#Dream Machines 2015

[simonh]

Analysis by Thomas Hawk

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sandra Newman’s “Julia”

The first chapter of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a fantastic joke that nearly everyone misses: when Julia, Winston Smith's love interest, is introduced, she has oily hands and a giant wrench, which she uses in her "mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines":

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

That line just kills me every time I re-read the book – Orwell, a novelist, writing a dystopian future in which novels are written by giant, clanking mechanisms. Later on, when Winston and Julia begin their illicit affair, we get more detail:

She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

I always assumed Orwell was subtweeting his publishers and editors here, and you can only imagine that the editor who asked Orwell to tweak the 1984 manuscript must have felt an uncomfortable parallel between their requests and the notional Planning Committee and Rewrite Squad at the Ministry of Truth.

I first read 1984 in the early winter of, well, 1984, when I was thirteen years old. I was on a family trip that included as visit to my relatives in Leningrad, and the novel made a significant impact on me. I immediately connected it to the canon of dystopian science fiction that I was already avidly consuming, and to the geopolitics of a world that seemed on the brink of nuclear devastation. I also connected it to my own hopes for the nascent field of personal computing, which I'd gotten an early start on, when my father – then a computer science student – started bringing home dumb terminals and acoustic couplers from his university in the mid-1970s. Orwell crystallized my nascent horror at the oppressive uses of technology (such as the automated Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear systems that haunted my nightmares) and my dreams of the better worlds we could have with computers.

It's not an overstatement to say that the rest of my life has been about this tension. It's no coincidence that I wrote a series of "Little Brother" novels whose protagonist calls himself w1n5t0n:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm

I didn't stop with Orwell, of course. I wrote a whole series of widely read, award-winning stories with the same titles as famous sf tales, starting with "Anda's Game" ("Ender's Game"):

https://www.salon.com/2004/11/15/andas_game/

And "I, Robot":

https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_I_Robot.html

"The Martian Chronicles":

https://escapepod.org/2019/10/03/escape-pod-700-martian-chronicles-part-1/

"True Names":

https://archive.org/details/TrueNames

"The Man Who Sold the Moon":

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

and "The Brave Little Toaster":

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212

Writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head is a very old and important literary tradition. As EL Doctorow (no relation) writes in his essay "Genesis," the Hebrews stole their Genesis story from the Babylonians, rewriting it to their specifications:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

As my "famous title" stories and Little Brother books show, this work needn't be confined to antiquity. Modern copyright may be draconian, but it contains exceptions ("fair use" in the US, "fair dealing" in many other places) that allow for this kind of creative reworking. One of the most important fair use cases concerns The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's 2001 retelling of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the enslaved characters, which was judged to be fair use after Mitchell's heirs tried to censor the book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suntrust_Bank_v._Houghton_Mifflin_Co.

In ruling for Randall, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals emphasized that she had "fully employed those conscripted elements from Gone With the Wind to make war against it." Randall used several of Mitchell's most famous lines, "but vest[ed] them with a completely new significance":

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/268/1257/608446/

The Wind Done Gone is an excellent book, and both its text and its legal controversy kept springing to mind as I read Sandra Newman's wonderful novel Julia, which retells 1984 from the perspective of Julia, she of the oily hands the novel-writing machine:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/julia-sandra-newman?variant=41467936636962

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both Wind Done gone and Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. For Winston, the world of 1984 is totalitarian: the Party knows all, controls all and misses nothing. To merely think a disloyal thought is to be doomed, because the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompetent Party will sense the thought and mark you for torture and "vaporization."

Orwell's readers experience all of 1984 through Winston's eyes and are encouraged to trust his assessment of his situation. But Newman brings in a second point of view, that of Julia, who is indeed far more worldly than Winston. But that's not because she's younger than him – it's because she's more provincial. Julia, we learn, grew up outside of the Home Counties, where the revolution was incomplete and where dissidents – like her parents – were sent into exile. Julia has experienced the periphery of the Party's power, the places where it is frayed and incomplete. For Julia, the Party may be ruthless and powerful, but it's hardly omnicompetent. Indeed, it's rather fumbling.

Which makes sense. After all, if we take Winston at his word and assume that every disloyal citizen of Oceania is arrested, tortured and murdered, where would that leave Oceania? Even Kim Jong Un can't murder everyone who hates him, or he'd get awfully lonely, and then awfully hungry.

Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

Julia is also perfectly positioned to uncover the vast blank spots in Winston's supposed intellectual curiosity, all the questions he doesn't ask – about her, about the Party, and about the world. I love this trope and used it myself, in Attack Surface, the third "Little Brother" book, which is told from the point of view of Marcus's frenemy Masha:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

Through Julia, we come to understand the seemingly omniscient, omnipotent Party as fumbling sadists. The Thought Police are like MI5, an Island of Misfit Toys where the paranoid, the stupid, the vicious and the thuggish come together to ruin the lives of thousands, in such a chaotic and pointless manner that their victims find themselves spinning devastatingly clever explanations for their behavior:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

And, as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia is a first-rate novel, expertly plotted, with fantastic, nail-biting suspense and many smart turns and clever phrases. Newman is doing Orwell, and, at times, outdoing him. In her hands, Orwell – like Winston – is revealed as a kind of overly credulous romantic who can't believe that anyone as obviously stupid and deranged as the state's representatives could be kicking his ass so very thoroughly.

This was, in many ways, the defining trauma and problem of Orwell's life, from his origin story, in which he is shot through the throat by a fascist: sniper during the Spanish Civil War:

https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

To his final days, when he developed a foolish crush on a British state spy and tried to impress her by turning his erstwhile comrades in to her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

Newman's feminist retelling of Orwell is as much about puncturing the myth of male competence as it is about revealing the inner life, agency, and personhood of swooning love-interests. As someone who loves Orwell – but not unconditionally – I was moved, impressed, and delighted by Julia.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

[kuwdora]

Saturday Morning Vid Recs - Space and Robots

@tafkarfanfic asked me for vid recs that are similar to the following vids:

Data’s Dream by GayleF (Gayle) and TasheryS which premiered at Escapade in 1994 - made on a VCR!! - and was remastered by morgandawn in 2004. Definitely check out the Fanlore page about Data’s Dream. Star Trek + multi-source.

Starships by bironic. Multi-source. The history of Starships on Fanlore.

These two vids are iconic. Please check them out and learn about their history from the Fanlore page, it's a great look at some vidding history and culture. Amazing vids, do love. As for some recs. I love this kind of prompt. More vids like [this vid] is so much fun. I dug deep into my vid rec archives and brain and bookmarks. I’ve also crowdsourced some recs from the vidding discord. Thank you to @rukbat3, @sandalwoodbox, @fairestcat, @monkeyswithjetpacks, @grammarwoman for the reccing help! And everyone else I might have forgotten.

From Land to Sky - and kicking ass while you're there!

Landsailor by @singlecrow/raven. Multi-source. Swades (We, The People); Master and Commander; 3 Idiots; The Dish; The West Wing; Parks and Recreation; Flight of the Phoenix; NASA archive footage; Apollo 13. ❤️ We're gonna need a bigger boat. Come O’ Eclipse by melodytree. Tenchi: The Samurai Astronomer. Calendar-making! Math puzzles! Astronomy! Politics! Eclipses! Oh my! Galaxyrise by starlady. Multi-source. Apollo 13 (1995), Interstellar (2014), Gravity (2013), Europa Report (2013), Contact (1997), The Martian (2015). This vid is full of so much wonder! The sky calls to us/If we do not destroy ourselves/We will one day venture to the stars. Going through space with the world by bironic. Space Exploration RPF. ❤️❤️❤️ From "day in the life of an astronaut" videos to international stardom; or, Chris Hadfield and his adorable mustache. Monsters of the Cosmos by CherryIce. Thor/MCU. Jane Foster/Science.Cherry’s editing is goddamn incredible. In the last century, black holes have gone from being mathematical curiosities to real objects in the cosmos. This is a vid about Jane Foster and her one true love, Science. Also, Thor is there. Toxic by JinkyO. The Planets (TV - 2019). Humanity/The Solar System. This vid is so fucking brilliant and makes me cackle in love and awe so much. It's dangerous, I'm loving it. Sci-Fi Friday in a Blender by Luminosity. Multi-source. Farscape, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who. So much happening in this vid. This is among one of the earliest vids I remember watching and became obsessed with back in the day. Supernova Girl by @usuallyhats. Multifandom. Doctor Who, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Steven Universe, Andromeda, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Mass Effect, Stargate. So many wonderful brilliant amazing EXCELLENT supernova women and girls. Zoom, zoom, zoom. Space Girl by @aurumcalendula. Multi-source scifi. Inspired by Charmax’s Space Girl vid and Bironic’s The Greatest. This vid has a great selection of newer tv shows and films and it’s fun to play spot that character. But also this vid will grab you by the heart, too. Utterly brilliant, perfection. A must watch!! 'I've been as far in hyperspace as anybody can.' One Girl Revolution by bessyboo. Star Wars, original and prequel. Padme and Leia!! Seeing these two focused on in one Star Wars vid is an adventurous kickass ride. I'll be everything that I want to be. Space Girl by charmax. Multi-source scifi. One of the most beautiful epic space vids out there! I know I’ve recced this before and I’ll rec it again and again and again. My momma told me I should never watch Sci-fi but I did, I did, I did.

Robots! More than wires.

If a Machine by caramarie, Multi-source. Robot narrative focusing on machine origin, intelligence, and interaction with humanity. And Human fallibility. An incredibly rewarding watch and rewatch. This is the story of cables and copper wirings. Electric Avenue by @monkeyswithjetpacks. Multi-source robots! Nate’s multi-vids are always so fun, especially when it’s showcasing classic cinema and all these excellent serials. Electric Avenue has source from 1919 to 2015. His editing is always on fucking point. Don’t miss this vid. We’re gonna rock down to electric avenue. Everybody by @kuwdora. Star Trek, the Borg. This vid was actually inspired by the Backstreet Boys original music video. I still have the vivid memory of watching or rewatching the original music video in @ars-amatoria ’s kitchen. And then at some point realizing it is perfect for the Borg. Am I original, am I the only one? Fembots by Grammarwoman. Multi-source. Sexy sharp editing and fun use of all the sources. The intersection of women and technology: a spectrum of clones, AIs, gynoids, cyborgs, and other artificial creations. On by @rhoboat77. Star Trek: Picard. A Soji fanvid. Rho has the sharpest editing skills this side of the Internet and this Soji vid is so fucking badass and worth 100 rewatches. Can’t hold me down cuz you know I’m a fighter. Que Sera Sera by @ohvienna. Star Trek Voyager and Picard. Seven of Nine.Nobody vids their Seven of Nine love like @ohvienna. You gotta watch this if you love Seven. Whatever will be, will be…"

Journey through Space.

To Touch the Face of God by destina. Multi-source. The Right Stuff (1983, )The Dream Is Alive, From the Earth to the Moon (TV).This is one of the most beautiful moving vids you will EVER, and I mean EVER see. From Chuck Yeager, to the Mercury 7, and on to Apollo and the Space Shuttle Program (STS) - a very human history of the triumphs, joys, and tragedies of the USA's journey into space. Doctor Who on Holiday by sisabet. Farscape, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who. A mashup vid of Luminosity’s Sci-Fi Friday in a Blender. This vid inspired me so much. And I have 10 very intense ideas about how I would do my own remix of this vid if I were to make it right now. Fly Me To the Moon by thirdblindmouse. Multi-source. This vid has everything! Alien sex! Xenophilia! Zero-gravity sex! Mpreg!!! Because everyone knows this song is about space sex. Game Night in Space by garrideb. Multi-source. This vid!!!!! IS! SO! MUCH! FUN!! Game on! How are you going to spend those long nights on your starship? Play games, of course! Space poker, space chess, space Monopoly… this is a fanvid celebrating game night in space, set to Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Starships (Monochromatic Remix) by @monkeyswithjetpacks. Multi-source. See the Fanlore page on the history of Starships (Monochromatic Remix). ALSO check out jetpack-monkey’s extensive notes and side-by-side comparison vid of the original vid and his vid!! He matched Starships shot-for-shot! Most brilliant work ever. The vid notes aren’t on the ao3 page so I HIGHLY recommend checking out the notes on his dreamwidth page! This vid is 10 million kinds of brilliant and technical prowess and perfection.

Vidshow Rec

Alien Invasion! - 30 vids curated and organized into a show by @tafadhali for VidUKon 2024. Featuring films and tv shows: Nope, Attack the Block, Pacific Rim, Venom, Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek, Prey, Smallville, Rowswell, Supergirl, Arrival, Starship Troopers and more.

Follow these tags to keep up with vid recs this summer:

#saturday morning vid recs

#kuwdora recs

A helpful guide I wrote:

How to Leave Feedback on Fanvids

[tonichelleak]

Dallas Seavey at the Ceremonial Start and ReStart of Iditarod 52. Dallas. Seavey. The kid that believed he was on a trajectory for an Olympic career and not a dog mushing one. Oh, sure, he was like many others of his generation who not only grew up in the presence of many great mushers - all the while helping his dad build a successful racing kennel - but one who watched Iron Will and tried to recreate many of the scenes from the movie... but as he often told tourists - he had no desire to make it his life like his dad had.

Then injuries sidelined his Olympic wrestling dream (was on his way to making the 2008 USA team) so he came home and continued helping his dad build monster teams.

After a while running the puppy team just wasn't enough. Puppy teams are competitive and if you know Dallas even a little bit you know the dude is extremely competitive.

He studied like he was working on a Masters Degree. No one knows the science and stats of the race more than Dallas. Guarantee it.

He won his first title in 2012, then again in 2014, 2015, 2016... took a break after his second place finish in 2017 (we won't rehash the whys) and came back in 2021 to win it again (granted the shorter "Gold Loop Trail" - thanks Covid - but he battled the Rainy Pass Pony Mafia so it still is a huge accomplishment). His '21 race meant he tied for most wins, sharing that record with the legendary Rick Swenson. Swenson was one of Dallas's childhood heroes... and Dallas had broken or tied just about every record Rick had.

This year, Dallas won number six. He is the winningest Iditarod Champion.

It wasn't easy. In November he and two of his handlers took teams out on a training run. His handler running many of Dallas's top dogs was hit by a snow machine. Dogs were killed, some injured with career ending, life altering injuries. The mushers were physically all fine, but mentally... mentally it took a while to feel "normal" on the runners.

Dallas borrowed dogs from his dad to make a competitive Iditarod team, it wasn't ideal - but he'd done it before. The Ceremonial Start and ReStart seemed to go on without an issue. Crowds cheered the musher on and he quickly slipped into the routine.

Monday of race week rolls around. Dallas' birthday. Early that morning an aggressive moose plowed into Dallas' team, the only thing for the musher to do was dispatch the moose. If you've followed the race you know what happened next. Dallas did not properly gut out the moose, one of his dogs was injured but it wasn't noticeable right away (dog is fine now), he was penelized for the improper dressing out of the moose. Dallas was not going to win.

Then things changed in the second half of the race. Teams who decided to try to outrun Dallas who was already dealing with time penalties pushed too hard, too long, too soon. Dallas caught up. And then Dallas did what Dallas does.

And now Dallas Seavey is the only six time champion in the history of the race.

That's a wild ride. (see what I did there? no, oh, well.... you can find out what I mean here.)

To view high quality photos, or purchase, click here.

For more see ReittersBlock.com

[bidaubadeadieu]

Photos of Hugh Hayden's Exhibition Home Work, as seen at the Rose Art Museum (Brandeis University), 2024. Throughout this post, text present in the gallery (written by museum curators, not me) is intended in block quotes.

Through his prodigious studio practice, Hugh Hayden (b. 1983, Dallas, TX) has become one of the leading artists of his generation. His meticulously crafted sculptures, hybrid forms, and poignant installations evoke profound reflections on the human condition within a complex, volatile, and often threatening world. hayden combines a probing analysis of serious and often painful topics with humor, visual puns, and wordplay, provoking a unique blend of visceral and critical responses.

I was captivated by Hayden's work from the moment I stepped into the gallery. Really stunning stuff. Names of all pieces in this post (left to right, top to bottom), as well as excerpts from gallery text, can be found below the Read More. I highly encourage you to check it out in more detail!

American Gothic (2024)

Hayden merges two skeletal figures with agricultural and domestic tools, examining aspects pertaining to labor and the dignity of work. The artist deliberately positions himself as part of a genealogy of American artists, referencing Grant Wood's 1930 painting American Gothic and Gordon Parks's 1942 photograph, American Gothic.

Eden (2022)

Eden presents two ribcages locked together in an intimate embrace. Hanging on a clothes rack, the ribcages are meticulously crafted from cedar wood, a material often used where clothes are stored to repel moths. The fact that the skeletal lovers are closeted suggests that this embrace needs to be kept a secret. The title references the bliss associated with the biblical Garden of Eden.

Hangers (2018)

High Cotton (2015-2020)

High Cotton, emulating and arcade claw machine, is clad in lustrous, Chippendale-inspired Honduran mahogany, carved to the recall the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century furnishings of high society. Sharp-edged cotton balls (replacing the game's expected toys) force a player to "pick cotton," a task directly associated with slavery. The work highlights the raw material used to produce the fine cotton clothing found around the world--and once neatly folded inside the mahogany armoires of slave owners.

Fairy Tale (2023)

Fairy Tale features a pair of interlocking Tiffany rings, with HIV-prevention medication replacing the expected diamonds or gems. The title suggests a "happily-ever-after" gay love story for those who once lived in the shadow of AIDS. The word "fairy" in the title, sometimes used as a slur, is here reclaimed with pride.

The Kiss (2020)

In The Kiss, two football helmets are caught together like stags whose horns are locked in battle. Their interlocking forms and the title of the piece suggest a range of relationships, from homosocial camaraderie to same-sex intimacy. Many of Hayden's sports-related sculptures expose the fact that the very devices supposed to protect may also wound. The Kiss recalls the high number of brain injuries suffered by football players.

Positives (2019-2024)

Hedges (2019)

This installation features a model of an archetypal suburban home. Rather than associating the domestic with security, Hayden transforms the familiar abode into an unsettling place where menacing branches sprout from and overpower the structure's walls, window, and roof. Hedges is experienced within a mirrored chamber that situates the viewer amid an endless row of uncanny houses. Hayden often notes that home ownership is considered one of the key goals of achieving the American dream. Yet this path is hardly assured for many people, given the inequities in society and the financial precarity that so many endure. As shown here and throughout the exhibition, Hayden's visceral sculptures reveal the disquieting contradictions of the American dream.

[taytaay131313]

DEBUNKING THE “KARLIE BETRAYED TAYLOR BELIEF”

Disclaimer: this post is taken from Reddit and it was put together and posted by this user : OddDragonfruit6179 I just made it into Tumblr post.

This is for people who might be new to Gaylor side of the fandom and to those questioning the “betrayal” surrounding Taylor Swift and her masters and Karlie Kloss. This is also an answer to anonymus messages about the line in the song It’s time to go believed to be about Karlie Kloss / When the words of a sister come back in whispers that prove she was not in fact what she seemed not a twin from your dreams she's a crook who was caught.

PSA - Personally, I exist as a Gaylor because I love interpreting Taylor's Queer themes that don't specifically revolve around certain muses & the beautiful way they can exist on their own. I am also not 'Late-Stage'-Anything, haha. But, saying that, it's amost impossible to ignore the elephant (or Giraffe) in the room when it comes to Karlie & Taylor's storytelling since Reputation. It seems there are some very firmly-held beliefs about 'what happened' (including Gaylors), and a lot of them revolve around the idea that Karlie 'betrayed' Taylor during the Master's Heist era of June/July 2019, 'feeding information to & siding with Scooter Braun' - which are often used to debunk Gaylor interpretations as a blanket shut-down. Given the latest drama with Selena & how she recently spoke up about slandering Taylor on TikTok, it reminded me of how we have a lot of evidence from both Taylor & Taylor's inner circle that this was probably not actually the case, and how quickly rumours & interpretations get adopted as 'fact' without any proof - something I think Taylor's also tried to get across with her music, too. I wanted to do a little deep-dive into this side of things to remind us all that we simply cannot believe everything we hear - there's always a lot more to celebrity stories than the loosly-held general beliefs :)

What was the big 'betrayal' in 2019?

If you're new here, welcome! The supposed 'betrayal' revolves around Taylor's Master's Heist in summer 2019, when Scooter Braun (millionaire celebrity manager) bought Taylor's entire back catalogue of music, leaving her without ownership of all her previous music. Taylor was at a turning point in her career, having just ended the 13 year contract that she'd been tied into since she was 15, and was just about to release her first fully-owned album 'Lover' She wanted to buy all her past music, allowing her to have full freedom & ownership going forward - yet it was allegedly sold to Scooter from underneath her, meaning he would be the one profiting from all of her life's work from Debut to Reputation & leaving her without any ownership rights of all her past work. (This is now why she's re-recording her 'Taylor's Versions' of her past albums.) How does Karlie tie into this? Karlie had been a huge part of Taylor's life since 2013. As Gaylors, most of us believe they were much more than friends & Karlie was the main muse for Reputation (2017) & multiple songs on Lover (2019). Karlie had signed with Scooter Braun in 2015. In 2016, Scooter was involved in the Kimye 'Taylor Swift is over controversy', being included in a photo Justin Bieber posted online to taunt Taylor (which Justin later said Scooter had nothing to do with). As she was Scooter's client, Karlie was immedietly caught up between Scooter Vs Taylor rumours, leading her to tweet this:

In early 2017, as the Kimye drama grew, Taylor stopped sharing her private life on social media. From 2017-2018 she releases Rep, goes on tour, ends her contract with Big Machine & begins working towards releasing Lover. All the while, rumours are consistently following both Taylor & Karlie about 'whether or not they're still friends' because they'd not been seen together. A lot of people believe they were still in each other's lives (there are multiple masterposts going into the possible romantic side of things), but the narrative is all over the place: In March 2018, Karlie tells the NY Times: 'don't believe everything you read' & that she and Taylor as still 'very close'. In July 2018, Karlie announces that she's engaged to Josh Kushner and Taylor doesn't publicly comment. In August 2018, Karlie attends the Rep Tour & is brought to the front pit when Taylor sings 'Dress'. In October 2018, Karlie has her first 'wedding' with Josh (up for personal interpretation if this is Lavender or not) - Taylor doesn't publicly comment. The same month, Karlie's YouTube shows her apartment is still full of photos of Taylor & her family/friends (not Josh):

In the first half of 2019 Taylor is finishing writing Lover, which include themes indicative that she is extremely up/down, full of anxiety & has push a 'lover' away: "I'm terrified if you ever walk away" (Cornelia Street), "We were crazy to think this could work, but we might just get away with it" (False God), don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you" (Cruel Summer), " jump from the train, I ride off alone" (The Archer), " blew things out of proportion, why'd I have to break what I love so much? I need to say hey, it's all in my head, I'm the one who burned us down, sorry that I hurt you, I don't do this to you, I don't wanna loose this with you" (Afterglow), "Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts, I look through the windows of this love, even though we boarded them up, chandalier's still flickering here" (DBTC)

What actually happened in Summer 2019?

Taylor begins promoting the release of Lover. In April 2019 she unveils a butterfly wing mural which looks extremely similar to Karlie's butterfly wings from the VS Show where they met & then continues to be ridiculously gay-on-main. She releases You Need To Calm Down, where she's the Sherriff of the Gay trailor park with Bi hair, and ME! on Lesbian Visibility Day... there's endless flagging in clothing/theming. She was getting very 'loud'. Many people believe she may have been leading up to 'coming out' officially, either with the album and/or the Miss Americana documentary that was in the process of being filmed. On 23rd/24th June, Karlie has her second 'wedding' (a big party). Taylor doesn't attend. Scooter does (he's close friends with Josh).

Within a week after he's at this party with Josh & Karlie, Scooter then flies to Nashville and completes the sale of Taylor's masters. The sale is partially funded by the Carlyle Group, who is in business with Kushner Companies (Josh's family's business).

On 30th June (the following weekend), Taylor announces that the Master's Heist has happened & how distraught she is. Lots of celebrities speak up against Scooter & many of his clients (Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber etc) speak up in defence of him. Karlie remains silent & doesn't make a statement either way.

On 3rd July, Perez Hilton starts stirring shit by saying that 'Taylor is no longer close to Karlie because she found out Karlie was telling things about her & her career to Scooter! It began circulating that 2 of Taylor's close friends, Ashley Avignone & Claire Winter had liked the tweet, 'confirming' that this was the case to those that follow gossip sites. Karlie is then photographed at events/lunches/trips with Scooter multiple times throughout the rest of 2019 - further ‘cementing' this idea for fans.

The final blow for this theory came when Taylor released Folkmore (2020): in the song 'Time to Go' she sings "When the words of a sister come back in whispers, that prove she was not in fact what she seemed, not a twin from your dream she's a crook who was caught", which many fans immedietly assumed was about Karlie.

Where are the cracks in all this?

Taylor's other friends: Obviously, social media is only a partial glimpse of a story, but it is very suggestive of behind the scenes information. The reaction to the current Selena controversy was what reminded me of her friendship with Taylor, after she stuck up for Taylor on a video of Hailey Bieber. Selena's been very close to Taylor since they were teenagers. In October 2019, shortly after the Master's Heist, she did an interview where she was in tears talking about how important her friendship with Taylor was, and how much she loved her & her family:

...so she would've been very much on Taylor's 'side' if Taylor has had an awful betrayal from Karlie, right? Yet in November 2019, just 5 months after the Masters Heist , she's very publicly supporting Karlie, too:

..and they have both consistently continued to support eachother ever since, right up to Selena's latest birthday:

In terms of social media, many of Taylor's current close friends & people she's worked closely with continue to follow Karlie (despite following a very limited number of people). This includes Taylor's oldest childhood friend, Abigail (who only follows 285 people - Karlie still follows her back), Haim The Band, as well as Danielle & Alana Haim on thier individual accounts, and Sadie Sink:

Karlie also continues to follow Taylor herself and Taylor's brother, Austin:

We also have two more of Taylor's very close circle, Ryan Reynolds & Gigi Hadid, liking posts about Karlie's 30th birthday in 2022:

What about Perez Hilton's claims? Baring in mind this is the ONLY 'evidence' that exists to support this story, I tried to find the original tweets about 'Karlie telling things about Taylor to Scooter', and low & behold: they're ALL gone. That includes Perez's & the 'Taylor Swift Updates' tweet that was supposedly liked by Taylor's friends. Gone, deleted, non-existent. Why would they have been deleted if they were true & Taylor wanted that story out there? Who made sure they were, from all accounts involved, and only those? Interesting.

What I did find, however, was some tweets and likes from the same friend, Ashley Avignone, discussing how none of Scooter's clients have been able to speak out against him or leave him because of their contracts (this would include Karlie):

What about Karlie 'siding' with Scooter & continuing to work/hang out with him? There were definitely pictures of Karlie continuing to spend time with Scooter after the Masters Heist. However, she was under contract. She never defended him or tried to reason about what he'd done. In fact, she left Scooter as soon as she possibly could. She hasn't been seen with Scooter since 2019 & she signed a new contract with a different manager in 2021. It's also relevant to note that Taylor's other close friend, Ed Sheeran, was also managed by Scooter at the time & didn't speak up publicly either. Taylor reportedly attended Ed's wedding in September 2019, yet Ed continued to stay with Scooter & publicly party with him well into 2021 (so, clearly, if there is an issue with Karlie it wasn't just because she continued to work with Scooter in 2019).

Last but not least, the music:

Throughout her albums since the Masters Heist, Taylor has consistently written about heartbreak & betrayal in different ways. Although 'It's time to go' has been grabbed by many fans as 'proof' that Karlie betrayed her, but most stories just aren't that simple. Taylor is a storyteller. One song doesn't equate to every emotion/situation that Taylor was feeling. As many of us do, I believe there's a clear arc of Taylor painting a picture throughout multiple songs, of how she thought she had been 'betrayed' & the pain of that, but later realising she was just blaming the person she had loved in order to get through it all. Others have done amazing, full analysis of these songs, but in terms of 'betrayal' specifically: In Hoax we see the raw pain of feeling hurt by the one she loved alongside what happened with the Masters Heist (this song is full of Karlie references & Taylor very clearly says she was writing about both love & the Masters Heist in the LPSS): "My eclipsed sun, this has frozen my ground / You know I left a part of me back in NY / You know it still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart, but what you did was just as dark, darling this is just as hard."

In Closure, we see that she's harbouring a lot of anger & isn't ready to move forward or past her pride: "Yes I got your letter, it wasn't right the way it all went down, looks like you know that now / I know that it's over, I don't need your closure / I'm fine with my spite / Guilty, guilty, reaching out across the sea that you put between you & me"

In Coney Island, we begin to see her taking accountability for her own role in the relationship breaking down in the first place (which ties in with Afterglow): "Sorry for not making you my centerfold / It gets colder & colder as the sun goes down / What's a lifetime of acheivement if I pushed you to the edge / Did I leave you hanging every single day / Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?"

In Happiness, we see this accountability clashing with the hurt she still feels about the way it all ended, but ultimately acknowledging she can't make Karlie the villain (suggesting she never actually was one) & wants to forgive her whatever role she did play (when she's ready). Hope she'll be a beautiful fool who takes my spot next to you, no sorry, I don't mean that, I can't see facts through all of my fury / I can't make it go away by making you the villain, guess that's the price I pay for 7 years in heaven / All you want from me is the green light of forgiveness, You haven't met the new me yet, but I think she'll give you that"

Later, in The Great War, we see a continuation of reflecting back on the same themes - telling the story of feeling hurt & betrayed, shutting the other person out, but realising the other person was also being equally hurt by it all / was never the person she should've been blaming: "Cursed you as I sleep-talked, tore your banners down, took the battle underground / I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone" (processing her pain through putting an end to the loudness of Lover & writing Folkmore). "Somewhere in the haze got a sense I'd been betrayed/ telling me to punish you for things you never did, so I justified it" (Taylor's acknowledging once again that the other person hadn't actually done what she thought they had) "You drew up some good faith treaties / Tears on the letter / My hand was the one you reached for" (could be a callback to the letter' in closure & suggests the person was trying to make peace). "Your finger on my hairpin triggers, soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honour & truth, broken & blue, so I called off the troops" (icy ground could be a callback to 'you have frozen my ground' back Hoax).

So where does that leave us?

Who the hell knows? No one does, but I love reading all the theories when the rest of the music is tied into it all! But in regard to there being a 'betrayal', given how there was never any concrete evidence that Karlie did anything wrong in the first place (& how the only tweets alluding to it have mysteriously dissapeared), the continual association with Karlie from some of the closest people in Taylor's life, Karlie leaving Scooter at the first chance she got & the arc of the 'thought i was betrayed but I was really just heartbroken & being dramatic' story from Taylor, I am now a firm believer that there wasn't a 'big betrayal' from Karlie in regard to the Master's Heist.

The rest of it is all up for guesswork. Taylor definitely felt betrayed by something at first. We know there were already break-up songs on Lover written before the Master's Hiest which suggest Taylor was the one to push her lover away, yet they were still dappled with hope that she'd get them back. Potentially, Karlie had already been pushed away & had sought security in her long-term partnership with Josh/decided to marry him. After the engagement & 1st wedding, this is when we see Taylor's very 'loud' Lover Era - could this have been an attempt to 'prove herself' to Karlie & make a statement about what she was willing to do? However, Karlie was already comitted to Josh & had gone through with the 1st wedding. Within a 1 week period of June 2019, Karlie doubled down on going through with her 2nd wedding to Josh & her manager bought Taylor's Masters, making it extremely risky for Taylor to continue to make a career-changing choice of 'coming out' (if that's what she'd been intending to do). Could it have been orchestrated by Scooter (& Josh?) in order to keep Taylor closeted? Could Josh have been involved financially in order to put a stop to the rumours about Karlie after they'd already comitted to marriage & keep his business deals/ family connections safe from speculation? Could Karlie simply have been trapped in the middle of all of it & torn between her loyalty to both Taylor & Josh, causing an already heartbroken Taylor to 'kick the cat' and initially put the blame on Karlie for the way it all happened? (If you factor in the possibility that both Karlie & Josh might be closeted & had eventually comitted to a consentual Lavender Marriage, it makes the risk of Taylor exposing them even bigger. Josh was tied up in Billionaire conservative circles & relied heavily on his business partnerships in the Middle East & Asia, as well as pressure from the Trump side of the family. We have no idea what kind of pressure he & Karlie may have been under behind the scenes).

Who the hell knows - but if Karlie had directly, intentionally been involved in such a big betrayal to Taylor, I HIGHLY doubt her best friends/family would be having anything to do with her.

Folkmore shows a clear theme of working through different, conflicting emotions, & then in Midnights we're back to seeing the Karlie-coded songs being portrayed as a big, authentic love (not one that was hate-filled or hurtful)...so at the very least, I'm definitley on the team of believing they have worked through whatever they needed to & have drawn a line under it all :) + a little update since the Eras tour started we have seen some of Karlies friends attend the show such as Derek Blasberg (her long time best friend), Cara Delevingne…Gigi Hadid revealed she will attend the Eras tour and go to as many shows as she can and she was just recently seen with Karlie in Mumbai. I hope this post made some things more clear for everyone not knowing this side of the story.

[evilforgood999]

I want to talk about which cars justin reigns uses

it would be logical if they used the same machines that the US police use but nah man, dreamswap ≠ logical

Have you seen the Jeeps? I know they're mostly for off-road driving, they're so cool and I want JR to be at least a little cool rangers and not ordinary cops.

just imagine that Dream was so perfectionist that he gave them a Jeep Wrangler 2015 or a Special version of the Jeep Wrangler Moab Edition, which are similar in color to their dumb black and white uniforms.

I also think they have the classic 2004 Chevrolet Express for going on raids where they will need to detain a large group of people

I imagine Cross saying "even though they're complete cretins I like the style of these guys. Seriously, how can they shame monochrome colors with their dumb behavior?"

[shera-dnd]

Alright I have eaten my mato peach and have gained the amazing power to do literary and thematic analysis of any piece of media, no matter how fucking stupid

and as the first activation of my ability, I'm turning it towards the stupid ecchi reverse slave harem manga, Mato Seihei no Slave (or Chained Soldier if you're not as much of a fucking weeb as I am) in order to prove that this is actually thematically consistent and surprisingly well written

(long pause as I let all my followers block me and leave)

but first to address the two shuuki in the room

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU'VE BEEN READING AN ECCHI SLAVE HAREM MANGA YOU FUCKING WEIRDO?

Look... LOOK! It's not what you think!

Okay so like a lot of anime and manga recently (primarily isekai) have been including slavery as a thing in their world building, and tho I'm not gonna claim that's the only thing it ever gets used for, it's quite clear that a lot of people are only using that as an excuse for kinky slave play BDSM

and then forget that that stuff comes with like... you know, the horrific implications of slavery as an institution

WELL GOOD NEWS! The author of this manga does not give a shit about disguising his femdom slave play kink as commentary on slavery, this is literally just a BDSM thing and it never pretends to be anything else

...besides, a woman has needs, okay?

WAIT SHOULDN'T THIS MANGA TRIGGER YOU? ISN'T YOUR TRIGGER THE LITERAL CENTRAL GIMMICK OF THIS?

YOU WOULD BE CORRECT! By all logical means I should not be able to read this manga without having the most viscerally negative response possible... except that I don't

I'm not gonna pretend that I know why or how this is working

But I read Monster Musume back in 2015 and it somehow helped me get over my fear of spiders, SO WHO KNOWS maybe niche ecchi manga are how I get over my mental blocks

I would rather it wasn't, but I'm having a hard time proving otherwise!

oh god we're already 400 words in and I have only just finished the preamble. Why am I like this?

Okay okay let us get started as I'll give a detailed explanation as to why Mato Seihei no Slave is about the bonds between people, the ways we bring out the best in each other, and what makes a good dom- ahem I mean leader... what makes a good leader

So for those who don't know the central conceit of this story is that this is a world where women get super powers and men get... to be stay at home husbands

Our protagonist is male wife supreme, Yuuki Wakura, whose main hobbies include cooking, cleaning, and day dreaming about one day becoming a hero

unfortunately for our adorable little boy toy he immediately finds himself falling through a portal into actual literal hell (technically it's called Mato, but like it's just hell) where he's promptly attacked by several giant monsters

BUT GOOD NEWS FOR HIM! He's being saved by a hyper competent hot woman in a uniform (lesbians going "it should have been me!" count should be at 1 by now)

BAD NEWS FOR HIM! She's alone and soon they both get overwhelmed because she can't go full apeshit murder mode while protecting his soft boy ass

Thankfully there is a way for her to save him still, it just requires some collaboration from him

("it should have been me!" count: 2)

And here we are at the main fucking gimmick. The reason why all the ecchi shit happens, the silly excuse for why this bad bitch decides to keep this guy at her side

Chains of Eternity: Slave

Kyouka Uzen (the ultimate girl boss) can forge a contract with someone to bind them to her will as her slave. This will bring out their hidden potential and allow them to fight by her side, turning them into a super powerful killing machine at her command.

In exchange once the task is done she must give a reward to her slave based on the difficulty of the task and the slave's "latent desires"

So yeah, Kyouka doesn't get to decide what the reward is, Yuuki doesn't get to decide what the reward is, only Kyouka's magic can decide what the reward is. Which basically just means the author gets to insert whatever horny fuckery they want into this

Rewards vary from giving him head pats, offering him treats, giving him a back massage, kissing him, to...

well this is a femdom series for a reason

(I think the "it should have been me!" count is at like a 4 or a 5 now)

and now I'm gonna analyze the ever loving shit out of that ability and how it is the crux to all the themes of the show and actually informs us on the nature of Kyouka's character

no, I'm not kidding

Okay so let me just break down what Slave does here from a kink point of view. It basically allows Kyouka and Yuuki to enter into a BDSM relationship where the dom always knows what the sub wants, while still being able to surprise the sub with her actions. She gets to constantly keep her sub beneath her, while also being magically required to reward him and give him aftercare once she's done

Those two have entered a ridiculously healthy BDSM relationship by forging a magical contract that lets them skip all the negotiation bits and go right to what the audience wants to see

(yeah it's gonna be impossible to track the "it should have been me!"s from this point on, so just try to keep your own count at home)

This is also the author's way of like having his cake and fucking it too

Because that way we can have Kyouka as the baddest bitch to ever live AND have her do embarrassing stuff with Yuuki without ever breaking character. In fact the loftier her goals and the more tragic her backstory the more reason she has to accept the reward mechanism as the price to pay for this power

It's also why Kyouka is easily the most developed and interesting character of the manga, to the point that Yuuki is more a supporting character to her arc

This brings us back to those three themes I mentioned waaaaay at the start

Starting with: "how we bring out the best in each other"

For starters it's quite obvious how that works with Yuuki. He wants to be a hero in a world where he should not be able to have super powers, and in comes Kyouka who gives him both the power and the purpose to achieve that goal

But this also extends to literally everyone in Unit Seven and beyond

We have seen the ways in which Kyouka has helped all of her team mates grow stronger and overcome their past traumas, some times by the sheer confidence and kindness of her presence

Hell we see one of her team mates unlock a rage mode power up because someone said Kyouka was a bad leader

and there's even another team leader who straight up evolved her powers into a new stronger form just out of sheer love and respect for Kyouka

This culminates in the development of Lending. The ability to let others take Yuuki's chain and use him in combat

and like I'm not stupid, I'm not gonna pretend this isn't primarily an excuse to have different hot women give Yuuki rewards in ever hornier scenarios, with the added benefit of being able to design cooler monster forms for him

and I mean... those are some really cool monster forms

But that's besides the point

The point is that this also pulls double duty by allowing Kyouka and Yuuki to constantly empower all of the people around them and help them through their character arcs

From helping people stand up to abusive family members, to allowing others to gain the confidence they need to grow, to just decking an asshole real hard in the face

And not once does Yuuki steal other's glory. The final confrontation and the catharsis is always delivered by the person who is being helped. Because lover boy here is the supporting character in his own story

This all leads neatly into another point: the bonds we have with others

DAMN RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS WE'RE GETTING CHAIN SYMBOLISM IN THIS BITCH!

Oh are we getting a message about how we're all links in the chain and the stronger each of us gets the stronger we all get? FUCK YEAH

Are we getting chains as a representation of a mutual bond of trust and respect, and get to see those bonds be used as a literal weapon to defeat a foe who is antithetical to that idea? ABSOLUTELY

TEAM WORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK, BABY!

But wait there's more! We got a character who can copy other people's skills and she also grows like crazy with each person she bonds with

We got teams of heroes besting villains who refuse to work with anyone

THAT'S THE SHONEN ANIME GOODNESS WE'RE HERE FOR!

(I mean this is technically seinen but who gives a shit, right?)

And that brings us finally to the third point, the series antagonists, and Kyouka's main goal

What makes a good leader?

So far we've focused on Kyouka and her ability, Slave, and how that allows her to help the people around her grow and encourages her to fight on the front line where she can be a shining example for all around her to follow

She treats everyone around her with trust and respect, even the boy who is literally her slave, and is by all metrics BEST GIRL!

Now all of that good shit doesn't mean much if we don't have anything to contrast and compare to

Enter Ren Yamashiro

gonna give y'all a second to simp for a bit before I continue

done staring at her legs? good. Anyways here's why she's awful!

Ren is the commander of the Anti-Demon Corps and easily the strongest character in the setting by a wide margin

She's also self centered, corrupt, physically AND emotionally abusive, horrifically petty, and likes dogs in the exact same way Makima from Chainsaw Man likes dogs

This is, of course, perfectly translated into her special ability, because this author loves having abilities inform characters

So not only does she have some absurd broken power that she has the power of anime and buddha on her side, BUT the way it manifests is as kanji covering her eyes whenever she activates her skills

Quite literally making so all she can see is her own power and greatness

AND her main use of her powers is to fly around, so she can be ABOVE everyone else

This isn't fucking subtle, but it sure as fuck gets the point across

This is a trait that Ren shares with ALL the main villains of the series. Each and everyone of them is blinded by their own greatness and is constantly looking down on others

Ren is just the least subtle. I guess they had to compensate for the fact that she isn't an actual literal evil god

And so all of those are put in opposition to Kyouka, whose goal is to overthrow Ren, become the new commander, and destroy Mato for good

The woman whose power makes her dependent on others, but that allows her to bring out the best in everyone she meets

A power that grows stronger the more people she helps and the more people help her in return

Standing up against all these people who refuse to rely on anything besides their own strength

That is why Kyouka is the shining example of a good leader!

Now here we are 2k words into this (OH DEAR GOD WHY AM I LIKE THIS), so what was the point of this journey?

Is it me recommending this manga to people and claiming it's genuinely "peak fiction"? OH GOD NO

This thing has so many issues and literally all of them stem from the fact that this is an ecchi harem manga story first and foremost.

Titillation always comes first over anything else, several of the smaller side characters eventually devolve into just different flavors of wanting to dom Yuuki, and that's not even going into all the pet play stuff featuring Ren

This is an unashamedly horny manga with a very specific brand of kink in mind and when I started reading it that was legit all I wanted out of it

But then it refused to be JUST that. It had an interesting story, fun action scenes, compelling characters, and a surprising amount of thought put into its themes

It's not a manga I'd recommend to most people at all, and it requires a considerable amount of tolerance for some capital H Horny anime bullshit

But honestly? If you're cool with that and want a fun and a little unhinged story you can do way worse than this

So what else is left to say except

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!!!!

[justcallmecoby]

Every once in a while i really get into the idea of wanting to make a BTTF fanfic and i start some really hardcore planing and storylining for a few days but then I ALWAYS get waaaay too confused with the cannon timeline and give up.

For example, last time i did this the main idea was a 2010/15 Marty (now of course the rockstar he always wanted to be with the right foot forward into his 40s) trying to contact and meet movie 2 future doc after doc promised him he will "Say hi to him when he gets there". I really thought this was a clever loophole for a continuation of the story after the pretty final ending of the time machine being destroyed.

THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS THOUGH THAT THE FUTURE IS DIFFERENT ISNT IT?! Marty at the end of movie 3 gets over his weakness to being called a coward RIGHT? So that would change the future and his way of life possibly getting him to his dream of becoming a rockstar. But if the future is different... his son would never get into trouble because he possibly a) doesont even exist or b) theres no biff problem because marty is no longer a coward so he would never get into the trouble marty in movie 2 has to solve in 2015. So if marty junior doesont get into trouble, doc doesont neED TO GET BACK TO 1985 TO GET MARTY TO 2015 TO SAVE THE PROBLEM SO MARTY NEVER BUYS THAT SPORTS ALMANAC FROM THE ANTIQE STORE SO OLD BIFF NEVER GETS TO IT AND NEVER FINDS OUT ABOUT THE TIME MACHINE SO HE DOESONT CAUSE THE 1985 TIMELINE TO CHANGE SO MARTY DOESONT NEED TO RETURN TO 1955 TO FIX THE TIMELINE SO DOC NEVER ACCIDENTALY TIMETRAVELS TO 1885 AND MARTY DOESONT GET STUCK IN 1955 SO HE NEVER GETS THE 1955 VERSION OF DOC TO GET HIM TO THE WILD WEST SO HE DOESONT EVER SAVE DOCS LIFE AND DOESONT RETURN BACK TO 1985 TO GET JENNIFER AND THAT MEANS THAT

HE.

NEVER.

GETS.

OVER.

HIS.

WEAKNESS.

OF BEING CALLED A COWARD!!!

*sigh* so...if he never gets over his weakness...the 2015 marty shouldnt change... but if 1985 marty never meets 2015 doc the timeline MUST change.......

Maybe..maybe im glad Back to the future is only a trilogy. That way it makes at least a little more sence. Yea...

...its probably better that i never got to write a fanfic continuation or id go insane.

[satureja13]

It's the last night before the tests and - should they all pass - the last night on their home planet...

It's already late but the Boys are still awake. And they're learning diligently.

Rubyn is tutoring Sai on Androids. Their fields of applications, their maintenance - and their dangers...

Sai knows about their dangers just all too well now. And he wonders why Rubyn hadn't desintegrated her evil creation RoDri6ue2-B. Since they are about to do exactly that with Tiny Can...

Rubyn: "Do you think we have the right to do so?" Sai: "Why not? It's just a machine. Of course we have the right to turn it off - if it malfunctions and can't be repaired. And we even have the obligation to destroy machines that are a possible danger to mankind."

Rubyn: "The following is what Captain Picard said at the hearing to Android Data's defense in the episode 'The Measure of a Man:

"Commander Riker has dramatically demonstrated to this court that Lieutenant Commander Data is a machine. Do we deny that? No, because it is not relevant: we, too, are machines, just machines of a different type. Commander Riker has also reminded us that Lieutenant Commander Data was created by a man; do we deny that? No. Again, it is not relevant. Children are created from the 'building blocks' of their parents' DNA. Are they property?"

I think it's not as easy as it seems. RoDri6ue2-B and Tiny Can are sentient beings. And even though RoDri6ue2-B is - let's say 'eccentric' - he never acted against the law. And the strive for world domination makes one excellent president material in some parts of this planet, right? Tiny Can only ever tried to help you - successfully. Hasn't he?" Sai wasn't convinced: "I don't know, they could be a potential danger in the future... Who knows what he's capable of?" Rubyn: "Well, anyone of us could be a 'potential danger' in the future. Jack, for example. He could spiral down again into madness anytime. Shall we withdraw him in advance, then?" Sai: "What? No!"

And while Rubyn and Sai philosophized about what makes one 'human', Jack and Kiyoshi went to the small yard behind the workshop for Jack's martial arts training. He's designated as security officer and takes this very serious. Jack: "Argh! I just can't seem to get this Tal-Shaya move right!" Kiyoshi suggested to practise with him - boy-to-boy.

The others already went to bed to be fit and well rested for the tests in the morning, so Kiyoshi and Jack went a bit away from the tents to not disturb them. Ah, how they'd missed this! They didn't know it then, but fighting is something they both really enjoyed back in their days as a (secret) couple.

And just like in the good old days, the intense physical contact aroused them - significantly ö.Ö' Jack doesn't know what to do with all those feelings - and the need. He needed more of Kiyoshi - now!

And Kiyoshi seems to feel the same way ö.Ö'

They agreed to quickly take a cold shower and go to sleep!

But the Romantium ore, Sai had threwn under the shrubbery, thwarted their plans and made them giving themselves over to absolute pleasure - as if they were remote-controlled.

'Give yourself over to absolute pleasure Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh Erotic nightmares beyond any measure And sensual daydreams to treasure forever Can't you just see it?

Oh, oh, oh

Don't dream it, be it.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

And - of course - Sai and Jeb heard them. Sai: "These noises don't sound like fighting noises anymore... What are they doing again?!" Jeb is a bit jealous. These are exactly the noises he wants to make with Sai. But he can't - because he can't hurt him...

Jack and Kiyoshi also didn't notice the ore when they crawled out of the bush. Jack even almost hit his foot on it!

Sober and deflated, they are devastated of what they'd done again. Sure, they talked it out last time, but it still feels wrong - to both of them. Being as close and intimate as they are as mates, just mates is one thing. But woohooing (and let alone kissing) feels still weird. Even though they try hard not to make it weird.

Jack: "Do you think it's the heat again?" Kiyoshi: "Hm - I thought if I were your Alpha once again it would stop, after I - uhm ... claimed you once...? I'll ask Greg about it." Jack: "Maybe rather Uncle Stefan..." Kiyoshi: "Right." Because Jack hates Greg...

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[methotrex8]

All this talk around AI has me thinking about the game SOMA.

In SOMA, there is an AI called the WAU that is programmed to preserve humanity at all costs. However, seeing as it’s a machine, it doesn’t know what makes humans human. This results in the following:

scans of humans’ brains being implanted into robots. They’re called Mockingbirds and often go insane with the dissonance of trapped in a nonhuman body.

Reanimated human corpses that are horribly mutated by the WAU. Some of these reanimated cadavers appear to be in a constant state of suffering, with some screaming or crying.

Comatose victims of said reanimated corpses kept alive only by being hooked up to the WAU, stuck in a dream state that they can’t wake up from, but *technically* still alive.

The protagonist, who is a scan of a terminally ill man from 2015 placed into the skull of a dead woman who is fused into a power suit.

The point of the game is to question what makes us human, but also what exactly is ‘human enough?’ Does any of the above count?

Idk man, maybe I’m reading too much into it. But that game left a mark in my soul and this talk of using actors’ likenesses and voices without their consent opened it back up again.

[simonh]

Sound of Sun by Thomas Hawk

[rheaswrath]

Medea - Euripides; 2.Jennifer's Body; 3. Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn; 4.Euphoria s2; 5. Stoker; 6.Pearl; 7. The Orestea -  Aeschylus (transl. Anne Carson); 8. Game of Thrones s1; 9.The Other Lamb (2019); 10. Seven Devils - Florence and the Machine; 11.Judith Beheading Holofernes; 12.Promising Young Woman (2020); 13.House of the Dragon s1; 14.Dream Girl Evil - Florence and the Machine; 15.Crimson Peak (2015); 16. An Allegory of Venus and Cupid - Agnolo Bronzino; 17. Ptolemea - Ethel Cain; 18.Jael and Sisera -Artemisia Gentileschi; 19. The Second Sex - Simon de Beauvoir; 20. Judith with the Head of Holofernes - Cristofano Allori (Palazzo Pitti, Florence version)

[kbspangler]

ISSUES - Coping Strategies

Remembered this old story of mine that I had posted on my Patreon in 2017. In April of 2016, I donated an AGAHF story to Geeky Giving, an organization raising funds " to help advance research on Parkinson’s, ALS, traumatic brain injuries, brain tumors, Alzheimer’s and more. " At the time of writing, Geeky Giving was working with the  Barrow Neurological Institute to determine the causes and progression of these conditions. 

Alzheimer's took my grandmother; it took my husband's grandmother. Both of us watch our parents like hawks: both of us wonder what's going to happen to us in 50 years.  So I approached Geeky Giving and offered to donate a story to them. They said sure, and yes, it could be an in-universe AGAHF story as long as it touched on the importance of neurological research. 

I have a series of short stories called "Issues," mainly for topics which don't get a lot of on-panel discovery. This is the story of the brilliant oncologist who had to shift her specialty to cyborg research, and the damaged forensic artist who is slowly putting himself back together. AKA: How Jenny and Shawn fell in love.

Please be kind: this was written in 2015-16 and language changes.

The man on the other side of the bed was sweet and kind and completely insane.

She didn’t know how to feel about that. This uncertainty bothered her more than the act of sleeping with a crazed man. Five years ago, she would have been mortified with herself, with the idea of intimacy with someone such as Shawn. Even if he wasn’t her patient. Even if he was more than a friend. Today, he was just…Shawn.

She didn’t let herself think about it—she’d find fear down there, and maybe something else, something that could chase the fear away but leave them both forever changed.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling and pretended she couldn’t hear her machines call to her.

Shawn’s mental voice was strong, and ran as crisp as a winter river through her mind. “Go,” he said.

 “I thought you were asleep,” she whispered aloud.

“You’re too noisy. You should go. Go be with them.”

She rolled over to face him. He had cut his hair himself last week and had done an awkward job of it. Someone had given him a buzz cut to tidy him up, but aggressive neurosurgery and skull-shorn hair paired poorly. She traced his scars with her fingertips, feeling the bumps and twists of the ridges of his scar tissue, and beneath that, his drowsy tangle of emotions.

“They miss you,” he said in her mind. He reached out and traced her own scars, hidden beneath her short brown hair. “I’ll miss you, too, but I want to sleep.”

“All right.” She kissed him on his shoulder, and felt him drop out of her senses as his implant went into passive mode. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Take your time,” he muttered into his pillow, his voice cut down to nothing from lack of use. “I remember having more energy after sex.”

“You remember sex when you were twenty,” she said. Their clothes were a single knot on the floor; she yanked on loose ends until she had reclaimed her pants. “We’re getting old.”

Gentle snoring.

The other members of the collective slept around them, rooms and buildings and miles away. She felt them around her, off-line but still present in the back of her head, four hundred souls who shared their thoughts with her during the day but kept their dreams to themselves.

She opened the door to the crash room and stepped into her lab. It was a medical suite in name only, stuck beneath a crumbling mansion in what once had been a wine cellar. Federal funding only went so far: the government could front the costs for the cutting-edge technology that had gone into their heads, but resources for infrastructure and development? Please.

She didn’t mind. She had built her own diagnostic laboratory by scavenging equipment from storage, or buying what she couldn’t borrow. The room served double-duty as an emergency ward, but the worst injuries she saw tended to be exercise-induced, and not too many of those.

It left her plenty of time for her own projects.

Her computers whirred to life around her. There was no need for clunky access codes; they recognized her and welcomed her home.

“HELLO, JENNY.”

Theirs was a woman’s voice, false and mechanical. Most days, she told herself that they couldn’t feel, that she was projecting her own eagerness to get back to work on her machines.

On nights like this, when the rest of the collective was sleeping and she was nearly alone in her own head, Jenny wasn’t so sure.

“Hello, ladies,” she said. “Ready to play?”

A human brain sprung up around her in reply.

It was lovingly rendered in greens, and enlarged ten times life-size for clarity; if she looked closely, she could see the bright flashes of synapses.

(Which was something of a comfort—it was her own brain, scanned and digitized, and independent confirmation that your own brain is active is always welcome.)

 The implant rested against her parietal lobe, a small metallic sliver smaller than the head of a nail. At this resolution, she could make out the microscopic filaments connected to it; these ran throughout her brain, the majority twining into her brain stem. Heat regulation had been front and center on the developers’ own minds; without it, the cyborgs would have cooked themselves within their own skulls.

She ran her fingers through the hologram. The silvery filaments covered her holographic brain like cobwebs, shining brightly against the green.

“Ladies, overlay image JED-1 over master.”

A second brain appeared, the same general size and shape as the first but made from blues instead of greens. The opacity of the green brain diminished as the blue brain was positioned over it.

“File: Jenny Davis, late night ramblings,” she said aloud. Talking helped. Speaking directly to her computers through her implant was good for clinical analysis, but it was late, and she was tired, and it was time to purge her thoughts so she could, maybe, get some sleep.

“RECORDING.”

“Thank you, ladies. Subfile: Background, general.” She began to pace around and through the hologram, checking for oddities. The blue brain was hers, too—had been hers, once, nearly seven years and an entire lifetime ago. Before the surgery, and the collective, and the alien oddness of hiveminds had all had their way with it. “Image JED-1, brain of a healthy 22-year-old Caucasian female. Ladies, highlight parietal lobe.”

 A section of the hologram began to glow.

“Side by side, magnify, compare and contrast.”

The hologram divided itself again, blue and green enlarging to fill the room. She wandered through the colors, talking to her machines as she went, tracing lines and shapes and twisting flashes of—

“What’s this?”

Jenny swore aloud as her concentration shattered. Shawn flinched away from her sudden frustration and dropped to his knees.

“Oh, honey!” She knelt beside him and reached out through the link. His consciousness scurried away from hers, looking for an escape but unable to find it. “I didn’t know you were there. I’m so sorry.”

She pressed her bare hands against his bare shoulders: she pushed positive emotions—calm, peace, belonging—across the bridge of their skin until he believed it.

He uncurled, looking up at her like a lost lamb.

“I thought you were asleep,” she explained. “You scared me.”

 Shawn laughed at that.

She managed to coax him off of the ground, one arm around him to keep him steady. “Here,” she said aloud. “Look. Want to see something amazing?

“This is me,” she continued, pointing to the blue hologram. “You know those tests you hate so much?”

“The brain scans?” He shuddered, and the sensation of being trapped in a tight white chamber crushed against her. Of lying as still as death, of knowing the person on the other end of the monitor was looking for what was wrong about what the core of you…

“Easy,” she whispered. “Please.”

His fear let her go, slowly. It had managed to find the cracks in her own psyche and had set itself deep—What if these brain implants stimulate tumorigenesis? Or neurodegeneration, or arteriovenous malformation, or… An almost endless list of what could go wrong…

 But there was the green hologram, brand-new and still perfect, and she told herself to put those fears aside.

“Well…” she began, “you remember during orientation, when we all had full medical diagnostics done? This is a composite image from my first MRI and CT scans.”

He stretched out a hand; it passed through the hologram, layering him in a blue the color of a summer sky.

“And this is me, too,” she said, pulling the green parietal lobe towards them. “From last week. Notice the differences?”

“This,” he said, as he pointed to the bright sliver of light on the green lobe. “Obviously.”

“What else?”

He grinned at her. A sense of pleasure at the challenge came back to her over their link, and she turned away on the pretense of gathering up some fallen papers. Too easy to forget that Shawn had once been in the FBI, that he had once been a brilliant up-and-coming forensic artist.

That experimenting with the human mind could have consequences.

Shawn didn’t seem to notice. He moved between the holograms, sorting and poking. His own digital renders began to appear as he worked; the holograms he created were more stylized than her own, freehand sketches hanging in the air beside her still images.

“Here,” he said, once done.

She wrapped her arms around him and stood on her toes so she could rest her chin on his shoulder. His sketches were playful, with arcs of white light moving across the lobes in quick streams. In some places, they caught what she hadn’t: Shawn’s sketches moved across regions that seemed no different than the others, with—

Jenny squinted, hard. “Are those bunnies?”

She stepped away from Shawn and moved into the holograms. A tiny cartoon rabbit popped out of a fold in her green parietal lobe and scampered across her brain. That first rabbit was followed by a second, then a third…more rabbits, an infinite number of rabbits, each scurrying with purpose towards different destinations.

Not just arcs of light, then.

“There are cheetahs somewhere,” he said. “And horses, too. They don’t show up as often. I used rabbits to show the most frequent movement.”

Sure enough, a streak of light emerged across the green expanse before her. A herd of wild mustangs, manes and tails flowing together as they ran, moved in a single stream.

“Damn,” she said softly. “Baby, this is really beautiful.”

She felt his cheeks flush. “It’s just a clip from a YouTube video,” he replied. “I didn’t have time to render each horse.”

“But you drew the bunnies?”

“One of them. The rest are a copy-paste job.”

“These are neural networks,” she said, reaching out to touch the mustangs with her mind. They blurred beneath her thoughts: she hastily moved her mind away, scared she had damaged them. The herd reformed and continued its journey. “Your bunnies are action potentials. The horses—” Out of the corner of her eye, a tiny feline body bunched and shot across the hologram at an incredible speed. “—and the cheetahs are electrochemical neurotransmissions.”

He laughed aloud, a wild, coughing sound. “I can’t remember freshman biology,” he said. “All I know is that the green brain has more wildlife than the blue one. A lot more wildlife.”

“That’s because the implant’s been changing us.”

White light in her head, so bright and sudden it took her a moment to realize her words had stunned him. Shawn stood, motionless, before he turned and fled to the comfortable darkness of the crash room.

“Oh, no, no, Shawn honey…” Jenny hurried after him. If he managed to make it under the bed, he’d be there for the rest of the week. She reached him in time to lay both hands flat on his back and pushed calm, belonging, peace across their joined skin.

He let her pull him away from the bed, but no further. They huddled on the floor in a sad, uncomfortable pile, and she felt a spot on the knee of her jeans grow damp.

Shawn was crying.

“There’s always some good that comes with change,” she said gently.

He looked up at her, eyes wide and desperate, before curling in on himself again.

“You didn’t break. You got a little bent, but… Here,” she said. “Come back to the lab. I want to show you something.”

Bad days turned him mulish, but this was a good day: she was able to coax him off the floor and as far as the doorway. They stood in the void between rooms, cold tile beneath their toes and warm carpet under their heels, as the holograms spun before them.

Jenny pointed. “You said you noticed how there was more wildlife in the green brain?”

“…yes…”

“That’s because our brains—this part of our brains, anyhow—is more active than it was before we got the implant. No, not just active—it’s thriving! Want to guess why?”

His attention was fixed on the holograms, but the easy scorn of an eyeroll passed between them.

“Humor me,” she said. “I’m going to have to explain this to people who aren’t in the collective at some point. Help me find the right words for this.”

“Because we’re using our brains in new ways,” Shawn replied, his mood pulling itself a little higher. “Talking via a link, or this—” he said, and pushed sensations at her.

Unseen fur, coarse but soft, surrounded her hands. Beneath that was the heat from a living body. With these came the memory of a beloved family dog, long dead but not forgotten.

“Exactly,” she said, blinking back her own tears at the loss of a pet she had never met. “We’re the first humans to have been augmented in this way. It’s causing us to think and act differently. We’ve got these new skills that we’re just beginning to put to use. We’re barely seven years into this experiment, and there’s already observable growth in the parietal lobe. Can you imagine what we’ll be able to do after—”

 “Wait, Jenny, wait. Brains grow? Don’t we… I thought we started shedding brain mass once we turned eighteen.”

“That’s Hollywood science,” she said. “Outdated and chock full of errors, but it still fits the script. The reality is…”

—rabbits, horses, and giant cats, speeding over an expanse of green in endless knots of light—

“The reality is, we’re miracles,” she said to him. “Human beings weren’t meant to be networked together. We shouldn’t have the ability to survive as part of a collective, but we do. We change—we grow. We’ve barely begun to understand how we can do any of this, but the more we learn, the more we can use that to grow.”

Shawn broke away from her and stepped into the lab. Greens and blues moved around him, coloring him in a digital sea. He was still naked; the scars across his wrists were nearly as white as the glowing animals.

“What about me?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not…” Shawn’s hands clenched uselessly. “I’m not who I used to be. Does this mean I can go back to how I was, or will I…”

He opened his hands and let his mind pour into hers.

Memories. All of them, from the moment that his own mind broke under the weight of a new reality to living in the fear of staying as he was, unable to change, unable to grow, a roller coaster of emotions that threatened to tip off of the rails—

Too much: she cried out. Shawn lost focus: the memories faded.

Her world rebuilt itself in pieces. The floor came first: she had fallen to her knees. She concentrated on the patterns in the tile until she found the walls. Where there was a floor and walls, there was a ceiling…

She stood.

Shawn hadn’t noticed. “Is this me?” he asked. “This?! From now on?”

She closed her eyes and thought about impossible conversations. Then: “Ladies?”

The holograms stopped spinning.

“Replace current images with new holographic display. Show SEF-1 and SEF-46, parietal lobes only. Side-by-side comparisons.”

Blues and greens vanished; blues and greens returned. To the untrained eye, nothing had changed; the wildlife was gone, but the silvery rectangle was still there on the green brain, and the same flashes of light chased itself in purposeful patterns across both.

“Here,” she said, as she joined Shawn in the center of the room. “This is you. Your earliest scans are blue, and the most recent scans are green.”

He stared up at the twisting holograms. She felt his attention dart across the details, focusing like a laser on anything distinctive or different…

“They look just like yours,” he finally admitted.

“That’s the problem, baby.” Jenny pulled him close. “If you had typical neurological damage, it’d show up on the scans. Whatever happened to you, it’s…harder to find.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Mental illness can be caused by emotional, psychological, or physiological events, or a combination of these. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of the causes of known disorders. Since your condition is almost unique, we’re flying blind.”

Sorrow. Loss. Anger—You’re a doctor! Why can’t you fix what’s wrong with me?!—and fear.

So much fear.

“We’ll get there,” she promised, as she pushed her own fear down below where she could feel it. “You’re responding well to medication and therapy. It’ll take time, and trial-and-error, and…and more tests, I’m sorry. None of this is easy, but we’ll make it work.

“You might never get back to who you used to be,” she admitted, as his heart hammered in her head. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t get to where you want to be, now.”

“I can do more tests,” he said quietly, even as the white chamber rose up again in his mind.

Together, they held their fears away.

[selkra-souza]

The Moodsters Rabbit Hole

So I was bored one day and in my vain attempt to search the internet to find a knock off Inside Out movie to ironically enjoy, I find out that one does not exist. Vídeo Brinquedo, the studio behind the critically memed Ratatoing, has truly forsaken me, and alas, I can only dream. Instead of finding a rip off Inside Out movie, I ended up finding something that accused Inside Out of ripping off it, I'm talking suing. Turned out to be just as interesting.

The Moodsters is a multimedia edutainment brand and children's foundation centered around a cast of six monstrous critter "feelings detectives" called Moodsters. There's Coz, the yellow Moodster representing happiness, Snorf the blue Moodster representing sadness, Razzy representing anger, Quiggly representing fear, Lolly who represents love and Tully representing ... being calm I think? The Moodsters is an IP created by Denise Daniels and owned by JellyJam Entertainment (formally known as the Moodsters Company) who claim on their website (themoodsterschildrensfoundation.org, formally themoodsters.com) that they're "providing accessible science-based content on emotions for children, their parents, and teachers for more than 35 years". That science is based in collaboration with Marc Brackett PhD and Robin Stern PhD, to develop the RULER™ model for dealing with emotions. Besides their mission statement and credentials, their site currently has downloadable workbooks for kids to print and journal their thoughts and feelings on, along with guide booklets for their caretakers. Their children's foundation initiatives includes an "International Partnership for Children Displaced by War" and "Grief Relief with the Moodsters".

They've got a twitter account featuring one (1) post from 2016.

Let's dig deeper though. Hopping onto the Wayback Machine and searching for "Moodsters" will show you that they've had an online presence since 2008. Since then, the brand has gone through a few changes, and they've released a few toys and published a few books.

I first want to go over the plushies specifically because look at them.

They're adorable. I want to firmly grasp them in my hand. These goobers were sold in retail in the mid 2010s and nowadays are pretty rare in the second hand market. They look soft and I appreciate everything from their embroidered features to Snorf's lopsided face. From looking at them, I like the quality. My only complaint is that their little detective capes lack edge stitches, which would make them more prone to tears, and I'm not convinced they have an accessible way to replace their batteries (though I could be wrong). Overall as a plushie lover though, I want them in my home so I can invite them to tea parties and have them sit on my bed.

Their website in 2015 teased a mobile app called, The Moodsters: Learn About Feelings, which - as far as I could search - does not exist. This page lists features such as an interactive story book, a Mood Meter that "gives children a basic vocabulary of feelings and helps them express themselves" by using a thermometer-shaped mood meter to take one's "feelings 'temperature'", a Moodster Mirror that "helps them make the connection between feelings on the inside and facial expressions on the outside" with demonstrations of 25 different emotions, and a Feelings Notebook that's an art program. The development of this app is no longer mentioned on the site currently, so it's probably a scrapped project.

At some point there was a Moodster themed memory match browser game and coloring pages (hard to tell if they were browser coloring games or printables).

Some of the features from the what would've been the app actually made it to market as toys. These toys were colorful little detective supplies. One for (almost) each Moodster. The top image of this very long post actually features each Moodster with their chosen detective tool on-hand. Coz wields a Moodster Mirror, Razzy carries a Moodster Meter, Quiggly has an emotional support Feelings Flashlight and Lolly writes in a Feelings Notebook, all (at some point) available at your (once) local Toys R Us. Whatever Snorf is carrying hasn't made it to market it seems, but it's apparently a First Aids Kit for Feelings (mentioned here). I can't find what Tully's item is supposed to be. Perhaps it's emotional identification cards, or positive affirmations? Who knows. My favorite out of these has got to be the notebook, mainly because I'm a sucker for cute stationary. I'd fold and decorate a little cardboard box just to house those crayons just for keepers sake.

And have I even mentioned the yoga mats?

Almost every plushie and detective tool toy appears to come with a picture book. I can't comment on most of the books since I can't buy any that still happen to be available as of now, but luckily there is a read along video I found shown below of one of them. It prominently features a more recent addition to the Moodsters lore, the human children.

These side characters where featured on the site as recent as October 2023 (I neglected to take a snapshot, so here's another from June), but are nowhere to be seen on the website now besides the older downloadable worksheets. There's a chance they've since been retired.

It's exactly as boring as I feared that it would be. Obviously, I'm far from being in the target demographic for this anymore as an adult, nor am I any expert of child psychology beyond one elective course I took in university, but the one credibility that I do have is that I remember my personal tastes from when I was a kid, so I can comment on this from that perspective. I will say if I was handed this as a little kid, I would've liked the little monster dudes, but my attention would've shifted away from this pretty quickly and easily, because the little monster dudes aren’t really doing much. I was one of those kids that was really drawn to creature characters way more than I ever was to human characters (and to be perfectly honest, I still am as an adult, but that's besides the point I'm about to make). The plot of the book is perfectly serviceable with a good message about altruism, so that's not the problem. My grievance is with the fact that the human boy Zach takes center stage as the main character, when one would think that the main characters would be the Moodsters. They kind of take a back seat working on the sidelines for the most part here, and don't directly interact with Zach that much. Would've been hard for kid-me to latch onto this when the cool critter characters don't have as much of an active role as they could have. Not every kid is going to be as drawn to critter characters as I was (and am), but if the critter characters are going to be the face of your preschool IP, they should be presented front and center as much as they can be. Children's picture books are a media format that isn't particularly long nor complex, so their biggest strengths are in the characters and the art. If it were open to changes, I'd make a few: I'd have the Moodsters be just a bit more proactive, such as the suggestion to buy Sam a new bike coming from Coz or maybe Lolly instead of his sister Zoey, have them discover the "feelings emergency" while they're hanging outside with Zach and Sam instead of by spying on them with their cool and fancy desk setup, maybe have a one or two page mini side plot where Razzy's anger at the truck driver is addressed and resolved with breathing exercises or something, and change the art style to 2D illustrations to allow more dynamic poses and expressions since the 3D models and environments used here are pretty okay but nothing that stands out too much (or just instead use more expressive 3D models). No major changes that would fundamentally change the book, just enough to give the Moodsters more spotlight and expressions. Overall, as is, it's an okay children's book, just nothing that really stands out much as unique.

Back in the 2000s, there was an animated pilot for the Moodsters (with art and animation direction by Drew Bloom) featuring different designs of them and an additional cat girl not present in the current iteration named Moodini voiced by Grace Garland. The earliest legible Wayback Machine snapshot for the Moodsters (May 16, 2008) lists their names as Zazz, Rizzi, Scootz, Snorf and Oola". Now, I unfortunately can't find the full pilot, only the intro, which is a massive bummer because it's the most interesting piece of Moodsters media I've encountered. Apparently, according to a few articles and court documents (we'll get to the lawsuit later I promise) it was titled "The Amoodsment Mixup", and said to be officially available in its entirety on Youtube ... only it's not there. It must've gotten unlisted or removed by the company owner, which is really disappointing since it looks like a fun watch. It's gone probably because it's an outdated interpretation of the Moodsters, which makes sense for the company to remove, but it's disheartening that I can't find it archived anywhere on the internet.

To comment on the intro that we can watch: I'm really digging these older designs! They've got that Muppet look to them with the high eye placement but with smaller mouths, and they've got more varied facial structures and come in different heights, along with overall looking more monstrous. The literal emotional roller coaster is a cute touch too! Honestly I wished they kept these looks, they're peak. I can't find an officially stated reason for the design overhaul and reboot of the IP; my only guess as to why was in order to incorporate human children for the Moodsters to interact with, so that the brand would be more relatable for kids and more easily applicable to them as an emotional analysis tool. There's merit to that decision I'm sure, but I personally prefer this older version because the Moodsters here look more critter-ly and kind of seem to just hang out in the woods doing their own thing, instead of having more "marketable" designs and hanging out directly educating human children. I was a kid in the 2000s, if this animation pitch made it to air on PBS, I absolutely would've tuned in to see these goobers. I likely would have enjoyed it as much as Dragon Tails, Cyberchase and Arthur, as long as the education came second to characters and story (as opposed to more overtly educational shows like Super Why). Honestly, I'm really bummed this pilot wasn't picked up for a full show, or heck, I can't even find the full pilot anywhere :(

Speaking of old iterations, I really want to show off these old renders of the Moodster headquarters I found digging through Wayback Machine snapshots from (June 29, 2014). It's the Emote Control Headquarters, which was seen in one page of the book in the read along video linked above, but with more detail in the background surrounding the central desks and not in Zach’s room. It seems these renders were to be how their headquarters looked before the human characters were added to the lore. And lemme tell you I adore the amount of detail put into these! I've mentioned the fancy desk setups from the book, and they're shown here again. It's got to be my favorite design aspect for the Moodsters, because each one has their own personalized setup that's color coded and decked out in decor. Coz has some sports equipment at his desk, Lolly's got art supplies, Quigly's got a telescope, and so on. It's a really good way to visually show off their personalities, since they admittedly don't have that much personality otherwise. My hot take is that it way more creative than the console in Inside Out because of its attention to detail. These colorful set pieces are peak kids show aesthetic appeal to me, especially the third image with the ambient lighting. This holdover is something I'm glad made it to more recent Moodster products like the book mentioned above, even if it doesn't make that much sense for them to have such elaborate setups to monitor on the kid they live in the same house with, but it sure as heck at least looks cool.

Remember when I said that this was something that accused Inside Out of ripping it off? Well we’re finally getting to that. I have no formal education on law keep in mind, so here's my understanding on the situation: in Daniels v. Walt Disney, The Moodster Company filed suit against Disney for breaching an "implied-in-fact contract". The gist of the matter is that the Moodster Company had pitched their IP to several companies, the relevant one here being Disney, during the 2000s (likely the animated pilot mentioned earlier was what was pitched), and accused Disney of using the ideas they pitched to produce the film Inside Out, and failing to compensate The Moodster Company for it. It was an accusation of copyright infringement. Disney filed to have this case dismissed, claiming The Moodster Company "failed to meet the legal standard for copyright in a character", basically that the Inside Out emotion characters are not rip offs of the Moodster characters. Ultimately the court granted Disneys' dismissal, because The Moodsters are "lightly sketched" and "are not protectable by copyright". This was determined by the "Towle test" (based on Mark Towle v. DC Comics), which has three criteria for making a character design eligible for copyright protection:

" (1) has “‘physical as well as conceptual qualities,’” (2) is “‘sufficiently delineated to be recognizable as the same character whenever it appears’ and ‘display[s] consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes,’” and (3) is “especially distinctive’ and ‘contain[s] some unique elements of expression.’” " ~ McDermott Will & Emery

It was determined that The Moodsters met criteria (1) but not the later two, mainly because of the several redesigns and name changes the Moodster characters have gotten over the years, ultimately making them inconsistent and indistinctive. The Moodster characters also didn't pass the “Story Being Told test”, because in what little media they have been in, they don't have a proactive enough role nor go through any character arcs nor at least have any unique personality quirks that would make them distinguished characters, instead their personalities are summed up with a short description in their pitchbook and otherwise only just kind of exist. I'd hate to side with the massive corporation for pretty much any reason, but it's a stretch for The Moodster Company to have claimed that Disney ripped them off with inside Out. If the Moodsters had more consistent designs and personalities that Disney-Pixar copied in the Inside Out emotions, there would've have been a case, but that case isn't here. However, I don't think it was completely unreasonable for The Moodster Company to take the legal action that they did, even if they didn't really have much of a legal leg to stand on, because the creator of the company, Denise Daniels had directly pitched the Moodsters to Disney and a contract was involved. I can imagine pitching your idea about personified emotions to a huge company like Disney only for them to come out with their own personified emotions movie a few years later to feel like a contractual stab to the back. One last tidbit mentioned in the court documents though, the most interesting claim Daniels makes is that she discussed the Moodsters with Inside out director Pete Doctor, though the context for when and why this discussion took place isn't known. If that's true, it's very possible that Inside Out took inspiration from the Moodsters, as in, the general idea of personified emotions. The movie is also known to be inspired by Doctor's own daughter, so if anything, this is a case of taking inspiration at most, not copyright infringement. It just goes to show that even though the Moodsters is, first-and-foremost, an emotional educational tool, it's still worth the effort to make your educational tool have an iconic narrative with distinct characters at the very least. It's also interesting to learn that the history of the Moodsters is more intertwined with Inside Out than I initially guessed. If this law suit has taught me anything, it's that the more you redesign your commercially public OCs, the less they are eligible for copyright protection. Weird to think about, in my opinion. (sources and relevant court documents (1), (2) and (3)).

The last thing I want to talk about extensively are the designs of the Moodsters themselves. Honesty, I like them. I think they're cute! I probably wouldn't have have written all of this text if I didn't. I dig the idea of having little fluffball monsters represent emotions, even if they have that generic preschool edutainment mascot look to them. I prefer their pilot designs, but the current designs have been growing on me. You might have noticed the green one got redesigned into the orange one to make room for another green one. Or maybe you didn't notice because they both look the same. In fact, they all kind of look the same save for the colors and outfits. They admittedly are not the same exact 3D model copy pasted with different colors and clothes (each have different shaped ears, cheek fur, facial features and heights), but they're all so similar to each other overall that they're still hard to distinguish. The only bad thing about their designs are the fact that their silhouettes look near identical, really.

If I gave you only half a second to tell them apart based on this image, you'd probably have a difficult time. I'd imagine the preschoolers they're marketed to would as well. Now, a bad silhouette is a pretty fundamental character design issue, but it's easily fixed by just reshaping them with different body types. For fun, I tried my hand at it shown below. Essentially they're the same but with more exaggerated shapes, along with digitgrade legs and short tails to help sell the monstrous look. I drew Tully (the current green one) a little later after the original five (digitally, while the former five were drawn traditionally). It's a first draft that could be improved upon more, because if these critters need anything apparently, it's yet another redesign. I did have fun with it though!

Since I like the pilot animation, it got me thinking about how I might reboot the Moodsters for a hypothetical animated show. I’d change the lore a bit. The main change I’d make is scrap the fact that they live in Zach’s house. They’re not like his fairly oddparents or anything to my knowledge, so there’s no need for them to hang out exclusively (or even primarily) with him. Instead of only helping Zach out with his emotions, I’d have them help out everyone in the whole town with them. This would allow the Moodsters (and the audience) to experience a diverse cast of human characters with a wider variety of life and emotional problems. The Moodsters could help out other children, parents, teachers, the baker, the librarian, the mayor, basically there’s a lot more possibilities than Zach alone would ever provide. A diverse cast of townspeople characters would make it more likely that the audience will relate to at least one of them. Having them help out adults would teach kid audiences that even adults need help with their emotions (because boy do we ever), along with giving this show an all ages appeal (so parents would actually want to watch it together with their kids, or heck, even teens, and adults who don’t have children). It’d be an episodic show that focuses on introducing characters with emotional problems that the Moodster main characters help solve, with the townspeople being better neighbors to each other for it. I personally would avoid any fourth wall breaking (“talking down to”) teaching moments because I personally hated that in shows when I was a little kid (I’m looking at you Dora) and it would bore older viewers. Again, I'm going for a aimed-at-young-children-but-has-an all-ages-appeal. All you really need to teach young kids via a show (again I'm far from an expert, I'm making assumptions based on my anecdotal experiences as a child) in an engaging way is interesting character interactions going through a well written plot honestly, and their caregiver being there with them to talk about it with them.

Also, why isn't there a disgust Moodster? Disgust is a lot more than just wincing your nose at duck poop on the sidewalk, it's a feeling that can shape your entire worldview - particularly about other people - if you don't take the time to analyze it like you would other emotions. It's probably the emotion that's talked about and understood the least and absolutely should have a place in an educational tool that teaches about how to identify and handle emotions. Waltzing around with unchecked disgust can mold a person into an needlessly judgmental snob, at worst a bigot (something I sadly have witnessed growing up with my own parents). Again, for fun, I designed one shown below. Admittedly, she's inspired a bit (a lot) by Rarity from My Little Pony. The gem emblem on her detective cape represents her meticulous sense of aesthetics, since she's the most artistic of the Moodster group. She’s purple because that’s the only color left.

Listen, the Moodsters new detective hideout could be in a burrow under a tree stump in the park, there could be a hotline the townspeople can call to summon them for their help with emotional problems, the park could have a year round carnival with a whole ride dedicated to the Moodsters because they’re beloved by the townspeople called the Emotional Rollercoaster that’s a callback to the coaster in the animated pilot. The whole town could be called “Moodsville” or something. One of the school mascots can be a cow (because MOOdsters) with rainbow colored spots that represent each Moodster. Townspeople can participate in all sorts of community activities like community gardening and hanging out at rec centers. The Moodsters can emotionally help children acting for the school play or college students picking careers or parents handling a messy divorce, the possibilities are truly endless.

That's everything I can find online about the Moodsters. I pretty much focused more on the Moodster media as apposed to them as a children's foundation mainly because I find the media more interesting, and it was easier to find information on. If you're reading this and happen to know any other other info about it (especially if it's about the pilot animation), definitely tell me about it because my intrigue pertaining to these fuzzy goobers is immense.

I think it's an IP with a lot of potential, and one that's struggled to have much of any footing on the general public these past few decades. Pretty much any rare recent mention of the Moodsters online is in reference to their lawsuit against Disney, and it's disfavorable on the part of the Moodster Company since a quick-glance-view of the situation shows a company that sued for a copyright infringement case that ultimately looked silly.

I do like their mission statement about aiming to help children and their caretakers to better understand and cope with their emotions, because emotions really are ignored, misunderstood and dismissed a lot here in countries like the US, leading to many dysfunctional interactions between family, coworkers, and communities at large. Discovering the Moodsters has certainly inspired me to be more mindfull about my feelings, and I hope this 9 page wall of text has inspired you to do the same.

Fingers crossed that the Moodster Company re-releases those plushies in the future

[batsplat]

the anon who sent the biopic ask here. afsfdfhhjkk I did in fact sent it to get you to talk about the movie version of sete/vale rivalry! I am also the sete anon after all.

anyways.

the vale selling his would to curse sete stuff had me screaming bc you see…….a while ago there was this gif set going around where 2020 or 2021 valentino’s leathers are unzipped and you could see how concave his chest is. and my first thought upon seeing it was “haha it’s actually concave bc valentino made a deal w the demon and gave him his heart in order to become the god of motogp, and also to curse sete:)))”

love the casey stuff, I think if we get the minds that worked on revolutionary girl utena in on this they could make it work. mainly bc rgu had really great visuals, lots of surrealist stuff and all that while having a pretty low budget. (yes rgu is also very complex and deals with stuff like csa, escaping the cycles of abuse etc but we’re not getting into that.) so, in some far far away alternative universe that studio makes a casey stoner inspired animated film (with huge budged) and it a cult classic. alternatively, satoshi kon could have also worked some magic w that set up I know. lots of great imagery there.

dovi biopic could actually work, if we use his story to make into a movie about the man vs corporate machine, how futile that struggle is, disillusionment and ultimately choosing to walk away. so, actually it won’t be a dovi biopic in the sense most ppl think of what biopics are? it would end up more grim than general audiences realize bc the movie will show that in the end ducati succeeded and have won world titles etc and dovi was a cog in that machine, and had his imput being downplayed etc. but also like dovi has his family, his inner circle, his self of self to fall back onto and the audience is obviously ends up on his side so it’s not downright depressing. (I wrote this w a specific director in mind even afdgghjk)

w dani&jorge………ok I’m gonna sound insane for this but. we need to maybe fully fictionalize this. have original characters, who are totally not heavily inspired by jorge&dani *wink wink*. get pedro almodovar to direct or something. this movie is now about jorge-inspired-character dealing with his closeted homosexuality, his fraught relationship w his father….like I am in no way trying to suggest that real life jorge lorenzo might be gay here! but his story does land itself to these themes if you think about it. the rivalry is underlined by homoerotic tension the two characters cannot acknowledge (even to themselves) within the setting of competitive motorcycle racing. buttt after their retirement? they discover that there’s a life outside of it all and maybe mayyybe the movie implies they could get together or something.

also love the sepang 2015 movie framing but yeah it would be considered the worst racing movie of all time, like 5.4 out of 10 on imdb, tge director wouldn’t be able to make another feature film for another 10 years after that. but good news it gets some reappraisal and a small but dedicated cult following like 15 to 20 years later.

wow, did not mean to type all of this out actually! but I do want to say that your answers never disappoint and it’s always a good read. have a nice day!

(follow up to this post) omg pls I love long asks, I'm gonna not take this in order because I NEED to skip to the casey/valentino rgu vision because?? yes? casey is like... such a magical girl... (magical girl transformation into leathers, is this anything) the rose imagery!! I want to rose imagery casey!! obviously again yes the thematic overlap between these two things is only,, loose at best, we are very much ignoring many of the things utena is actually About,, but. disparity between idealised roles and how those roles actually function, having those images interrogated/torn down... growing up!! casey realising his parents' dream was imposed on him rather than chosen... even just kind of. the aesthetic make up of utena, the core components of how it actually tells its story. the focus on duels and being challenged... formalised process of DEMANDING to fight the current 'champion'... the shadow plays...

this to me is casey and valentino

anyway if u squint it is like. kind of the same energy as paddock gossip. the skits are also.... yeah hm. hm

moving away a bit from utena and its very specific themes, I think what you really can also do with this vision is like... play up the culture clash vibes for casey? I've been meaning to make the post on this forever, but there's a specific theme that comes through in a lot of the stuff casey's said and written over the years that's really concerned with... well, the trip from australia to europe, the hardship associated at various stages with that, never quite feeling at home in this new environment, zero paddock friends, never learning italian and being sick with the concept of italy by the end of his ducati tenure, saying that europeans weren't as straight talking and honest as the anglos (valentino did also help turn him off the concept of the british, mind you), saying the europeans were more partisan, bad sports fans, really kinda... wrestling with a lot of his loneliness and feelings of isolation by attributing a lot of this stuff to this different european mindset. where some of his competitors were nasty in part because that's what they're all like in big bad europe. and idk, that's something that you can really dig into with these abstractions, when you're isolating casey and then making him accept this Challenge of facing the god - through motorcycle racing but also through ritualistic sacrifice - and eventually he takes on this task that he's supposed to, that's supposed to be his duty, but for some reason everyone still hates him for it... and you play up how it's not necessarily his individual agency that even brought him there. he's there to win, and yet they hate him for winning. everyone wants competition, nobody likes the competition when it's actually there

also like. sleeping beauty him. pricked by the thorn of a rose and he's taken out of competition and has to recover and everyone criticises him for 'just' having his finger pricked with the tiniest drop of blood. idk a lot of his quite specific baggage and struggles are really made for abstraction. he's also got this... look. just a very specific vibe that I think you can magical girl-ify. vibrant red, a little bit delicate, as the shadows creep in on him

where it's kinda... he's unique, he's special, he's got All That Talent that allows him to take on a task nobody else has managed... but that's also part of what isolates him, that x factor of his raw natural ability that allows him to make it at the top of the sport In Spite Of All The Odds but also means he CAN'T get a quiet peaceful existence

and the rivalry with valentino, which, first of all they both make for great animated characters because they're incredibly distinctive (I would make utena!valentino so very very tall), but also that slight... element of menace. valentino constantly in the spotlight, and the brighter casey shines the more he's in danger - even if he rather wouldn't be the centre of attention. he still is.... even if he shies away from it, the world is still watching. valentino is still watching. and the gaze itself has consequences

literal glare of the camera lens, exposing casey in a way that makes him uncomfortable. unnerving and too bright and trapping him

casey looking at valentino and the changes in what he sees over time. the gradual adjustment of perception when he comes to learn of a different version of valentino (who is in turn still separate from Valentino The Person)

and that kind of animation style for the motorcycles and everything... thinking about specifically casey's phillip island 2009 which is his very first race win after his illness-induced absence and I've never personally been THAT big on white liveries (he still loves it though) but like. symbolism-inspired colour change for key step back into the fray, to a new moment of hope

his leathers also have like. a very specific vibe here. as do his interactions with valentino. the specific way they grasp hands idk I've got a vision

(they do also hug pretty warmly in parc fermé and there's a bit more to this race given it was a massive W for valentino as far as his title bid was concerned but he'd also been informed of a personal tragedy the day before - but we're gonna ignore all that here)

also OBVIOUSLY

the assen 2007 fight was SUPPOSED to be animated

it also lets you dig into kinda likeeee the weird elements of that rivalry where it switches from being a primarily on-track one to being a completely off-track one. like idk it feels you can play with that switch of them being real duels to just being. casey stabbing him while valentino taunts him. this disconnect where casey is now on top of the world in all the Actual Motorcycle Racing but the whole picture isn't quite as simple as that.... the ways in which casey can't entirely win....

other random fun bits of imagery/vibes:

again, you can have random animals running around in animation... tortoise turtle and the hare laguna '08 I will keep saying it

speaking of laguna '08, the most memorable move happens at the corkscrew... I think you can do something with concept of a corkscrew

laguna '08 overall is just a top ten anime battle isn't it, the fact that the whole thing depends on this. reversal. where rather than valentino always stalking his victims (inherently evocative) but is committing to obstructing casey from ahead (btw today's their anniversary!!! <3)

you have GOT to do something funky with pressers, like casey's relationship to the media is so fundamental to his entire story... essentially treat it as another form of combat imo. like give it the exact same visual lead in as the actual on-track battles, so that you have this collapse between the on-track and off-track

collapse between the identity of the rider and the bike. common thing anyway in the weird way these blokes talk about their bikes, obviously valentino is like. a number one offender for this. and obviously you can easily exploit this in animation!! and also if we're sticking with the yellow = infection stuff, then casey is constantly being at risk of overwhelmed by the yellow.... and once he's stepped away from that bike to go to honda instead, he has to see this thing that's separate from him but still somehow a part of him be infected

playing with how casey was inspired by valentino... you know the utena kinda. prologue of utena being inspired to become a prince... basically that vibe. stepping up to become a deity and being presented the blade to challenge a god. But Was That Really Such A Good Idea

you can do something with chequered flags I reckon. idk what but you do something with them

casey's obsessed with fishing. a symbol of childhood innocence and one of the things he would have loved to do when he was essentially being forced into making motorcycle racing his dream, something that caused controversy back in 2009 because he got backlash for going fishing during his injury absence (yeah I don't know what they were on back then too) and something he references when he retires on his pitboard 'going fishing'. it's innocence, it's his individual dream, it's peace away from the track... you can work with that

obviously valentino himself makes all this symbolism shit very easy given he did canonically give himself an eyeball helmet during one of his ducati races. like we get it buddy. that would SLAP in animation

okay I just need to say it. you know how in catalunya 2009 casey is just like. two seconds away from fainting on the podium and valentino/jorge are having their whole intense thing going on and are just. ignoring it. gets me every time, it's just such a bizarre discrepancy of vibes. like two different narratives are going on during that podium and they're just pretending like the other one isn't happening, except in casey's case that's extremely understandable and in the others' case?? idk I'd check on him?? power of animation I'm having casey literally faint and everyone ignoring it. maybe several times. sorry casey this is social critique on your behalf

if you have an equivalent utena walking up the stairs pre-race build up, it is so important to me to remember that casey crashed during the valencia 2009 warm up lap

something something valentino catalunya 2008 special italian football team leathers something casey's issues towards italy something them actually having a duel in that race while casey is just about trying to wrestle his italian manufacturer into making themselves useful for once... this is the first... second? turning point of the season. okay look there's several turning points. but crucially that's one of the big ones, when casey is starting to get the ducati situation sorted and they have a post-race test at catalunya and then casey goes on his little win streak that leads you to laguna. I think you can do something with the concept of italy here

something something taking on the number one plate symbolism

thinking of the utena stopwatch thing and how casey's mum was always making the notes for casey's races as a kid and they're included in his autobiography... like you've got this little kid with essentially performance reviews... idk something about constantly recording what he's doing. I can SEE that scene of animated kid!casey going around the dirt track while his mother is recording his progress with a stopwatch and notebook in my mind...

two-faced valentino... make it literal. Valentino The Racer and Valentino The Character and Valentino The Person as entities that casey meets separately

something about valentino's fucked up little fingers as his one vulnerability

valentino reeling in casey like a fish, is this anything

anyways. I love the dovi description... I still get like. nebulously sad about his 2020 where it's both kinda I get how this fell apart but it's so unsatisfying? which is the fun of it! narratively speaking. and the fact that he was such a big influence on the development of that bike, how possessive he got over that project and really saw it as his, how he ended up being unceremoniously dumped and he's seen them win again and again... again he does have the whole 'being well adjusted' thing working against him BUT idk there's a satisfying suitably cinematic story in there somewhere

and yeah I do see the jorge/dani vision!! I think that one's the one where I'm like. the least attached to the literal details and am quite happy to fictionalise it!! especially because lbr his path to his first title just Does Not Work narratively. like 2010 only works as a good conclusion of that arc if valentino is actually THERE to be defeated, or if jorge and dani actually have more of a title fight. and he does have an extremely queer-coded narrative!! you kinda have the actual family right, then the way he kinda... cycles through a few versions of what are essentially all found families, like he's got the whole manager situation which obviously in itself ends up a nightmare, then the coach turned manager he also split from then ?? it's kinda... that dimension of athletes where they're CHOOSING the people close to them (not that he's fully in a position to make a lot of these choices!!) and then has to cut ties when he becomes more aware of how those people are attempting to exploit him.... the whole number switching thing is explicitly framed as a form of liberation. his tendency to get Obsessed and a little Weird about all his major rivals (dani, valentino and dovi get the worst of this) like it's just a fun vibe to play with... the way the rivalry with dani is also a little Imposed from Above and also jorge doesn't get why dani keeps him at such a distance and is constantly trying to like. bug him into paying attention to jorge. he just makes for such a good coming of age story protagonist, like he's so vibrant and awkward and cocky and kind of ridiculous,,, prone to way too intense introspection and just overthinking EVERYTHING and he's trying to play a character while also wanting to find his authentic self or whatever... he's just such a Young Guy and his story with dani is full of that energy... yes

anyway. on to sete. you and me anon

valentino!!!! cuts!!!! his heart out!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE THAT omg.... I love the idea that he'd just. be motivated to destroy sete enough that he's willing to take the final step.... the one that ensures his rule over the sport will never be challenged in any meaningful way but he also cannot return from, a line that he can't un-cross.... AND y'know I've banged on enough about this idea that valentino really DID change his approach to his rivals after that, acquired a bit of distance which would be!! fantastic, it's also that element of not just him Losing something but also him not wanting to go through those kinds of complicated emotions at the hands of someone who had been a friend again... removes his heart!! exorcises his softness!!

I kinda love the idea of making it... the natural conclusion of where that particular journey was taking him. like the idea that that's kinda always where he was headed... it's why I think the sachsenring/brno 2003 thing is so neat, like the fact brno is the site of both the big comeback win against sete but ALSO where he agreed to ride for yamaha in the middle of the night. that you're drawing the line between 'he wanted to be his own man' (seemingly a harmless motive, even admirable) with what 'being his own man' involves, aka psychologically torturing his rivals (possibly a little questionable). another thing I adore here is his phillip island 2004 celebrations when he seals the title..... what a spectacle!!!! in retrospect it's just kinda,, oh look what a fun celebration! he's having fun!! it's all a show!! because sete has been erased from that celebration. and that race is the culmination of BOTH those arcs set in motion at brno 2003, it's his great yamaha victory while also being deeply cruel... and before that the sepang celebrations... I just like the idea that what people tend to see as Good valentino traits (joyous, fun celebrations) and Bad valentino traits (working to destroy his rivals) are fundamentally impossible to detach from each other, and the only way you get rid of them both is by suppressing who he is as a person... now I'm not saying that the devil tempted him to join yamaha but I'm not not saying that? works with the ibiza trip between sachsenring and brno too, like you can parallel that to sete contemplating honda the previous year (this did Not canonically happen but narrative efficiency). it's all their choice!! but they were also Twisted By Circumstances.... valentino's corruption arc why does nobody see this is valentino's corruption arc....