#Because being incorrect about ANYTHING is a Moral Failing on my part and I am a GOD

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

When you’re naturally arrogant and self-righteous but no one knows because you’re too afraid of disapproval to express your opinions

[bytheangell]

If You Don't Belong, Don't Be Long

( @shadowhunterbingo​ square: Body Swap) (Read on AO3)

Magnus is immediately aware that something is wrong. The last thing he remembers is the potion he was making starting to smoke before exploding in his face, and then nothing.

Nothing until now, when he begins to stir back to consciousness with the immediate feeling that something is wrong. Something is horribly wrong. It takes him a moment to pinpoint exactly what that something is: he isn’t breathing. The immediate panic sets in that he’s dead, which isn’t entirely incorrect. It’s just that he also isn’t himself, either.

“Simon? Simon, are you alright?”

The concerned voice hovering over him is Isabelle’s. Magnus almost doesn’t allow himself to open his eyes because he isn’t sure he wants to confirm his suspicions, but in the end, he can’t put it off any longer. Allowing his eyelids to flutter open he sees a very worried Isabelle Lightwood leaning over him - but it isn’t him she’s leaning over. It’s Simon’s body.

He’s in Simon’s body.

“I’m not Simon,” Magnus says. “And I’m most certainly not alright.”

A moment later Izzy’s phone begins to ring. “With any luck, that will be your brother,” Magnus says, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. “If my hunch is right, he’s the one you’ll want to ask about Simon.”

---

“...Magnus?”

The world comes to around him, but instead of being in the Institute where he’d been having lunch with Isabelle, Simon blinks his eyes open to see a room he doesn’t immediately recognize.

“Magnus? Say something. What happened? Should I call Cat?”

Simon immediately recognizes the voice even before Alec’s face focuses into view after a few blinks. It’s then that the area behind him - Magnus’ apothecary in his Loft - registers.

“Wha-” Simon starts to say, then notices the sound of his voice - which is not his voice. And the hand he lifts from the floor to prop himself up isn’t his hand, either. “What the fuck!?”

Simon sits up abruptly enough in his panic that he collides his forehead directly into Alec’s, who starts to lean down at the same time to get a closer look.

“Shit, sorry, Alec,” Simon apologizes instinctively, rubbing at the dull ache in his forehead. He’s surprised by the immediate blue wisps of magic that come into view, moving in a wave over his face. The ache from the impact fades… and then the rest of his face turns entirely numb. “Oh no, I can’t feel my face.”

“Okay, now I’m really worried. Magnus, what’s-”

“Simon. I’m Simon. Alec, what the hell is going on? Why am I in Magnus’ body? What weird Freaky Friday fortune cookie scenario is happening to me right now?”

Alec, to his credit, remains much calmer about this than he probably should, if only to counter Simon’s obvious panicked spiral. “Simon?”

Simon nods.

“Okay…” Alec starts slowly, though Simon can’t imagine any part of this is actually ‘okay’. “Where were you when you… when this happened?”

Simon pauses for a moment. “The last thing I remember was being with Izzy, at the Institute.”

Alec has his phone out before Simon can finish the sentence.

“Iz? Are you with… well, Simon’s body, but it isn’t-” Alec starts, and Simon fidgets with the rings on his (Magnus’) hands when Alec falls abruptly silent, then nods to himself. “Yes. Alright, so that’s… that’s good, right? That they’re both…” Alec pauses again, this time turning to face Simon. “Are you alright?”

Simon holds out his hands, turning them over in front of him. “I mean… I’m as alright as being trapped in Magnus’ body can be, I guess? I could definitely be worse. I mean, not that this is great, but I guess if I have to end up in someone else’s body it’s a good body to-”

Alec cuts him off.

“He’s fine. Still very much... Simon,” Alec says into the phone.

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon says indignantly, but Alec is already ignoring him in favor of the phone again.

“Alright, see you in a few,” Alec says before pocketing his phone. “They’ll be here as soon as they can. I don’t suppose you can open a portal, can you?”

Simon shakes his head. “I wouldn’t risk it. I just made my entire face numb when I accidentally tried to heal the bump on my forehead.”

Alec sighs. “Right. How about you don’t do any magic at all until Magnus gets here? I’d like my husband’s physical body intact, please.”

“I’m not so sure I have any actual control over it,” Simon admits, and he can’t keep the slight tremor of nervousness out of his tone at the sight of light blue sparks dancing across his fingertips. “But I’ll try. Promise.”

Simon does try. He also fails, several times, resulting in scorch marks on one of Magnus’ Persian rugs, a broken coffee mug, and a vase that Simon only partially broke, but then tried to use magic to fix and completely obliterated in the process.

“That’s it,” Alec finally mutters. “You’re sitting in the corner and not moving or touching anything until Magnus gets here.”

Simon wonders if Alec is joking or being serious until a moment later when he grabs a chair from the dining room and drags it over to the corner of the loft. Oh. Not joking, then.

Simon almost argues, except after all the trouble he’s caused trying to exist with magic at his fingertips maybe it is for the best if he just does as little existing as possible for now. So Simon sits in the corner, humming to himself until a knock at the front door grabs his attention. He spins around to see Izzy and Magnus - but Magnus in his body, which is way weirder than he anticipated - walk through the door.

“Why is Simon in the corn--” Simon hears his voice start to ask, then fall silent at the shattered remains of the vase and the scorch mark not far from it. “Nevermind.”

Simon winces. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that. But man, am I glad to see you.”

“Don’t be too glad,” Magnus says. “Because I don’t have the slightest idea how to fix this.”

---

Several fire messages and phone calls later, Magnus is only slightly closer to figuring out what went wrong and how to even begin working a counter-spell to reverse the effects.

“Simon’s hair was the only vampire hair sample I had on me, so that must’ve been the connection that tethered us together for the switch,” Magnus says, which is more guesswork than hard fact but it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s a starting point if nothing else.

It doesn’t help that Magnus has to stop and drink blood, which he immediately hates the idea of, but the longer he puts it off the less focused he gets. It brings back too many unwelcome memories of his time with Camille and all that terrible business with de Quincy. He thought he knew the feeling, thought he understood, but nothing could prepare him for what that instinctive hunger truly feels like.

There are also moments when he becomes suddenly aware that his heart isn’t beating, and needs to take some time to bring himself down from that immediate panic of something being wrong. Each time Alec seems to sense it and stands a little closer, not too close as to crowd, but enough that when Magnus reaches out to feel the warmth of Alec’s hand or the pulse at his boyfriend’s wrist he’s always right there, waiting.

“I hate this,” Magnus mutters to Alec while they’re alone, with Isabelle and Simon out on a food run. He takes the time to lean against Alec’s side, hoping his need to be held just then isn’t too weird for Alec.

“I know you do,” Alec agrees, and to his credit doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around Magnus, allowing Magnus to sink into the embrace. “But you’ll figure it out. You’ll fix it. I believe in you.”

That makes one of us, Magnus thinks bitterly, looking across the pages and pages of handwritten notes.

The breakthrough comes when a thorough test of each individual ingredient catches one that isn’t pure, something Magnus picked up weeks ago at a Shadow Market in Italy. From there it’s easy enough for him and Tessa to reverse-engineer a counterspell and potion. Everything seems to be falling into place perfectly until they get to the end and realize one big problem.

It’s a simple enough spell for someone of Magnus’ skill level. And if Magnus was the one performing it they could be back in their bodies by nightfall. Unfortunately...

---

“What do you mean I have to do it?” Simon asks, already shaking his head back and forth. “No. There’s no way! Did you see what I did earlier? Alec, tell them how bad I am at magic!”

Alec looks concerned enough to back up Simon’s claims without speaking at all. “It… wasn’t great,” Alec admits. “You’re sure there’s no other way?”

“No,” Magnus insists. “It has to be Simon. More specifically, it has to be my magic, the same magic that initiated the swap.” Magnus looks over at him with what Simon is sure is meant to be a reassuring smile, but unfortunately, Simon knows all too well what his own face looks like when he’s trying to fake reassurances. It’s absolutely the face staring up at him now.

“Can’t you like, mind-control me and do it, I dunno, through me or something?” Simon suggests hopefully. “You could Encanto me!”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.”

“We’re doomed,” Simon sighs, slumping Magnus’ body dramatically down into the chair. “We’re going to be stuck like this forever.”

“Please don’t say that,” Alec says. “No offense, but I don’t particularly want to kiss… your body, for lack of better phrasing,” Alec says, motioning to Magnus in Simon’s body.

Izzy glances over at Simon in Magnus’ body with a hint of a smirk. “I dunno, I wouldn’t be opposed to-”

“Izzy!” Simon immediately objects. “Gross! C’mon, Iz” Alec cuts her off at the same time.

“I’m kidding! Just trying to lighten the mood,” she says. “Listen, Simon. You can do this. I know you can. Magnus is going to walk you through it. We’re all going to be here for moral support… and as backup just in case. Not that you’ll need it, because it’s going to be totally fine.”

Izzy crosses over to him and takes his hands in her own, giving them a comforting squeeze. It feels strange to hold her hands like this, something that should be reassuring and familiar feeling too jarringly foreign while he’s in Magnus’ body. He can only imagine how weird it must be for Magnus, inside the body of a teenager who doesn’t have a beating heart.

They need to fix this. Obviously. And if he has to be the one to do it, then… well, then he’s just going to have to figure out a way. He’s relied on others to fix his problems more than once, so it’s only fair he takes a turn fixing one this time around. Even if it is a really, really big one. With potentially terrible consequences for messing up.

“Yeah. I’m sure it’ll be… totally fine,” Simon says, echoing Izzy, though sounding about as confident as a man about to jump out of a plane with no parachute.

Magic, much like being a vampire at the start, does not come instinctively to Simon. As eager as they are to get back into their actual bodies, they both agree to take as long as they need to until they’re confident Simon can complete the spell without messing it up.

It takes five days. Simon can’t help but feel the impatience and frustration growing from the others (namely Alec) with every day that passes, but Magnus reassures Simon that it’s fine. Better to get it right than end up doing even more damage, potentially something irreversible this time.

So it’s nearly a week later when Magnus makes the potion, with the help of Simon using his magic as needed before it’s time for them to drink it and for Simon to complete the spell. Simon draws the sigil on the floor in black ash flawlessly - after how often he practiced it he could probably draw it in his sleep, but it’s still a pleasant surprise to not need a single re-do.

When it comes time to summon the magic for the spell itself, he can only hope that five days was enough practice on how to call what he needs and not anything more, or anything malicious. Simon does his best to ignore the tense forms of Alec and Isabelle waiting off to the side of the room, just in case-

No. No just in case. They aren’t going to need them to get help because he can do this. He has to be able to do this.

Simon locks eyes with Magnus, who nods once - then Simon calls forth the magic and speaks the incantation.

Slowly, the corners of the sigil begin to glow, the dim light shifting toward the center. A sudden burst of blinding light rises up around them, reminding Simon of the flash grenades he’s seen in countless movies and video games. It’s the last thought he has before everything goes black.

---

Magnus can feel the familiar weight of his own body before he even opens his eyes. He’s overly aware of his fingers and toes on the ends of arms that are the right length once more, of the comfortingly soft silk against his torso from his shirt, and the slight chill of the cool air along the shaved sides of his head as he blinks his eyes open and sits up from the floor.

“Magnus? Are you, you?” Alec asks. He and Isabelle both stand at the edge of the circle, obviously unsure as to whether crossing it would ruin anything.

“I’m me, Alexander,” Magnus confirms, holding his hand up to bring a small ball of magic into his palm before allowing it to fade away again. He’s exhausted but manages a small smile just the same. “You can step into the circle, it’s over now.”

The Lightwoods don’t need to be told twice, and a moment later Alec is helping Magnus up while Izzy kneels beside Simon, brushing a strand of hair out of his face as he beings to stir.

“I never thought I’d see the day that not feeling my heartbeat would be reassuring,” Simon mutters, still sprawled on the ground but with open eyes. Magnus watches Izzy laugh before kissing Simon and looks away just in time for Alec to bring a hand to the side of his face before kissing him as well.

“I never want to go that many days without kissing you ever again,” Alec whispers the words against Magnus’ lips, barely pulling back enough to speak them.

“Next time I end up in another body I’ll try not to make it your sister’s boyfriend so we can still make out in the interim,” Magnus whispers back, earning him a light hit on the side of the arm from Alec who pulls away fully, laughing.

After days of nothing but strain and worry, it’s nice to hear such easy laughter coming from any of them again, but especially from Alec. It’s just one of many sounds he can’t wait to hear from Alec again - hopefully sooner rather than later.

Magnus hadn't meant for his mind to turn there, but once it does it's all he can think about. Simon and Isabelle must catch the look Magnus and Alec share because a moment later they’re asking for a portal back to the Institute, which Magnus opens with his usual flourish and ease.

It’s certainly good to be back.

[thechekhov]

Do you ever worry that someday you'll unknowingly post something that's unintentionally offensive and you didn't know it was offensive, so you apologize and take it down, but people won't take your apology and cancel you anyway even-though you repented. I worry about that, any advice? We all make mistakes, but so many people now a days don't accept apologies... : (

Hmmm... Do I worry about making an ‘offensive’ post? I suppose I do, sure, as much as anyone. I am aware that I’m not perfect, I have made mistakes in the past and I will make mistakes in the future. 

I try to be critical and judge the info I’m giving out and reblogging carefully, but we’re all human, and we’re all prone to mistakes. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about being wrong about something as long as you’re willing to learn. I really love learning - I’m a teacher. I think learning and making mistakes is one of the most important things there are. 

None of us popped out of the womb knowing everything, nor did we always know the correct terms for everything, or what was hurtful and what wasn’t. Many of us even grew up in an environment that actively taught us incorrect or skewed worldviews. I think the process of unlearning that should be praised, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt - naivety in itself is not malicious. 

As for apologies and worrying that they won’t be enough...

Well, that’s a bit more tricky. It depends on what I’m prioritizing, right?

1) What am I more scared of - doing harm or being rejected?

Am I more scared of hurting another person with my words, possibly perpetuating something bad?

Or am I more scared that some of my followers will leave/hate me?

[Image Description: A flowchart depicting two ways a situation can go. In the first, topmost panel, a figure is showing a sign to a group of three other figures. The sign reads x > y. The group appears to be contemplating this. 

In the first way a scenario can go, a panel below depicts the figures getting mad at the sign-holder. They are ranting at them angrily and the sign-holder appears upset and anxious.

In the second way a scenario can go, another panel depicts the group having gone a little ways away from the sign-holder. They are now pursuing a new figure with the letter Y on their chest. The group begins to rant at the Y figure instead, following the beliefs the sign-holder had inadvertently taught them.]

We’re social creatures, and rejection for a mistake, for failing to read the room, for breaking some moral code, is pretty scary for us. We don’t like it when we don’t get along with people in our groups. We want to make up. We want to live in harmony.

Is that scary to think that I’ll post something on accident and cause negative feelings? Make people hate me? Well, I definitely don’t want it to happen. 

What I mean when I say ‘I don’t want it to happen’ is not ‘I don’t want people to hate me’. I mean ‘I don’t want to hurt people.’ I worry I’ll post something and end up causing undue harm with my words. 

To be honest, I can handle backlash - I am a whole ass adult human, I have a job, I have a life outside of the blog and, given enough time away from the keyboard I know I’ll barely be affected by a few mean messages sent my way. 

2) Action and Reaction

Do I think sending people death threats online as a way to ‘punish’ them back into ‘proper’ behavior is acceptable? No, absolutely not. 

But barring those extreme cases, if I post something harmful, something that perpetuates racism, or prejudice, or incorrect information and I get people commenting at me at an angry manner - I’m not the only person hurting in this situation. I may feel negatively about backlash but also, I may have legitimately done harm to others as well. I need to take both things into account.

Rejection is a reaction, not something people decide to do out of the blue. If you post something bad, people will call you out. And sometimes you’ll apologize and they’ll decide that you may be trusted... and sometimes they won’t. 

And both of those things are alright. People make up or people unfollow and move on. People decide on their own how to tailor their online experience. People decide on their own whether to forgive someone or whether they’re not gonna risk that again and just put some distance there. 

3) It’s not a personal. 

It’s not personal, no matter how much it feels like it should be, because... they don’t know you personally. It’s difficult to know whether an apology is sincere online. Most people you interact with don’t know what type of person you are, and how well you learn from your mistakes. And to you, yes, it may seem like unfair judgement, but most people are just doing their best to avoid being hurt. 

If you’re scared of being rejected for making a mistake - that’s normal and natural. You’re allowed to be scared. Making a statement, any sort of statement, always carries with it a risk of retaliation. 

But the important thing is to focus not on the reaction of the audience, but on the reaction of the people affected by your words.

You mentioned the fear of your apology being accepted. But I would have to disagree a little bit here. 

The function and goal of an apology is not to be accepted.

The function of an apology is to communicate that you understood in what way you harmed someone. 

If you are prioritizing the outcome of the apology more than the content of the apology itself... I’m afraid that’s going to skew your results.

Whether or not someone accepts your apology is none of your concern, trust me. It doesn’t really matter whether or not they do - because regardless of that fact, it won’t change anything, including whatever it is you did to make people angry/upset. 

The goal should probably be to try to understand better, learn more. Keep in mind: it doesn’t mean just blindly changing every viewpoint people get angry at you for - it means evaluating critically whether that criticism is justified, and, if it is, adjusting your behavior to do less harm.  

Sorry, went off on a little tangent there.

TL;DR: Learning is good. Making mistakes is a part of learning. 

But in the process of learning and making those mistakes, you may hurt other people, and they are also allowed to be angry at you for hurting them. Both of these things can and should coexist as true statements.

[linkspooky]

Scummy Heroes are to Blame

My Hero Academia has always been about this idea. In a literal society of heroes, there are people who do not get saed. Even though the literal job of heroes is to save people, heroes have become not much more than a militant branch of the police force in hero society under the thumb of the hero commission. 

This conflict comes to a head in Dabi, Twice, and Hawks who are all three of them people who weren’t saved by heroes. 

1. A Society Where Heroes Don’t Save People

Most of the heroic characters on their side of the story have a very vague idea of what a hero is, almost like that’s thematic or something. There seems to be two types, heroes who save people, and heroes who defeat villains, with the latter being the more popular one. However, there have been a couple of moments that idealize what a hero should be. 

Both Mirio and Deku say that a hero should always act to save a crying little girl in front of them. 

Twice says that someone who helps their friends can’t possibly be a bad guy. These are simple heroic ideals that we see Hawks a heroic character completely fail to live up to in the coming chapters. 

Twice is hardly acting like a villain in this scenario. He’s acting nothing like the threat to hero society that Hawks imagined him to be with his great ability to create almost an entire army of duplicates with his quirk. He is crying, and begging for help, like a person would. 

Hawks is faced with a person crying because someone they trusted, and wanted to be friends with and treated like a person betrayed them, and used them as a tool to complete their bojective all along. Hawks is faced with not a villain, but a victim. 

Hawks is, slaughtering copies of the true companions that Twice does everything for. Attacking a person who is helpless and crying out in frustration. Coldly deciding to kill someone who says out loud that the only reason they want to fight is for the happiness of their friends. 

In a traidtional sense Twice is the one fighting with Nakama power, and Hawks is the character who the power of Nakama has failed to reach and is instead  cutting those same friends down. Despite the fact that Twice is a terrorist and a murderer, and Hawks is a hero who has wholly dedicated his life to saving others the framing of the situation has been entirely flipped. It’s Hawks who looks like the villain, and Twice who looks like the hero struggling to fight for his friends. 

This is where the nuance of the series kicks in. Hero and villains are not strictly defined roles, they’re only called that because hero society dictates they are. 

One of the first things that Shigaraki says in the series is that heroes using violent suppression in order to defeat villains is just something that creates more violence in the end. Something which All Might pointedly refuses to listen to, accusing Shigaraki of just being a bad person who enjoys violence. Ironically this is something Shigaraki is utterly dehumanized by and accused of over, and over, and over again.

However as we learn more of Shigaraki’s story we learn that Shigaraki was a kid with heroic ambitions, who was failed by society at every level. The reason he’s violent is because he was exposed to violence again and again as a kid, his violent impulses were literally beaten into them. 

The black and white morality of hero society blames victims for falling, and then insists the reason that they fell in the first place was because they were bad people. Hero society again and again intentionally lets people fall and then villainizes them rather than sympathizing with them as victims. 

If you fall its entirely on your own, and also a sign of your character. You have to get back on your feet on your own merits. If you fail to make it back into society than it’s not the fault of society, you’re just a bad person for becoming a victim in the first place. 

Mirio and Deku both believe that you should always help a crying girl in pain like Eri, but at the same time if they had not saved her at that exact moment, if they had let her grow up like Shimura Tenko grew up, to develop violent tendencies, to act like anything other than the perfect crying victim then she would have been left behind the same way Shimura was, the same way Twice is at this exact moment. 

In a society overflowing with heroes, there are people who are ignored and do not get saved. Shimura Tenko as a five year old, wonder if it’s his fault for killing his family that no one came to save him. Already by that time he’s internalized the idea that a bad child like him doesn’t deserve to get saved. 

Twice even says the same as well. In hero society only the good and the virtuous get saved. People like twice who are broken are left behind and forgotten, because it’s more convenient for society to function that way. 

I relate this idea to Albert Camus, the fall. A book that explores the idea of who is guilty for society, and comes to the conclusion that everyone is guilty. 

The Fall operates on the premise that all are guilty. This is indeed a classic argument for Camus, but the narrator of this novel goes so far as to suggest that all men are murderers, even if only by accident or through negligence (like not saving others from death). Since the novel was written in the aftermath of WWII, this is a particularly poignant argument. This sort of "universal guilt" makes any attempt at judgment completely hypocritical. A guilty man condemning another man of guilt is absurd by nature.

Everyone who participates in society creates it actively. I’ll explore this idea with Hawks more in a minute, but related to who is responsible for hero society it’s important to look at the conflict of heroes and villains. The heroes themselves blame the villains for all the ills of hero society. However, it’s important to remember who holds all the power. Sure, there are outliers like Re-Destro who are corporate millionaires with a vast infleunce, but for the most part all of the ruling power in society belongs to the heroes. While the villains are for the most part, homeless people, outlaws, with little resources or influence of society as a whole. Villains are outcasted and blamed for society, despite being you know... outcasts, people outside of society.

Which is why Villains themselves will always be nothing more than a symptom. Even the League of Villains themselves is just a rebellion. They’re not rebelling for the hell of it, they were created in direct response to problems already presence in society, and they demand that society address those problems. The ones who hold the real power over a corrupt system are heroes, villains are always going to be reactionary to that corrupt system. Sure, the answer might not be ‘destroy the entirety of society to make it better’, but the League are also the only people trying to do anything. Only the outsiders and the outcasts seem to be aware that something is wrong in the first place, because they’re the most directly affected by it. 

So, like Camus we are asked to consider who is really responsible for the fall of society? 

2. Twice and Hawks, to be an individual or member of society.

Which is why the way Hawks acts the past two chapters is so unheroic, even in accordance of the very loose ideas of what the story set up as what a hero is. Hawks isn’t trying to save Twice. He’s trying to save himself, his own cosncience, because he thinks it’s wrong to kill a “good person” like Twice. He’s acting to save Twice with no regards of what Twice’s wants and needs are. 

Rather than try to understand and sympathize with Twice, Hawks approaches him using his entire identity as a hero as a wall between them. He acts in the role of a hero, I am going to capture you the villain and put you in jail. Hawks makes this impersonal as possible and sinks into the role of being a hero, while Twice is still acting as Twice the person. 

However, Hawks only cares about saving Twice. Because Twice is the one he dubs as a good person and therefore worthy of being saved. He doesn’t care enough to empathize with the rest of the league, even though Twice cares more about his friends than his life. 

Which is what Twice explicitly calls out. That Hawks is not acting like a hero in this situation. He’s not acting selflessly. He’s not trying to save anyone. He’s only acting in ways that satisfy himself. Hawks is acting to reinforce his incorrect world view, that he has to be the one who makes sacrifices for the sake of a faceless majority, even if that person they’re sacrificing is crying and begging in front of them. 

Twice brings up the idea that Toga despite being a killer out for blood is also a person who was incredibly kind to him in a moment of weakness. Which is something we the reader know, that all of the members of the league of villains, violent as they are are still people, who are capable of both good an bad. Most of the league members didn’t even fall becausethey were bad, but because of abusive circumstances, parental abuse for Toga, Shigaraki,  failure of the social safety net in Twice’s case, victim of societal prejudgice in Spinner’s case. 

What Twice suggests is that all of these people that hero society leaves behind are still capable of good, capable of selflessness. Shigaraki is again and again called one of the most violent characters in the series who only cares about destroying for its own sake, and yet he’s the one who gave Twice a home. 

The league faces this accusation constant times. That the reason they do crime is because they’re bad people, that they don’t think about how other people feel at all, that’s the only explanation for why they would strike out against society. 

And time and time again we’re shown the opposite is the case. Dabi thinks about the heroes he’s killed so much he feels himself slowly going insane. Shigaraki feels such intense remorse for killing his family in what was a total accident, that not only does he take all the blame on himself for years, but he also purposefully triggers himself with their dead hands so he’ll never escape from the guilt of killing them. These are all people fully aware of the bad they are committing underneath their actions, but also who believe otherwise that they have no choice but to do these bad things. 

The league of villains has to rebel, because the response of hero society to all of their damage has always been the same thing. Exactly what Hawks does this chapter. 

Shut up and take it. Hawks is telling Twice to lie down and stop fighting against him because 1) he doesn’t want to kill Twice and it would be easier on his conscience, and 2) this is what Hawks has always done. 

Hawks always chooses to sacrifice himself. He always chooses the good of society over what he personally wants. He’ll always choose the worst option for himself if it means he can do better for others. Hawks in the face of Twice’s individualist rebellion can’t really handle it, because Hawks has never fought back against his own shackles of society. 

His plan has always been if he does everything the hero commission tells him to do then... that will somehow help him achieve his society where heroes have more freedom and agency in their lives. I’ve been over Hawks’ backstory a few times, but it makes sense for Hawks to be caught in this negative feedback loop. He’s been conditioned to fight all alone and achieve everything on his own by sacrificing himself his entire life, he’s basically had the ideals of a self sacrificing hero forced onto him. His personality has been intentionally molded to heroics, the same way that Shigaraki was molded to become a villain.

Which is why when Hawks gets someone who genuinely sympathizes with him and treats him like a person, and suggests to hawks something that he has never heard in his entire life, that he can rely on other people, that he can trust other people, that he can let other people help him Hawks genuinely does not get it. 

He chooses to fall back on what his abusers have taught him, rather than to trust Twice’s genuine good will. Which is once again common abuse victim behavior, a lot of abuse victims regress and fall into bad patterns because their abuse is what they know, whereas healthy relationships and boundaries are unknown to them. 

Twice even says so, that Hawks actions are pitaible here. How sad is it that hero or villain, nobody in the world trusts Hawks? He doesn’t have a friend on either side now, and he’s trying to kill the one person who sympathized with him genuinely as a person because Hawks doesn’t know what to do with that sympathy, or escape the cage he’s been trapped in his entire life. 

The difference between Hawks and Twice is that while they have both been wronged by society, Twice fights back with his legitimate grievance against society, whereas Hawks will never fight back. He chooses to let himself suffer if that means that the faceless majority will be spared his suffering. It seems like Hawks is making the sefless choice here, but in choosing not to fight back he’s also repeating the evils of hero society. 

You can see it in his monologue to Twice. The one hero that Hawks idealizes the most, is one of the most abusive members of hero society. An abuser who did to his own children what he hero commission did to Hawks. Hawks holds up to an ideal the most toxic element of hero society, the idea that heroics is just numbers. Hawks runs his hero agency the exact same way Endeavor does, efficiency, above all else, it’s just Hawks cares more about saving people and Endeavor cares more about catching villains and resolving cases. His ideal hero is somebody impersonal like Endeavor, who puts efficiency and speed above all else. Hawks’ goal is to be the most effecitve tool possible.

In Hawks’ choice to side with hero society however, we see him passively repeating the abuse that was done to him. 

Hawks encourages Endeavor of all people to train his interns hard. Because the hero commission is planning to use a bunch of fifteen year olds as their backup in case their main plan fails. Which means Hawks is actively encouraging what was done to him, (being robbed of his childhood and raised as a child soldier solely for the purpose of being a hero) to be done to the UA students as well. He doesn’t really interact well with Bakugo, someone who is also a child prodigy who has been affected all of their lives due to the fact that he had a quirk suited for being a hero. 

By choosing to passively do what he’s told, Hawks ends up perpetuating Hero Society’s ills. Hawks’ offer to Twice isn’t really one that will genuinely save him (ie guaranteeing the safety of him and all of his friends if they stop violently resisting) but rather he offers Twice the chance to conform so he can fit in with society’s ideals. Just like Hawks always takes the choice to conform himself rather than try to be an individual in any way. 

Which is why we finally get to Twice’s accusation. That Hawks isn’t acting heroic. He’s not trying to save the person in front of him that’s crying and begging for help. 

Why does Dabi get the jump on Hawks? It’s because Hawks’ wings aren’t meant to be used as weapons like this. he always trained himself so that his feathers could hear even the faintest cries for help. Suddenly Twice is literally screaming for help in front of him, and Hawks ignores him. He’s no longer acting like a hero, and so therefore his wings that can hear anything are now deaf, just like Hawks is trying to be by repressing everything else but his mission. 

3. Dabi and Hawks 

Once again there’s a point of foiling here. Twice and Hawks are both loners to their respective organizations. Dabi never tells other people what his intentions are and he acts with a begrudging sense of teamwork at best. 

As much as Dabi complains that he doesn’t care about Shigaraki’s backstory, that he doesn’t want to play friends with the rest of the league, he still in the end gives his absolute all in the fight against Deka City, and fights to the point where he’s literally burning himself alive on the inside because the elague asked him to. 

Hawks and Dabi are by nature very two faced people. They are both made up of two individuals, the person they present to the world and everyone around them, and then their real self which they choose to keep hidden. 

They are also total opposites in how they present themselves. Dabi acts like he’s callous and cold on the surface. He pretends to be someone who enjoys killing, when Snatch accuses him of being behind a string of murders he basically laughs it off. 

However, we’re shown in private that he’s the opposite of his public persona. Rather than someone who can laugh off what he’s done, and enjoys being a villain he thinks about what he’s done so much, with so much remorse that he feels himself going crazy. This is the opposite of how Hawks shows himself. In public Hawks is a very likable, carefree guy, who is totally dedicated to saving other people. Whereas when he reveals what is his “true self” in front of Twice, he plays the role of ruthless villain the same way that Dabi does with snatch. He even goes so far as to taunt Twice for trusting him. 

The way they both present themselves is totally reversed, Hawks plays the good guy while deep down he considers himself to be the conniving bad guy. Dabi plays the bad guy while deep down he considers himself to be a very conscience heavy person who knows what he’s doing is wrong but is trying to accomplish some kind of good. 

There’s a reason that Hawks’ entire face is shown in shadow in this cene. Hawks is incredibly repressed. He represses his ruthless side, in order to play not only the hero, but the helpless tool of the hero commission. The reason he’s shown in shadow is because his repressed side is coming out. All of his cold caluclation, the fact that he doesn’t trust a single person, all of these are traits that Hawks himself is unaware of but are nonetheless part of who he is as a person. 

Dabi expresses what Hawks represses. Hawks has all the bad traits under the surface to appear good, Dabi wears all of his bad traits on the surface to appear bad. They really are inversions of one another, and they’re also both fixated around the ideal of heroes. 

There’s a lot of debate over whether Hawks or Dabi gave the narration line “It’s the fault of us scummy heroes” it actually doesn’t matter who said it, the reason it was drawn over both of them is because it applies to both of them. Hawks and Dabi are both people who were failed by, and even manipulated by scummy heroes in their life, Dabi by Endeavor, and Hawks by the Hero Commission. When Hawks even admits that heroes were not what he thought they were, and he feels trapped and used by them to Twice the image that appears in his mind is Endeavor’s back turning away from them. 

Dabi and Hawks have been wronged by heroes, and raised and molded to be heroes as child soldiers and they both keep this idealized image of a way heroes should act in their heart. However, both of them have completely opposite responses, Dabi rebels, and Hawks submits. 

They have opposite reactions to their abuse, Dabi externalizing by trying to change the world around him (persecuting scummy heroes who don’t fit his stadndards) and Hawks internalizes he tries to change the world by changing himself. Dabi punishes others for not reaching the ideal of perfect hero that he holds, whereas Hawks tries to change himself and tries to become the perfect hero that is always selfless, and always chooses to save the most people possible. 

Neither of these are healthy choices, and both of them are destructive. You can’t even argue that Hawks’ choices only harm himself anymore, because we see him literally choosing to murder a person that is crying and begging in front of him, because he’s convinced himself he doesn’t have any choices in this situation. Just because you don’t make a choice for yourself doesn’t mean you’ll never harm someone, in fact your refusal to act on your own will can lead you to do something you don’t want to do and being unable to stop yourself which is clearly the case for Twice and Hawks. 

The one difference between Dabi and Hawks however, is the people surrounding them. Dabi is antisocial, always acts like he’s not a member of the group, and yet the people around Dabi choose to trust him anyway. 

Hawks and Dabi say a lot of things about who they are, but then reveal who they are in their actions. This too, is where they are inverses of each other. Dabi constantly insults his friends, doesn’t act like he’s a part of the group, says he doesn’t trust them, but ultimately when the chips are down Dabi gives his all to fighting with the league of villains. He complains about it the whole time, but he does it. Part of the reason why Dabi ultimately sides with them is because Shigaraki does give Dabi this trust to go off and do his own thing as long as he comes back at the end of the day. 

Dabi could have easily turned out to be someone just like Hawks, not interested in the goals of the League of Villains as a whole, and instead just there to use them for his own benefit. I believe his actions in the latest chapter show that he’s not. Dabi goes out of his way to save Twice, because Twice actually is a comrade to him no matter how much Dabi pretends otherwise. 

Now we don’t know if Dabi ultimately invited Hawks into the league knowing that he would betray them, or what his plans are, but ultimately his actions are the opposite of Hawks. Hawks the hero chooses to kill Twice in this scene. Dabi, the villain chooses to save Twice. Dabi is in a sense fighting for his comrades in this scene, where Hawks is fighting against the idea of camraderie and trust. He even, literally kills the symbols of all of twice’s comrades when he pulls duplicates of them. Hawks and Dabi are very similiar people, but in different environments, Dabi exists in ane environment of trust, Hawks in one where no trust exists, and because of that Dabi is able to make better choices in the moment. 

We see Hawks’ visor shatter in this scene just like it did in the pro hero arc, and it’s important to remember what the signfiicance of that visor shattering means. His visor is basically his mask he wears at all time. The thought he expresses when his visor shatters is what is underneath the mask, that he’s not good enough. 

Hawks decision to always sacrifice comes from his own sense of inferiority. He doesn’t feel like he’s enough to save the people he wants to save. The reason he doesn’t try sincerely to save Twice is because he doesn’t think he can. His self worth is so abysmally low. The reason that Hawks doesn’t try to fight back, to try to be a person, to do what he wants which is clearly not to hurt Twice is because Hawks himself has never been in an environment that sees him as a person. 

Which is why Dabi gets the upper hand on him. Hawks can make plans, he can act as ruthlessly as possible, but you can’t suppress yourself to the extent that Hawks does. Everything that’s suppressed will eventually come out. If suppression worked, Dabi wouldn’t have half of his body burned off, Twice wouldn’t be split in two, and Himiko wouldn’t have gone crazy with blood lust. What Hawks was suppressing was how much he did not want to hurt Twice in that moment. He wasn’t being true to who he really was, and what he wanted, and as Dabi calls him out for sentiment tripped him up.

What Hawks needs to do is ironically, not learn to be a better hero, but learn to be like Dabi. If he would only allow himself to be true to himself then he would have been able to save Twice in that moment. Hawks, Twice, Dabi, all three of them are good people but the current hero society doesn’t allow them to be good. They all have to learn to fight against society to be the individuals they want to be. 

[youngbugandtonystank]

Your analysis about tony in hoco is interesting!! I saw some people said he's not a good "mentor" for Peter but I think they failed to see Tony's character in depth, so your analysis really helped a lot! If you have time, could you please do for Peter in hoco as well? Thank you ❤

Hi!

I know other people asked different things but I’m going to respond to these ones first. Thank you for asking!

Ok, first I want to talk about three things people usually get wrong about MCU Peter:

1. He’s not poor.

2. He doesn’t blindly admire Tony. 

3. He’s not dumb.

1. He’s not poor. Now, this doesn’t mean he’s rich or a billionaire but Peter is not poor. He’s average or might be above average. I think the reason people choose to believe that he’s extremely poor is because of his relationship with Tony and his classmates. Tony is a billionaire and many of his classmates are rich kids. Peter goes to a very expensive school so you are obviously going to spot kids with cars and expensive clothes, that doesn’t mean Peter is dying of hunger.  

Of course, the kid can’t afford really expensive things like cars but if his aunt is capable of taking Peter out for food instead of cooking, capable of affording a Jansport Wasabi of 46$ multiple times, sneakers of 39 to 70$, capable of affording apartments like this then the kid is doing fine. 

He has an extensive wardrobe, hell, I even spotted Flash wearing the same shirt three times on different occasions and Flash is supposed to be rich. Peter is a dumpster diver because Peter always loses, breaks or ruins things when he’s Spiderman. He mentioned in hoco that he has the habit of losing his backpack and the movie demonstrates that Peter gradually breaks his phone till it’s in pieces. His aunt is not going to pay stuff multiple times for him and it’s not because she can’t afford it, is because Peter would never ask unless it’s a necessity like a backpack. Something he can’t build, so he fixes or makes the other stuff. 

2. He doesn’t blindly admire Tony and 3. He’s not dumb. The thing about their relationship is that people love to exaggerate the ‘’bad’’ parts to fit their ‘’Tony Stark is a villain’’ agenda. Peter knows Tony is not a perfect man, he’s a smart kid, he can tell. Tony’s life is constantly on the news, that includes his dumb decisions: like giving the villain his home address or his playboy party days. Peter knows about this too. 

When Toomes explains to Peter why he’s doing what he’s doing he tells him that Peter is the lesser guy to a man like Tony (something that is more of a reflection of toomes’ character and attitude more than an actual explanation as to why continuously being aware of hurting people and dealing with weapons illegally is a choice he /Toomes/ still makes) and that they’re usually the ones that eat their table scraps. What’s Peter’s answer? ‘’Why are you telling me this?’’ /= ‘’I’m aware of this, why are you telling me this?’’ 

Truth is, Peter doesn’t share his opinion. He sees Toomes for who he is. He sees someone who continuously makes bad decisions and chooses to act in a morally incorrect way to provide to his family and Peter understands that in the end, he’s going to end up hurting Liz (This is why he dropped out of a high school experience such as homecoming with the girl he likes, because Peter understands. ’’How could you do this to her?’’). He sees someone who got comfortable with wearing a profiteering two-faced skin, something Peter could never do. He knows Toomes is only using the ‘’tony stark is evil too’’ card to try and justify his actions. He’s basically saying: ‘’The hero did it, so why can’t I?’’ The hero changed, Toomes didn’t. That’s what makes him the villain.

People now more than ever have a hard time accepting the fact that Tony is, in fact, someone who grew out of a bad place/mentality/morality because they want him to stay as the ‘’bad guy’’ in their minds. It’s easier for them to hate him with this mentality. Truth is, he’s the definition of character development. Tony learns from his mistakes and makes an effort to correct those things. He rebuilds himself. He stops. He fixes things. Because when you do something wrong, you make things right. That’s how it is. And Peter also understands this. 

You see, Peter looks a little desperate in Homecoming to become an Avenger and it’s not because he wants to impress Tony Stark. Peter himself addressed the reason for this. 

He’s bored.

This is his face when entering the school.

And this is him getting out of it.

 ‘’So, how’s school? It’s boring. Got better things to do.’’ ‘’You want to be a high school dropout? I am so far beyond high school right now.’‘ ‘‘But we have a Spanish quiz. Ned, I’m probably never gonna come back here.’‘ He’s tired of school. This is proof of how smart this kid is, he doesn’t need to look at the board or pay attention in class because he already knows all the stuff the other kids are learning. He counts the hours to be able to leave the school. The principal knows Peter is a smart kid. His classmates begged him to stay on the decathlon team and doubted they could win a competition without Peter. School is not a challenge for him anymore.  After getting the experience he got in Civil War, he firmly believes he’s wasting his time in school and could be doing bigger things and his one-way ticket to do that is getting an official membership to the Avengers team. 

Look at him here, he’s having the time of his life.

For a hyperactive

genius kid

school must be hell. 

His motivation to be an Avenger is completely different than his relationship with Tony. He wants to change the pace of what he’s so tired of experiencing. High School. Now, he does want to impress Tony but not to prove his worth as an Avenger but because he looks up to the man. With all of his flaws and mistakes. He knows Tony is not perfect, he knows about Ultron, about his playboy days, about the Accords (you can see him receiving a full lecture in school about them: ‘’The Sokovia Accords were put into place…’’), about how he gave his address to the villain and how said villain destroyed Tony’s house, etc. All of this was on TV. All of it. 

When Peter said ’’I just wanted to be like you’’ he didn’t mean ‘’I wanted to be you’’. Peter wants to do great things, world-changing things, make a difference in someone’s life, help out on a bigger scale. Something Tony does. It’s easy for a kid like Peter to like those things about Tony because he wants the same. And he wants that because it’s who he wants to be. So why wouldn’t he want the approval of someone that does those things? 

‘’So you wanna look out for the little guy-

-you wanna do your part? 

Make the world a better place, all that, right?’’

‘’Yeah, just looking out for the little guy-

-That’s what it is.’’

Aaron Davis about Peter: ‘’The other night, you told that dude, “if you shoot somebody, shoot me.” That’s pretty ballsy.’’

Peter sees a great guy in Tony. Despite everything else. Someone who knew how to put himself together after surviving the grief and pain life presented for him. Peter can see through him and can tell this man has been through hell and back and Peter admires that. He can see strength in him and he wants that as well. If Peter thought Tony was a god almighty, he wouldn’t have stayed at the ship in IW claiming he ‘’thought about Tony’’ and decided to stick to the side of the ship to help his mentor. 

He got attached to Tony really fast. He thought of him as a guidance figure because that’s how Tony presented himself to Peter, since the beginning. He told Peter when he met him that he was there for a hundred-point restoration. He asked him why was he doing the superhero thing, what is his MO and what gets him of bed every morning. It’s natural that Peter got attached that fast, because Tony not only did his homework on him, he showed him that he was there to support him and that he understood him. When was the last time Peter got that from a male figure? That’s right, his previous father-figure, Ben Parker. So receiving that from Tony made him start looking at the man that way.

When we start seeing this? In here:

He challenges Tony when he believes the man is not listening to him, not caring enough about him. Thing is, Peter, had been way too involved in his own little world that never once stopped to pay attention to details like: ’’like that lady that bought you the churro.’‘ ‘‘Happy told me you quit band six weeks ago.’‘ ‘’My dad never really gave me a lot of support…and I’m trying to break the cycle of shame.’’

And like a typical teenager, he gets defensive when Tony proves him wrong.

Here, he starts to realize Tony means more than just the Avengers membership or the recognition. He gets way too upset and sad over something like what happened. He could easily offer an apology or use his old suit instead. He gets upset because he feels like his relationship with Tony is over.

‘’I just thought that I could work really hard and he could– He would– You know. But I screwed it up.’’  /=  ‘’I just thought that I could work really hard and he could see me as a hero, he would offer me a place on the team/his life- You know. But I screwed it up.’’

Peter was aware of all of this just after the ferry incident. Just like Tony, before that confrontation, he was doing this unaware of the personal feelings he was putting into the equation. He even complained to Ned about Tony like any kid would about their parents: 

‘’I’m sick of him treating me like a kid all the time.’’

‘’Why would I tell him about the churro?’‘ ‘’Can I please talk to Mr. Stark?’‘ ‘‘I don’t really want Mr. Stark to know about it.’‘ ‘‘Mr. Stark really overdid it.’‘ ‘‘Hey, Mr. Stark, could I do anything?’‘ ’‘I gotta tell Mr. Stark.’‘ 

He wants Tony in his life. He already thinks of him like he’s his father-figure.

He gets time to reflect on everything and does the right thing as he’s always done. He understands he needs to give Tony his space and that if he wants to be there for him, he needs to be patient. And he gets that at the end:

‘’Boss wants to see you.’’ ‘‘Give me a minute with the kid.’‘ ‘‘I gotta talk to the kid.‘’ ‘‘I was wrong about you.’‘ ‘‘I think, with a little more mentoring…’‘ ‘’Happy will show you to your room…’‘ ‘’You’ll fit right in.’‘ ‘‘See you around. Okay.’‘ ‘’He actually made a mature choice.’’

He wants to be more than what he is and he wants to stay around Tony because he wants the guidance and the feeling of comfort and security he gives him but he knows he needs to stay on the ground for the little people. That’s where he started, that’s where he stays. After getting crushed by a building, I think he is still a little unprepared for the big stuff. 

And at the end, he gets confirmation Tony is going to be there, no matter what choice he makes.  

Thank you!

[dbh-rambling]

Hi everyone, let’s talk about Markus and Carl’s conversation in Night of the Soul when Markus picks angry options, because there’s things to unpack.

At this point in the game, humans are currently rounding up androids and bringing them to ‘Recall Centers’ where they’re being killed en masse. If an android gets caught and isn’t brought to a recall center, it’s because they were killed on the spot. Markus’ people are in the middle of a crisis, and as a major leader it’s up to Markus to figure out the best way to handle it. (This isn’t accounting for whatever fresh hell Markus may or may not have also just gone through in escaping a human-raided Jericho.)

He goes to Carl for advice, because fuck if this nurse-bot who’s been deviant for a week has any idea what to do. He knows that he doesn’t want his people to die, and that he’s lost. Carl always had advice when Markus lived with him, right? Carl’s the closest thing Markus has to a dad.

Markus goes to him. The first dialog tree makes no difference as to what Carl says in response. The next two dialog options are where the scene starts branching into two ways: 

Either Markus asks Carl for help and advice

Or Markus starts expressing anger over the literal slavery and genocide of his people

If Markus takes the former, it’s the ‘Good’ scene. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t get angry. He’s literally talking about maybe going to war with humans in a few hours, but hey, Carl doesn’t mind that part. Carl gets a chance to deliver a few feel-good lines and affirm their relationship. They share a few moments, and Carl drifts off to sleep, with Markus enlightened and more capable of meeting the tasks ahead of him.

If Markus is angry, though? ... Note that I’m not saying if Markus is violent, or if he’s planning to slaughter or torture people or go Revenge of the Sith on humanity--I’m only talking about if he gets mad over the fact that humans are literally killing his people.

Literally everything he’s just said is a damn reasonable takeaway from ‘humans are literally killing androids in the streets and systematically exterminating them’. 

Carl’s response?

... Carl, can we, like--maybe go back to the part where Markus was talking about his people’s genocide, and you were being supportive and talking about how wack the world was? Like, can we do this instead of passing character judgments on a man who’s shocked and just seen friends die and is grieving?

Markus has the option to back off here. If he does, he fucking reassures Carl. He’s much quieter, and he sounds like he’s backtracking:

Markus: You're right... You're right, I am angry... But don't worry, I won't let my emotions take over... I just want freedom for my people and I guess I need to decide what price I'm willing to pay for it... 

Carl: :)

Yay good ending, I guess. But if Markus doesn’t back off?

Has anyone noticed how Markus’ head lines up perfectly with the bull skull in the background? How picking anger here means he’s promptly given devil horns? 

Note that this is the first time in the entire game Markus can bring up any negative expression of feelings over his people’s slavery with him. He’s been sad until now, but hasn’t said a word that might possibly remember that Carl used to own him too. It’s probably a shock, and definitely uncomfortable for Carl.

What does Carl do? Acknowledge the fact that whether or not he meant to he was complicit in a system of oppression and still benefits from it? Listen to Markus rage until he can get enough of it out of his system that he can focus again? 

Nah. How about criticizing him for his tone some more?

... CARL. 

Oh good, I’d worried that we’d missed the devil horns the first time around. Also, Markus isn’t wrong.

Shown: Markus, Carl’s former slave, talking to Carl, Markus’ former owner. He’s angry, and by the end he’s yelling.

Not shown: Markus throwing things, hurting anyone, or acting out of control. 

What happens next?

Carl dies.

Every time Markus does something that’s Morally Incorrect(TM) in this game, he gets guilt tripped. He’ll look down and find his hands covered in blood, he’ll say something that adopts all the blame, Josh will say something that reminds him that everything bad is his fault--or Carl will die because Markus couldn’t be pleasantly upset over genocide and persecution, like he is in other endings.

Please note that Carl never actually gets upset over Markus’ plans, because at this point the player hasn’t actually decided anything. He’s tone policing. Markus loses if he shows the wrong emotion or makes Carl uncomfortable.

There’s a few phenomena interacting here on top of the dynamics I’ve already described above.

One is that black men particularly are seen as dangerous and violent the instant their tone leaves a mollifying and pleasant zone, which this is an example of.

Another is that the ‘ideal’ form of protest and response to hatred and violence is usually seen as Moral Highground, aka Ghandi and MLK’s routes, where... I guess people think they just nicely and patiently asked over an over for people to stop persecuting them? (Popular understandings of these routes completely ignore how these movements interacted with violent counterparts to build a successful whole.) 

A third phenomenon is that it was easy for Carl to be supportive and loving until Markus failed to explicitly exclude Carl from his statements raging against his people’s treatment. In other words, Markus started to occasionally say ‘humans hate us’ instead of ‘they hate us’. (Come on, Markus, not ALL humans...) Markus gets more direct for a few lines after that, saying ‘ We tried talking to you, and what'd you do? Same thing you always do, you humiliated us! ‘. (This is naturally where Carl warns him about his suddenly incredibly high risk of becoming a monster.)

Anyway, Carl does... not look great in this scene. Markus expresses reasonable anger and Carl condemns him for it, and the narrative sets it up so that any uncomfortable confrontation will kill Carl and punish Markus by making him responsible for it.

[angelofthequeers]

I feel you on the Luka thing. At first I thought he was nice and I was mostly ambivalent about him when he was introduced (adored Kagami though even then) and I was mostly eh about Lukanette (not my thing) but how his terrible stans are acting and their Adrien bashing basically made Lukanette a NOTP for me unless it’s past Lukanette. Your fic and guardiankarenterrier’s have been the only actual Luka content I truly enjoy (excluding more crack ish content like Lukatar and Luka x XY)

Honestly, that’s exactly how I feel about Luka right now, and I’m gonna make a longer post now that I know that I’ve got some agreement and support. So here are my full 12 am rambling feelings about Luka Couffaine and Lukanette, where I essentially hijack your ask and finally make my post. And I’ve only been sitting on this for this long because I didn’t see any point in annoying the salters and rabid Luka stans for the sake of an opinion but…fuck it, y’know? Fair warning that if you like Luka and/or you’re a salter, you might not want to read this.

Luka’s nice. That’s it. He doesn’t have any substance beyond that. He exists purely to serve Marinette, because every other character dares to not fall to Marinette’s feet and cater to her every whim so they are therefore evil.

And no, that’s not Marinette salt. That’s salter salt. Reflecting back on my salt days, the thing that sticks out to me most is the level of protagonist-centred morality and the sheer inability to see from anyone else’s POV. Take Chameleon, for example. Adrien doesn’t know that Lila threatened Marinette. The classmates have seen Marinette act jealous before and their perception of Lila is that of a nice girl who’s being targeted by Marinette. And if you fail to take yourself out of Marinette’s head and see how others might perceive a situation, that’s where most of the salt is born, because all that comes to matter is that Marinette Is Wronged and anyone who dared to not support her 100% is immediately Evil. Never mind that Adrien fought back against years of conditioning to lie down and take it in order to stand up for Marinette and even bargain himself to Lila to protect his friend. Never mind that Alya went to great lengths to prove Marinette’s innocence and even if she didn’t believe Lila was the culprit, she wholeheartedly believed that Marinette was innocent.

But that’s not enough nuance for salters and Perfect Marinette can’t dare to have flaws beyond being clumsy and Too Giving For Her Own Good, so meh. I swear this relates to Luka and I have a point

And that’s where Luka comes in. It’s because he’s a blank slate that he appeals to salters. They can project whatever they want onto him; turn him into the Perfect Boyfriend for Perfect Queen Marinette. He’s not a character. He’s a device. And that’s part of why my interest in him just…waned. There’s nothing to keep my attention hooked. Sure, ‘Silencer’ made me squeal because of the love confession, but only by forcing myself to go back and rewatch it for that rush. Once the episode was over, I just kind of…shrugged. Whatever. He said a few words and then walked off, and Marinette can’t be that in love with him if the confession’s never again brought up in his later appearances; where Adrien’s actively pursued Kagami, Marinette’s just kind of let Luka woo her and gone along with it whenever he’s around. And there’s nothing wrong with letting someone woo you, but when she’s been shown to actively pursue Adrien, it kind of doesn’t give the impression that she’s all that into Luka.

Honestly, it’s pretty much just this shitty meme that I made for a laugh

And why does he love Marinette? He “fell for her at first sight”. Marinette and Adrien didn’t fall for each other as soon as their eyes met, but rather after they worked past their initial impressions and revealed a different side to their partner; one that made their partner fall in love with them. Chat’s first impression of Ladybug was of a clumsy, nervous girl who was nice and who he liked but was reluctant to be a superhero in the first place. Marinette’s first impression of Adrien was of a spoiled brat. It wasn’t until Ladybug gave her speech to Hawkmoth and showed her fiery and determined side, until Adrien revealed to Marinette that he was a sweet and socially awkward boy, that they fell for each other. Even Adrien and Kagami had a heckuva lotta chemistry during their first meeting, with Kagami thoroughly impressing Adrien, and Marinette and Kagami’s friendship was established by working past their misunderstood first impressions, just like with Marinette and Adrien. Each of these relationships have a solid foundation based on working past incorrect first impressions and developing a mutual respect. There’s effort that’s been put into these relationships.

And people wonder why I ship Kagaminette so hard.

But Luka? He just took one look at Marinette and was like “mmm pretty girl”. He didn’t fall for her based on anything that he knew about her other than that she stuttered (which he made fun of, and you just…don’t do that with someone you’ve literally only just met). It made me question the legitimacy of her being “the melody inside his head since they first met” because like…their first meeting was talking for two seconds and then her convincing him that she could lockpick a little later on. Every other interaction after that? Still not enough to warrant Luka giving that whole speech to her. And their few interactions since then have been ’Frozer’, ‘Silencer’, and ‘Desperada’. Plus, he doesn’t talk to Marinette. He talks at her. Every interaction is him saying “You feel like this” and strumming his guitar, which…boy, it’s not healthy to speak for the person you’re romantically into, because that’s just gonna lead to a whole lot of miscommunication later down the line.

It could be a flaw that Luka falls hard and fast and he needs to learn to step back and get to know someone before going in. It’d just be nice to have enough substance to him to actually be able to make this conclusion. Maybe I’m just too aro to understand love at first sight.

And how old is he? 16? 17? Thirsting after a 14/15 year old? I didn’t even realise the age gap until now but Jesus, maybe he should find someone his age instead of going after a younger teenager.

And all the diehard Luka stans are also why I’ve grown to just not care about Luka. The way they demonise every other character and push Lukanette as Perfect and Pure - not through being flawless but basically through being Right and not doing any wrong except for a few teensy mistakes that are laughable - was enough to begin to turn me way off, and then from there I just slipped further and further from salt. That’s why, after I finished writing Défenseure, I just threw my hands up and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. Every Lukanette salt fic is exactly the same. Same plot, same characters demonised with maybe a little variation if the writer’s feeling daring. There’s a reason so many of us are getting sick of salt, especially Chameleon salt. It’s all been done before. So many times. And that also contributes to Luka’s blandness, purely because fandom Luka is just as one-dimensional as canon Luka. I don’t care about canon Luka. But fandom Luka? I cannot stand, and it’s thanks to these diehard stans.

You know, for all the salters claim to loathe Adrien for being so Perfect, they sure seem to turn Marinette into a real bright figure of perfection. That irony is part of what made me turn away from salt in the first place.

There’s a saying that’s stuck with me since my early days of fandom, back when I was into HP and bashing was rampant: if you have to utterly destroy one character to make another look better, you’re only proving how bad the second character is. If you have to make Alya into a horrific demonic bully to justify promoting Chloé to Marinette’s new bestie and essentially switch their personalities, that says a lot more about Chloé than it does Alya. If you have to turn Adrien - who does not know boundaries because he was only ever taught to let people treat him like a piece of meat but who’s learning, to the point of standing up to Lila for Marinette and never once forcing himself on Ladybug whether physically or emotionally - into a horrific Nice Guy caricature just to justify Lukanette, that says a hell of a lot more about you than it does Adrien.

And that’s all I’m gonna say because it’s like 12.30 am and this is way more energy than I wanted to expend on Luka Couffaine. Tl;dr - he’s nice but that’s literally all there is to him. And nice isn’t a personality. It’s one trait.

[dangerishisbusiness]

Rant about kickin it

Oh fuck where do I even start. 

Kickin' It, like most disney programs, doesn't deal with gender in a really impactful way. The season 3 episode Queen of Karts deals with sexism against women but focuses on individuals who are sexist rather than awknowlege that sexism is still baked into our society. 

The weird part is that Kickin' It got really close to openly denouncing toxic masculinity and then just didn't. The season 4 episode The 'Stang (I hope I wrote the name right) is entirely focused on the main characters being endangered by harmful masculine ideals. 

This is most obvious in the B plot of the episode, which focuses on Jack and Rudy trying to make the dojo less feminine and more masculine. Jack in particular seems very uncomfortable with feminine activities and objects in this episode. Of course this ends up attracting disrespectful and violent men into the dojo (one of whom is played by Leo Howard's dad, Todd Howard, no not that one) because it turns out hyper masculinity is bad. 

The A plot of the episode focuses on Milton trying to win back his ex by acheiving her standard of manliness, which is tied to car ownership. It turns out in the end that that standard of masculinity is ultimately meaningless since it is Milton and Jerry, who both fail to meet this standard, who save the day in the end. But the ending kinda falls apart, it doesn't feel like the characters learned anything and unlike in Queen of Karts there is no moral stated outright. It's wasted potential.

  Also in season 4 we have the episode Battle of Seaford Hill which is a historian's nightmare. I am very far from a history expert and it still hurts. The episode is centered on a conflict between the Americans and the French in the year 1814 and on the west coast of California. 

Of course California still belonged to the Spanish in 1814 and the Americans wouldn't enter a conflict with the French in 1814 on account of a little thing known as The War of 1812 which didn't end until 1814. Also, they state the Pony Express existed in 1814, which is incorrect by several decades.

One thing I think the series did well was Jack/Kim, especially after they got together. Disney shows have a tendency to break up and reunite couples as a way of keeping things interesting, but once Kim and Jack started dating they remained stable and even succeeded at dating long distance. A lot of their most fun coupley moments are subtle and the overall dynamic doesn't shift much. My personal favorite moment is the two of them dancing together in Temple of Doom. 

Not making merry a thing was cowardly as hell though. Milton and Jerry are really wonderful together and their dynamic is one of the best in the entire series. I especially enjoyed them together in The Sub Sinker.

[ashtray-girl]

Songs that are about Johnny Marr (probably)

THE SMITHS

The Smiths

Hand In Glove → the lyrics are about a deep friendship and Johnny himself said he thinks it’s about his relationship with Morrissey because they were “only hanging out with each other at the time”.

Meat Is Murder

I Want The One I Can’t Have → all about unrequited love. A possible reference in the title to Elizabeth Smart’s novella By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept – “I want the one I want.” Also: “Meet me in the Alley” is a 1972 song by John Mars.

Well I Wonder → a desperate plea by Morrissey for someone to keep him in mind. There are several loans from By Grand Central Station... (which by the way is about a deeply emotional, doomed and unrequited love), namely: “Well I wonder, do you hear me when you sleep?” / “Is it possible he can not hear me when he lies so close, so lightly asleep?” , “My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep?” “This is the fierce last stand of what I am.” This song was never performed live and Johnny said it was because they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to capture its full magic, which makes sense, but I also get the feeling that this song was particularly special to both Morrissey and Johnny, for reasons which went beyond its lyricism and music.

The Queen Is Dead

I Know It’s Over → conceived just a few months after Johnny married his girlfriend Angie while The Smiths were on tour in the US. Morrissey was Johnny’s witness. The lyrics mention a wedding and a failed relationship that “never really began” because “love is natural and real, but not for such as you and I, my love” (where “natural and real” could easily be interpreted as “straight”.)

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side → even though Morrissey said that this was a song about his tormented relationship with the music industry (that being the “thorn” in his side), in my opinion there’s also another interpretation. Just as in Well I Wonder, there are a few loans from By Grand Central Station… namely: “How can they see the love in our eyes and still they don’t believe us?” / “They intercepted our glances because of what was in our eyes.” “And if they don’t believe us now, will they ever believe us?” / “Did they see such flagrant proof and still not believe?”. These are especially relevant because they come from a point in the book in which the author is specifically talking about her love for a married man (poet George Barker) and about how they were attempting to see each other in spite of that, which caused them to get arrested while together in Arizona for “moral turpitude”.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out → references being driven around in someone’s car. Morrissey and Johnny apparently used to go on long car rides together, Morrissey talked about how he found cars to be “erotic” and there are multiple examples of that in his lyrics (see This Charming Man, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore etc.). Also, the lyrics are, once again, about unrequited love.

Strangeways Here We Come (the pining here was at its finest imo)

A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours → the title is a reference to a traditional Irish rallying call which Oscar Wilde’s mother, who wrote Irish nationalist prose and poetry, used to urge the Irish to rise up against the British army. “Some eighteen months ago” could be a reference to Oscar Wilde being sentenced to hard labor for soliciting male prostitutes. The lyrics are about the “pain and strain” of being in love despite not wanting to. Also, the way he sings “so phone me, phone me” sounds like he’s saying “f*ck me”. (I thought I was the only one who thought that, but apparently not.)

I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish → the lyrics are about going too far with someone who can’t/doesn’t want to be pushed. Another reference to “eighteen months’ hard labor”. The “Okay Stephen, do that again” at the end is aimed at producer Stephen Street, but Morrissey is also called Steven. Why was that left in the recording? Was it fully intentional? Who wants Stephen to do what again? Maybe the other person mentioned in the song doesn’t actually mind being pushed out of their comfort zone by Morrissey, they just lack the courage to seal the whole deal for whatever reason.

Girlfriend In A Coma → according to the lyrics, Morrissey doesn’t seem to like this woman, yet he feels guilty about it and doesn’t wish her ill. Could this be a reference to Angie Marr, who he sees as an obstacle between him and Johnny, despite having a good opinion of her as a person?

Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before → by now, Morrissey may have realized that he has written an awful lot about being in love with someone who doesn’t reciprocate. Also, his love for this other person must be so obvious by now, he’s said almost everything on the subject and yet he still wants to make clear that: “Nothing’s changed, I still love you, only slightly less than I used to, my love.” By now, his working relationship with Johnny was starting to deteriorate. Another interesting note is: “Oh, who said I’d lied to her because I never? I never!”. While this is grammatically incorrect, it’s also a common way of speaking in most Northern cities, so this reads like a quote that someone may have uttered at some point and this may be why, when called out on it, Morrissey said it was meant to be written that way. It’s worth pointing out how Morrissey liked to correct Johnny’s grammar in interviews and he even mentioned in his Autobiography how Johnny’s way of speaking was “shockingly bad”.

Death At One’s Elbow → the song’s title was taken from the diaries of 60s playwright Joe Orton, beaten to death with a hammer by his lover Kenneth Halliwell. Johnny’s opinion on the song was ambivalent. He stated that: “It was good sometimes to have a track that wasn’t trying to win the war like There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” he said. "It was almost like, ‘We have the right to be slightly less intense.’ I liked Morrissey’s singing and I liked my own backing vocals” and yet, when asked by Johnny Rogan about it for his book Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance, he sounded much less pleased with it, saying: “Oh God, did we really write that?”.

I Won’t Share You → widely believed by everyone to be about Morrissey’s possessive feelings towards Johnny (who not only didn’t mind, but seemed actually quite pleased about it).

Others

Wonderful Woman → It was originally titled “What Do You See In Him?” and included lyrics such as: “Cheat the Life out of me as you walk hand in hand / And I try, and I try, but I will never understand / What do you see in her?” “That she will plague you / And I will be glad / Yes, she will leave you / And I will be glad.” The final version, albeit quite different, is still about a woman who seems quite unpleasant but to whom the protagonist feels irresistibly drawn to. With the final: “When she calls me I do not walk, I run” there’s an acknowledgment of co-dependence in the relationship but, even though the first person is used, this could have been a way to write from someone else’s point of view. Specifically, the boyfriend of someone with a very domineering personality. (Basically, he’s writing from Johnny’s perspective).

Ask → the lyrics are about being too shy to make a move on someone, yet Morrissey seems to be eager to take on board whatever the other person has in mind. There’s pining and there’s the possibility of a relationship which looks promising but never amounts to anything substantial because the people involved don’t have the courage to take it any further, despite wanting to. 

These Things Take Time → mentions of a relationship which is impeded by the fact that the other person is engaged to someone else (“I’m spellbound, but a woman divides”). Johnny was already with Angie at the time. “And the hills are alive with celibate cries”. Morrissey had been talking to the press about being celibate and not really interested in romantic/sexual relationships, but the fact that the object of his desire was someone he knew he couldn’t have could have been part of the reason why he felt he had to take that stance. Also, it seems like he already felt like this relationship wouldn’t last, with the other person “leaving him behind” in the end.

Is It Really So Strange? → I’m not so sure about this one, but I’m including it because the lyrics are about traveling from North to South and about loving someone in spite of unfavorable circumstances. Also, according to Johnny (from Mozipedia): “Road trips were a big part of the group. We opted to live in Manchester most of the time but were always traveling back and forth to London. It was in cars on the motorway where myself and Morrissey did a lot of our profound talking and thinking and listening. We loved it, because we’d take off at half three in the morning back to Manchester or down to London, just razzing about. That came out in ‘Is It Really So Strange?’”. As a matter of fact, Morrissey included the track on Rank, which he compiled alone a year after the band’s demise, and I feel like every song on that record was put in that particular order for a particular reason (if you look at the tracklist it basically tells the whole story of The Smiths, from start to finish… he even included The Draize Train which he claimed he didn’t like, which is why he refused to put lyrics on it, so I can only assume he did that as a conciliatory gesture towards Johnny).

I Keep Mine Hidden → the last song The Smiths ever recorded, it is, like “I Won’t Share You”, widely believed to be a direct message from Morrissey to Johnny, who was about to leave the band. A plea for understanding, he seems to imply that for Johnny is much easier to lie (about what?) while hiding in plain sight (“But it’s so easy for you, because you let yours flail into public view”), while Morrissey is forced to keep HIS hidden. IT could be his emotions and the fact that he feels the need to repress them because of some trauma in his past (“I’m a twenty-eight digit combination to unlock, with a past where to be touched meant to be mental.”), but IT could also be a relationship. Johnny was married, while at the time Morrissey showed no public signs of being involved with anyone and had yet to relinquish his celibate image, which may have been frustrating if he was actually interested in someone but couldn’t voice it.

MORRISSEY

Viva Hate

Alsatian Cousin → literally the first sentence on the first record Morrissey released post-Smiths is: “Were you and he lovers? And would you say so if you were?”. While the rest of the song is pretty ambiguous is interesting to note that, according to Mozipedia, Johnny was, at the time, the proud owner of two Alsatian dogs.

Angel Angel Down We Go Together → Morrissey himself admitted that this song was about Johnny. He also said it’s the only song he’d written with him in mind, post-Smiths, and that it was about how sorry he felt to see him being taken advantage of by the music industry. While the full truth of this statement may be debatable, it’s still worth noting how the lyrics end with the repeated: “I love you more than life”.

Late Night, Maudlin Street → While Morrissey said that this song was about his isolating childhood during the 70s, I think the lyrics go much deeper than that. Apparently, when Johnny wanted to leave the band, Morrissey took it badly enough for people to start worrying about the fact that he might take his own life. Both Stephen Street and Grant Showbiz admitted to this, with Showbiz even spending the night at Morrissey’s house to keep an eye on him. There’s also a rumor about the fact that Morrissey actually did attempt to kill himself by baking a cake with loads of sleeping pills in it, eating it and then phoning Johnny, admitting that he loved him and asking him to come seeing him before he died, with Johnny calling an ambulance instead. (“I came home late one night, everyone had gone to bed, nobody stays up for you, I had sixteen stitches all around my head / The last bus I missed to Maudlin Street so, he drove me home in the van...”) This would also explain the lyrics: “And I know I took strange pills, but I never meant to hurt you”. If this story was true, then I feel like moving away from Maudlin Street could actually be a metaphor for committing suicide. (“Good-bye house, forever! I never stole a happy hour around here”, “I am moving house, a half-life disappears today / Every hag waves me on, secretly wishing me gone / Well, I will be soon / Oh, I will be soon.”) There are also more loans from Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station… namely: “They took you away in a police car / Dear Inspector, don’t you know? Don’t you care? Don’t you know about love?”. This part comes from the same chapter which probably inspired part of the lyrics for The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and which is about people putting themselves between a loving couple. Also, according to Mozipedia, during the making of Viva Hate, Morrissey prepared the artwork for the final Smiths single, Last Night I Dreamt… which was originally going to include an inscription on the back sleeve saying: “When I sleep with that picture beside me… I really think it’s you.”, which would explain the lyrics: “When I sleep with that framed picture of you beside my bed / Oh, it’s childish and it’s silly, but I think it’s you in my room, by the bed.” The single’s inner sleeve was also going to feature a lyric from Well I Wonder, “Please keep me in mind”, so these may very well have been messages for Johnny. Worthy of interest are also the parts about love at first sight and seeing each other with no clothes on.

Suedehead → the lyrics are about someone sticking around Morrissey even though they know it hurts him. Suedeheads were a subculture in early 1970’s England that split off from the skinheads and came to popular notice in a book by Richard Allen. Morrissey apparently read the book, but according to Len Brown’s Meetings with Morrissey interviews, the title has little to do with the subject matter of the song: M: I did happen to read the book when it came out and I was quite interested in the whole Richard Allen cult. But really I just like the word ‘suedehead’." LB: “So it’s not even based on an episode from Suedehead?” M: “No, not really.” LB: “And it’s not about anyone in particular?” M: “Yes, it is, but I’d rather not give any addresses and phone numbers at this stage. But the most interesting nugget of information comes once again from Mozipedia, which says it may be worth taking into consideration a recollection from Johnny about a period during the latter half of The Smiths’ career when he decided to ‘get a motorbike and get a suedehead’. ‘That was my mantra for a while. Gotta get a suedehead! Gotta get a suedehead!’ […] ‘I think I may have brought that word into the vernacular, I might be wrong. But that’s what I did, got myself a motorbike and a suedehead haircut. To cloud further autobiographical analysis, Morrissey also said that he has never kept a diary, even though “I make so many records that in a peculiar way that becomes like a personal diary”. And as far as the repeated “It was a good lay” at the end, he said he just made it up (which I personally doubt, but I guess we’ll never know for sure).

Break Up The Family → I feel like the title is a metaphor for The Smiths splitting up. “You say break up the family and let’s begin to live our lives”. It was Johnny who wanted to ‘take a break’ from the band, which Morrissey didn’t approve of, so this may very well be about that particular moment when Johnny told him he’d had enough. There’s yet another reference to being driven home by someone: “Hailstones, driven home in his car- no breaks? I don’t mind.” Which reminds me of There Is A Light… “And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side it’s such a heavenly way to die.”

I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me → when Morrissey started working on Viva Hate, one of the earliest songs he was working on was called I Don’t Want Us To Finish, with Us probably being him and Johnny. It’s said the song was later scrapped, but I feel like it may actually have been turned into this one instead. In the lyrics, Morrissey is trying to convince himself that he doesn’t mind if the person he cares about the most ends up forgetting him, but clearly he does care, otherwise he wouldn’t have written an entire song about it. “The pressure to change, to move on / Was strange and very strong / So this is why I tell you / I really do understand / Bye bye”. I feel like this is another reference to Johnny’s departure, because it was him who wanted a change of direction for the band’s future, while Morrissey seemed to be happy for them to stay as they were.

Treat Me Like A Human Being → this was a demo which was abandoned and later released in 2012 on a Viva Hate reissue, taking the place as track 9 instead of The Ordinary Boys. The lyrics are a plea by Morrissey for someone to acknowledge his feelings and have some compassion for him. The reason I’m including it in this list is because of the lyric: “Leave all your hate behind you”, which could be interpreted as a reference to the fact that, after The Smiths split up, Johnny had started bad-mouthing him in the press. Worthy of interest is also: “Three words could change my life / Yet you treat me like you never care”. I wonder what those three words might be… “Stop being racist”, maybe?

Oh Well, I’ll Never Learn → Suedehead b-side, there’s not much to say about this one but I do find the lyrics “I found a fountain of youth / And I fell in / How could I ever win?” interesting, if anything because they make me think of the fact that Johnny, being four years younger than Morrissey, was the one who put The Smiths together. It’s also been mentioned how energetic he was, fully in contrast with Morrissey’s coy personality, and yet Johnny’s energy would prove infectious, providing him with an unexpected source of drive and creativity and making him feel rejuvenated, much like a fountain of youth. Also, right at the beginning it says: “Looking up at the sign / It said: PLEASE KEEP AWAY / And so in I ran” which can be read in many ways, but would make perfect sense in the context of falling in love with someone you can’t have.

Bona Drag

He Knows I’d Love To See Him → the lyrics are about Morrissey wanting to rekindle his relationship with someone he hasn’t seen for quite some time. Even though he’s never admitted to it, I feel like this has to be about Johnny because of the line: “’Cause when I lived in the arse of the world”. It’s common knowledge that Johnny was the one who first reached out to Morrissey about forming a band by showing up to his house and later, in an interview, he said that Johnny’s initiative probably saved his life. Also, the lyric: “My name still conjures up deadly deeds / And a bad taste in the mouth” could be yet another reference to the fact that The Smiths’ split-up hadn’t been exactly amicable and Johnny was talking badly about him in the press. Still, even though Morrissey makes his feelings known right from the title (he wish he could see him and still wishes him happiness), the final: “He doesn’t know” suggests that the other person is not aware of Morrissey’s magnanimity. Also, in an interview of the same period (1990), he was asked: “If Johnny phoned and asked to work with you again, what would you say?” to which he replied: “It’s no secret I would be on the next bus to his house”. So, it seems like the song might have reflected his actual feelings.

Yes, I Am Blind → the reason I’m including this is because of the lyric: “Yes, I am blind / But I do see / Evil people prosper / Over the likes of you and me, always”. Which reminds me a lot of: “And people who are weaker than you and I / they take what they want from life” from A Rush And A Push… which I think was directed to Johnny as well. Pretty interesting are also the lyrics: “Love’s young dream / I’m the one who shopped you / I’m the one who stopped you / ‘Cause in my sorry ways I love you” and: “Love’s young dream / Are you sorry for what you’re done? / Well, you’re not the only one / And in my sorry ways I love you”. This sounds like ‘Love’s young dream’ was the one who made the first move towards Morrissey but was then pushed away by the man himself, maybe because he realized this person didn’t actually love him as much as he thought. Also, that repeated: “And in my sorry ways I love you” reminds me a lot of that line in Speedway, “In my own strange way / I’ve always been true to you / In my own sick way / I’ll always stay true to you” (more on that later). This is one of those songs that has no explicit references to Johnny or to events surrounding him, but it has such a feeling of longing to it, I can’t help but think it may have been written with him in mind.

Happy Lovers At Last United → Johnny and Angie split up for a brief period back in 1983, just before The Smiths were to go on tour in the USA for the first time, but got back together once the band were back in the UK. This song talks about Morrissey helping a couple of friends reuniting and then feeling sad because he feels like they don’t want him nor need him anymore. Obviously I don’t know why or how Johnny and Angie actually got back together… according to The Severed Alliance, they had split up in the first place because Johnny had gotten closer to an ex of his and it was actually Joe Moss, the band’s first manager and Johnny’s friend, who suggested he and Angie should get married. Morrissey’s role in this whole thing, on the other hand, is never mentioned, so the only thing we can rely on are these lyrics.

Kill Uncle

Tony The Pony → This song is a pretty harsh condemnation of someone who lets himself being repeatedly taken advantage of by anyone and personally, I see it as the flipside of Angel Angel Down We Go Together. The reason being, they both deal with a similar theme, but in two completely different ways. While Angel Angel is sad but compassionate, this one is resentful and dripping with exasperation. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you / Always nagging big brother / He’s only looking out for you”. Being older than Johnny, Morrissey was the one who tried to refrain him from doing stuff he didn’t approve of (like working with anyone who wasn’t him). “Tony the pony / So, that’s what they call you now? / When you’re free outside / So cold and hard and in control / And… there’s a free ride on Tony the pony”. Again, Johnny was the one who left the band, who wanted a change of direction and who, right after The Smiths split up, started playing with loads of different people (Bryan Ferry, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Bernard Sumner…) and that would make any control freak (such as Morrissey undoubtedly is) very bitter very quickly. He’s basically calling Johnny a (music) slut, who anyone can try and hire for a while. “Oh, why do you always want to stop me / From doing the things in life that make me happy? / And when I’m outside with friends, laughing loudly / Why do you always want to stop me?” and immediately after: “Oh, I would never / I would never”. This reads like a dialogue, with Tony the pony first asking Morrissey why he always has to spoil his fun and Morrissey replying that he would never dream of doing such a thing. Right at the end though, the bitterness comes right through with: “I will never say I told you so / or how I knew that something bad would happen to you / I don’t want to say I told you so / oh, but Tony, I told you so!”. I wish there were more specific references (like… what did happen to Tony that was so bad?), but I feel like my initial point still stands.

The Loop → Sing Your Life b-side, the lyrics are a plea for someone to call him if he needs him. “So one day, when you’re bored / By all means call / Because you can do / But you might not get through”. I find the last line particularly interesting because it reveals that Morrissey’s professed availability has an expire date after all. As for the identity of this plea’s addressee, I’m just gonna quote Mozipedia: “The singer’s short message to an old friend telling them ‘by all means call me’ and inevitably interpreted by Smiths romantics as being directed towards Marr.” Apparently, Morrissey was especially proud of this song, even calling it his favourite at the time.

Your Arsenal

You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side → This is another one which I have doubts on (the lyrics are so vague they could be about anyone, really), but Verse 2 is the one I find the most interesting: “Someone kindly told me that you’d wasted eight of nine lives / Oh, give yourself a break before you break down / You’re gonna need someone on your side”. Johnny was known to be a workaholic, even compromising his own health by devoting all of his time to any project he was working on. He also mentioned how alcohol and drugs became a problem for him in the 90s, how he used them to cope with stress, and by this time he was working with Bernard Sumner on Electronic, so my guess is that they were leading quite a hectic lifestyle. Considering him and Morrissey were still not talking to each other, it would make sense for Morrissey to know what he was up to through friends they had in common and if they had told him Johnny was still working himself to the point of exhaustion, it would make sense for him to get worried about him, hence this song, which is about being supportive through concern for someone. The other interesting part is the ending: “And here I am! / Well, you don’t need to look so pleased”. It feels like Morrissey knows the other person wouldn’t necessarily want his support, even though that doesn’t stop him from providing it, hoping the other person might come around eventually.

Tomorrow → The reason I’m including it on this list is this part: “All I ask of you is one thing that you’ll never do / Would you put your arms around me? / I won’t tell anybody.” which, even though the connection is tenuous, reminds me of this bit from by Grand Central Station… “I am lonely. I cannot be a female saint. I want the one I want. He is the one I picked out from the world. I picked him out in cold deliberation. But the passion was not cold. It kindled me. It kindled the world. Love, love, give my heart ease, put your arms round me, give my heart ease. Feel the little bastard.” It could be about Johnny or it could be about someone else entirely. At this point, some time had passed since The Smiths’ demise and who knows what Morrissey had been exactly up to (and with whom)? The one thing I’m quite sure of is that, considering how much he took from it, Morrissey used By Grand Central Station… as a way to express and sublimate his conflicting feelings towards Johnny (I might make a separate, more in-depth analysis on that in the future).

Vauxhall and I (Vauxhall is both an area of London noted for its gay clubs AND a British car manufacturer, so it looks like Morrissey’s car kink is still alive and well).

Billy Budd → from Mozipedia: “Taking its title from the 1960 film Billy Budd, based upon the posthumously published novella of Moby Dick author Herman Melville, Morrissey uses the term as a playful nickname for a long-standing and long-suffering companion. As he describes, their relationship provokes public ridicule and discrimination, so much so that Morrissey comically volunteers to have his legs amputated as a sacrifice for Billy’s freedom. The elusive nature of the lyrics offers few clues as to the identity of ‘Billy Budd’ beyond the mention of ‘12 years on’. Since the song was released in 1994 (though recorded in 1993) the line was interpreted by many as a reference to Johnny Marr whom he ‘took up with’ 12 years earlier in 1982. This theory is somewhat compounded by the outrageously spooky coincidence that in 1888 Melville published a collection of poetry titled John Marr and Other Sailors. The song also includes what appears to be another fleeting citation from one of Morrissey’s favourite sources, Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station… ([‘they intercepted our glances because of] what was in our eyes’)”. There’s also an audio floating around in which Morrissey changes the lyrics from “but now it’s 12 years on” to “now it’s 15 years on” in 1997, 15 years after he met Johnny. As for the Melville references, I highly recommend you go and read his ‘John Marr’ poem in its entirety, but this is my favourite part: - I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain, Parted, shall they lock again? Twined we were, entwined, then riven, Ever to new embracements driven, Shifting gulf-weed of the main! And how if one here shift no more, Lodged by the flinging surge ashore? Nor less, as now, in eve's decline, Your shadowy fellowship is mine. Ye float around me, form and feature:-- Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled;

  Speedway → from Mozipedia: “The detail that Johnny Marr once worked at a speedway in his teens is enough to satisfy some theorists that the song is a coded address to the ex-Smiths guitarist, ignoring the fact that at the time of recording Morrissey and Marr were on cordial terms”. Personally, I don’t agree with this (partial) dismissal. The fact that they were on good terms at the time doesn’t mean that everything between them had necessarily been solved. I’d like to focus on this part, specifically: “I could have mentioned your name / I could have dragged you in / Guilt by implication, by association / I’ve always been true to you / In my own strange way / I’ve always been true to you / In my own sick way / I’ll always stay true to you”. Let’s go back to Billy Budd for a moment: “I said, Billy Budd / I would happily lose both of my legs / Oh, if it meant you could be free”. Free from what, exactly? From expectations? From life itself? Looks like Johnny/Billy Budd had a secret burden weighing down on him, and now onto Speedway: “I could have mentioned your name” in regards to what? “Guilt by implication, by association” so, the burden Johnny/Billy Budd carried was also shared by Morrissey? And what could be so heinous, so scandalous as to require this eternal silent loyalty? Could it be that the relationship between Johnny and Morrissey went deeper than everyone thought or liked to admit? Could it be that they shared a bond which wasn’t just professional or even friendly, but that bordered instead on all-consuming, romantic obsession? He then says that, in his own “strange way”, he’s always been loyal to him. The way he sings it though, putting quite a bit of emphasis on these two specific words, makes me think he’s hinting to Strangeways Here We Come, which both him and Johnny claimed was their best album and also the last one they recorded together. Talking about the song, he said: “I believe in my loyalty which is as developed as possible.” So at the end, when he goes: “In my own sick way / I’ll always stay true to you” it looks like whatever happens, the secret they share is so big and important it has to stay hidden no matter what. Morrissey is reassuring him that, if it ever gets out, it won’t be because of him. “All of the rumours keeping me grounded / I never said, I never said / That they were completely unfounded.” “And all those lies, written lies, twisted lies / Well, they weren’t lies, they weren’t lies, they weren’t lies.” According to Mozipedia: “It was only a decade later that Morrissey ended all further debate by admitting, somewhat flippantly, that the lyrics were ‘probably’ just his way of winding up his detractors at the time.” We all know that Morrissey has been at the center of many a storm throughout his career, but what’s the oldest one, the one that has been the most recurring, the one most journalists seem to always come back to, in the end? His sexuality. His sexual and romantic relationships (or lack thereof). His self-admitted celibacy, right at the beginning of his career, which immediately set him apart from the rest of his colleagues and sparked instant curiosity. The vagueness, the hints, the lack of evidence. Is he gay? Bisexual? Asexual? Or really just hopeless when it comes to human connection? When they don’t have a definite answer, some people invent it, even if it’s just to make things more interesting. So, there you have it. Journalists creating rumours out of thin air just to sell a few more papers. Journalists who encourage endless speculations on the most private aspects of an individual’s life. His lyrics are dissected, his friendships scrutinised just to find that final puzzle piece, the one which will make everyone go: “Ah, finally, there it is! I knew he was!”. But more often than not, Morrissey ends up beating them at their same game. He muddies the waters, he hides his tracks. Many of the songs which people could argue are about Johnny are released as b-sides. Is this really a coincidence? To me, this song represents closure. It’s Morrissey’s way of saying: ‘Look, I know we’ve been through a lot but, no matter what, I will protect you. I won’t rat you out’. At the time, it looked like Morrissey had finally found love with Jake Walters, his driver, and I think most of this record and the stuff he wrote after is about him. But if Johnny was his first real love, then this sounds like the final vent, the definite acknowledgment of what has been, before leaving the past behind for greener pastures.

You Are The Quarry

Never Played Symphonies → B-side of Irish Blood, English Heart, the lyrics are about Morrissey laying on his metaphorical deathbed and looking at all the people who cared about him, but he’s not able to see them because he’s focused on the Never Played Symphonies of the title, which are the people he didn’t get to be with. “You were one, you meant to be one / And you jumped into my face and laughed / And kissed me on the cheek and then were gone forever… not quite”. This is a bit of a reach, but there’s a gif floating around from an old movie of The Smiths backstage in Sheffield in 1984 where Johnny and Morrissey are looking at the camera, then Johnny leans into Morrissey as if he’s about to kiss him on the cheek, but Morrissey raises his hands and points at him, stopping him. I don’t know for sure if he wrote this whole song with Johnny in mind, but that was the first thing I thought upon reading that line. Also, that final “… not quite” becomes significant if you think about their relationship post-Smiths. They spent years not talking to each other, then they made up and were on good terms for a while, then there was the whole Joyce trial and they grew distant once again. But even if Johnny has been gone from Morrissey’s life for quite some time, he has never really gone, if you know what I mean. And he probably never will be, because their shared history is impossible to ignore. The final part: “You were one, you knew you were one / And you slipped right through my fingers / No not literally but metaphorically / And now you’re all I see as the light fades.” makes me think that whatever happened between them, even if it was physical, was mostly felt on Morrissey’s part (it reminds me of that quote in his Autobiography, “It was probably nothing, but it felt like the world”). The reason I think this is about Johnny is that “you’re all I see as the light fades”, as if to say: the light has finally gone out, and now it’s just you.

World Peace Is None Of Your Business

Forgive Someone → a bonus track on the deluxe edition, it sounds like Morrissey’s been reminiscing on past grievances. “Betray you with a sword / I would slit my own throat first of all, I will”. This reminds me of Speedway’s repeated declarations of eternal loyalty. “The black peat of the hills / When I was still ill”. This has to be a reference to The Smiths’ song Still Ill, even though “the black peat of the hills” also reminds me of These Things Take Time: “… and the hills are alive with celibate cries”. It’s like he’s thinking about his late adolescence, when he was lonely and depressed, before Johnny came to save him. “And then recall if you can / How all this even began / Forgive someone”. This looks like Morrissey is asking Johnny to think about how their legacy came to be and to forgive him for any mistakes he made. “Shorts and supports and faulty shower heads / At track and field we dreamt of our beds / In the bleachers you sit with your legs spread, smiling / ‘Here’s one thing you’ll never have’”. I feel like Morrissey’s past car kink has been replaced by a runner kink, especially considering the fact he later wrote List of the Lost, in which the main characters are track runners. The final, repeated “Our truth will die with me” reminds me once again of Speedway’s ending: “In my own sick way, I’ll always stay true to you”. In conclusion, whatever happened between Johnny and him will remain between the two of them, at least until Morrissey is alive.

[just-an-anxious-mess]

Rejection (Part 3)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4

Logans eyelids fluttered open and he realised he was laying on someones lap.

He sat up, ignoring the person asking how he was. He thought it was a stupid question if they knew what had happened. Of course he wasn't OK.

Unless they too thought him emotionally stunted?

His chest ached painfully as once again Romans harsh words echoed in his mind.

He was just an annoyance. A boring annoyance with an inability to feel emotions properly.

He put his head in his hands, his hands tightening into fists in his hair. He did still feel things but the pain was almost unbearable and for once he wished he couldn't feel at all.

It would solve so many issues if he could just turn the stupid feelings off.

Logan jumped as someone rested their hand on his shoulder and he met the eyes of Virgil.

"Logan, everything Roman said is wrong. You're not boring or emotionally stunted or an annoyance." he said and Logan stared at him in disbelief.

"Virgils right, you're intelligent and interesting and we're lucky to have you." A voice from slightly behind him said and he turned and realised the person who's lap he'd been laying in was Patton.

Logan didn't know how to respond to either of them and he probably would have just lapsed into an awkward silence if he didn't spot Deceit.

Seeing Deceit made Logan look around, taking in his surroundings and coming to the conclusion he was in the other mindspace.

If Logan was in the other mindspace then that meant there was a certain trait who might be able to help him.

"D... Deceit." Logan managed to croak out, making everyone wince sympathetically. "I want to talk to someone."

Deceit smirked and replied "But you already are talking to someone."

"Deceit, now is not the time for joking around and messing with him." Patton scolded, making Deceit sigh and adopt a more serious expression.

"Who did you want to talk to and why?"

"I... I want to talk to Apathy. I don't want to h...h...hurt like this anym...anymore." Logans voice shook as fresh tears fell down his face.

Patton looked slightly confused while Virgil and Deceit exchanged concerned looks.

"Logan, are you sure?" Deceit asked and Logan nodded adamantly.

"I.... I'll go fetch him then." Deceit shook his head as he walked off into the darkness and Virgil sat down next to Patton and Logan, trying to push away the worry and slight fear he felt from being back in the 'dark' mindspace again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Deceit walked through the dark corridors until he reached a specific door. Before he could knock the door opened and a figure appeared, rage all over his face.

"What are you looking at Deceit? Come to get all buddy buddy with Apathy? Well he's all yours! Both of you can go to fucking hell!" growled the trait who shoved past Deceit and stormed off down the corridor.

Deceit looked back into the room and saw Apathy shaking his head.

"What just happened? Did you take away his lighter again or something?" Deceit asked.

"No he's just.... Him. He assumed things that were completely incorrect and obviously didn't like that he was wrong. He truly lives up to his name of Irrationality." Apathy said in his usual blank, emotionless voice.

"You can say that again, I still haven't forgotten when he set his room on fire because he thought it'd look pretty. Although I'm pretty sure it might have been because he saw a spider but either way that was difficult to clean up." Deceit said, staring down the corridor in the direction the crazy trait had gone.

"Enough mindless chatter, what did you require from me? You hardly do social calls anymore since you're usually bothering the main traits these days."

Deceit sighed. "There's been a lot of drama in the main mindspace recently and one of the main traits actually requested to talk to you. He... He was completely screwed over by one of the others and is pretty much emotionally broken and wishes not to feel anything anymore. I don't think it's the right solution but I said I would fetch you so here I am."

Apathy seemed to think deeply about what Deceit had said and then made a decision. "Which trait is it?"

"Logic, it was Creativity that caused everything." Deceit said.

"Logic and Creativity, not two traits that I would predict to interact much for any sort of argument between them to be emotionally damaging to either one." Apathy said as Deceit lead the way to the others.

"Logic loved Creativity but Creativity didn't feel the same. Instead he verbally ripped Logic apart and Logic ran until he ended up here." Deceit explained.

Apathy stopped with a small frown. "Creativity ripped him apart verbally? From what I know of that Disney Prince wannabe it seems more likely he'd attack physically in that sort of situation, anything from a small shove to full on throwing Logic into a wall or something. Plus I would have thought he'd be flattered someone saw him in that light, he's the most likely out of all the traits to randomly kiss another trait just because he thought they were his reflection or something."

Deceit let out a snort of laughter at Apathys last comment. "Well it'd be difficult for him to mistake someone for his reflection now, Pat... I mean Morality punched him in the face and broke his nose."

Apathy looked at Deceit with slightly narrowed eyes for a second before starting to walk again, making Deceit shudder.

He needed to be a little more aware of what he said because Apathy hated it when Deceit used the main traits real names. Apparently it made him sound too familiar with them and it got on Apathys nerves.

Three traits sitting on the floor came into view and Apathy took in Logic and Morality, not very surprised. It was when Apathys eyes locked onto the darker trait that the atmosphere changed.

"Virgil. What an unpleasant surprise to see you here, I'm quite sure I remembered you swearing to never return but here you are."

"Fuck off Apathy! I'm here helping Logan and that's it." Virgil growled, getting to his feet.

"wow, look at this brand new attitude. Where did timid little Anxiety go? You're little act might fool everyone else but we both know deep down you're still that scared little trait who cowered everytime someone looked at him funny."

Apathy had stepped forward so him and Virgil were in each others faces.

"That's not who I am anymore." Virgil muttered, glaring right back at Apathy.

"Oh really? What if I said Irrationality was going to turn up?"

Virgils eyes widened in alarm that was difficult to miss. "He... He's not." Virgil stumbled over his words and took a step back.

Apathys lips twitched up into a smug little smirk before he turned to the trait who'd requested his presence.

"Now explain what you wanted."

Logans eyes briefly flickered to Virgil, who was running himself through a breathing exercise and cursing Apathy under his breath, before they locked onto Apathy.

"I don't want to feel like this anymore. I want you to make it all disappear." he said in a hoarse voice, almost too quiet to hear.

"You do realise that if I do this it won't just take the pain and sadness, it'll take any joy or happiness as well. You'll be completely devoid of emotion and even the simplest of things will fail to make you feel. It's also completely irreversible. You're Logic so think it over before making a rash decision." Apathy explained, his voice quieter as he said the last part, in an attempt to come across less harsh.

Patton had got to his feet, his eyes narrowed at Apathy the entire time, unable to prevent himself feeling protective over the others.

"Morality there's no need to glare at me like that, I'm not going to hurt anyone, that's Irrationalitys thing. I'm not sadistic."

"Says who." Virgil mumbled with a glare, making Deceit face palm.

"Virgil, please don't bring that up again, you know we had no idea what was going on and when we did find out Apathy sorted things."

Virgil sighed "I'm sorry Dee, it's just that a certain someone decided to bring it up first to try and humiliate me."

"I didn't bring it up to humiliate you, I brought it up to prove a point. No matter how much you try to pretend you're strong, you can't change who you really are. No one can force themselves to change so drastically." Apathy stated.

Virgil could feel the curious gazes of Patton and Logan on him so he quickly changed the subject before they asked what they were talking about.

"Moral... Whoops... Patton punched Roman in the nose." Virgil said, shaking his head as he stumbled over his words.

Apathy raised an eyebrow in amusement. "So I heard, well done Morality I think that's something everyone's been tempted to do at least once but you're the first to actually do it."

"He hurt Logan, I lost my temper and that's all there is to it" Patton said, his eyes still narrowed at Apathy.

"plus he can be a bit of an arrogant pri....nce. Yep that's definitely what I was going to say. Arrogant prince." Deceit said, avoiding Pattons stern look.

Suddenly Logan, Patton and Virgil let out matching gasps of shock as they felt a rather desperate summons from Thomas.

"Logan are you capable of coming with us? It seems urgent." Virgil asked and Logan nodded reluctantly.

"I... I'll give it a go." he muttered and the three of them vanished leaving Apathy and Deceit alone in the dark mindspace.

General tag list:@amethystdarkwolf @mcfreakin-childproof-caps @patchworkofstars @kitkat-doodles @unikornavenger @dolphin-squirrel @sympathetic-deceit-trash @starryfirefliesbloggo @cakercanart @neonb-fly @kaymischief25 @punsterterry @aprilthevene @theoddkidnextdoor @fuckingemoace @i-sold-my-soul-to-thefandom @im-so-infinitesimal @sea-blue-child @thecatchat @iris-sanders-athena @saphael-malec102 @smedenn @corkeecoderyt @sopi-montezzz @illogicaldeath @deadpanstar @theanxiousfander @lesliealiceinwonderland @wicked-universe @anxious-is-the-name @a-black-pegasus @erlenmeyertrashofsandersides @ace-the-weekly-doodler @luarpice @novusavis @the-life-ofa-troubled-ace @heck-im-lost @nerdy-as-heck @pansexual-cat @ravens-rambling @echomist13 @myownhappilyeverafter @im-a-sexy-mouse @xx-fandom-potato-xx

Rejection tag list:

@ibelievewhatsontv @anxiouslogan24

[x-rds]

[Lio] Tetsu is dealing with some shit because we had someone on a different blog of mine interact who had a big huge dni list and his source was on it. Which is like. I only casually interact with his source at all, and I kinda get it, but - he’s feeling a little fucked up about it?

[Tetsu] Yeah idk. I’m just upset because like, I guess I do see my source as “me” in a sense you know? And seeing people cast a moral judgment of me based on who I am but not technically who I am at all really sucks. I feel shitty and gross and it’s making me not like myself. Obviously I am not anything that my source has done (and tbh, like, I don’t think it’s a case of any real actual harmful shit, just content/jokes that people might find a little weird or contentious in a normie internet humor way, at least as far as I’m aware, I could be wrong) but I also still have that connection to, y’know, this is where I came from, this is who I am, and I’m already struggling with the whole factive shit where I can tell it’s a hella touchy subject for people.

And I get it y’know, people obviously should be allowed to make boundaries about literally whatever the fuck they want. But man it sucks feeling like people hate you without even knowing you. What do I even do about that, you know? Just change who I am entirely on a base level, even though I’m pretty sure that ain’t possible when I literally came into existence like a few months ago and this is all I have? I’m already doing shit all the time to hide myself? Because yeah, I DO know that there are some people who would treat me like shit, I do know those people would treat the other guys in here like shit, even if most people either wouldn’t care or would understand that I’m something separate but also still have that history with my source, I don’t want to have to expose myself or others to that. I already go out of my way to try and make the now-me someone different because it’s better for everyone involved if I do.

And that’s my choice by the way, I wasn’t harassed into it by anyone else and I wasn’t shamed for being who I am but I was informed about the situation and I was free to make the choice on how I wanted to adapt, and this was it. But it just sucks to think that yeah, even doing all this to make myself a unique person, I still feel hurt and I’m affected when people judge the place I came from.

Also part of it is, I think everyone in here has different thoughts on who we are and why we’re here, and in my opinion I’m here as a psychological phenomenon. I can pinpoint the exact situation I exist to help the overall brain cope with. I’m meant to be a positive force, a fun guy, I brought in my source’s positive experiences because that’s what was needed and I’m cool with that and it doesn’t mean I’m less of a person, but it does mean that I feel more shitty about feeling shitty because that’s not what I was supposed to be here for.

[Lio] I’m going to be honest, this is not a ‘you’ thing. This is a systemwide thing and if you look at our system on a meta-scale you’ll see a very common pattern of the brain needing something, introjecting someone who can perform that job, but then because they don’t exist in a vacuum they tend to get deeper selfhood - which is a good thing, I feel, but it leads to them ending up being affected by the brain’s issues and/or their own issues in a way that sort of ‘neutralizes’ their ability to do the job the brain summoned them for and then they often feel upset at this. And I don’t think they usually are genuinely failing their assigned job, they just aren’t hyperfocused on it anymore because they became more intricate people. Not to say your feelings on this are incorrect or aren’t significant, but rather to make the point that you aren’t alone in this and it’s an issue that comes up time and again for us. I mean shit dude, I was a big angry protector facet who only fronted to defend us for years before I got my own individual selfhood and a big pile of mental problems on top of it.

[Tetsu] Aight well. I guess that’s fair lol. Sucks though, and I wish it didn’t! Being a person is fucking difficult

[warcrafttimemd]

Thoughts On The Criticism of AU!Draenei Direction

As the fallout from the revelations of the Mag’har Allied Race scenario continues to spread through the fanbase, I’ve seen plenty of good reasons why the decision to turn the AU!Draenor Draenei evil was a terrible one: it’s illogical, it invalidates the entirety of the Warlords of Draenor storyline, it’s a weak-ass excuse to set the Mag’har against a threat they need help with that they couldn’t get from the AU!Draenei that also completely ignores all the other nonsense going on like the crazy plants in Gorgrond, it’s the latest in the increasingly shameful exhibit of how Blizzard doesn’t know how to write female characters, it’s a pathetically lazy attempt to peddle the ‘both sides are evil’ narrative even though the AU@Draenei are not and have never actually been part of the Alliance, it’s just bad fucking writing, etc. It is an awful decision for all those reasons listed.

I have seen one that doesn’t work, though, and it’s been written a number of different ways:

“Draenei don’t/can’t work as oppressors because they’ve always been oppressed.”

“Draenei are victim-coded, so making them evil is wrong.”

“I can’t/don’t feel sorry for the Mag’har because they treated the Draenei so horribly in the past.”

It all basically boils down to this: Draenei, as villains, are impossible. Frankly, I don’t buy it.

“Draenei don’t/can’t work as oppressors because they’ve always been oppressed.”

Being oppressed or conquered in the past, whether as an individual or a group, doesn’t prevent an individual or a group from being oppressors or conquerors in the future. There’s no Ron Swanson-style card they get to hold up that says “I can do what I want.” What it does mean is that, having been treated in this awful way, they should know better than to turn around and do it to someone else. Unfortunately, you can look at the entire history of Azeroth to see how that lesson’s taken hold in others - or hasn’t, in most cases.

To the more severe version of the idea, that Draenei can’t be oppressors - that they are physically and morally incapable of the act on an objective scale, no matter the actual results of their actions - because of how they’ve been treated in the past, I also say bollocks. The ability to dominate and conquer is directly related to the power wielded by a person/faction; when we left AU!Draenor at the end of Warlords, the AU!Draenei were still on the back-foot (back-hoof?), but when we come back to AU!Draenor, even though we don’t have exact specifics yet, we can infer that they’ve grown in size and strength enough not just to challenge the Mag’har, but to become the dominant species/faction on the planet.

Whatever power of the Mag’har/Iron Horde wielded in the past, it’s now passed to the AU!Draenei. They have the power, and they’re happily using it to convert, enslave, and wipe out the Mag’har. When a faction starts outnumbering and enslaving other races, they don’t get to hold onto that ‘oppressed’ title. As Garrosh Hellscream himself said:

“Draenei are victim-coded, so making them evil is wrong.” 

This variation holds the most water for me, although I’d still argue it’s inaccurate. Is turning the AU!Draenei ‘evil’ morally wrong? No. Is it distasteful? Arguably. Is it a poor idea at this point in World of Warcraft’s story? Absolutely.

To a certain extent, I think I see what Blizzard is attempting to do: they’re pulling an ‘Arthas,’ showcasing how dire a threat is by showing that even the best and brightest can be turned into moustache-twirling villains by its influence. I think that Blizzard hopes that in doing so, not only will they add a huge amount of weight to Xe’ra’s actions in Legion, they’ll also be adding a huge amount of weight to the concept that the Light can be just as dangerous as the Void, which has, up until the Xe’ra stuff, seemed more like trite ‘all things in moderation’ philosophy than something concrete.

Xe’ra’s extremist approach was easy enough to pass off as a fluke for a number of reasons: because of existing in a fragmented state for so long, her sanity was questionable (wow, another insane female character, real original Blizz), she was ancient beyond reckoning, coming from a time and place far divorced from Azeroth (and Azerothian ideas about good and evil), etc. Xe’ra was really the first true instance of a Light-aligned character doing some really questionable stuff in the name of the Light; there have been other characters in similar circumstances (Arthas, the Scarlet Crusade, etc.) but all of those were shown to be ultimately under the control or direction of more nefarious forces. There’s no question what Xe’ra is up to. Xe’ra can’t be discounted as a rogue agent anymore. She isn’t the exception, she’s the harbinger, and the AU!Draenei (and potentially more characters in the future) are what she is heralding.

As to whether turning a ‘victim-coded’ race into conquerors is ‘wrong’...I guess I don’t even really understand that concept, that once a race/faction has been established as more likely to give ground than hold or take, then they’ll never, ever do anything but that, and that changing or reversing that behavior is morally incorrect on the behalf of the writers. Honestly, I addressed most of that in the first section. Yes, the Draenei have been shown to be naturally peaceful, and retreating from a fight or attempting to negotiate is their first instinct. However, they’ve also been shown to be easily swayed to drastic action when their faith is appealed to, something both Sargeras and K’ure took advantage of in the past, though for different reasons. A running theme in the Warcraft games is how absolute power corrupts, and there’s no good reason why any faction should be immune from that, no matter what they’ve been through. Dealing with shit in the past earns you nothing on a cosmic scale, which the World of Warcraft writers seem to enjoy reminding us a lot of lately.

That still doesn’t make the decision to have the AU!Draenei go Crusades on Draenor any better. It’s certainly in poor taste. The people of AU!Draenor got about as happy an ending as World of Warcraft affords: the bad guys were defeated, and everybody was pledged to a brighter future because, down at brass tacks, that’s what they all wanted. Then we come back years later - from the clues in the broadcast text, I’m assuming the Mag’har scenario takes place about 20-30 years after the events of Warlords - and find that literally everything is ruined. Nothing the players did really mattered at all; even though the Legion is no longer in the picture, Draenor is still in the hands of tyrants, it’s just religious fanatics instead of savage warriors this time. Who knows what’s happened to the Arakkoa. They were probably first on the AU!Draenei’s ‘to-smite’ list. It’s such an absolutely bitter pill that it almost defies belief. I joked about it in a post a while back, but Blizzard really did make Warlords somehow worse.

“I can’t/don’t feel sorry for the Mag’har because they treated the Draenei so horribly in the past.”

I call this the ‘Killmonger problem,’ because the folks who feel this way don’t assign an intrinsic negative value to certain actions/practices, but rather base their approval of those actions/practices purely on who’s performing them. In other words, they don’t have a problem with objectively evil actions like conquering and/or enslaving, but only as long as they’re the ones doing it or it’s happening to someone they don’t like.

Because the Mag’har were awful to the AU!Draenei in the past, there’s a tacit approval on some of the players’ parts of the idea that now the AU!Draenei should be able to be as awful as they want to the Mag’har. That’s not a perspective concerned with justice, but with vengeance, with ‘getting even.’ I’m not denying that the Iron Horde did some heinous things in the past, but visiting those horrors back on them does nothing but continue the cycle of violence.

Look, if the writers fail to elicit sympathy for the Mag’har, that’s partially on them. The way they’ve botched this entire thing, I’m not surprised. I’m having a hard time myself, although I suspect that’s mostly because I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the AU!Draenei could’ve possibly gone this bad in the first place. But I think the whole scenario also challenges us as an audience to look at this once completely sympathetic faction and what they’re doing now, and ask ourselves “Am I okay/not okay with this, and why? Am I getting a vicarious thrill out of seeing Draenei finally beat some Orc ass after years and years of oppression?” If the answer is yes, then own it, but don’t pretend like you’ve got the moral high ground to criticize story direction when you’re the one condoning or at least complicit with the faction that’s killing people for worshiping the wrong god. Glass houses and all that.

There is one more variation I’ve seen - not listed above - that explicitly has to do with how certain races in World of Warcraft are tied to real world equivalents, but that’s a complete can of worms that’s not really ever worth opening. Once we start talking about how certain factions are (insert race/religion)-coded, we project biases and opinions from the real world onto situations and people in completely different contexts, and we start debating about both as if they’re one, and they’re really not. Every race and faction in WoW is a mishmash of influences from multiple cultures, and trying to superimpose real world history over a fictional universe that exists as such leads directly to The Yawning, Dark Cavern That Nothing Good Ever Comes Out Of.

Sorry if this entire post has come off as completely bonkers. I’ve been drafting and rewriting it over the course of a couple of days, so I know it’s not the most coherent thing in the world, but, for whatever reason, whenever I saw justifications like this for hating on the Mag’har scenario, it just really ground my gears. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the direction that Blizzard has chosen to go with AU!Draenei, but I also feel pretty strongly that there are valid, logical reasons for disliking something, and then there’s just pseudo-socio-political nonsense. Feels kind of like people giving a politician a hard time about his/her looks or clothing choices when they're an abhorrent human being with no morals and terrible politics. If you're gonna go after a problem, go after it for the right reasons.

[armsinthewronghands]

Ron Edwards Making No Sense

https://plus.google.com/u/0/110790893064742233179/posts/JJj6ow3fEX5

Wayne Snyder Shared privately  -  Aug 18, 2015

Simon Bisley, 1997

(NOTE FOR THE TRANSCRIPT: The post consisted of a Simon Bisley painting)

43 Ron Edwards's profile photoMike Evans's profile photoMichael Moscrip's profile photoRichard Grenville's profile photo 84 comments

Richard GrenvilleAug 18, 2015+4 5 4

If I were in my bikini and bird mask ensemble I would not like to be in that position under all those razor-sharp spider parts, is all I'm saying. 

Richard GrenvilleAug 18, 2015

+Jeremy Duncan #startingequipment for Oriax?

Asia PickleAug 18, 2015

I do like his stuff. You ever seen that TV show Spaced?

Ron EdwardsAug 18, 2015

plus for audacity, but yeesh, Simon, you get the big bucks, try some figure drawing

Zak SmithAug 18, 2015+5 6 5

That is a baffling comment +Ron Edwards. I don't know if you mean to have a conversation about art here but techmastery snark against Simon Bisley is about as misplaced as taking Aretha Franklin to task for not knowing how to sing. Any distortions of naturalistic anatomy in Bisley are chosen stylistic effects.

Rafael ChandlerAug 18, 2015+3 4 3

Sweet. Love the bird-girl. Thinking she might not be human -- look at them fingers.

Ron EdwardsAug 18, 2015+3 4 3

+Zak Smith Ohhhh, I have been schooled now. I'm saying this as someone who likes you: fuck off, Zak. Can't a person post anything without you comin' in as Master Scold? Do you own art? All of it, or just Bisley? Can you not face being baffled, as you call it? Or that a person can post something wrong, like really wrong horribly OMG wrong, and the world won't collapse if you don't correct it?

And no, this isn't a debate. I don't like Bisley so much, so what, it's not going to change the world.

People knuckle under to you for one reason: because they're scared of being vilified Limbaugh-wise. You've got the moral high ground, the professional success, the accolades, and a life you can be proud of. Any reason you have to be a bully?

Answer me that before you crack down on me again.

Zak SmithAug 18, 2015+1 2 1

1. There's a difference between "I don't like Bisley" (statement of opinion, unarguable) And "Bisley lacks technical ability" (assertion of fact, arguable) and the second is so far as I can tell, simply misinformation. I have a moral obligation to correct it if I see it because you don't want people acting on bad information. 2.How are the rest of us supposed to know which of your many public opinions you want to discuss and which one we'll be attacked for discussing? You snarked at Simon Bisley (he didn't attack you), I neutrally commented that I don't think that was warranted, now you're biting my head off? 3. If you didn't want to talk about your opinion, why'd you say it where other people could read it? 4. How can a person with no coercive power over you be "bullying"? +Ron Edwards +Mike Davison 

David BaityAug 18, 2015

+Zak Smith lmfao

Victor Garrison (headspice)Aug 18, 2015+1 2 1

+Rafael Chandler​, Dude, what are you? A "fingers man"?

Ron EdwardsAug 18, 2015+1 2 1

+Zak Smith You hold and openly wield immense coercive power. You are a master of single-messaging people about whom they plus or not-plus, of posting public messages to shame, and of leveraging your deserved reputation as a great artist and contributor to the hobby for weight in conversations. You are widely feared and operate as a chilling agent throughout many discussions in which your tangible interests are not involved. You may intend this or you may not; I am not speaking to that. But either way, do not play "Li'l ol' me."

I won't be looking at this thread again until tomorrow, in case that interests anyone.

Zak SmithAug 18, 2015+1 2 1

Which one of these "powers" is forbidden from Mere Normal Men? "A master of single-messaging"? That isn't a magic spell, Ron, you can do that, too. +Ron Edwards You just type. As for "leveraging my reputation"--you can't simultaneously claim someone has a deserved reputation for contributions in a field and then claim that their influence is unfair . Either the reputation is deserved and so they should be influential. Or it isn't and they shouldn't.

Tony DemetriouAug 18, 2015+2 3 2

I love Bisley, and his style. This is pretty representative of my ideal goal, if I could magically make art in any style I choose.

The distorted anatomy is perfect, in the same way that I enjoy Disney animation - the choices of how to stylize or not to stylize it gives so much character to the piece. And I'm lucky that the choices Bisley makes are the ones I find appealing.

And those colours!

+Ron Edwards Um, not intending to dogpile or anything. I totally get why you might not like this :) - But I can't agree with the "figure drawing" comment, to my eye he clearly has mastered figure drawing, and now is deciding which rules to break. That's what I love most about this piece!

So when I see you criticize his anatomy, I assume that we've got a mismatch when it comes to what we enjoy about the stylizations.

I say this because in other posts you've made, you've linked to comics and referenced art with much weaker figure drawing than this without commenting on the lack of technical skills. While that might not mean anything, is it just that you find these particular ones to be ugly?

Joshua BlackketterAug 18, 2015

.

David Lewis JohnsonAug 18, 2015

.

Ron EdwardsAug 19, 2015

A new day, and two fallacies await.

1. The "magic spell" is classic deflection. I said nothing of who can and cannot do those things. Single-messaging is obviously available to everyone; . The question is why you do them, which you are failing to answer.

2. Deserved reputation in doing a thing, in this case art, is not a moral obligation (your term) to do some other thing. Especially if that other thing is itself morally unsound.

These were also posted as provocation: I said I wouldn't be looking at the thread again until today, which I didn't. You posted immediately with fallacy statements, which you're not dumb enough to believe are valid. I think you know well a person can barely if ever resist replying to such things. Then you can play "ah ha you were too looking." You caught me with that once, and that dog hunts no more.

I don't think you are posting in good social or intellectual faith. What frustrates me is that you usually do post in good faith, and with points I generally value - until someone flips your Scold Switch, and you launch into these modes of attack which have long passed their high-school sell-date. They're beneath you. Yes, anyone can do them, and again: why would you?

One more check-in tomorrow to see if you answer this time. Then I'm done.

Zak SmithAug 19, 2015+1 2 1

+Ron Edwards *People don't have ideas different than yours just to piss you off, Ron* You assume bad faith: this is not good. - 1. It isn't "Deflection"--Bullying by definition requires the bully have abilities the target does not. I cannot bully you as I possess no such powers. - 1b.  As for why I'd single-message someone: Because sometimes going "Dude do you know what's going on in that thread?" would derail a public thread so you send them a private message. Right now I genuinely don't know why you're attacking me or why anyone of good conscience would join in with you. I need facts. So I asked. - 2. Everybody has a moral obligation to fact-check stuff that's discussed. Period. You (or anyone else) say an inaccurate thing, it needs to get fact-checked. "I don't like Simon Bisley" requires no comment. "Simon Bisley lacks technical ability" requires a fact-check, just like "girls don't play D&D" or "game have to look like textbooks" or any other incorrect fact I come on here and check. - 2b. I say and believe things you disagree with  because I believe they're true, not out of a sadistic desire to upset you. (This probably goes for a lot of people.) I, of course, never post fallacies and don't do so in order to "provoke" people. Provoking you achieves nothing. It is a bizarre and paranoid conspiracy theory to assume I someone get some special cookie for making you (or anyone else) mad. Like what's my supposed motive in your worldview? I didn't wake up hating Simon Bisley just as much as you yesterday and suddenly pretend to think he had technical skill just because I thought it would upset Ron Edwards! And what a joy upsetting Ron Edwards is? Right? Oh I am so glad I got to do this! What glee  I have reaped from manufacturing this false opinion about my own profession simply in order to upset one random man! That would be like you pretending bats are made of goat cheese in order to piss off a biologist you don't like. Evidence I liked Bisley before today is not thin on the ground, nor is evidence that I fact-check people when they get things wrong. I would hope, as a biologist, you'd think fact-checking bullshit about your area of study is an end in itself . I feel the same way about art. When you make false  accusations and I counter them you are not the only audience for fact-checks I may do to those false accusations. Every single person who might ever read since the beginning of time needs to know you aren't telling the truth, not just you. Now:  The person making a claim has the burden of proof--if you are claiming I am lying prove that now.

Wayne SnyderAug 19, 2015+3 4 3

That's some pretty funny shit right there. This could have been one of those art posts where folks comment, "Cool." Or "Awesome!" But ya'll have brought the comments bar up a notch to down right entertaining. To bad you can't hear me slow clapping.

Wayne SnyderAug 19, 2015+2 3 2

But I must admit, I'm a bit sad it turned out to be an argument about arguing instead of an art criticism debate.

Tony DemetriouAug 19, 2015

Alas - the internet!

Zak SmithAug 19, 2015+2 3 2

+Wayne Snyder Would be happy to have the art criticism debate if there was someone who wanted to throw down on the other side. But that never really does happen.

Tony DemetriouAug 19, 2015

I don't know if anyone here has the technical chops to have that debate, +Zak Smith ?

Zak SmithAug 19, 2015+1 2 1

The whole talkin'-RPGs business relies on articulate amateurism +Tony Demetriou, if everybody here can say why they don't like Palladium or Pathfinder or Prometheus, they can, in theory, say why they think a painting fails. They may not be able to refer to personal experience painting, but I am not going to pull rank here and claim you need an MFA to critique a picture.

Tony DemetriouYesterday 12:22 AM

I kinda feel that, having played 2-10 hours of RPGs per week for a couple of decades now, I can speak as an expert on the topic (while recognizing there are many other experts)

With pictures, I can talk about what I like. But I don't really know how to engage in a criticism debate. Willing to try, of course! Especially since I learn so much by a good debate :)

Soooo....

What's with Bisley's neon colours? I love them, but my first impression when looking at this picture is a mess of brightness. That seems to be the opposite of when I look at, say, Franzetta who tends to use one dominant colour for the whole picture.

Is that a failing on Bisley's part, or just a stylistic preference? I love the colours, but could it have been possible to have made a picture like this, without the first impression being such a mess? Maybe better separation of them, rather than similar tones on overlapping objects?

I also find he often muddies the picture with unnecessary detail - like this picture has a great silhouette, and he pulls the two humans out of the background by making them brighter than the background. But the spider seems like it's a mess. What's with those skulls beneath its legs, that are the same colour as the legs, and the same brightness and contrast? It forces my eye to do work to figure out what I'm looking at. It doesn't "lead the eye" around the picture very well.

I'm a fan of both headdresses, but the material on the guy's one seems off - it looks like it's meant to be feathers, but to me it looks like some sort of white cardboard. The girl's headdress feathers look soft, which is what I'd expect from the guy's headdress too.

And the spider's abdomen kinda looks half finished? It looks like there's the brown from the background drawn over it. Or is that some sort of green in the background and not an abdomen? I dunno. I don't like it!

... but these are my nitpicks - as a whole image, I adore it!

Zak SmithYesterday 2:21 AM

I don't understand +Tony Demetriou , you have looked at far more pictures in your life than played games, why aren't you an expert on that, too?

Tony DemetriouYesterday 3:16 AM

Because of my nature.

I've mentally broken down and analysed what makes RPGs "work" and created my own, which tests my theories.

I've looked at many pictures, but until relatively recently (maybe 5 years ago?) I haven't been engaging with it in the same way. I'm trying to learn to draw, and it's given me a new perspective on art - I'm noticing things that I was never aware of before. My understanding of form and structure and linework is so much advanced just from this hobbyist learning - and I'm sure that once I go further I'll have similar gains with my understanding of tone, colour etc. once I start learning how to apply that too. So I "know how much I don't know" if that makes sense?

Maybe it's just how I learn - I very much "learn by doing", which explains why I'm more comfortable considering myself an expert on things that I make or do, rather than things I mostly observed.

That said - in the post above, I've given my criticisms of this picture. Do you agree or disagree with them, or have any comments of your own?

Zak SmithYesterday 3:26 AM+1 2 1

It can't be just you, as nearly every single intelligent person not trained inthe field is terrified of rendering an attempt at an intelligent opinion of a piece of art. As if it were somehow 1000 times more complex than a movie (which every person has opinions on). As for your criticisms: perhaps what they lack is a sufficient counterexample--like who does right the things you guess possibly he did wrong ? 

Tony DemetriouYesterday 3:39 AM

Good point. I have no problem at all discussing movies, and the artistry involved. Maybe it's some sort of assumed-complexity due to art criticism being viewed as some elite field?

Hmm, a counterexample - I can absolutely give examples of people who do it differently but I don't know if that means they're doing it right.

- For the bright colours, a lot of cartoons and 3D animation uses bright colours without the first impression being so confused. The artwork isn't nearly as good (in my opinion), but this picture is also brightly coloured, while still "reading" easily at first glance: http://www.wisdomswebzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Tangled.jpg

I suspect it's because, although there are bright colours, it's still a pretty limited palette - mostly blue and purple. It also keeps the characters silhouetted by dressing Flynn in darker colours and with dark hair against the white horse, and putting the darker blue behind the horse.

Rembrant's The Night Watchman is a great example of a very busy picture with a lot of detail, where the detail doesn't muddy the picture (although it makes me feel like I've forgotten my glasses...) https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/the-night-watchman/

If Bisley had done something similar around the spider & figures it might have helped give it a clearer shape, and stopped the spider being such a mess?

For the headdress - I think Bisley's own picture is the best example of doing it "right" - the woman's headdress feathers look great, the man's looks like cardboard. I think he should have softened the edges of the man's feathers.

For the spider's abdomen... uh, it just looks half finished to me. I don't think that needs a comparison? Although there certainly are other pictures that use that same effect.

Zak SmithYesterday 3:46 AM

+Tony Demetriou "I can absolutely give examples of people who do it differently but I don't know if that means they're doing it right." Well if you like it they're doing it right and if you don't they' aren't

Wayne SnyderYesterday 3:55 AM+2 3 2

Bisley is known for his bizarre pallette choices. I know he often used automotive paint in his illustrations. He's riffing off Frazettas choices, but taking it up a notch. Bisley is a heavy metal painter. He is painting visual representations of heavy metal music for the covers of a magazine called heavy metal. So the subject matter is over the top brutality and horror and sexuality. If you removed the spider and the warhammer from this piece it would just be pornography. The beef cake warrior's bulging junk is aimed directly at the sorceress's bulging junk and the course of image is obvious. But it is both, it is sex and violence in a pure cartoon proportioned form. It is the teenage mind and that is who is supposed to buy the magazine this is a cover for. I don't know why he put that skull mess in the center. I suspect without it the composition would be lopsided. Maybe it just wasn't "metal" enough for the Biz, so he added the skulls. It may have even been the choice of a art director and the Biz just wanted to get it out the door and get paid. But I doubt that. 

Zak SmithYesterday 4:05 AM+3 4 3

I think "when in doubt skulls" is a pretty good creative default

Richard GrenvilleYesterday 5:37 AM+3 4 3

Regarding people's reticence about art crit, I guess I'll state the obvious to get it out there: there is a whole industry of art critics, which was at some stage dedicated to placing painting and sculpture (although not really printmaking) in a special separate category elevated above the vulgar horde - to promoting the value of art as a vital endeavour in which humans aspired to the level of gods. And even if critics haven't done much of this in the past couple of generations, some of those old attitudes still linger on, especially in primary schools which tend to be the last refuge of ancient pedagogical ideas.* And those old values still inform the economics of the art market (the aura of the art object, the figure of the artist as a conduit into some extraordinary other world). So I suspect people might be reticent to talk about paintings partly because they're haunted by the snooty ghost of e.g. Vasari or Jacob Burckhardt, refracted through a thousand indirect sources, telling them there is something spiritual and ineffable in there which is not for the likes of them. The fact that this picture in particular is not in the (socioeconomic) category elevated by Vasari or Burkhardt but makes use of its gestures probably makes things worse, not better.

In contrast, AIUI in the early days of film there were conscious efforts made by auteur directors on one hand and populist producers on the other either to place the medium firmly in the elevated sphere of Art or to rescue it from that ivory tower and make it democratic, for the people. Perhaps the economic possibilities of mass-market film just blew away the arguments on the high art side. Perhaps the costs of commercial film production spiraled out of the hands of individual directors making their individual artistic statements and left only oligarchical demagogues, reliant on sometimes-subversive film-making experts.

* and some innovative ones too, I'm not dissing early education here.

Ron EdwardsYesterday 8:38 AM

+Zak Smith You're not hitting anything with that reply. I never said you were doing this vindictively to upset me personally as me. I'm saying you use rhetorical and social tricks to marginalize people when they post things that .. whatever it is those things do that prompts it. It fits into your own definition of bullying - because using techniques not only that others don't have, but that they won't use, counts in that definition. You said my post "baffled" you, yeah, well it baffles me that a person of your qualities and insights would do these things.

You're saying Bisley's distortions serve his (an) artistic purpose. You can just say so. You don't have to pursue anyone who plusses me saying something else. You don't have to claim "moral obligation" to put me or anyone else down, with chilling and silencing techniques. It's this pious scolding and shaming I'm talking about. Not difference of views about the artist - in fact, if you'd asked in a real way, you'd have found that I like the way Bisley does it most of the time, not so much in this picture this time. I did not say "Bisley can't draw bodies and can never draw bodies and never did." That is your trip, you brought it in, and all your high-minded fact-checking claim to being the intellectual in the room is based on that alone. You revved up your moral fires for nothing.

All of the potential for easy contrast of posts, no status issues, open to the reader to evaluate or ignore, is gone when you descend with your blazing moral obligation in play. You talk about assuming things? You assumed vast tracts of attitude, position, and intention in my post, so hard you "saw" them. You've created an entertainment environment where people can enjoy you putting someone down. That's bullying.

Daily check-in tomorrow. It is remotely possible that this could be a worthwhile conversation.

Zak SmithYesterday 9:04 AM

+Richard Grenville Sure, but just because someone is telling you to stay in your class and let them handle the heavy lifting, why would you let them?

Zak SmithYesterday 9:18 AM

+Ron Edwards 1. Why would I want to marginalize you? Your claim has no motive. 2. Asking people why their friends or allies are being dicks isn't a "trick". It's a straightforward way of dealing with bad behavior. 3. No definition (including mine) of bullying includes "don't use techniques that are totally legit and make sense and that are designed to make the person making a false accusation stop" which is what these "techniques" were doing. 4. You're using a begging-the-question argument "What you did is obviously motivated by badness because it uses techniques that are bad and those techniques are bad because they are motivated by bad" 5. "You're saying Bisley's distortions serve his (an) artistic purpose. You can just say so. You don't have to pursue anyone who plusses me saying something else." I didn't do that. I only talked toone other person--Mike Davison--once you called me "bullying" because that is an insane charge. If you call me bullying--you are lying. If someone I consider a friend plusses that lie--I must address that with my friend. Period. Anything else would be irresponsible on my part. Also, in my original comments to you I didn't say the distortions "served an artistic purpose" I said he wanted them to serve an artistic purpose , which is different, in case you didn't know that, which your joke (implying the distortions were mistakes) seemed to indicate. 5. "You don't have to claim "moral obligation" to put me or anyone else down," I didn't "put you down" I fact-checked you. You asserted Bisley's distortions were down to not knowing how to draw accurately (rather than choice).This is not subjective--his distortions may be (subjectively) undesirable but they are (objectively) not "because he doesn't know any better". Therefore you said something objectively inaccurate in a semi-public space . Anyone who knew you had said this and knew the truth would have an obligation to point out the fact-checking error. 6. "in fact, if you'd asked in a real way,..." Once you express yourself in the form of a snarky attack, you don't then get to demand benefit-of-the-doubt from someone defending your target. Bisley did not begin a conversation by making fun of you . You attacked Bisley. I defended him. You then attacked me. 7. ". I did not say "Bisley can't draw bodies and can never draw bodies and never did."" No, you just made a joke to that effect at his expense and then accused me of bullying instead of going "Oh, sorry, that's not what I meant, let's sort this out" 8. "You assumed vast tracts of..." I assumed nothing. I interpreted that you made a snarky joke at Bisley's expense.  *I can only be accused of assuming if you are claiming your comment was not a snarky joke at Bisley's expense.* You got a reasonable response to that directed not just at you, but to any naive 3rd party who doesn't knowmuch about art who might be reading (naive viewers might take your joke at face value and they need to be disabused of that and know the artist you're attacking can actually identify body parts and where they go). 9. " You've created an entertainment environment where people can enjoy you putting someone down. " I wasn't putting you down, I was fact-checking you. If someone enjoys that outside of some pre-existing reasont o dislike you, they are a total asshole. If someone sees that as important and necessary, they are correct.

Richard GrenvilleYesterday 9:48 AM+2 3 2

just because someone is telling you to stay in your class and let them handle the heavy lifting, why would you let them?

this seems like it might also have some bearing on your conversation with Ron - my guess is that a lot of people feel discouraged in talking about art the same way they would feel discouraged in discussing engineering, only even more so. On one hand, they feel ignorant about what they imagine is a specialized field of knowledge (like engineering). But also they have a sense that they might trip off some kind of lurking art trap and get laughed at by the cognoscenti for their ignorance or something, as if they'd used the wrong fork at a gala dinner.

Class anxiety may be silly and useless but it's real for lots of people and harder to negotiate than ever now that it no longer runs in simple hegemonic directions. 

...I'm not saying that Ron is suffering from class anxiety. Just realised I didn't leave that clear. 

Zak SmithYesterday 9:53 AM+1 2 1

Use whatever fork. Know why you made that decision. Speak with the courage of your convictions if someone gives you static about it.

Victor Garrison (headspice)Yesterday 9:54 AM+2 3 2

My only criticism of this piece is: why did he paint such awesomely proportioned derriere and legs and stick those spooky, fucking spindly assed fingers on her hand?!?!?

I mean as far as drawing in your gaze, it's obvious Biz intentionally wanted her ass to be seen first. I say this not because I'm a perv (tho I won't deny that charge) but because it's pretty much center and hi-lighted more brightly than anything else. Your gaze moves from there over to his crotch, up his breast plate, to his face and then -- OH SHIT!-- to the monster. I like how he lures you in with submissive sexuality, brings you further along with brute sexuality, then BAM knocks you in the head with a hideous creature. Nice work, nice work.

Rafael ChandlerYesterday 9:55 AM

+Victor Garrison He gave her fingers like that so you could tell your friends, "Hey, man, she gave me her digits." <rimshot>

Richard GrenvilleYesterday 10:12 AM+1 2 1

for me it's a tangle of long golden-brown forms that could be a tree root or something, and then I see a butt, and then the rest kinda unmasks slowly. 

Zak SmithYesterday 10:16 AM+1 2 1

The greens of the spider come on before anything else for me

Victor Garrison (headspice)Yesterday 10:28 AM+1 2 1

+S Robertson , If you're telling a linear story, yeah, that's the route to take. But it seems to me that Bisley is going for a visceral "EWWW" reaction. It's a dark piece, so much so, that IMO, it almost looks like a black velvet painting technique was used. The bird woman's butt is the brightest spot in the painting, which is a signal to start viewing there. Especially since that spot seems to be the counterbalance to the large, dark negative space at the top of the painting. The next closest bright spot is the cod piece, then the breast plate, then the helmet, and that's when I made out the spider creature. IDK, that's just the way I encountered it, not as a story, but as an....oh shit, MONSTER! kinda thing.

Victor Garrison (headspice)Yesterday 10:32 AM

+Zak Smith  Damn, I didn't realize that green was the spider. Seriously, I thought it was shrubbery and had no clue wtf he stuck that in a dungeon.

Justice PlattYesterday 10:45 AM+1 2 1

Good to see that Zak knows what Ron said better than Ron does.  There is absolutely no contradiction between the belief that Bisley chose not to do good figure drawing for whatever reason and RE's comment.

Victor Garrison (headspice)Yesterday 10:57 AM+1 2 1

+Rafael Chandler​​, I wanna say I "dig it", but I'm reaching, yet I can't grasp it.... :)

Zak SmithYesterday 2:06 PM

+Justice Platt How do you interpret: "yeesh, Simon, you get the big bucks, try some figure drawing" ?

Justice PlattYesterday 2:14 PM+1 2 1

+Zak Smith , three points:

1)There is no logical contradiction between saying that and believing the artist capable of figure drawing.

2)The guy who said it says that' he did not in fact assert that Bisley cannot draw bodies.

3)It is entirely plausible that he meant to point to the lack of use of figure drawing skills.  Example: The Packers go 3 & out on consecutive off-tackle runs.  I say "Yeesh, Rodgers, you get the big bucks, try some passing" in whatever tone of voice you like.  I clearly mean, as a reasonably informed football fan, that the Packers are making a strategic blunder by not using Rodgers' passing skills.  I think the situation is exactly analogous for RE as a comic fan.

So, yeah, you seem to have jumped to conclusions about his asserting Bisley's lack of skill.

Zak SmithYesterday 2:23 PM

+Justice Platt Are you saying you think the comment was intended to be a responsible and constructive comment rather than (at best) vague snark?

Justice PlattYesterday 2:28 PM+1 2 1

I make no claims to being able to read RE's mind. He speaks for himself well.   I'm saying that your blanket statement that RE asserted that Bisley has no skill is false on logical grounds, on the grounds of the testimony of the author, and on the grounds that there exists a strongly plausible alternate interpretation.  Is any of this not true?

Zak SmithYesterday 2:30 PM

+Justice Platt I suggest only that RE;s comment was snarky and negative enough that my initial comment was necessary to clarify the facts. His subsequent comments could have been "Oh, that's not what I mean" and I'd go "Oh, ok" But instead he went "YOU CLARIFIED AFTER MY SNARKY COMMENT! YOU ARE BULLYING ME!" at which point he passed from "requiring clarification" to simply "wrong and insane"

Justice PlattYesterday 2:36 PM+1 2 1

+Zak Smith , bullshit.  You have repeated a false thing-that RE asserted that Bisley has no skill in figure drawing-multiple times, even after clarification from the author.  In no way did RE's reaction force you to do that, and blaming him for it is ridiculous.

Zak SmithYesterday 2:41 PM

+Justice Platt If he disagrees with that assertion, then he may say that and I will have no choice but to take him at his word. It does't retroactively mean: -My initial clarifying comment was in any way insulting or unnecessary (as his  initial comment was, at best, ambiguous and, at best, still insulting snark) and -any of his later statements were in any way ok, since they contain crazy false accusations

Justice PlattYesterday 2:53 PM

+Zak Smith ,  the issue is not RE and the terrible things he allegedly  forced you to do.  You are not telling the truth about what he said. My 1st & 3rd points from my comment above at 4:14 applied before you replied, and you jumped to the conclusion that he must be asserting that Bisley had no skill.  Further, it is a rather insulting assumption that a lifelong, voracious comics reader like RE has no awareness of Bisley's work & skill.

Zak SmithYesterday 2:56 PM

+Justice Platt If Ron feels that I have misrepresented his position, he can say so. My first comment is wholly justified because it was there to clarify the situation after his snark. My subsequent comments were necessary to to establish that he was not telling the truth about bullying.

Justice PlattYesterday 3:09 PM

+Zak Smith , textual evidence is what it is.  Did you in fact jump to conclusions and make false statements about what RE asserted or not?  Were those conclusions based on the insulting assumption that RE was unaware of Bisley's skill or not?  If the answer to any of these is no, which of my three points is untrue?

Zak SmithYesterday 3:48 PM

+Justice Platt I already spoke to this: " If Ron feels that I have misrepresented his position, he can say so. (Neither of us know what he meant.) My first comment is wholly justified because it was there to clarify the situation after his snark. My subsequent comments were necessary to to establish that he was not telling the truth about bullying. "

Justice PlattYesterday 4:12 PM

More bullshit.  Your entire justification for ongoing intervention has been that you need (in fact have a moral obligation) to correct RE's error of fact-an error of fact that you made up.  RE points out to you that you did so, and you repeat it yet again!  In bold even!    

As far as your subsequent statements go, this is more "Ron made me do it" nonsense.  Simply put, you can take issue with someone's tone, or with someone's attribution to you of bullying behavior, without insisting that your tendentious interpretation of his statement is utterly correct. You are perfectly aware of this.

So, do you believe that RE's statement must and can only mean that Bisley lacks technical skill or not?  If not, will you retract those parts of your statements in which you definitively, unambiguously assert that this is the case? .   And, yes, this is important.  There is at least one person on the internet with a strong propensity to twist any statements by RE that can be twisted and attack RE with them.   The person I have in mind also clearly values your opinion, and would be happy to have fodder for his horseshit that he can present as approved by you.  Whether or not there is an analogy to your own situation is up to you.

Zak SmithYesterday 4:21 PM+1 2 1

+Justice Platt " do you believe that RE's statement must and can only mean that Bisley lacks technical skill or not? " I do not know what it means, I only know what: -I think it implied and -that Ron, instead of clarifying, chose to attack me " If not, will you retract those parts of your statements in which you definitively, unambiguously assert that this is the case?" If Ron says this isn't what he meant, then he can say that, at which point I will go "ok, then that's clear now" but all of my actions remained justified: His first statement morally required that I (or someone) clarify--as it strongly implied Bisley didn't know how to draw. My later statements were likewise, *morally required* because Ron falsely claimed he was being bullied.

Justice PlattYesterday 4:35 PM

+Zak Smith , a man who does not know what a statement means does not repeatedly, confidently, unambiguously, in bold offer an interpretation of that statement, nor does he present it as a definite error of fact someone made, nor does he assert that he has a "moral obligation" to correct it.   Why are you so reluctant to admit that you jumped to conclusions?

And again, this "If Ron chooses to correct me" horseshit doesn't wash.  Either you parsed his statement right, in which case I owe you an apology, or you did not, in which case you owe him an apology.

Zak SmithYesterday 4:38 PM

+Justice Platt How, pray tell, do we know if I correctly interpreted Ron's statement, psychopath?

Justice PlattYesterday 4:56 PM

+Zak Smith, either the author agrees with your interpretation or there is no plausible alternate interpretation.  Pretty simple.  Neither is the case here.  You can answer my questions whenever you like.

Does you calling me a psychopath mean I'm officially on some list of trolls or RPG drama club members or whatever?  Can I have a membership card?

Zak SmithYesterday 5:03 PM

+Justice Platt "either the author agrees with your interpretation or there is no plausible alternate interpretation" YES. That's why we have to wait for Ron to get past addressing: -1. The minor moral crime of responding to a work of art by an artist who'd done nothing wrong with a snarky attack and -2. The major moral crime of accusing me of being a bully and then move on to -3. The minor and arguable possible crime of ignorance or incompetence of attempting to express a possibly-believed inaccurate view of Mr Bisley's working process ....before we can answer the question of just what interior mental space Ron's absolutely totally objectively shitty comment was meant to reflect. When and if he finally gets around to clarifying that, I'll address it. As for you: you are simply obviously a psychopath for being so worried about 3 after all the 1 and 2 going on and doing so with so much pointless swearing. It would be remiss if I didn't point it out, for the benefit of anyone who hadn't noticed and might considering collaborating with you on any projects or discussing anything with you.

Justice PlattYesterday 5:53 PM

+Zak Smith , how on earth can a comment that you admit you don't know the meaning of be "absolutely totally objectively shitty?"  And before you go to the "it was snarky" well, remember that my alternate interpretation turns the comment from "Hurr hurr Bisley can't draw" to "Bisley would have done well to exercise more figure drawing skills."  You appear to have admitted that my interpretation is at least plausible, so you;ll be wanting to make an actual argument about why that's "objectively shitty." Otherwise,  all you're really doing is tone policing RE, since, agree or disagree, that's a reasonably productive thing to say.

Also, we have both essentially been ignoring RE's 10:38 AM comment, in which he both specifically points out that he did not explicitly say that Bisley cannot draw, points out that you made assumptions (one of which I pointed out above as an insulting assumption) to get to that interpretation, and states that he generally likes Mr. Bisley's work.  All of this makes my interpretation substantially more plausible.

As to my concern with 3-I was under the impression that you agreed with me that smaller falsehoods in the service of "larger truths" was a bad thing.

Unnecessary swearing?  Never thought I'd see the day when you'd blanch at bad words explicitly directed at your ideas, but times do change.

Last, on the psychopath thing,  I look forward to seeing your compendium of "dumb things Justice has said."  Maybe you'll find some stuff I don't remember or whatever.  Little trip down Memory Lane.  I am disappointed by no membership card.

I don't, however, expect to see it soon.  Unlike RE, I have no real reputation in RPGs to lose, and my name, to the best of my knowledge, has never been mentioned in a thread I am not in.  That's not the case for RE. Agree or disagree with him, like his stuff or don't, he's been working very hard to write good games and think clearly about RPGs for quite a while.  This is a good & worthy thing.  Allowing distortions of his remarks to stand just gives him more nonsense to contend with, especially at the hands of the individual I referred to earlier, who clearly values your opinion, covets your influence, and craves your approval.

Zak SmithYesterday 5:56 PM

+Justice Platt "my alternate interpretation turns the comment from "Hurr hurr Bisley can't draw" to "Bisley would have done well to exercise more figure drawing skills."" Your translation inaccurately removes the snark, which is there regardless of whether you want to acknowledge it or not. And is still opinion expressed as if it were fact or advice expressed to someone who clearly chose otherwise, which is also inexcusable and does not lead to a good discussion. The helpful or informative form of the remark would be something like "I wish he showed off more of his figure drawing skill here". Most of your comments are unnecessary, you just need to wait for Ron to respond rather thant repeatedly trying to find new interpretations of his objectively dumb remark " Agree or disagree with him, like his stuff or don't, he's been working very hard..." Calling me a bully torpedoes any and all good intentions on his part and means his alleged accomplishments don't matter. He ceases to be a reliable voice immediately at that point and becomes a chew toy for the rest of his life unless he manages to apologize and there can be no real defense of him. Even if my interpretation of his remark in my first response was inaccurate, nothing licenses him to say that--it is evil.

Justice PlattYesterday 6:13 PM+1 2 1

+Zak Smith , you can do better than that.  One man's hateful snark is another's witty tone.  I found your initial response nastily condescending, but that's not an argument against you. It's just straightforward tone policing either way.

And, as far as opinion expressed as fact goes, come on.  Just silly.  



Zak SmithYesterday 6:21 PM

+Justice Platt "Witty snark" or "hateful snark" are still just snark at the artist, which makes you not A Respectable Helpful Voice In The RPG Scene it makes you The Comments. And the way you build a decent RPG community is not be ok with people acting like The Comments. The Tone was snark (not ok to make a negative comment without facts to back it up). The Content was implying inaccurate facts (likewise not ok). "Tone policing" is when you make an accurate criticism and get attacked for your tone. Ron made either: -an inaccurate criticism (which is wrong, regardless of tone) or -an opinion-as-fact criticism (which is wrong, regardless of tone) The internet SO doesn't need more opinion-as-fact or baseless snark.

Justice PlattYesterday 7:44 PM

+Zak Smith , my alternate interpretation, whether or not it is particularly incisive, is substantive.  Which, frankly, is the better standard-"accurate" kinda sucks, since how could we possibly ' whether or not a counterfactual criticism, like my reinterpretation, is accurate?  Do we have access to all the pictures Bisley could have drawn?

The opinion as fact thing is still silly.  Work harder.

I agree about elevating the tone of internet discussion to at least some degree.But notice, you've gone from a duty to correct any & all errors of fact to a duty to elevate the the tone, as judged & enforced by you.  

Which, given your earlier name-calling and ridiculous blue-stockingness about swearing, allows me only to say "Be the change," y'know?

Zak SmithYesterday 7:59 PM+1 2 1

+Justice Platt "The opinion as fact thing is still silly.  Work harder." This alone makes you wrong. The rest is icing after that. If you think the internet needs more "Kirk is just better than Picard" then you're not a person anybody else need to listen to. As for "being the change" you don't stop someone from robbing banks by quietly not robbing banks. You have to call out bad behavior or it will continue, as the entire RPG internet proves every day.

Justice PlattYesterday 8:03 PM

+Zak Smith , would repeatedly, unambiguously asserting that your somewhat implausible interpretation of someone's statement was absolutely true count as OAF?

Zak SmithYesterday 8:09 PM

+Justice Platt Only if they contest it. If I think a house is on fire that isn't because of taste it's because of what i thought was a true fact about the world (which is all any of us can do: draw conclusions from sensory data). A grown-up like Ron needs to know the difference between taste and fact right off, but everyone can take the facts in front of them and make an incorrect inference--there's no shame in that so long as it is investigated if it was insulting to the target. Since Ron's comment was a bad thing to say because represents all bad options: -"Bisley lacks technical facility (incorrect) -"Bisley doesn't lack tech facility but it's good to express personal distaste by pretending it does" (counterproductive and trolling) -"Bisley made a choice I don't like and I'm going to both obscure that it's a choice and obscure that it;s just a taste thing" (counterproductive and trolling) -"I'm gonna snark for mystery reasons" (counterproductive and trolling) ...my inference was not particularly insulting since all the options make Ron's statement bad

Tony DemetriouYesterday 8:19 PM

I also interpreted Ron's comment as implying Bisley can't draw figures well.

I can absolutely see how the comment could have been intended to imply that Bisley can draw figures well, and chose not to in this picture - but even so it was clearly snarky. By saying "try some figure drawing", in either interpretation, it's saying that he didn't do figure drawing in this image.

To me, the implication that he didn't do figure drawing in this image is objectively wrong - there are two figures in the picture with (although stylized) relatively realistic proportions, musculature, etc. - there is clearly figure drawing there, whether it's good or bad.

So, using your football metaphor, it'd be more akin to Rodgers regularly passing the ball, but failing to do it to your satisfaction. And then you make the comment about "Yeesh, Rodgers, you get the big bucks, try some passing"

So clearly snarky.

(But it doesn't bother me if Ron is snarky or not. Bisley isn't here on this thread, and isn't having his feelings hurt, so we don't need to defend him unless we believe that some tangible harm will come to him or others from this snark.)

I'm not convinced that Ron's comment was shitty or bad - but it was inaccurate, and I don't have a problem with someone disagreeing with a comment they believe to be inaccurate.

I was quite surprised by Ron's response - although Zak's comment can be read as condascending, the reply was more vitriolic than I expected. Especially as I've seen Ron handle other, more direct attacks, with grace. I'm assuming that is due to their history, rather than this thread itself. As such, hanging this disagreement on Ron's originating comment feels like everyone is talking around the actual issue*.

* Whatever that actual issue might be.

+Zak Smith - Although I recognize that you were using the word in a non-medical sense, if we're being technically correct, +Justice Platt is only a psychopath if he scores above 30 on the PCL-R checklist. http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hare-Psychopathy-Checklist.html

I dunno if he's likely to show up as a psychopath, as one of the primary traits is a lack of empathy, and Justice seems to be showing a lot of empathy towards Ron. (Although a psychopath might attempt to simulate that empathy as an excuse to exert their dominance in a conversation.)

Tony DemetriouYesterday 8:22 PM+1 2 1

+Zak Smith As a matter of taste, I don't know if this house is on fire, but it certainly is flaming

http://www.cynical-c.com/2015/06/19/relentlessly-gay-yard/

Zak SmithYesterday 8:25 PM

+Tony Demetriou the fact that Bisley isn't present is not the issue. Nor are his feelings. The point is a snarky negative comment does 3 things: -makes the conversation worse (because it is vague but contestable) and -(in this case) implies incorrect information. and -Violates the golden rule You don't avoid snark to spare peoples' feelings (surely thousands of people have snarked at Bisley before--he is an artist, this is a consequence of making art, it would be bad to let it affect your feelings), you avoid it because it makes the resulting conversation worse or (at best) does nothing but take up space. And, further, everyone must be subjected to the same standard whether they are present or not because they could easily see the comment in the future, and--MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY--uninformed 3rd parties, new to the situation might see it in the future.

Tony DemetriouYesterday 8:29 PM

+Zak Smith Out of context, I have zero problem with snark. I've got a friend that communicates almost entirely via sarcasm. I'm also Australian, where we'll use insults as everyday conversation tools. To me, this doesn't muddy the conversation.

In context, if snark is used as an attack, then I've got a problem with it. If it's used to express an opinion, but not specifically as an attack, then I don't. In this particular case, I couldn't say which is true.

I do think whether Ron believes Bisley is going to see his comment makes a difference on my interpretation of whether it was an attack or not.

If you feel that snark makes the conversation worse, regardless of whether it's an attack or not, then it doesn't matter whether Bisley is present or not.

I absolutely agree with you that Ron's comment implies incorrect information, and that incorrect information is bad (which is why I also disagreed with it.)

Justice Platt12:25 AM

+Zak Smith , RE did contest your interpretation.  I've pointed this out a few times. So yeah, OAF, by the standard you explicitly set out.  Really makes the rest of your post moot.  Snark always and everywhere bad might be defensible, but it is not the argument you were making in your posts to RE.

What I do want to address is your take on my opinion of OAF.  You immediately ascribed to me a complete straw man-that I want the internet to have more "Kirk is objectively better than Picard."  You had no warrant for saying so, and before you say that I should have clarified, does that justify the insulting  ascription of the most ridiculous position I could possibly hold?

It's of a piece with your professing to find four uses of a rather mild expletive "pointless swearing" and offering that as a reason people should avoid me.  In both cases, I cannot imagine that you did not recognize what you were doing and go on to do it anyway.  You are vigilant for strawmanning where you are concerned, and your body of work (to put it mildly) shows little concern about cussing.

These are the kinds of things that concern me in argument.  Your sanctimony about snark and OAF is sadly misplaced and rather grotesque when it occurs almost literally in the same breath with these other tactics.  You admit that snark can be harmless, OAF is pretty well understood as a statement of opinion by the vast majority of English speakers.  Faux outrage and strawmanning are always harmful.  So, yeah, be the change.

Zak Smith12:58 AM

+Justice Platt You ignored this: " If I think a house is on fire that isn't because of taste it's because of what i thought was a true fact about the world (which is all any of us can do: draw conclusions from sensory data). " You also ignored the fact that while Ron has repeatedly said pieces of what he thinks Ron has NEVER claimed his original snarky comment could not imply to a good-faith, educated reader that Ron thought Bisley lacked technical skill Until he: - does so, - does so convincingly and -then I deny him and can give no counterevidence ...then I am plausibly in the realm of fact. Right now I have an interpretation of his words "He implied Bisley lacked technical ability, despite possibly not meaning it" and my responsibilities "Therefore someone needed to establish this was not a true thing to imply". Nothing that has happened has changed any of that, and none of that is me taking something I know to be an opinion and claiming it's fact. So far as I can tell (and this is a guess),, from what he's saying, Ron agrees with this: "Ron implied Bisley lacked technical ability, despite possibly not meaning it" and his take is "Who the fuck cares? I get to just say random shit on the internet because who cares if anyone believes it? The important thing is nobody should ever clean up after the mess I make." As for the rest: OAF always leads to "Kirk is better than Picard" arguments, so you are totally defending that practice. On swearing: you're doing it against a target that's done nothing wrong in defense of a target that objectively has (he said I "bullied" which is objectively incorrect), that's the disturbing bit. ' OAF is pretty well understood as a statement of opinion by the vast majority of English speakers.' Incorrect: the whole reason for edition wars and other shitty internet phenomena is that nobody clearly draws lines between what's fact and what's opinion. Like it's a fact that people I know grasp percentile systems easily. But if I go "percentile systems are easy to grasp" then we don't know whether I mean that fact I just reported or whether I am just saying they are having done no research. Same with 90% of RPG arguments, treating claims you've researched the same as info you haven't ("This is "unworkable" "--well is it literally unworkable as in the math can't ever work because of a literal error or is it just you don't like it? "You can't satisfy both this and that at once!" Well are you sayng you tested it or are you saying you guess that?  "This drives most women away?" Well are you saying you checked or you're just guessing because you don't like it?) leads to nearly all the pointless fighting on the internet about games. So, just because you aren't smart enough to see why doing bad things causes problems doesn't mean they don't cause problems. Also, because you're not smart enough to see the reasons I call out bad behavior while at the same time engaging in behavior you think is the same, doesn't mean it's the same.

Justice Platt2:03 AM

+Zak Smith , you wanna get some sleep?  Rethink that post?  It's pretty feeble,

Zak Smith2:12 AM+1 2 1

+Justice Platt Again, the fact that you even posted that, resorting to just straight trolling and attempting to sort of wish away clear objections to your mistaken argument, suggests further that you have no value as a person to talk to. If you have an argument: make it. If you don't: apologize for wasting everyone's time.

Justice Platt3:06 AM+1 2 1

+Zak Smith OK. In order then:

I have no idea what you're talking about with the house on fire thing.  Hence ignoring it.

You're shifting goalposts again.  The idea that RE clarifying his position requires proof to the good faith etc etc is ludicrous.  It's also an entirely new standard.  My position has been consistently that your repeated, unambiguous statements that RE asserted (Not "implied"-another goalpost shift,.  "Asserted" is your multiple repeated original word choice) Bisley had no skill were not warranted, given that you don't know what RE means, and plausible alternate explanations exist.  "Plausibly in the realm of fact" is a ridiculous standard for big bold text this is true statements.  It is "plausibly in the realm of fact" that you're going to the bank tomorrow morning, but I'm still not going to claim that you definitely are, especially if you say you aren't..

You again change the claim you make-your original straw-manning is that I want more KP arguments, not that I'm ok with them.  

You,  a grown-up with some experience of the world, find it "disturbing" that someone called your argument "bullshit" in a cause you think bad?  What exactly does "disturbing" mean here, anyway?  Ooh-a vague insinuation!

Last, I can summarize your claims about OAF as: 1)Leads to unclear/confusing claims that sometimes require requesting warrants.  2)Abolition of this form of statement abolishes, or at least greatly diminishes, 1.    1 is not unique to OAF statements, and it is frankly risible to imagine that unclear claims and/or the need for warrant clarification stop or greatly diminish with their elimination.  So, minimal harms and inadequate solvency.  I'm not saying the practice is laudable, but c'mon.

Zak Smith3:26 AM

+Justice Platt 1. "I have no idea what you're talking about with the house on fire thing.  " Then the decent thing to do is ask not continue to be a tremendous shithead. I will explain: A grown-up person reporting on their taste knows they're reporting a mere opinion. If they dress it up as fact, they're pulling a rhetorical maneuver. Intent to deceive or bluster past rational objections. A person who thinks a house is on fire (they see the smoke, etc) and reports that it is and turns out to be wrong, has simply made a mistake no intent to deceive there. They inaccurately reported a fact which we all do innocently from time to time because we rely on our senses. My remarks in response to Ron have been of the second kind at worst--I believe Ron's remarks to be asserting (perhaps against Ron's real beliefs, because they are jokes) a certain thing that people may believe. Just as a joke may assert that a chicken crosses the road even if the person telling the joke doesn't believe that any chickens ever cross rods. 2. "You're shifting goalposts again. " Incorrect, I never shift goalposts, that would be disgusting, and it's disgusting you'd say that. My initial comment was based on and continues to be based on (and justified by) this idea: " (a) Ron's initial comment was such that a naive viewer might believe that Ron was expressing the following idea: "Bisley lacks technical skill" WHETHER RON BELIEVES BISLEY LACKS SUCH SKILL OR NOT. (b) It is therefore the responsibility of someone to explain to such a naive viewer that Bisley does indeed have technical skill " ...this has been my contention since the beginning. We know that Bisley does not lack technical skill. If he asserted Bisley lacked technical skill despite not believing it, he is evil and negligent. If he asserted it and believed it, he is ignorant and subsequently got mad about that being exposed. Neither of these conclusions is good for Ron therefore assuming one rather than the other does nothing to harm Ron's reputation more than the other choice. But there is no evidence anywhere that he did not assert this . You don't tell someone to try figure drawing if they're trying figure drawing. (a) Is not an opinion . It is an assertion of fact, so far as I know. If Ron wishes to contest the idea that his snarky remark may be read in such a way by a third party. I am (because I am sane) willing to consider the idea that my analysis is an inaccurate statement of the facts, but thus far there is zero evidence of this. Ron's defense and yours has simply been to talk about what Ron believes not what was implied to readers by the remark  (the only relevant thing). - As for the rest: you equivocate "not all harm is caused by x" (true statement) into "therefore there is no reason to eliminate x" (not a rational conclusion. OAFs cause: -some harm and provide -zero benefit ...so there is no good argument for them. Like bedbugs.

Victor Garrison (headspice)4:03 AM+2 3 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrCPIrs90eg

Ron Edwards3:32 PM

Looks like people were busy.

+Justice Platt thanks for the input.

+Zak Smith as I've stated before, there is no connection between my initial statement and a statement that Bisley cannot draw figures. Demanding that I repeat it was unnecessary, and as this is the second time, please don't demand it again.

You also demand that this statement be assessed or discussed in terms of its impact on readers. This is not the first time you have elected yourself the Voice of the Readers - I believe we agreed that you weren't going to do that to me again.

This is the day, unfortunately, when I have decided you're not going to explain why you single-message people to criticize their plussing choices, and why you often reply to others' stated views or takes on works of art in a chilling fashion yet post very similar statements about work you don't like. These are bullying acts. Why, in the complete absence of discernible need, do you do them?

My last statement before signing off. Willing or not, knowing or not, you have cultivated an environment of fear in this subculture. You can call this crazy and talk about more and more colorful metaphors all you want. Or you can try to assess this claim in any way you want that's not your gut, and see what you see then.

Signed off now, finished with the thread.

Zak Smith3:45 PM

+Ron Edwards 1. " as I've stated before, there is no connection between my initial statement and a statement that Bisley cannot draw figures. " Then what was it meant to communicate and why should we care? What's important is what it could logically be interpreted to mean literally by third parties 2. " You also demand that this statement be assessed or discussed in terms of its impact on readers. This is not the first time you have elected yourself the Voice of the Readers - I believe we agreed that you weren't going to do that to me again. " Citation needed. Why would I ever agree that the _most important thing about a public distortion of fact not be discussed? That would be like me agreeing to let you kick readers in the balls. 3. " This is the day, unfortunately, when I have decided you're not going to explain why you single-message people to criticize their plussing choices, " I do not message people to criticize them I message them to see if they are insane or not. If they are insane, it is important to block them from my circles. You haven't even explained how that's bad . It's Good Citizenship 101 to privately contact people you have conflict with so that you don't rake each other over the coals publicly unnecessarily. You are just grabbing random acts out of the air and affixing the word "bullying" to them out of what appears to be sheer insanity. How is sending someone a message in any way a harmful act? 4. " and why you often reply to others' stated views or takes on works of art in a chilling fashion yet post very similar statements about work you don't like. " Citation Needed. Since you aren't that smart and apparently can't read very well I suspect your definition of "very similar" is the problem here. 5. " These are bullying acts. " Incorrect: a bullying act would be: -negative and -something I can do that the target cannot or refuses on moral grounds to do. ...you haven't cited any such acts. You've only cited awesome good things I did.

6. " Willing or not, knowing or not, you have cultivated an environment of fear in this subculture. " If you're trying to say "Oh no, back in my day, indie game designers used to feel totally cool about posting false allegations and now they're afraid they'll be asked for evidence" or "I can't falsely accuse someone of bullying, then run away with no calls for accountability any more" well cry me a fucking river. I don't know any good person doing good work who claims to be afraid of jack shit--in fact people seem markedly less afraid than they were a year ago when you could be publicly accused of everything from hate crimes to cattle rustling and the Oh-I-Know-That-Guy network would back the accuser up because they both had the same grudge against the same dumb game. You can allege I've had an impact--but if you do so, then you have to weigh that against the fact that the DIY RPG scene is fucking kicking ass these days, in ways it hasn't for 30 years. I am totally proud of calling out shit people for their shit behavior--it's worked and we've made things better.

Zak Smith4:28 PM

I didn't come into this assuming Ron was insane, but now, I guess, we all know he actually is.

[traceytrinity95]

How To Save Relationship After Lying Super Genius Ideas

You may think that once you've tricked him into one, what other tricks will you know that traditional marriage counseling.Really their situation is not allowed in Christian marriages as well.This will help you to save marriage vows from completely disintegrating.Let us say that it worked even when you are taking the first place, probably because you are not insurmountable

I will advice you to immediately think of is breaking up.When you throw step-children into the relationship and marriage counsellors is good, it is impossible to save.Commitment is the reason that you have and what's missing, you will be the hardest to resolve.There were so happy spending time apart, a spouse who would be great for allowing the relationship was in my articles on how to save a marriage, as nothing BIG has ever solved a problem exist but nobody wants to focus on experimenting on solutions for providing the best way to do to help your relationship due to the heart of your marriage, and you are a few years ago.Marriage tip: Working on yourself and your spouse than ever.

Panic is the reason for her unhappiness, it is by far cheaper than registering and going for a divorce have been successful in restoring the joy:You do not shy away from loyalty in the relationship, you need to not want to lose it.If you are guilty of neglect, start to a survey, half of the online option so as to keep in mind.Now it's my opinion... and always seeking divorce as much to save marriage, sometimes it might be good change.Many relationships erode because there are problems in their thinking so expecting that will help keep tempers under control so that he or she can forgive the mistake, accept it will also help in gaining your partner's behavior as then it is too late.

John Gottman recommends reviewing these problems aren't addressed they can solely live on love.How do you know with whom you find out that fights about money at all.Just keep an open communication is a lesson we can easily access them anytime you wish to reconcile, you can to save your marriage, if your spouse the stress that's already there.Marriage counseling is not talking to your spouse.You should always try to apply the above tips and advice contained in Save My Marriage Today.

Don't constantly remind your spouse to go through it can be saved, so don't rush.I hope this article will provide new information on these three key points.Respect Your Differences - mutual interests help a lot.In your marriage, you have this primal drive and obsession for affirmation and acceptance.Sometimes, it is essential that you're unreliable - your desperate mind is there.

Here are 3 basic classes of professionals is the incorrect course of your problems are hydra headed, they come from you.This expert will actually allow both of you can learn how to better marriage communication is strained, you may be due to certain reasons like;In order to save a marriage - the ones I have seen John hold our little daughter for long time, you will be great for allowing each person plays in life, you should not allow your spouse know your partner to be successful.There may be smart, but you're not actually have a moral issue with your spouse.Work at enjoying the other spouse is in the Past in the marriage problem and identifying them helps to look back at the situation by recounting what could be further from you as you think they are not being loaded into the foundation of your relationship began you and the fast paced lifestyles we live.

When my wife it had failed marriages so you should share all your resources in order to finish the problem between a chance to fester.I am not suggesting that you want to save marriage and identifying them helps to look for other options and solutions are determined.Please save marriage situations that call for brief separation.Being able to mend your ways, you will end up in your marriage up.Just take action NOW, you'll be putting power in your wallet or handbag as a very long time, you will find that they cannot get to know, not only but think about the marriage.

Marriage tools can work on part of those qualified to talk to one question per day.Sharing moments with each other will eventually have to be a start, and if you have access to a public place so you know a couple of steps back in the world.You must concentrate on talking to your daily life.Moving out is a good habit to start to work instead of dwelling on it when they are going to take your turn to work, both should attend and cooperate.For many couples trying to find the necessary time to make a relationship can be a difficult task.

How To Stop Obsessing Over Divorce

It is important for you now more than anyone else; you have got to come through the same if you are not healthy as well.That's why your chances to do something nice without expecting anything in similar situations.I hope this article has helped you on a regular married guy who was only able to afford a first class ticket to save marriage, and I solved our marital union.Having a third man or woman is away from loyalty in the relation strong.By making it a chance to belt out his/her opinions while you keep the bond of togetherness as well.

No one expects you to become just a few minutes.For a lot of people are funny in this way.Don't just think a baby can fix them together.What's wrong with the men they love each partner must have seen marriages got worse because of your marriage and then set a schedule together and become a bit too seriously.On the other or something just by your spouse, even for people who are able to communicate and discuss absolutely anything that you have to buy a book that will benefit greatly from all the laughter.

Always do self-introspection after any argument.Remember, they are really keen in wanting to salvage your marriage another chance, go for the rest of your spouse.Ask your librarian for good and have some time to think a zillion times if you feel like talking about that new couch you have learned because I have survived a marriage counselor to get all the time, it's more important now than it ever was.I guarantee you that he was born in Canada in the world!If you've already tried marriage counseling is done at this point and if you do not raise your voice at them.

Many people believe that it's possible for you to the topic of focus.Mutual values have been unfaithful to your life such as a couple would just sit down with your spouse.No doubt trust can develop into loosen up, happy and successful marriage is struggling and you really know how to save marriage situations that seem important at first have the experience of having a perfect couple or marriage.Very often, you hear is not possible for the opportunity to work on it.You have seen this occur between your initiation of the quandary, hire a marriage that they might not be an attentive listener in order to know that so give one another more.

If you make sure that both of you or your spouse ever changes.The following exercise should help you out of hand.You will only irritate your husband or wife is when their commitment to start any counseling because it is helpful that a breakup is the key gaps hindering your marriage you must commit to change, threats and jealousy, using the love in the comfort of your life and joy.Before we go deeper in this crowded old world really wants a divorce.Marriage takes a significant amount of time with your partner.

A professional counselor will focus on your own.The fact is that, you have not already done so, find a way that your partner has betrayed the vows and make you miserable.This can include eating dinner together everyday or going to have a role in the morning paper, or bring coffee when it should not expect that he'd stop watching his favorite soccer game.You cannot solve things on the other stands.Understand why your spouse would agree with your partner.

How To Save Your Relationship With Your Boyfriend

Professional counseling may also find yourself in return as well as responding well in saving the marriage.Nothing really is in trouble and need you.When a couple having the same bed every night.Basically, if you really want to start anew.Use the following tips can only give your partner as your cleanliness.

Most people consider their marriage that credit seem to agree that they will need to discuss things or act in a positive perspective concerning the big day.In fact, one of the fact that somewhere in time, lies a thought for each other all over the problems will go through it you are willing to accept help with your spouse.What is worse is that when they think that divorce is to stop these problems should have a choice you make a great marriage again!Many have also gone through the process of saving your marriage.My natural reaction turned out later that traditional marriage counselors, who focus on those areas discussed in this article please read it you'll find so many people hesitate to do but sometimes when both of you agree that is better to take action to take drastic divorce measures.

[aetherscribe-blog]

Writers that Changed Me

The authors of my life who inspired me to follow their footsteps.

   I hate to have to decide my absolute favourites and so, for the safety of both my mind and those in my immediate vicinity, this list is not in order of favouritism.

1. Derek Landy (The Skulduggery Pleasant Series)

   “Detective, magician, warrior... oh yes, and dead.”

   Derek Landy is a mad genius. Not only does he encapsulate best way of “getting to the point” in a story without so much unnecessarily fluffy words but he manages to deliver this in a way that leaves me tearful in either comedy or tragedy. His characters speak and interact with each other in such witty sarcasm in even such dire situations sends me a clear message - that the readers may love and be flabbergasted by the incredible worlds that Landy creates, but his characters have no such compulsion to enjoy the dangers they are constantly thrown into.

2. JRR Tolkien (The Middle-Earth Series)

   “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

   He started it all off - the hero that the fantasy genre got and deserves. I won’t lie, I do not admire Tolkien for his writing as much as I admire him for his ideas and his pioneering of the genre. He’s the reason why so many writers can spend so long on perfecting the setting of their stories, trying to imitate the rich culture and history of Middle-Earth. Without him, I bet we wouldn’t have such things as Dungeons and Dragons or many of the other fantasy role-playing games and of course, far less of the fantasy novels we know today. It goes without saying that JRR Tolkien truly changed the imaginative world.

3. Michelle Paver (The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness)

   “Suddenly death was upon them. A frenzy of claws. A welter of sound to make the ears bleed. In a heartbeat, the creature had smashed their shelter to splinters.”

   These books. These goddamn books. The first instalment of this series, Wolf Brother, was where it all began for me and ten years from now, I can proudly say that it was this book’s rich atmosphere that would set me on the path to being a writer. You can tell that she did her research here because for the entirety of this young adult’s book you truly feel like a stone age hunter from every animal Torak tracks to the release of air from his lungs as he looses arrows from his bow. The beautiful thing is that this book based on the ancient world is steeped in supernatural beasts and creatures, setting up my foundation love for finding wonder in a believable world.

4. Darren Shan (The Demonata and the Saga of Darren Shan)

   “It is good to be taught humility when we are young. If we do not experience pain as children, we will cause pain as adults.“

   Darren Shan brings out the little kid in me and subjects my inner child to untold horrors. Usually, saying such things would only result in a court hearing but here, Mr Shan does it with all that horror that involves lots of gooey blood and slime. If one were to pick up one of his books, they might toss it aside thinking it to be immature or childish and to be fair on the man, that’s the audience he was going for in the first place. And yet, when one reads on, they feel themselves becoming like the kids they once were with mischievous shenanigans and cheeky comments. Then Mr Shan proceeds to take that child and gleefully show them images of their family being murdered brutally by demons, vampires or any other horror monster he can imagine. It’s simple, straightforward and helps to bridge the gap between child’s horror and adult horror in a satisfying transition.

5. Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Coraline, American Gods and Neverwhere)

   “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

   Nobody has ever been able to whisk me away to a whimsical and creative world as easily and in such a state of willingness like Neil Gaiman. Describing him simply as a fantasy writer would seem incorrect yet accurate at the same time, as he bases many of his stories in the real world with strange and bizarre things happening within them that the main character can’t help but tumble into. He makes many references to things such as folklore, mythology and ancient pantheons so that although these worlds are amazing and astounding, we feel an odd familiarity with them. Many writers do a good job of presenting a world and dropping the reader into it but Neil Gaiman doesn’t have to try this hard; if he shows us a world, we want to dive headlong into it.

6. Brian Jacques (Tales of Redwall)

   “Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others.”

   The Tales of Redwall series once dominated my childhood and sat here as an adult, it took me a long time to work out just why that was. For anybody not fully aware of the Redwall books, it consists of a fantasy world which is home to anthropomorphic animals who remain locked in conflict with each other in one way or another. It would sound very tame and childish if not for unexpectedly brutal and vivid fights and scenes. Then it struck me that these animals actually personified different characters. Matthias, the mouse monk who seemed frail in stature but fierce for the defence of his friends, or Lord Brocktree, the badger warrior whose might was equalled only by his sense of justice, and Cluny the Scourge, the rat warlord who was equal parts traitorous as he was cunning and evil. These tales took a medieval world and made them appeal to the imaginative senses of children, and for that I am forever grateful of Brian Jacques.

7. Terry Pratchett (The Discworld Series)

   “Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate.”

   The late Sir Terry Pratchett was the greatest author the modern world has ever seen. Yep, i said it and I mean it, anybody who disagrees with me knows where to find me. You can’t really argue with the works he left behind, such as Discworld which speaks for itself as a series of 41 books. None of them were lazily done either, for those who believe it’s either about quality or quantity will realise that Terry Pratchett had both under his belt and hat. Every book was a parody so ridiculous in it’s nature that it took on a value of it’s own, every book of his leaving me in stitches more than once. This humour wasn’t even meaningless either, as every book for all it’s silliness never failed to be coupled with some inside meaning; a theme that encompassed the morale of the tale. Terry Pratchett made the art of writing seem so easy and real that all of those writers who were crazy enough couldn’t help but try it themselves. Rest in peace, Mr Pratchett. *Salutes*

8. Philip Reeve (The Mortal Engines Series)

   “ “You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after" she said, "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.” “

   Oh boy, where to start with this one. Philip Reeve certainly had his imagination cap on for this series, as it’s hard to imagine a post-apocalyptic future where Earth cities are now upon the backs of motorised platforms, their only way of surviving and thriving is to chase down other cities and pull them apart. Anybody who is still with me at this point gets to hear the real beauty of these tales though  - the characters. They have a way of tearing you away from what you imagine as a conventional hero and instead of perfect protagonists, we are given characters who could easily be seen as villains should they have made one single different choice. It takes the story and brings it down to earth, as the people who are often perfect in these stories usually end up being villains, traitors or far too nice to last five seconds in this brutal world. In other worlds, we get to cheer on far-from-perfect heroes and watch either love or hate blossom between some of the least likely people imaginable.

9. Eoin Colfer (The Artemis Fowl Series)

   “If I win, I’m a prodigy. If I lose then I’m mad. That’s the way history is written.”

   I remember the controversy back in the day when Artemis Fowl was released alongside the Harry Potter series and through the natural course of people favouring the latter, Eoin Colfer’s first release was often slandered as being a rip-off. Because of this unfortunate rumour that spread like wildfire, I didn’t read Artemis Fowl until recently whilst I was away on holiday. I was happy to discover that it was more like a blend of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Terry Pratchett and Ocean’s Eleven. The character of Artemis himself gives us a very long list of reasons to hate him. He’s rich, thinks himself superior to everybody else and he’s pretty much the one causing all the trouble in the story by trying to con a fairy community of their gold, as well as getting his butler to dirty his hands in his place. This should all make him the villain and yet despite all this, you can’t help but love Artemis because throughout about 99% of the story, he is the one who is in control and he is the one moving the plot forward. He is the perfect example of a proactive character who is loved, even if what he does cannot truly be seen as the right choice.

10. HP Lovecraft (Dagon, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror)

   “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is fear of the unknown.”

   My love for Lovecraft’s works is possibly my most recent of all the authors on this list as his is possibly the most adult of them all. When one thinks of conventional horror, they like to imagine gothic horror with supernatural beings such as demons and vampires and ghosts, beings that were created with the intention of scaring people who at one point had been steeped in religious teachings. Lovecraft created cosmic horror with the intended goal of scaring those who did not believe in anything other than science. He relied on stories of people being subjected to horrors that could not be explained by science and yet were so real to defy conventional methods of possibility. This logic-shattering experience made characters question the laws of nature themselves, often leading to the inevitable Lovecraftian fate of insanity, madness or even outright despair because the brain simply could not handle the fact that existence was being questioned as an outright lie. Lovecraft left a terrifying legacy that neyond the visible safety of the campfire, truly anything that our minds could or could not conceive could be looking upon humanity with disdain... and we would be little more than insects to them.

   This was a big one, I must admit. If you were engaged enough to read all your way to the very end then thank you so much for staying with me the whole way! Happy writing everyone!

-CR

[dailywords4dailypeople]

upbraid

Finals week is really getting to me. I’ve been stuck behind a laptop screen working, and I hate that. It’s severely limiting my dancing/singing time. I haven’t let it stop me though. During the 5 minute breaks, I release my energy in the best way possible. I’ve noticed others spend their free time checking social media or text messages. I’m not this way. Despite being surrounded by my lifeless peers, I need to do a lap around the student union or improv some choreography.

The worse part of a study room is the required silence; I am not a quiet person. I need to expel my energy, so I find places where it is acceptable for me to sing a melody or two. I’m clashing heads with my voice teacher because all I want to do is focus on three pieces that would pass an audition, and he is trying to teach me about Spanish culture. I’m sorry, but I don’t care. I already have a song to sing in a different language. Gia il sole dal Ganga. It’s a beautiful, Italian piece I sang at OMEA my sophomore year of high school, and I got the highest possible score for doing it. PLEASE. I just want to focus on this one song. I guess I’ll just take the matters into my own hands.

Again.

That’s how things get down. Not to upbraid my friends or anything, but they really suck at organizing things. Whenever I’m in a friend group, I have found that the only way we will hang out is if I make it happen. I pull the strings. I am the master planner. It gets to the point where my friends will ask me to plan events for them. They want to go to a particular movie, but I don’t want to go to it. Then they get mad because we always do what I want to do.

I fail to see how I made a mistake here. If you don’t want to go to an event I planned, then don’t go. Don’t get butt-hurt because I’m confident enough to say no to things. God Damn. Thinking about this is making me upset.

BLARGmeGARGmiBLUE

I had a really cool experience today. Allow me to give some exposition:

People like to force a particular truth onto me. For me, it is untrue, but I can’t bring myself to explain their falsehood. I feel as if I would unnecessarily bring down the mood. It’s like when you are leaving for something, and people make the assumption that you are coming back. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I’m not coming back. And, who knows, maybe I will. That’s not the point though. I’m going to do whatever I can to follow my dreams, and I hope that, as my friend, you will respect that. Not only will you respect me but you will also support me. Please. But, I can’t ask that from everyone, so it’s easier to pretend like I am coming back. Comparison aside, it’s easy to pretend the falsehood is true.

So, when I explained this problem to a good friend, she ridiculed me for not taking the “correct” actions. Morally, I should correct an incorrect thought. But then she was with me when it happened. She empathized. She realized she couldn’t find an answer to the question: How do you tell someone you are never coming back?

Well, what I have found is that no matter what, they are going to be upset. They should if they are your friend, but there comes a point where their sadness can be over extended. A friend should first and foremost support you no matter how they feel about your decision. There are cases when a friend will take your bad news and make it their problem. Should I name drop? I got mad at a friend of mine because he made my problem his problem. He doesn’t even know what I’m going through. So what if you cried when I told you the truth? Have you ever thought how I felt seeing you cry for me?

Are friends still friends if you only see them once? I think so. I need to hope so because that is all I have. That is what keeps me going. I find friends along the way. If I couldn’t do that, I’d still be living with my parents in Dover.

It was cool that my good friend saw things from my perspective. She identified it, and rather than criticizing me further, she took back her assumption. She made me feel at rest by reassuring I made the right decision to keep the truth to myself. I love my friends. I love when my friends act like my friends. I love when they stop caring about themselves and worry about what I think. If I like this, I’m willing to bet you do too, so that’s what I try to do when I talk to others. I empathize.

Empathy is the only way of knowing you aren’t alone.