper walks drama queen style into the ocean, declaring that Jasper always keep going until they get what they want. Stevonnie state, that Jasper lives in the ocean now. (Don´t get me started on that)

In Beta we get shown from all sides how powerful and “perfect” Jasper is: By Amethysts frustration and Peridots attempt to show Jasper´s flaws, but physically there are none. Even her exit hole is perfect and huge and is glass all the way through, due to frictional rockmelt, a sign of Jaspers raw power. We will get another hint on Jasper´s potential and strength in Back to the moon, where Eyeball Ruby states, how Jasper “took out 80 christal gems before sundown upon emerging”. My poor lesbian fandom heart was just “WHOOOAAAAAAHHHH!!!  KILLERQUEEEEEN!”. Then in earthlings we see Jasper for the last time in canon in an emotional showdown. Jasper fuses with the currupted gem for her power, but fails the test, power put her to. Due to her state of mind and the corrupted gems running off and her fusing with a corrupted gem, she finally corrupts, while namedropping Pink Diamond, her Diamond.

(How Jasper and Pink Diamond actually were together will be shown in canon and there are already amazing in-depth-videos by @sliceofotaku on Youtube, So I won´t go too deep into that now.)

200 years later after the events in the show, in my AU (canon divergence/sequel to the end of the series), Jasper posesses a court.like structure of gems, hybrids and humans, is uncorrupted and in her full glory. What happened? Well, that is for a different, future post, but sure is, that Jasper got into align with her power, even the power of her BAD place, the ocean, giving Jasper a special connection to its depths, which she passes on to her descendants. 

                                           (More to that in part 2)

[moviesaboutdrunks]

28 Days

Film: 28 Days, 2000, Dir. Betty Thomas.

You might remember them from such films as this one: Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, that girl from season 7 of Buffy who knew she was going to die.

Reason for watching: Suggested by Netflix.

Let me get a couple of things out of the way: I love Netflix (seriously, is it not the best?), and I am not an AA drunk. I mean zero disrespect to the people the program works for, but that ain’t me, and you’re not gonna stay sober with something that doesn’t work. I use a different set of resources, and they’re doing the job for me so far.

I also didn’t dry out at a 28 day rehab center. Whether that’s because we don’t really do that in my country (unless you’re paying through the nose for it), or because nobody made me dry out but me I don’t totally know. I didn’t bother to investigate how everybody else was getting clean in my 'burg, I just did what I was doing. I would have liked to go to Promises, Malibu, but I am not rich or American enough, and what I got is working fine.

With those qualifications made, you should also know that I can still get down with an AA rehab movie (which is a good thing, because if you’re looking for movies about drunks getting sober, AA is going to feature. AA is huge, it’s worldwide, and it’s what most people think of when they think of recovery). This is an AA rehab movie. That is why it is called 28 Days. There is also chanting, the serenity prayer, and “it works if you work it.” 

The star of the show is Gwen, played by Sandra Bullock, who is a hard-partying writer. She parties so hard she ruins her sister’s wedding, crashes her sister’s wedding limousine into someone’s house, and gets sent to rehab instead of jail. At first she thinks it’s totally naff, then she comes around and decides to get sober. Obstacles to her sobriety are (duh) how much it sucks to be sober, (also duh) her horrible childhood, and her boyfriend (Dominic West), who doesn’t think she has a problem and helps approximately zero percent by bringing her drugs and booze and refusing to recognize her desire for a full-on lifestyle change.

This isn’t a very original plot, obviously, but I didn’t care about that. I was in the mood for an emotional kinda-weepie (good work, Netflix), and that’s what this was. There are some very emotional moments, at which I had emotions, and some funny bits, at which I laughed. There’s a bit of artfulness to it - Loudon Wainwright’s songs are diagetic, and he appears as a rehab inmate playing them (do you say inmate? Some people probably do). The overhead announcements that bookend several scenes are particularly funny (”Don’t miss Tonight’s Lecture: Is God an Alcoholic?”; “Tonight’s Lecture: Why it’s a bad idea to celebrate sobriety by getting drunk.”) I loved the inclusion of equine therapy, and I cried real tears over Gwen’s sad flashbacks, her making up with her sister, and (spoiler alert) the really tragic death of her poor young roommate (jesus, what else was this poor girl gonna do but die? She was so young, and had nowhere to go). I couldn’t have cared less about the love story between Gwen and Viggo, but then neither did the movie because it never came to fruition, and I feel like things were better for that. Gwen ends up with no mans, and that is okay. She can do it alone now, precisely because she’s learned how to ask for help. Great stuff. Lotta feelings.

The depiction of withdrawal is pretty minimal. Gwen has a night of shivery puking, and a few days of shaking hands, but besides that she’s good, if miserable (and hugely anxious). I wondered if this was intended to suggest that Gwen was an intermittent binge drinker rather than a constant heavy drinker, but I guess it’s also possible they just didn’t want to show the extreme grossness of what withdrawal is really like (i.e., it is longer, and has more disgusting sweating and runny pooping). I also assume, like most AA movies, they like to stick to the Betty Ford model, in which addicts (Gwen also used opiates, and I assume coke and other party drugs) are not allowed any drugs of any kind, not even painkillers for an injury, or benzodiazepines to help you not literally shit out your insides or have a seizure and die.

This is pretty typical in what I see depicted of quitting and recovering drunks in movies like this; supervised white-knuckling. It has always stuck me as a little bit odd in relation to the disease model (which I’ve never totally bought, but it is the model that’s cited in these filmic contexts where someone is sent to rehab instead of jail - and it’s referred to here specifically: guidance counsellor Steve Buscemi gives Gwen a pile of books and says “here’s some information about your disease”). I guess, actually, that this is one part of why I’ve never really gelled with AA-related rehab programs, or at least struggled to see how the logic all hangs together - if we’re medically, physiologically powerless over being an addict, as they say we are, what’s wrong with helping us break our physical dependencies as comfortably as possible, in order to cushion us for the serious work ahead? Do we really believe that some individuals are just so hardwired to get high that they can’t even be trusted to take any drugs ever, even under the supervision of a doctor, even for the purpose they are prescribed?  I guess the supervision is there in case something went severely wrong though. And they must sometimes dry people out before they send them to rehab - movies aren’t documentaries - surely they must, or people would periodically drop dead in group. 

There’s an element of moralism to it though, and you know there is; just as the addict must now become humble and scrub toilets (also the Betty Ford model - and Gwen does it on crutches, since she’s sprained her ankle leaping out of a window for some spilled vicodin), she must face her long night of physical and emotional hell. She must go through the twelve trials (see what I did there?) to realize what a piece of human shit she has been, and fully, physically experience her pukey rock bottom before she can begin to rebuild. The depiction of white-knuckling is twofold; it’s speaking truncated film-language to cram the physical horror of the quitting process into a shorter length of time, and it reflects some of what people generally think about addicts, even if they’re singing in the helpless-to-a-disease chorus - we need to be punished for our lack of self-control. We need to suffer to learn our lesson. In these movies, suffering through withdrawal as harshly as possible is presented as the best possible grounding for the coming psychological labour, almost as if we can’t be trusted to believe we want it if we don’t “earn it”. I don’t particularly object to suffering. I’ve never believed I am powerless over my alcoholism, or that alcoholism is a disease I was born with and will always have, or that the demon drink is the thing that makes me a shit person when I’m way too drunk. I believe I had (or have) a maladaptive coping mechanism that propped itself up with a chemical dependency, and that that’s a problem, but it’s one that’s sort of unrelated to my being human trash (or rather, it’s related in that I can use it as an excuse to not deal with being human trash, and also it doesn’t exactly help me avoid making human trash style decisions, but it’s not the source of the issue). I don’t mind suffering for my alcoholic sins (if I have any that are purely alcoholic), and I’ve got no problem with the idea that people might want me to either (that’s their problem). I’m just pointing out the philosophical complexity in the moralism here. We’re powerless, in this model, but it’s also our fault we haven’t powerfully accepted being powerless.  Side note: also interesting is the moralism as attached to various drugs and how that’s changed over time. When I quit, Nicotine Dependence was listed on my hospital form as something else I had a problem with (I ignored this, because fuck you I’m not quitting smoking and drinking at the same goddamned time). Here, in this film, which was made 17 years ago, everyone smokes like chimneys. But they’re not allowed caffeinated coffee, because it’s mood altering. Smoking used to be a lot more value-neutral than it is these days, I guess.  

The just-before-ending climax of the film, as I said, is Gwen realizing and saying aloud that she needs to ask for help, and then saying to herself as she finally manages to convince a horse to lift its hoof (something she was never able to do during equine therapy), that she can control the small things, but then she just has to let go. This is literally a repetition of core AA philosophies, but it isn’t necessarily wrong, either in general or for Gwen. It’s also pretty moving. And given that I’m a non-AAer who can still get down with the genre, I can find my own commonality in it: I don’t necessarily believe I wasn’t in control of the fact that I ended up an alcoholic, but what I will say is that I used it to feel like I was in control of my life. What gold-plated bullshit that was. You can’t drive where you want to go when you’re hammered 24/7. You’ll just wind up crashing a limousine into a house.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

“The misery and the hope we shared”

A review of The Plague by Kevin Chong, Arsenal Pulp Press

By Will Johnson

When Kevin Chong first sat down to write The Plague, it was absolutely unnecessary for him to invent a new epidemic for Vancouver, as the opioid crisis currently ravaging the west coast is already sending a staggering number of residents hurtling to an early grave. By the end of 2017 the city had brought the average death rate down from around 150 per month to under 100, but the epidemic has soldiered on despite aggressive interventions by the B.C. government.

And while the average headline-reader still associates these deaths with the hardcore drug addicts of the Downtown Eastside, picturing homeless derelicts slipping from this mortal coil in shadowy alleys, a closer look reveals that those passing away include teenage athletes who have been prescribed painkillers, upper middle class couples with young children and a disproportionate number of people living in First Nations communities.

In other words: this is hitting just about everyone, from all walks of life — leaving us with even less of an excuse to look the other way.

*

Chong may or may not have had the opioid crisis on his mind while penning his latest novel, but his depiction of our society’s inability to grapple with the threat of imminent death feels both prescient and immediate, a clarion call for those who have become too accustomed to other people’s suffering. Lost in narcissism and materialism, Chong’s average Vancouverite has allowed their selective empathy to negate their ability to engage with others’ personal emergencies. Their solipsism has rendered them incapable of creating the sense of common purpose required to tackle a large-scale catastrophe.

“The city was made up, as it had always been, of people who worked too much for too little … this bustle precluded self-examination,” Chong writes in the introduction. “Yes, there were activists in the city, but those people seemed unhappy and disagreeable.”

The Vancouver he conjures has never seen a war, has yet to experience the great earthquake looming in our future, and contains citizens that “came together to for summer fireworks that celebrated … fireworks”. Because of this, “it was an anatomized city, a place in which the joys and fears were contained within the spheres of self and family” and “collective traumas were experienced but barely heard by the rest of the city.”

These days Vancouverites are being bombarded with social media campaigns that not only plead with your average person to care about the drug users dying all around them, but also to consider the humanity of those being taken from us prematurely. “People who use drugs are real people” is the repeated tagline, juxtaposed beside faces identified thusly: “Cousin, Student, Drug User, Friend”.

Not addressed is why we typically fail to see this truth, why we’ve become so skilled at ignoring the marginalized in the first place.

In The Plague, the city’s residents initially greet the health emergency with faux concern, failing to understand the gravity of their situation. “On their profile photos they posted pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks. Others, hoping to look medieval, wore black cowls, but resembled nerdy sorcerers.” They flee reality by taking in apocalyptic films, “which ranged from Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, from camp to comedy.”

It isn’t until a full-out quarantine is called that people begin to take things seriously. “Our devotion to routine was how we sought comfort in the moments after the hot flare of annoyance tapered into disquiet — when we noticed, say, a co-worker absent from a meeting. Or when we saw entire aisles in markets picked clean.”

*

Chong’s sixth book could easily be placed within the genre of disaster fiction, which makes it perfectly suited for exploring the nuances and political realities of the opioid crisis.  

While his earlier novels include a coming-of-age story and an immigrant narrative, this is his first attempt at a larger scale epic. It has parallels with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which plays coy about the apocalyptic destruction that occurred before the opening, instead dwelling on the existential questions raised as his characters struggle for survival in its wake.

In much the same way, readers of The Plague finish the book with very little information about the disease that drives the action, the way it’s contracted or how it’s ultimately cured — meanwhile they know all about the characters’ interior lives. Both of these books have a parabolic, vaguely Christian texture, like you’re reading a carefully crafted sermon by someone who doesn’t believe in God.

And if you’re expecting something akin to a Stephen King door-stopper, you’re going to be mightily disappointed by The Plague. In Chong’s still-operating city we don’t have Walking Dead-style system breakdown, the characters brood and chat more than they do anything else, and there’s no Dustin Hoffman telling his superior “With all due respect, fuck you, sir” like in Outbreak. There are scenes that are funny, but more in the way that makes you cringe afterwards.

Chong’s book is inspired by the work of none other than Albert Camus, whose 1947 novel La Peste documented an outbreak in Oran, Algeria decades earlier. Ten years after its publication, during his speech accepting the Nobel Prize, Camus said of his writing “it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared”.

Put another way, by critic John Cruikshank, he was depicting “man’s metaphysical dereliction in the world.”

For Camus, writing about a killer disease was his opportunity to tackle the Third Reich. For Chong, it gives him an opportunity to explore topics wholly unrelated to the action, everything from riots and sex scandals to gentrification and the changing role of contemporary journalism. And anyone who has spent any time in the Rainy City will find plenty that’s familiar, including the nihilistic materialism of its residents — though he doesn’t mention yoga pants even once.

And in both books there’s no Higher Power coming to save us. As McCarthy says, “There is no God, and we are his prophets.”

*

Into this setting Chong plunks three main characters: Dr. Bernard Rieux (who shares a name with Camus’ protagonist), an American writer named Megan Tso, and a city hall reporter named Raymond Siddhu. These three each engage with the health crisis in different ways, illustrating both how futile and how meaningful their actions are, at first ignoring all the dead rats with blood coming out their eyes until they’re forced to watch people they love suffer slow, hideous deaths.

When all is said and done, the crisis will last four months and cost 1400 lives, but somehow this feels beside the point.

“Everyone wants to make this health issue political,” Siddhu complains to Rieux, shortly after the first cases are reported. “Infectious disease doesn’t check your party affiliation. Suffering is universal.”

Though it may be new to them, the threat of disease existed long before these characters ever stepped foot on the page. In a televised speech, Mayor Romeo Parsons calls the epidemic “our founding condition” — reminding them that the city is named after an English officer of the Royal Navy who was faced with disease upon arrival. He describes the scene of first contact in the 1890s, noting that the First Nations populace had been decimated by smallpox before the settlers even landed.

“Captain George Vancouver did not see wealth and abundance but devastation. He found abandoned villages and beaches lined with decaying bodies. He saw canoes placed in trees, which upon closer inspection, held skeletons inside them.”

And just like any catastrophe, its the weak who end up suffering most.  “You don’t need to wear a tinfoil hat to see how disease disproportionately affects our most marginalized people, the poorest, the least privileged,” he says.

Chong has put a post-modern spin on the old Stalin quote “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic” by showing the meaningless ways public opinion can be manipulated when it comes to matters of life and death. For instance, the mayor’s rise to popularity is triggered by a YouTube video of him making a jump shot that was “widely shared and re-posted”, making people feel “pre-acquainted with him”.  

Meanwhile Tso is the author of a book called The Meaning of Death. She reflects there was “a look that people who organized death-related events cultivated. It wasn’t so plainly ‘alt’ as a high-school goth aesthetic.” She later notes that her marketing manager told her “to tell funny stories about the mummies of the Atacama Desert to make you feel comfortable about turning cemeteries into picnic spaces and taxidermying your pets.”

People will try anything to convince themselves they don’t have to feel other people’s pain.

*

Parsons is easily Chong’s most compelling character, but it isn’t long before he’s dragged off his high horse. Siddhu ends up breaking news of a sex scandal — the mayor mistakenly fucked his own long-lost daughter — and the beleaguered politician goes into hiding.

It’s hard not to see the parallels here with Chong’s former colleague Steven Galloway, whose own scandal has become a multi-year fiasco pitting different factions of the literary community against each other. However, it’s from this unlikely avenue that he comes up with the narrative’s most hopeful storyline, as Parsons discovers a new humility and joins forces with the front-line workers.

“This infection exposed everything that we had wanted to sweep aside. It’s allowed us to see others — not just the ones who looked like us — it allowed us to see them as equals. The disease levelled us,” he says.

Putting aside his political pomposity, Parsons ends up volunteering for The Sanitation League — a service started by Rieux that helps afflicted people outside the hospital system. In the most moving scene of the novel he sits by the bedside of a young girl about to die, witnessing her final moments alongside her parents. It’s cathartic for him, as well as the reader, because it puts a human face on what is primarily an abstract menace.

“Rieux did not need to tell him that this child was not responsible for her own death,” Chong writes.

Here’s where some would draw a distinction between those suffering from Chong’s plague and the people overdosing on fentanyl — they feel one is responsible for their fate, while the other isn’t. But this moralistic worldview allows onlookers to dodge feelings of complicity while ignoring a simple fact: it’s the world itself, and the treatment people receive from their societies, that maneuver them into places of vulnerability. This idea is explored in the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by journalist Johann Hari, who has worked to humanize drug addicts and call for the legalization of all drugs.

“Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It’s actually going to deepen it,” he writes.

“So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”

*

The most promising solution to the opioid crisis was pioneered in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver with the creation of the country’s first safe injection site — a move vehemently opposed by Stephen Harper at the time. Recently, Ontario premier Doug Ford made headlines for saying he was “dead against” them, despite the fact that they’ve been proven to be enormously effective at saving lives and helping addicts into treatment.

“Public opinion has slowly begun to turn against prohibition, and policy-makers are finally beginning to look at addiction as a health issue as opposed to one for the criminal justice system,” journalist Travis Lupick writes in his new book Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction.

For anyone who has loved someone with an addiction — as I have — safe injection sites provide an opportunity for caregivers to demonstrate to the vulnerable that they’re loved, that there are people out there willing to help. Out of crisis comes compassion. And as with The Plague’s Sanitation League, it takes people putting aside their personal comfort (and sometimes safety) to reach out to those on the brink. It’s Mayor Parsons’ willingness to personally participate that wins him Rieux’s approval.

“This is not about your personal business,” he says, shaking his hand. “It’s because I think your idea of suffering is grounded in reality.”

As the book draws to a close, Siddhu is amazed by how the Vancouver community has pulled together, telling Tso “I felt like I was in a community for the first time.”

She agrees.

“I’ve seen people risk their lives for strangers, people who would otherwise be unheroic."

*

Despite everything, inequality and injustice persist right to the end of Chong’s novel — just like in the real world. As the death toll rises, some residents barricade themselves in their homes to focus on renovations while others start new professions: “People were working as amateur massage therapists and running restaurants from their dining rooms.” Others come up with radically immoral ways of coping: “They raised online donation campaigns for friends immobilized by grief and then pocketed the proceeds.”

“I go out in the evenings more than I have in the past ten years,” Siddhu’s colleague tells him. “The city has never been livelier since the funerals started.”

Chong’s novel is bleak, it’s true, and the language purposefully keeps readers at arms’ length — at one point, there’s even a trigger warning. (“We are aware that the suffering of children can be acutely difficult and may prompt, among readers of this history, their own troubling memories.”) But in each of his main characters he’s found something of the human spirit to celebrate. At one point Siddhu is faced with his own powerlessness when a former journalism subject confronts him about how little has changed since he reported on the conditions she’s living in.

“You told me my words would make a difference, and I said you were full of shit,” she says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”

The narrative isn’t without hope, though, and Rieux in particular stands out as an example of selfless giving. While speaking with Tso about his views on medicine, he gives a short speech on how he keeps going.

It’s the sort of thing that would work well as a personal mantra.

“I don’t have a view of life in an abstract sense,” he says. “I don’t care when it begins or how precious it is compared to a gorilla’s. I just want to help people.”

[larrywt]

It’s all been a bit quiet on here recently so I thought I’d update you all as to what I’ve been doing. My accidental phallic sculpture caught me quite by surprise and really influenced the next stage of this line of enquiry.

Whilst trying to find where my work fits in the world of sculpture I found similar work of abstracted bodies by Robert Gober. Gober’s work about sexuality and loss of artists and friends around him due to AIDS in what was, perhaps, the darkest point of the wide-spread epidemic in the 1980’s. The Guardian’s Jason Farago describes the work of Gober as “a collection of memento mori, of burning relics from an era when boys like me didn’t know if they’d live another year”(Farago, 2016), encouraging us to reflect on our own personal loss, our actions and how we can better ourselves. This reflection manifests itself through disembodiment, intricately replicated legs (Untitled Leg, 1989-1990) are no longer attached to a body, they float on alone as if the body they were once attached to has faded from memory. Reproductions of male lower torsos and unlit candles (Untitled 1991) offer the viewer a “sobering re-acquaintance with recent history and unfathomable loss…. and in the silence and vulnerability of so much that Mr. Gober has done, dwells the theme of redemptive love and the all too real effect of its absence, which is poisonous hate”(Farago, 2016), the abstracted body in Gober’s work seems to haunt the gallery space.

This had me thinking, perhaps I should make work along similar lines but update it to provide commentary on the modern age of social media and the forever quickening world in which everything is instantaneous has served to desensitise people from social taboos, resulting in an unrelenting barrage of messages with unsolicited requests to “send nudes” or to accept an invitation into a faceless stranger’s bed as the norm. I want my work to highlight the immense pressure put upon social media users to drop their morals, standards and their pants with little regard for their own sexual health.

As you can see, I have started to create malformed body abstracted bodies to bring about a sense of disgust and body horror. You’ll see as time has gone on I have included things in my work such as real hair and a glossy finish to really hit home and deliver a wake up call to social media-addicted society.

  This piece (above) was created using a pizza tray!

      Above: I did try to take this further with a clockwork mechanism to create spinning hair but unfortunately the hair kept getting caught in the mechanism and clogging.

Although I was determined that I wanted my work to be grotesque I also wanted it to reflect the commodity status that sex has degraded to, to make it so sickly-sweet, as if I were offering a high-end, high quality product. I wanted to have high-sheen finishes on my sculptural pieces, similar to that seen in the work of Jeff Koons, in which the self-merchandising and kitsch nature of the work is reflective of our consumerist culture.

The images below document the installation period of my latest co-curated show, ‘Constellations’.

The installation piece depicts two phone screens, both using an app like Grindr or Tinder. They are separated by a love heart, a message of irony considering the lewd circumstances and the direction of their conversation. The heart is shiny but almost in a thick and gelatinous way, there are craters on its surface too. The conversation continues onto the floor, one asks the other if he can see his “love stick” and so they exchange pictures, in doing so they expose their malformed manhood.

I have created this piece so that if you read the piece collectively it plays out much like a conversation on one of these apps but if you read each screen on its own it reflects the lonely nature of the realities that these lewd message senders face.

References

Farago, J. (2016) Robert Gober opens at MoMA: Sober, haunting and genuinely affecting. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/03/robert-gober-moma-retrospective-review-sculpture-art (Accessed: 14 January 2017).

In the Studio – January Update It's all been a bit quiet on here recently so I thought I'd update you all as to what I've been doing.