#I have a two part commission from another artist similar to this idea and I stare at it all the time and I just sigh

[linpunny]

Crying sobbing throwing up

You know what, THIS is illegal, not smut. I feel like a criminal.

😳

[kaisooficpodcast]

Pride by and with yeolimerent

I am Alexio Sospranio and you’re listening to the kaisoo fic podcast!

For new listeners, the kaisoo fic podcast is a space where we discuss literature found in the kaisoosphere. Where we have authors on the show to give them a platform to talk about their writings and journey as an author in the fandom. 

This month we are looking at one fic for two episodes. First part was on the 12th, and today the second episode for the same fic is on the 14th. Special kaisoo dates!

If you, dear listener, have been up to date with the podcast episodes, you will find that there will be similar questions to other author’s sessions. Each author brings in their own different perspectives and experiences. By asking similar questions, we get to see how diverse yet united kaisoo fic writers are.

The sequence in which we will be having this episode is as such:

Firstly we have yeolimerent introducing the fic of the day, followed by some plot based questions, next some questions on their journey as a writer. Then we end with the 3is: lesson learnt; source of inspiration and impact to the kaisoo fic community.

I also got about four questions from an anon on curious cat, so I will be weaving the questions into the appropriate segments of the episode.  

Cover Art

Now, prior to me giving the author of the day these questions, I asked yeolimerent what is their favorite scene from Pride. And when they responded, luckily Lyn was still doing commissions… so i asked her. One more, just one more!

Thank you Lyn for opening up commissions and being accommodating to my requests!

In the podcast cover art… we have kaisoo on a beach. This scene is not a reimagined scene, it is from one of the last few moments of Pride where kaisoo reconcile.

Context from the fic for this particular position kaisoo is in takes almost directly from the fic itself.

Intro to author 

With permission of the author, I have reader Jie with me today, who will be taking the persona of yeolimerent. 

Introducing a bit on yeolimerent:

yeolimerent has been in this fandom since (2013), that’s about (11 years). The pull factor that got her into this fandom was always Chanyeol and EXO showtime in general, when she was in high school and everyone was getting into EXO. Journey with kaisoo started ever since she could remember and had always been inspired by their chemistry. yeolimerent is currently focused on EXO right now. She’s also into a lot of queer artists and media. 

Welcome, yeolimerent, thank you for your time in answering the questions for today’s session. 

Thanks for having me!

Yeolimeret. yes? Shall we dive into the episode! We shall! We start with the fic.

Pride

Pride by yeolimerent has 33 chapters with about 300 thousand words. Set in a universe where Kyungsoo is a chaebol and gets entangled with his driver. Lust, bitterness and heartache develops over the course of several chapters. Content warnings include smut (bottomsoo), I think one scene of dubious consent, and minor character deaths. 

Now, yeolimerent, would you maybe like to start us off for those who are not familiar, what is Pride about?

The initial plan was always to make a Seven Deadly Sins series starring major EXO ships and KaiSoo would be Pride. I just had this big interest in rich-poor au when it came to kaisoo and this felt like the perfect opportunity to do it. Another factor was the idea of a younger Jongin falling for an older Kyungsoo and looking up to him in a way. 

Pride is heavily Kyungsoo’s side of the story and how his world turned upside down in a span of a decade— from being one of the richest people in the country to owing millions of debts and then his poor first love who broke his heart turning into one of the most powerful men in the country who now has the upper hand on him. Here, we see him build and ruin relationships with other people in his life. We see how drastically things can change in a span of eight years, and how a lot of them also stay the same.

It’s basically his very complex journey of self-discovery and well… pride. 

Pride literally starts with a bang. And I love it. The first chapter titled Prologue, readers are met with a very high tension chapter where Kyungsoo is angry and Jongin exudes danger. It is a very gripping scene. I am curious as to why you began the fic with a scene from the climax of the plot? 

To be honest, this was the very FIRST scene that i came up with for Pride. It was my starting point. So what happened here would be the basis for the majority of what I wrote so it was very vital to the story. I guess I wanted the readers to read it first and think “Oh, what could’ve happened between them?” and “where do we go from here?” so it is the perfect prologue for the story.

The prologue scene is indeed very… you can get overwhelmed. And you did warn the readers to say that this is an intense and complicated fic, but I am super thankful that I continued to read and that i​​ stuck through the whole thing. 

Walk us through the chronology of you piecing up the plot. How did the pieces come to play after setting the prologue? Was it a bit overarching idea first or specific scenes coming in slowly piecing it all up?

For the chapter, I wasn’t much of a planner when I was writing Pride compared to how I am now as a writer. So every chapter came to me randomly, no outline and all. I just had this vague idea of what I would want to happen in that chapter and how I wanted to wrap it up, and then things just unfold from there depending on my inspiration. That’s probably a factor why the fic was so long because I couldn’t control it haha!

Wow, chapter coming up randomly with no outline… 

Wait, what about that tiny detail in the chapters before the 8 years apart happened, before the presentation? The tiniest bit of information, the carelessness of Kyungsoo leaving his blueprint in the room without much thought… was that also not fully planned? Because only at almost the very end was it revealed that his carelessness plus Soojung’s sly personality cost him a lot of things. That tiny detail became one of the most important points of the story that pushed Kyungsoo to be off the grid. 

As a reader, we also did not give it much thought because that moment was also brief. I guess my question now becomes… how intentional was your choice to have Kyungsoo not give too much thought to his work?

Yes. I wanted to convey that everyone had some sort of fault for what happened. Kyungsoo as a kid was meant to be careless and impulsive, and thats what got him in trouble. I intentionally made him spoiled and imposing to raise a bit of intrigue because he was, after all, still a chaebol kid. I wanted people to see how he treated people like Soojung unprovoked and think “did he deserve it?”

A question from my curious cat reads: if Jongin and Kyungsoo had met on Kyungsoo birthday in the bar, what would have happened? I was like omg Jongin turn and face Kyungsoo!!! Jongin turn around damn itttt :(

Ohh. I dont think that would be that productive as well because Kyungsoo would do what he did best, which was of course— to run. LMAO.

Surprising moments

Previous episode I asked the readers about the element in the plot that surprised them.

There were generally two main points on how Pride really grabs the reader’s attention. First shocking point for Pride was how readers were shocked at your choice yeolimerent, the writer’s choice. Of having Seonho be Kyungsoo’s buddy as they travel to New York and become the best of friends.

One of my most favorite things about Pride was Kyungsoo and Seonho’s very unconventional relationship. It was always the part that caught people off guard hahaha. I like the fact that when you read the first few chapters, Seonho would be the last person in the universe you’d expect to be Kyungsoo’s rock during the hardest days of his life but it happened anyway. It was also vital to his relationship with Jongin because a lot of jealousy stemmed from his past relationship with Seonho and it was very fun to watch unfold because Jongin was busting a vein while everything between them was platonic.

Seonho and Kyungsoo’s relationship is definitely unconventional. Related is another question from my curious cat for your fic. The question is: did Seonho really get his closure with Kyungsoo? Even though they both moved on with their lives, whenever I read Seonho and Kyungsoo’s part in New York I always had this weird anxiety about what if they cross the line of friendship. But they never did. They kept it cute, I loved it and Seonho’s character development was crazy! I wish I had a Seonho in my life too… So again the question is, did Seonho really get his closure with Kyungsoo?

I didnt really want to be so explicit about it. To me, they didnt have to sit down and have a lengthy talk about their relationship before running away together. I think that scene in the bar where their simple conversation about running away from their families became their closure in some sort because it was definite that no romance was left. Simple a trauma bond and the desperation to live their similarly miserable lives at home.

It also put emphasis on the concept of forgiveness because while Kyungsoo hated Seonho’s guts during college, it showed that he was SOOO heartbroken from Jongin to find solace on his ex and their shared trauma with their dads. It was enough to rebuild their relationship into a different, but stronger one.

Thank you for touching on the point of forgiveness. We see a lot of that here in the many relationships we explore in the fic. I think almost every pair baeksoo, chanbaek, kaibaek, has an element of forgiveness because of how much the characters have each hurt each other. 

A pairing brought up in the previous episode was Baekhyun and Kyungsoo. Right before Kyungsoo leaves, you can tell that Baekhyun felt a void in his heart after their conversation. Then a while after Kyungsoo goes back to Korea, we witness that scene where Kyungsoo talks to Baekhyun and when, i quote: his words tugged in his most fragile spot, chapter 26 titled Make It Up To You, is a sincere Kyungsoo who wants to help Baekhyun. This scene was a nice change of pacing and it feels very honest as well. 

Yes. I think one of the lines I liked there was “we could stop being friends and I’d still know you more than anyone.” because that’s the gist of their relationship. Baekhyun, when he was unapologetically weird and had no other friends in college, was still the realest version of himself and only Kyungsoo really accepted that before Chanyeol came.

Another point of surprise made was how intense Jongin’s love was for Kyungsoo. Seeing as we are reading the fic in Kyungsoo’s POV, it was quite an eye opener to have read Jongin’s. As readers we do get a hint of Jongin having feelings for Kyungsoo. And upon the Jongin’s POV chapters, our impressions are validated, but to such a shocking extent. The previous episode as mentioned by one of the readers was that: they were convinced that Jongin had feelings for Kyungsoo the first time they met, but felt skeptical with their hunch since it always seemed like Jongin was siding with Soojung and setting Kyungsoo aside. But as the Jongin’s POV chapters were revealed, I think collectively, for readers, it becomes very clear that it is without a doubt Jongin loves Kyungsoo. 

You do a wonderful job and I really appreciate you giving us Jongin’s POV. Reading the fic again from Jongin’s POV, it becomes very thought provoking because there is a wider perspective which makes the story more complex. 

The part of the plot that changes to Jongin’s POV is after Kyungsoo is honest to Seonho that he loves Jongin. And with that, i pause for a question to yeolimerent: at what point of writing from Kyungsoo’s POV did you feel like you needed to share Jongin’s?

The part where he stopped tugging the other side of the rope and felt this intense fear of losing Kyungsoo completely when he saw him with Seonho at the parking lot. At present time, of course readers could tell Jongin wanted Kyungsoo back but him as a person didnt really know that or knew where to start. That scene with Seonho was some sort of his wake up call and from then on, he stopped letting his fears hold him back and was definite about winning the love of his life back so it was the perfect opportunity to reveal his side.

Writers Journey

The next segment is on the writer’s journey, your journey of writing Pride amongst other things.

The nature of Pride is that it is very long and dramatic and with that it has a very high intense emotional plot. As a reader, it feels overwhelming at times and i think a point that was brought up in the previous episode was how even upon rereading it the second time, the emotional rollercoaster was as intense as the first reading. And for some, already knowing the twist and surprising parts of the fic, it allows us to analyze every interaction they have before leading to that point. So that is us as readers. But how did you keep your emotions in check while writing?

It is crazy because a lot of people had complained about it being heavy throughout the years and I totally get it, but writing it was so therapeutic to me. I guess projecting a lot on Kyungsoo’s character played a lot of factor in that. He did a lot of stupid things in that fic but a lot of them were something I’d do or a choice I’d make so it felt nice to let it out.

Oh, wow. I see, so what kind of work is Pride to you?

Therapy! That was the time of my life where I had a lot going on and was in the middle of my med school applications so writing was a solace to me.

I did not know what to expect of your answer to my question, but I am definitely quite in awe. 

It sounds like the whole process was very cathartic especially when you say you project on Kyungsoo and it feels nice to let it out. I am in awe mainly because I see it is something to channel your creative energy and in turn, because it is something so unique, very yeolimerent style, readers can really immerse themselves in your words and see the plot developing through your eyes.

With that i am curious, how long have you been writing? Is the reference on ao3 correct to say that you have been writing since 2019 or did you start way earlier on another site?

I have been writing the first Deadly Sins fics in wattpad since 2017 and only moved to AO3 in 2018 for my first BAE fic. I wrote Pride in AO3 but it was also posted in both wattpad and AFF. I’ve also been writing creatively since high school, which was over 10 years ago.

How seasoned a writer were you in writing when you came up with this? What point of your writer’s journey was Pride published?

I definitely had a much better experience writing it compared to the first two because I got better at expressing the character’s emotions. I would say I still got a bit better in fics I wrote after Pride but that was one of my works where I was able to express the characters’ emotions the way I wanted to deliver them.

Somehow that is comforting to know. This really long work has not only had therapeutic aspects for you, but you were able to articulate yourself. And it’s a win for everyone. We get a wonderful story filled with deep human flaws, heartache of first loves, redemption arc and a hope for love to persist. And hopefully you also get to benefit from it by navigating through life with more grit and faith with whatever life hits you with.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson learnt. The points we made the previous episode was that this fic teaches us so many things - importance of honest communication to resolve issues and insecurities. Teaching us about how moving on and forgiveness is important. 

There is so much to unpack, so if there was one or more points you would like readers to take away from this story, what would it be?

Like you said, definitely communication and how important it is in a relationship. A lot of the problems in Pride came from their lack of talking which could be solved if the two of them were locked in a room together. Yes, the long tension was sexy but a lot of time could have been saved if they were well-functioning adults lol. I think forgiveness was also a big concept in this fic, not for the sake of those who wronged you but more on your peace of mind.

So now knowing the lessons you want readers to takeaway and us understanding the kind of work Pride was to you, what was the most challenging part of writing this particular au? 

I did say it was therapeutic but writing it also had me confronting a lot of emotions buried deep when I was writing it. So many aspects in Kyungsoo’s character’s life were heavily based on mine so it definitely was difficult to acknowledge it. I was also in a phase where I aimed to please people so I was rarely satisfied with the chapters I wrote no matter how good the feedback I’d receive.

I see. I suppose it is natural for when things are therapeutic, it forces you to be honest. As a reader, we can see your sincerity. Thank you for writing. 

Examples 

Of course we cannot talk about hardship and forget about good things. So yeolimerent, what is your favorite scene? A scene that so beautifully captures the essence of the fic, a scene that you think about when you think back into this fic? 

The ending on a beach was very heavy, both in good and bad ways. Years of unsaid words had to come out and it was messy, so I definitely remember it first. The scene where they were both sitting on the sand, both tired and hopeless, reimagining what could have been if things were different and accepting there was no way of changing things, so they either leave for good or move forward together. 

Probably just me, but I also love the double chapter with Jongin’s POV on everything because it sheds light on a lot of questions.

I recently reread the scene again and it is easy to feel emotional at that moment. 

I have another question from my curious cat that reads: In the FAQ, you mentioned the emotional scene but I wanna know what was your favorite scene like you read the scene and went “ damn girl you kinda ate”. Would it be the same beach scene or do you have another in mind?

Jongin’s POV was definitely one of my favorite because I had to navigate a completely different character and speak from his view. I also liked the scenes where Kyungsoo was trying to find himself in New Zealand because the parallelisms with his life and something as simple as volcanos was appealing to me.

Yeolimernet, listeners would be so honored to have you read an extract from the scene in the beautiful New Zealand beach, your favorite scene.

The designer looks at the distance where the sun has slowly risen. He bites his lip hard to prevent both a smile and his sobs.

“How could you confess and build all our dreams… in a car, parked on the side of the street?” his laugh mixes perfectly with a hiccup. Soo lets his head fall on his chest when Jongin reaches for his nape.

Inspiration

Thank you for reading your favorite scene. Having you read an extract aloud like this, it just makes me wonder, what inspired you to have this au? 

When I started writing it, I just wanted to see where it would take me. The moment their conflict started as college students, I found myself, even as the writer, asking for more too. I just always had this thrill in me whenever I got to start a new chapter or publish them. I looked forward to seeing what people thought. I guess that was my biggest drive to go on. EXO as a group was also very active when I was writing this story so there were still a lot of ship crumbs that helped me.

I find your trust in the process very fascinating. It becomes a journey of self discovery both for Kyungsoo and yourself.  

And from this inspiration of yours, was this the original idea you had in mind when you first drafted the fic? How much has the story grown or changed while writing?

Nothing particularly different from the final product. It definitely was supposed to be shorter than 300k like the 2 sinners trilogy before it, but I really had fun writing it and felt like the scenes I came up with, no matter how tedious and uneventful they seemed, were vital for the story and the characters’ arcs.

It certainly seems that way, very purposeful and intentional scenes. 

Impact

We are nearing the end of the episode, this next and last segment is on the author’s impact on the kaisoo fic community.

But before that, the last question from my CC reads: my pride yaps are never ending pls don’t mind me but anyway thank you so much for writing the fic really..even though its angst its one of my go to comfort fics. I need to get this off my chest, I felt like Wrath and Pride happened simultaneously in two parallel worlds..there is a thin line as there were lots of similarities but two fics were completely different. The emotions you conveyed, idk how to put it hope you get what I am trynna say..so how did you do srsly?

Ohh yes, they were completely different worlds. Thanks for being kind! I think my sinners trilogy are similar in a way because the sins are somehow still intertwined in other stories. You can still apply wrath on Pride, and you can very much see pride on Wrath’s characters. Idk if that makes sense but i think that’s what made them feel similar. 

I hope that answers your question, anon!

Yeolimerent, what kind of writer do you consider yourself as? For example, what is the one thing you hold dear to when writing? Or what is something you would never write?

Hmm I definitely am the type to write details as vivid and palpable as possible. I’m very visual as a person so I like writing the scene where I can be as clear as I possibly can for the imagery. I also try to write realistic lines or something I wouldn’t cringe at if I hear real Kaisoo say it in real life (key word: try hahaha). I like writing characters that are deeply flawed, and then I like having them reflect on said flaws.

In terms of tropes, I’m very welcoming to a lot of them as a reader. But as a writer, being realistic like I said, I’m not particularly into farfetched or over the top tropes like Mpreg or A/B/O. But depending on the world-building, I have fun reading them and am not closing any doors about writing them in the future.

And upon identifying the things you would like to continue to do, and the things you will never do as a writer, what’s the biggest thing you learnt while writing fics? Anything surprising or impactful or moving? Be it about the storytelling, the language used or the life lessons?

Heck, number 1: it is a thousand times harder to write fics when English is not your first language! TT I’ve had a lot of writing experience outside of the ficdom but it is still a struggle to express certain thoughts in another language. 

Plot-wise, I realized I also like it when my characters admit that they did certain things because they just fucked up and not everything has to have deep reasons. It’s a trend I’ve seen in my recent works and it’s always refreshing to write about people who screw up once in a while.

Thank you for writing despite it being difficult.

With all the things you have learnt yeolimerent, and with your experience, all 7 years of it, what do you think makes a great story?

Write what you want to read! I’ve scrapped a lot of stories because I found that I tried writing them to please a certain crowd but it didn’t really feel right on my part. Writing what you would like to read gives you more ideas and creative juices you didn’t know were there. Allow your characters to have flaws and give them space to grow too. I have a huge preference for slowburn stories, both as a reader and writer, because seeing the characters go through a satisfying arc is what makes a great story for me. 

Ending Ment

Before we end things, dear yeolimerent, do you have any other comments you want to share with us listeners? Any teasers for ongoing AUs or a hint of upcoming AUs you have in your work in progress stage? 

Nothing in progress for me sadly as I am busy with hospital work :( I might have some things in the drafts but I don’t know if they’d ever see the light of day lol. I am definitely reading comments and messages once in a while though, whether I reply or not, and it really gives me strength. I would definitely like to write more kaisoo fics in the future especially once they start interacting again, canon!

I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk about Pride like this after so many years so thank you for doing this and for appreciating the fic! I’m very grateful.

Thank you yeolimerent for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us in spirit of the episode and my dear Jie voicing over as yeolimerent, thank you for doing this with me on a weekday.

Dear listener, the link to the author’s ao3 and twitter profile will be given below in the notes section. And with that we have come to the end of today’s episode. 

Do keep a lookout for next month’s episode because we will be going through Chasing Summer Skies by rainepaige08. 

New episodes either every 13th of the month or 12th and 14th, special kaisoo dates, of course.

To reach me, i am kaisooficdrunk on twitter and if you want you can drop me questions on my curious cat you can do so with the same username. There will also be another link that brings you to my tumblr blog with the transcription for today’s episode. There you can also find the other scripts for other episodes as well.

Thank you for listening, have a good day, dear kaisooist, and we look forward to next month’s episode. Stay tuned.

[mrultra100]

If I can be real for a moment…

I feel like my involvement with Johnny Test as a franchise is basically over at this point. For those who’ve been with me for a long time now, this might come as a surprise that I’m finally letting go of what people have been referring to as Dexter’s Lab, but with whipcracks after all of these years, but there’s a lot that I wanna get off my chest about the state of the franchise, along with how things will go with my side of the situation going forth.

At this point, I’ve come to accept that Johnny Test, as a franchise, is likely going to stay dead in the water for real this time, especially with how the second season of the Netflix revival not only silently came out with barely any fanfare, but also became the final season, likely for good. I know a big chunk of the JT-related stuff was back when I was obsessed with the Vampire Twins to request art featuring them from multiple artists (Which is something that I deeply cringe at now, and fully regret for how stupid and childish that was. I apologize to everyone for that era), but in the last few years, I’ve been slowly making them more and more into their own thing, distant from what they were originally.

The Ultraverse V-Twins have changed a lot, with things like aging them up and changing their designs to reflect that, giving them more fleshed-out abilities and personalities, and overall just making them my own characters at this point. Don’t get me wrong, they still fit with my Primal Eternity idea, as that’s the one aspect of my JT stuff that I wanna keep around to somewhat of a degree. As for that project’s future? I could think of more ideas for characters and doodle them out, like I have before, or maybe I could take a small break from that project for a while. Im not sure. Regarding the bigger picture, I feel like/hoping to get some more work for it done after this break, before the franchise turns 20 next fall. We’ll just have to wait and see on what happens next. As for now, the V-Twins, while having a small connection to their origin franchise, will be their own thing going forward. Since they’re basically my own character after the series that they were based on is likely going to stay dead for good (which blows, but that’s just how it is), it’s the least I can do for them. In the meantime, Maryanna, now that she’s my mascot, is probably gonna be the hero of her own adventure. Time will tell on how her story will play out.

Regarding other things related to JT, I wanna give a quick shoutout to @rominadrawsart16 and @arti-squid. While they’re more active in the small JT fandom than I am, I love how they use character from the show to further their own skills as artists, similar to what I’ve been doing with Maryanna recently. If you haven’t already, please give them a visit.

And to give my thoughts on JT being dead and buried, I have a few conflicting thoughts. One part of me wishes WildBrain did more with the IP when making the Netflix revival, as alright as that was. Another feels like they should’ve go for a complete reboot to the franchise to start with a clean slate, and another feels like the series didn’t needed a revival in the first place, as shocking as they might sound. Unless the two seasons commissioned by Netflix were all that were planned, Johnny Test wasn’t really a show that needed to be brought back in the first place. After everything that had happened to it (The CW merger that caused the show to suffer budget cuts after Season 1, the infamy it got during the 2010’s due to how it became generic slop, etc), it feels like the show was basically doomed from the start. As much as I wanna go more into that with greater detail, that’ll be saved for another day.

So basically the short of what I’m trying to say is this; Johnny Test, as a franchise, is probably over for real this time, my involvement with it, outside of JTPE and supporting my friends, is (mostly) done, and the Ultraverse V-Twins (especially Maryanna) are here to stay.

See you, Space Whipcrack…

[archivyrep]

Libraries, records, and Kore: Archives on Mount Olympus [Part 5]

Continued from part 4

Soon enough, we get back to the Fates and their memory tape once more! In episode 111 ("You Tell Me"), we see two of them assembling the record in a tape titled "Hades & Persephone" while saying they need to work on their filing system due to the amount of time it is taking them to find the tape in the first place. A few episodes later, in episode 113 ("Tell"), Hades gets the tape delivered to him, like a person would deliver a pizza. Fancy that! I can't think of any archive that would have a delivery service like that, but I know that some public libraries, like the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore City, have a program to ship books to people, so I guess this somewhat similar.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Nov. 28, 2020.

The tape itself comes up in various later episodes. In episode 114 ("VHS"), Hades watches the tape for the first time and is flabbergasted. Then, in episode 115 ("The Bringer of Death"), the season 1 finale, he tries to call Kore after watching the tape, and finally, he watches the tape, again, in episode 116 ("In Plain Sight"), still aghast at what he sees. The assembly of the tape is also showcased in the season 1 recap of the webcomic.

This isn't all. In episode 125 ("A Tree"), there a recap from an earlier episode showing that records of an incident in the mortal world of Kore's supposed destruction are missing, and in episode 127 ("Artistic Rendition"), the report of the incident is put together. That leads to what happens in episodes 130 ("The Guest") and 131 ("Interview with the Barley Mother"): Kore begins to tell her truth about what happened. This is an important part of authentic communication between people, making "genuine interaction" possible, as noted by Theology of Work, and it is important to give the truth a "strong foundation." That is exactly what Kore does when she speaks to Hades about what happened, speaking into his tape recorder (another 80s vibe of this webcomic), with her truth allowing for their relationship to deepen, as they both trust each other, showing the value of her truthfulness.

Truthtelling itself is valuable in truthtelling commissions about past injustices, like in the case of the oppression of indigenous people in Australia or many other countries across the world since the 1970s, allowing for awareness of past actions, encouraging all to move forward peacefully. It is also is vital in bioethics, related to the idea of informed consent, and can counter the idea of paltering: misleading people by "telling the truth."

Kore does not engage in paltering here but rather tells what happened from her perspective and it makes her a stronger person by doing so, even though it is an intensely emotional experience, as would be expected after everything that Kore has been through.

© 2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[theohonohan]

Chris Burden's bridges

Around the time that I first moved to London, the UK's museums were made free to all. Tate Modern had just opened—a couple of years later the Baltic opened in Gateshead. It was the time of the New Labour government, of Sure Start and many other enlightened policies. Free access to art museums joined up neatly with the London Underground's policy of commissioning art. There was a general sense (which I completely bought into) that art was beneficial, part and parcel of city life, a "merit good", and worth paying attention to.

A more cynical observer would have seen this as bourgeois, bien pensant nonsense. The activity of engaging with art could be reduced, in those dismissive eyes, to posing at the Tate in the mode of Simon Schama. Julian Barnes' 1987 novel Metroland contains the following paragraph:

Our reason for constantly visiting the Gallery was straight-forward. We agreed—indeed, no sane friend of ours would bother to argue—that Art was the most important thing in life, the constant to which one could be unfailingly devoted and which would never cease to reward; more crucially, it was the stuff whose effect on those exposed to it was ameliorative. It made people not just fitter for friendship and more civilised (we saw the circularity of that), but better—kinder, wiser, nicer, more peaceful, more active, more sensitive. If it didn't, what good was it? Why not just go and suck cornets instead? Ex hypothesi (as we would have said, or indeed ex vero), the moment someone perceives a work of art he is in some way improved. It seemed quite reasonable to expect that the process could be observed.

This exalted view of art holds that the museum is a restorative place, the lungs of the city (Bataille), a place where the dust of everyday life is washed away from the soul (Picasso).

One aspect of the London art scene that made it appealing to me was that it looked to America. The English artist Tacita Dean had an exhibition at the Tate in 2001 which, as well as featuring lighthouses (a personal favourite of mine) involved a sound art piece about a trip to Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah. In 2003 Paul McCarthy put huge, disturbing inflatable sculptures on the riverbank in Bankside, similar to some sculptures I'd seen by him while browsing through an art book. The London art system seemed to be bringing American ideas closer, in the same way that the World Wide Web did. I was an Americanophile and I was drawn to that side of things.

One exhibition which I didn't see in person, but which made a big impression on me, was the opening show at the Baltic. It featured, on the top floor, some very large Meccano models of bridges, including the Tyne Bridge, by the American artist Chris Burden.

I reacted to images of these bridges in the same way as I react to Magritte's painting Time Transfixed: I am not sure whether to appreciate them literally or symbolically. Time Transfixed (1938) depicts a fireplace from which an express steam locomotive is emerging. The locomotive looks small relative to the fireplace, but there are two ways to interpret this: either it is a miniature (roughly, a 5" gauge live steam model) or the artist is implying some kind of dislocation in spacetime which causes the fireplace and the locomotive to be juxtaposed in one space at different scales. Magritte wrote “I decided to paint the image of a locomotive… In order for its mystery to be evoked, another immediately familiar image without mystery—the image of a dining room fireplace—was joined.” I am not sure whether I get this—whether I sense the mystery the artist wanted to bring out—or whether I am just enthralled by the concrete idea of a miniature steam locomotive. Let's be clear: I am definitely enthralled by miniature locomotives, but that doesn't disqualify me from taking Magritte's point, or Burden's.

The latter's Tyne Bridge is taller than a person, with the roadway at chest height. It is painted in a similar shade of green to the real thing. Not having seen it up close, I can't say how much the detailed design of the original bridge suffers from being reproduced in Meccano. The more traditional architectural forms of the Tyne Bridge's hollow granite towers are rendered in wood.

The movie Paddington 2 portrays the son of the family as the owner of a large "toy" live steam locomotive, comparable to the engine which appears in Time Transfixed. It is part of the film's representation of cosy, idealized, heritage-friendly London cosmopolitanism. Burden's work, in general, does not share this soft, romanticised view of the world. The scale of his Meccano construction is intended to awe. There are no concessions to conventional aesthetics in his sculpture: it is unadorned: maximally masculine and hard-edged.

Burden made a name for himself in the 70s, in Los Angeles, with a series of self-destructive performance pieces, which included having a friend shoot him in the arm. It was only after becoming a prestigious performance artist that he parlayed his fame into a quieter career making large objects which related to engineering and architecture. In his Beam Drop of 1984, steel I-beams were hoisted up by a crane and then dropped, one by one, into a pit filled with wet concrete. The dramatic action of ends of the beams lancing into the mushy cement, and their clangorous contacts with previously dropped pieces of steel, substituted for the real and irrational violent effects of his previous work.

The work of putting together huge model bridges out of Meccano and Erector set parts was taken on by Burden's studio. The artist commented that, towards the end of one project, the price of the antique construction set parts had started to increase: he had been buying up a significant fraction the whole world's existing supply and the parts had become rarer. These sculptures are not cheap: few sculptures are.

The value of a work of art is usually tied to its rarity. Early in his career, Burden ensured his reputation by seldom advertising his performances in advance. Thus, having attended a genuine Chris Burden event became something rare, something to brag about. After having moving into more conventional object-making, Burden quipped “Stuff here [his home and studio] flows pretty freely between being functional and being elevated to exalted art status.” If it takes a kind of consecration to turn something into art (and most theorists, such as Bourdieu, would say that it does) then Burden found himself ordained, in a position of being able to self-certify the artistic value of objects he acquired.

For the art audience, sincerely trying to make sense of an expensive artwork such as Burden's Tyne Bridge, the rarity and pecuniary value is a troubling point. Free access to museums meant that the experience of viewing the work cost the public nothing. Yet it is difficult not to see this state of affairs as analogous to a palace economy, in which wealth flows in to a central ruler, and is then redistributed to the people at the ruler's discretion. The supposedly beneficial effects of art had to be gained in the same way as a TV license holder claws back value from the national broadcaster—through evanescent experience.

One could imagine Chris Burden selling cheap multiples—individually signed Meccano struts, say—as a way of making his art tangibly accessible to a wide consumerist audience. As far as I know, though, he never issued any multiples. Perhaps one of his huge and intimidating structures being broken down into its tiny individual components and then dispersed would have been too much of an erosion of his concept. A multiple is the absorption of art into capitalism, except when it's free, in which case I suppose it's just the prestige of art dissolving into society and everyday life.

Following the exhibition at Baltic, in 2004 Chris Burden made a work called Tyne Bridge Kit, a one-tonne chest of drawers containing 200,000 green-painted Meccano components. In theory they could be assembled to make a duplicate of his 9½ metre-long Tyne Bridge. What is unsaid is that this is a kit which the individual hobbyist definitely cannot afford, even though the labour-intensive job of assembling it wouldn't be included in the price. I like this piece less than the assembled bridge. I guess I find it jokey and heavy-handed. It's not a distillation of the (successful!) earlier bridge project—if the earlier project hadn't existed this kit would be an even more frustrating object.

I'm still not sure what I think about Chris Burden's work. Maybe I'm only drawn to his Tyne Bridge model for the wrong reasons, for its practical rather than artistic properties. After several years, I am none the wiser about much of his other work, both the performances and the objects. Its meaning eludes me. He himself said "My main, No. 1 rule is, don’t worry what it means—other people will figure that out—just make sure that it looks neat." So maybe I am getting what there is to be got.

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

King Ahasuerus’s second wife, Esther, learns that the King’s chief minister is plotting to have all the Jews in the Persian Empire massacred. Esther intercedes with the King and eventually he grants her request to spare her people. The intense colours create an impression of exotic splendour, while strong light heightens the drama. This painting has recently been dated to c.1546-7, just as Tintoretto’s career was about to take off with his first major commission, 'The Miracle of the Slave' (Accademia, Venice) of 1547-8. The story is told in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible, to which additions were made when it was translated into Greek. King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes I, ruled the Persian Empire when the Jews were captive (485-464 BC). Esther, his second wife, conceals her Jewish identity from him and learns that Haman, the King’s chief minister, is plotting to have all Jews in the Empire massacred. Encouraged by her cousin Mordecai, Esther decides to intercede with the King on behalf of her people. She fasts, puts on royal robes and approaches the King, an act full of danger as it was forbidden, on pain of death, for anyone to enter the inner court without a royal summons. In the Greek addition Esther faints when she sees his face full of anger; then ‘God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself’. Eventually Ahasuerus grants her request to spare the Jews and Haman is hung on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Ahasuerus is described as ‘clothed in the full array of his majesty, all covered with gold and precious stones’; in the painting his golden robe originally had more orpiment - a bright yellow pigment. Esther enters with two maids, ‘leaning daintily on one, while the other followed carrying her train’; she is ‘radiant with perfect beauty, but her heart was frozen in fear’. Tintoretto was one of the first artists to show her fainting, a motif that linked her to that of the Virgin collapsing at the foot of the Cross.

There is another version of the painting, on the same scale, in the Escorial, which is generally accepted as a workshop replica: in that painting two extra figures appear to the right and a kneeling boy in armour holds a banner behind the king. The same figure appears holding back a curtain in an engraving by Simon Gribelin after the Royal Collection painting made in 1712. In the present painting the boy is gone and two unfinished figures occupy the same position: a twisting man, with a long scarf around his neck, and a shadowy, turbaned figure. It seems that these two figures were part of Tintoretto’s first idea for the composition: the twisting figure could be Haman reacting to the events behind the King, his long scarf knotted about his neck alluding to his future hanging, and the turbaned figure is his companion. The artist must then have changed his mind, left these figures half-finished, and painted a boy in armour over them. Possibly at this point Haman was painted in similar costume, and his turbaned companion, with soldiers and banners, in the centre background. At some date after 1712, probably in the nineteenth century, an unknown restorer decided to remove the boy in armour (along with the curtain and a portion of the left background), presumably in order to ‘retrieve’ the two figures. Unfortunately the unfinished turbaned figure was damaged in the process, so presumably the same restorer replaced the boy in armour (with the curtain, surrounding background and the yellow highlights of Ahasuerus’s folds of drapery). At this stage the boy was at once ‘original’ (that is, reflecting Tintoretto’s final intention for the painting) and entirely repainted. He can be seen, clearly of inferior quality compared with the original areas, in reproductions made before 1950. When the painting was cleaned in 1950 the boy was removed and the ‘twisting’ and the ‘turbaned’ figures below were reconstructed. This solution was also adopted during the 1991 conservation. The consequence is that Haman appears twice in the same painting.

In his 'Dialogo di Pittura' published in 1548, a few years after this painting was completed, Paolo Pino claimed that Tintoretto had set out to combine the drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian; Ridolfi later claimed that Tintoretto had this motto written on his studio wall. A series of drawings of this period show Tintoretto studying Michelangelo’s sculpture and that of his Venetian contemporaries (by this time heavily influenced by Michelangelo). Tintoretto does not exactly quote from Michelangelo here, as he does in 'St Mark Rescuing the Slave' (1547-8; Accademia, Venice), but his confidently modelled, twisting and foreshortened figures clearly recall his work. We can also here detect the influence of a Florentine sculptor working in Venice, Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), whose turning pose of 'Mercury from the Loggetta', completed by 1546 (and studied by Tintoretto), can be related to the uncovered figure of Haman. In addition, the composition, with its crucial break between the King and Esther and the clearly defined space in which the events take place is indebted to the narrative balance of Raphael’s work, particularly such models as his cartoon for 'The Sacrifice at Lystra' (Victoria and Albert Museum). As in Tintoretto’s 'St Mark Rescuing the Slave', some areas, like the turbans of the men on the right and centre, are wrought to a high level of finish, while other areas, like the foot of a figure behind the man in fur on the right, are left remarkably free and unresolved. Both there and in Esther before Ahasuerus intense colours - blue, gold, white and crimson - create an impression of exotic splendour, while strong light heightens the drama. In the present work the light source is in the top left foreground, casting such deep shadows that it is impossible to read the expression of Ahasuerus, the principal character. These effects of light and colour are perhaps typically Venetian, but 'Esther before Ahasuerus' and 'St Mark rescuing the Slave' together mark a moment in Tintoretto’s career when his central Italian sources - Michelangelo, Raphael and Jacopo Sansovino - give a controlled energy to his figures which conveys a power and drama that is unprecedented in Venetian painting. Catalogue entry adapted from The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London, 2007

Esther Before Ahasuerus by Jacopo Robusti, called Il Tintoretto

Italian, c. 1546-1547

oil on canvas

Royal Collection Trust (acquired by King Charles I)

[sugadaily]

On tvN’s You Quiz on the Block, SUGA told stories from before his debut. The period of his life when he struggled with how to live off his music. SUGA and BTS have kept going and going for eight years, and now he’s on their grounds, where he can do anything he wants musically. What began with that long journey is the story of SUGA holding his head up higher and staring at the future, reaching for it.

How are you feeling after your shoulder surgery? You’re doing physical therapy in parallel with work. SUGA: I’m all right. I’m keeping up with the physical therapy, too. I had surgery last year because I wanted to be able to go back to work sooner. I have nothing else to do except music.

You said that there’s nothing for you to do other than music in the “BE-hind Story” interview on YouTube, too. SUGA: It’s true. I tried gaming, but I have no talent for it. The people I play with online get so frustrated if I do. I mean, I’m working hard and got some recognition in my life, and yet people bash me so hard in games. (laughs)

I wonder if there’s a game you can do better in than you do in your career. You’re currently at your sixth week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 [with “Butter, at the time of this interview]. (laughs) How are you feeling these days? SUGA: When we were at number one for two weeks straight, I was like, Wow, this is so amazing! But after the fifth or sixth week, we really started to talk about it between ourselves: I really can’t believe this. Anyway, I feel like I have a responsibility. And I think I’ll end up thinking much, much more when we get ready for the next promotion. Even if I just try to enjoy this situation, it hasn’t sunk in. We can’t leave the country, plus there’s lots of issues in the world right now that are much more important than how well we perform on the charts.

As you say, it’s a tough situation, all over the world. How do you feel about releasing “Permission to Dance,” with its positive message, at this point in time? SUGA: It seems like everyone around the world is really tired of this situation dragging out. I wanted to convey a message that tells people to keep hanging on to hope until the very end. Whereas we released the album BE in this situation, seemingly without any certainty, I believe things will slowly get better now. I don’t know if we can go back to the way things were before, but I’m still working with the hope that we can return to a situation that resembles what we had before.

Aren’t you tired of the pandemic being in this prolonged state? SUGA: I look at it as, when you lose one thing, you gain another. I ended up being able to see my family more since I’m in Korea. In that sense, I feel more stable, so I’m not so much tired as hoping each day that things will become okay soon. I keep moving back and forth between work and home, and I’ve started to reflect on parts of myself I didn’t know about before. Like that I feel somewhat comfortable when I start and finish work at a certain time. While I used to have to go to bed at a certain time for work the next day or else I had a hard time getting up early, now I know I’ve figured out what time I should wake up at to make sure I feel good all day. What I pursue in life is emotional stability, and I don’t think there’s really anything too exciting or sad happening these days.

What effect do those emotions have when you work on music? SUGA: They don’t have a big effect on it. I think it affects the way I write lyrics a bit, but I’m not working on any lyrics at the moment. I’ve been making music for a long time, so I think it’s possible for me to express emotions I’m not feeling in the moment. And it’s good that we released “Permission to Dance” in this kind of situation.

You sing rather than rap in “Permission to Dance.” In addition to rapping, you started singing more both before and after BE. What did you learn about your voice? SUGA: “Permission to Dance” was a little bit difficult. I don’t draw a line between singing and rapping or anything, but it was different from our usual style, and the vocals were a bit high, too. So even though it took a while to prepare for it, I worked hard, and even when I asked some older musicians for their opinions, they all said, “It’s good the way you’re doing it. Don’t try to sing better—just sing more.” I think my only option is to sing more, like they suggested.

As far as style goes, you’ve been doing a smoother kind of pop music. Did any differences arise as a result of these changes? SUGA: All things considered, the English was the hardest part. I paid close attention to my pronunciation in “Butter” and “Permission to Dance.” It wasn’t easy to capture that smooth feeling in the songs, so I practiced my pronunciation quite a bit. And I end up breathing a lot when I’m doing an English song, but the rap parts were a bit hard for that reason. There’s a clear difference from Korean songs, since English has so many syllables. But I don’t have any one method I stick with for my vocals yet, so I tend to try lots of different things out.

What do you make of BTS’s achievements over the past year with “Permission to Dance” and “Butter,” as well as the group’s change in style? In the space of a year, you’ve released songs in a style different from MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 or BE. SUGA: As a producer, I think reactions are important to an artist who works within the field of popular music. With that in mind, speaking as a producer, “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” were the best choices. And musical tastes are different from country to country, and the cultures are different, too. Given that situation, I think it’s important that we’re a group who can send such a universal message out into the world.

BTS has really grown and changed a lot, starting with “No More Dream” and all the way to “Permission to Dance.” SUGA: I think it’s a natural course of event for those of us who make pop music. Artists mix and match different genres as they grow, and the music develops as the people of its time listen to it. I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately, and thanks to the times we live in, if I listen to a song a few times, they recommend me more songs in a similar style. And after listening to them, I realized the style of hip hop is also changing and is splitting off into different offshoots. Other than hip hop, I also listen to a lot of instrumental music. I’ve always liked Hans Zimmer’s music. There have been many times where a movie I like turns out to have music by Hans Zimmer.

What is it about Hans Zimmer’s music that draws you in? SUGA: I like orchestral music. There’s a lot of pop songs that are under the three-minute mark now, and whereas it’s sort of predetermined that they’re always written with intros that are four bars long, orchestral music can do a lot within its framework.

But, as can be seen in IU’s song “eight,” which you both produced and featured on, you broke out of pop music’s typical composition style and tried out a highly condensed progression. The composition of the chorus is very straightforward. SUGA: Yes. I insisted that the flow be roughly cut in half from that of a typical song, and I expect more pop music will be like that in the future. And maybe even shorter as time goes on. I mean, these days there’s songs that are under two minutes, even.

Regardless, I felt the chorus in “eight” is extremely dramatic with its structure and the melody of the chorus. I thought it was rather grand in scale as well. Would you say that you’re attempting to mix your tastes and things you want to do into the structure of pop music? SUGA: As you know, I love hip hop, so when I was first making music I thought it had to be hip hop no matter what and that I had to take pride in my own ideas and not accept any compromise. But while getting some experience at the forefront of pop music, I figured out that you can keep being stubborn or inflexible because there are people listening to you. There was a time I made music without any listeners before I became a member of BTS. But if someone were to ask if I stopped being stubborn about the music I’m making these days, the answer’s no. As I grew up and became an adult, I came to realize that I have to negotiate between what I want to do and the kind of music the public wants without compromising anything. When I give up on something I wanted to do, I ask myself, What will I get out of this? And conversely, when I want to do something, I ask myself, What can I get out of this? That’s how I keep my balance to make it to where I am now.

You have no choice but to think about those things when you work on other artists’ songs, especially when you’re a producer. SUGA: I’m BTS’s SUGA, and I’m Agust D, and when I’m producing, I go by “by SUGA.” But when it comes to by SUGA, I make perfectly commercial music. I’m the producer for those songs, sure, but the owner is someone else, you know? In that case, they’re commissioning my work. But they wouldn’t think about just leaving it all with SUGA. The artist’s label has to think carefully about whether to commission me for producing and consider my situation, too, and those people must be hoping for something commercial. That’s the most important part of working with outside people. Actually, that kind of work isn’t much of a benefit to me, to be honest. Oh, he can write this kind of song, too. That’s all. The more valuable thing I can get from it is the recognition and records the artist or the company will get with the song instead.

As you noted in your previous Weverse Magazine interview, when you discussed your “interest in the music industry in the US,” you seem to constantly think about the things artists can do within the framework of the music industry. SUGA: I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve become more certain since the pandemic started that I’m the kind of person who always has to be doing music. That much I know for sure, so I want to keep on making good music. And the pop music market is something that came about because there were people listening, and there’s a long history to the US music market, and it possesses the most influential charts in the whole word. So then I thought, Wouldn’t they have gone through all the same things that we have? And really, whenever I talk to other pop stars, the situation is always similar. The US is also more realistic about commercial results than any other country. I wanted an accurate picture of how those people work. Right now, Korean pop music’s spread is in full swing and we need more good artists to keep popping up. From a producer’s standpoint, if that’s going to happen, I think the key is how well we can mix our music and the characteristics of overseas music industries overall.

How did it feel to be in the lineup for the Grammy Awards, one of the icons of the US music industry? SUGA: The feeling was less immediate because we couldn’t be there in person, and it wasn’t a huge distinction, but the performance made me think, This is different, because it’s the Grammys. What changed my view from the first time I went to an American music awards ceremony was, the first time I went, I was really scared of the world’s biggest music market. But when I look back now, I don’t think I had any reason to feel that intimidated. To be honest, I have only now begun to enjoy the awards ceremonies; I wasn’t able to then.

It’s no exaggeration to say that you’ve achieved most of the things that you can as an artist in the music industry. What steps do you think are necessary for the artists who follow after BTS? SUGA: The way artists work seems so difficult. They make an appearance on a different music show every day once the promotional period begins, meaning the exhaustion artists face is enormous, and that fatigue often results in injuries as it adds up. That kind of music show is for promotional purposes, so it’s not like the artists can earn a proper income from them. On top of that, despite all the promoting, there’s no visible outcome, so they inevitably lose morale. If possible, it’d be nice to have one of the performances be really high-quality, even if it’s just the one, but in this environment I’d say that’s pretty difficult. And since our job doesn’t fit the common conception of work, there’s ambiguous boundaries when it comes to issues of legal protection as well. We need a lot of improvements to be made to the industry and its system.

They demand a lot of things as collateral for success, yet success is extremely difficult to attain. SUGA: The great thing about the label I’m with is they listen to the artists’ opinions. I think both we and the label know to a certain degree what kinds of activities would be best commercially speaking. But the question is whether the body can endure it or not. If the fatigue builds up as you continuously do those promotional activities, it’s hard to do them the way you did when you first debuted. In that case, I think the label ought to actively accommodate the artist’s views about what they can and cannot do. An attitude that’s just like, Oh, we made you kids, and as long as you just do what we tell you to it’ll all work out, so just do it—I think that really doesn’t make any sense. Of course, there could still be situations where the label has to be pushy like that, obviously. But I heard there’s been times where a label will just say, Do it, without any explanation to the artist, or, Why are you talking so much? I think that’s the biggest issue and it’s destroying the industry. If you just see the artist as a product, how can they do anything creative? I really think it’s very contradictory to ask the people on stage to put on an enjoyable performance when they’re experiencing neither fun nor enjoyment.

That reminds me of the music video for “Daechwita” somehow. You appear onscreen as both a rebel character and a king, looking as different as your situation when you first debuted with BTS and your situation now. SUGA: There was a lot I wanted to do in “Daechwita,” not just musically but also visually, and a lot of ideas came to me as I came to reflect on who I am as a person while working on the music video. It naturally occurred to me to separate SUGA, by SUGA and Agust D. The character I played in that video who wasn’t the king was a stranger. It takes place during the Joseon era, but then there’s cars and guns, which of course don’t belong in that era. I think we’ve been living our lives that way. Right from our debut, a portion of the hip hop lovers criticized us by saying, They’re idols. But at the same time, we heard things like, They’re not idols. I didn’t know which drumbeat to march to, so I think that’s why each of our albums took a different direction than people were expecting. But I don’t think I can call myself a stranger in this situation anymore. So these days my main goal is to keep going with BTS for a long time. Having a huge audience show up at our concerts is nice, but I think the goal for all of us is to make sure the group can keep making music even as we get older. I think right now we’re thinking a lot about how we can have fun and be happy on stage.

What do you mean when you say fun and happy music? SUGA: I think people are happier the busier I am, so lately I’ve been thinking that I need to focus a little more. I figure we should do as much as we can for ARMY since they feel happy watching us. We’ll continue to try our best, so I hope they believe in BTS and keep their eyes on us.

So that’s why you do music. SUGA: This is the only thing I know how to really do. Other than music and BTS, there’s nothing special about me when I look at this 28-year-old Min Yoongi. That’s why I want to keep doing this.

[your-brilliant-lady-m]

Part 4 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Glamour

You can call it however you want: kid's show logic, superhero disguise logic, magical girl show logic, cartoon laws, suspension of disbelief, etc. But the fact that nobody recognises Marinette, Adrien and others when they are suited up IS NOT BAD WRITING. It's one of the main laws of this genre. That's not because characters are stupid, okay? So, being frustrated that everyone in the show acts stupid about this "wearing a mask that covers only eyes" trope is strange. This criticism is not valid or fair.

But, this trope has to make sense in-universe as a worldbuilding and narrative element.

Miraculous doesn't give us much direct information on how glamour works. And in this case, I think we need both SHOW and TELL. Because if you don't establish the glamour rules clearly, you are going to run into problems and create unfortunate implications with your storytelling choices.

Appearance

Miraculous obviously gives our heroes magical glamour. In "Lady WiFi" we find out that masks can't be taken off. It's magic. No other explanation is needed.

Miraculous can slightly change the appearance of users (eyes, face shape, height and hairstyles). People can identify and notice the hairstyles of heroes (numerous Ladybug wigs, statue in Copycat). Jagged Stone points out the change of hair when he mistakes Chloe for Ladybug ("Antibug"). But it's just a costume. There is no magic that prevents Jagged from understanding that Chloe isn't Ladybug. So, how does it work? But it's forgivable because it's cartoon logic. Suspension of disbelief works here, I suppose. I won't judge this too harshly.

Glamour also obviously prevents people from making a connection that Marinette and Ladybug have identical hairstyles. So people know that Ladybug wears her hair in pigtails, but magic does not allow them to notice similarities.

Another important question. Does glamour work on Kwamis? Can they see who is behind the mask?

New York Special makes it clear that magic does not affect robots and they can see through glamour. Does that mean that Markov, AI built by Max, knows the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir? And it's never addressed.

Plagg in "Frightningale" says that holders can subconsciously choose their superhero appearance. This is actually pretty interesting and I like this idea a lot. Except the show is not consistent with this. The transformation of Master Fu looks identical to Nathalie's. And we have seen how different from each other Ladybug and Black Cat holders looked in the past. At the same time, Master Fu and Nino have different takes on Turtle superhero suit.

Age Glamour

Does age glamour exist? Do people see Ladybug, Chat Noir and other heroes as adults even when they look like teenagers to the audience (their height and build are smaller even when they are transformed)? Is that why no one ever questions the fact that children nearly die on a daily basis?

I mentioned unfortunate implications earlier. Well, this is where they come into play. Let's talk about "Copycat". A lot of people discussed it before me, so I won't bore you with details.

When I watched "Copycat" for the first time Theo's crush on Ladybug didn't bother me, because I thought that he sees Ladybug as his peer, a girl who is about 20-23 years old. Theo is an artist, his character design is that of an adult. He has his own studio, its appearance indicates that he did serious commissions in the past. The guy has no idea that Ladybug is like 13.

But then we get "Heroes' Day" and "Ladybug". And Hawkmoth calls them "kids", which means that there is no age glamour. Others see Ladybug and Chat Noir as teenagers. Perhaps, other Miraculous users aren't affected by age glamour. Therefore regular people see all heroes as adults but other heroes are able to guess their age more or less correctly. But you must spell this thing out because the audience can interpret "Copycat" differently. If there is no age glamour, then Theo is crushing on a teenage girl and he is fully aware of this fact. And this doesn't look good for your show.

The "No Age Glamour" theory is further confirmed in "Sapotis" where Alya just straight up analyses voice recordings and says that Ladybug is a girl their age. If glamour exists then it should also cover technology. Kwami can't be photographed. Face and voice recognition software shouldn't be able to analyse transformed superheroes and detect their identities in any way.

Besides, after "Sapotis" Alya should definitely be sure that Ladybug is not 5000 years old (also not an adult), especially after she wore Miraculous herself and was one door away from detransformed Ladybug.

SEASON 4 UPDATE! There's no age glamour after all.

In "Furious Fu" Su Han calls Chat Noir a child without knowing his identity. It means that everyone knows their superheroes are teenagers. "Copycat" can't be saved from that, uh, subtext anymore. No one questions the danger of their job or the balance of their lives outside of the mask. No one doubts their competence after "Origins" ever again. No one becomes annoyed after being bossed around by two teenagers in spandex. You had many opportunities to drop these details into the narrative. Someone could have been akumatized over this (I will not be ordered around by some magical kids!).

I don't know why writers decided not to use at least this idea and slightly adjust "Copycat" if they got rid of the age glamour completely. It can be explained as kid's show logic, but unfortunately, I'm reluctant to do it. If many characters sympathise with akuma victims on-screen, why not with the teenage superheroes who must fight them?

New York Special had this weird focus on collateral damage out of nowhere (the damage done by sentimonster Robostus) and yet it has 0 effect on the main story. No one in Paris is pissed that their 2 teenage protectors weren't there.

Ironically, "Furious Fu" and that one remark made by Su Han also created unfortunate implications for other moments in the show. Just hear me out. Apparently, Jagged Stone wrote a "thank you" song for Ladybug knowing that she is 13-15 year old child back in "Pixelator". Fandom is more than happy to roast Lila for lying about saving Jagged Stone's cat and him writing her a "thank you" song. Fandom claims that Lila's tale could harm Jagged's reputation, when he wrote a song for teenage Ladybug several weeks prior. Meanwhile, in-universe this lie is 100% believable.

If we put on "realism glasses", then both this whole song situation and Theo's crush in "Copycat" have uncomfortable implications. However, the show's canon can't be viewed and criticised through "realism glasses". I admit that bits and pieces of my criticisms are affected by these "glasses", but, ultimately, I'm trying to be fair and concentrate only on things that can't be justified by "cartoon logic and worldbuilding".

Could the existence of age glamour solve this problem of unfortunate implications and other concerns mentioned above? YES. Is it better for the narrative? YES. Is essential for the story? NOT QUITE. Could the absence of age glamour be called an irredeemable storytelling flaw? NO.

Disclaimer: On a side note, only older audience can notice these implications. Children, the target audience, most likely won't understand this subtext simply because they don't have enough experience. So, perhaps, this criticism is unfair, because these moments only look weird to me as an adult. It's like an adult joke in a cartoon that you don't get until you reach a certain age.

There's nothing technically wrong with adult writing a "thank you" song for a teenager. It's just an expression of gratitude. However, unfortunately, we live in a world, where adults normally wouldn't write songs for teens to express gratitude only. In real life similar actions would imply pedophilia and would be actively scorned by the public. No one would risk their reputation like that even if their intentions were genuinely pure and sincere. But this show can't be viewed through "realism glasses", because it's a cartoon and in certain cases we as the audience must use suspension of disbelief and pretend that certain things are possible for plot to happen.

Su Han also wants to give Ladybug and Black Cat to adults. Why didn't Master Fu do this then? Writers don't give us any explanation. Throughout the show we never question this up until the moment it's revealed that adults don't have time-limited powers. Then comes "Furious Fu". Story suddenly becomes self-aware here. Because apparently nothing prevented Fu from giving the most powerful Miraculous to adults who won't have time limit and will be more effective against Hawkmoth (see part 3 for more details).

I have a very good example of Age Glamour done right. It works in the story. There is no confusion or unfortunate implications. There is like one plothole connected to the glamour (it's been years and I still can't forgive them for Cornelia and Caleb) but otherwise, it's a pretty solid example of both show and tell. Clearly, writers wanted to avoid uncomfortable implications which are present in "Copycat". I am talking about W.I.T.C.H. comic books and animated series.

If you are not familiar with it, I'll give you a brief explanation. The story follows 5 girls, the Guardians of Kandrakar who are chosen to protect their world and parallel ones from evil. They receive magical powers from the amulet known as the Heart of Kandrakar. Their powers are based on elements: fire, water, earth, air and energy. Our main characters are about 13-15 years old. In the animated series they are younger and they attend middle school, making them 12-14 years old. But the transformation makes them look 18-20. They look like young women to each other and to other people. At the same time, people can recognise them, their looks and voice don't change. Most people don't know that they are really teenagers when they are not transformed and these people don't know that magic can make them look older. That's why everyone treats Guardians like adults when they are transformed. Comics establish this fact in the very beginning. In first issues characters state that they look older, we are also shown this multiple times.

In fact, one of the first side plots revolves around the fact that Irma uses her powers to sneak into the disco club to meet up with her crush. Irma is 13 at the beginning of the series, she is a high school freshman. Her crush, Andrew Hornby is a senior guy 17-18 years old. Irma has liked him for a long time and wants to impress him, so she decides to be clever about this. She transforms into her Guardian form of the 18-year-old girl, hides her wings, sneaks out to the club after her parents are asleep without any problem, and meets Andrew, who obviously doesn't recognise Irma in this girl who looks about his age. Smitten Andrew offers her a ride and 13-year-old Irma doesn't understand the implication of that offer, so she accepts. And, obviously, he decides that she is interested in more than just a ride home, since she agreed, and the comic implies that he fully intended for them to have sex in the backseat of his car. But Irma understands the implication only when Andrew tries to kiss her. She panics and turns him into a frog. And she actually pulls this "I need to look mature" trick more than once over the course of the series.

It's not the only situation where this age difference is handled well and makes sense. People who know the main characters in everyday life remark on their older appearance during transformation. Sometimes people flirt with Guardians when they are transformed. In one of the side-novels centred around Cornelia, she is worried that the prince of the realm they helped to save from famine would try to marry her. That never happens, but Cornelia actually brainstorms with her friends about how to tell the prince that she is really 15.

There are many other plot points where this happens, but I think that you got the idea. I really like how "Age Glamour" was handled in W.I.T.C.H.

How do we fix this? Create the situations where people offhandedly mention "Age Glamour" in the presence of Marinette or Adrien, use Kwami for this.

"Don't worry, dear. Chat Noir and Ladybug are adults, who know what they are doing. I am sure that they will handle this. "

Theo could say: "Oh, I wonder which university Ladybug goes to?"

"So, does that mean that other people see us as grown-ups, Tikki?"

A few words and boom, problem solved. Then allow the "show don't tell" rule do the rest.

[relic-seeker]

ok in order to get the brain worms out here's a spoilery thought discussion / blurting author things of this fic so far & primarily lemm / quirrel's relationship thank you <3

firstly i'm just still mega proud of myself...

although very subtle & more obvious in coming chapters, i just love the idea that lemm didn't really see romance as an option at all. he has this beautiful relationship with quirrel that complements both their dependence / growth within society & their independence but lemm simply did not believe a romance would benefit them or be realistic. it's not that he's dense -- i view lemm's perception of romanticism/sexuality very similar to mine -- but that he wouldn't 'sabotage' a perfect relationship (not only emotionally but physically!) by initiating something more. part of it also comes in with anxiety & his own past issues that i'm yet to elaborate on

i know it's only become recently explicit, but i'm SO glad i got to drop more on lemm's backstory in these last two chapters. i have a whole prequel fic planned & a Tiny bit written regarding lemm's origin story... it's obvious in the game itself that lemm is annoyed & mildly grumpy & prefers his solitude -- but why? i'm of the belief that lemm is an outsider to hallownest (there is so much evidence that i'll hold back for now) & a chance to explore everything to unpack is so fun. plus i highly relate to him & want to give him a meaningful backstory that explains why he is who he is <:)!! like, the upper class shell colour, the solitude, the beard that is only seen on another character in a random silksong trailer... infinite possibilities & i love making one to fit my narrative

this point is actually fairly subconscious but i only recognised it since just before publishing i read the first 7 chapters of the fic: the narrative voice of the whole things changes from mostly being lemm-centric & focused on his view of the events happening, to a mix of both quirrel & lemm. the more descriptive pieces are certainly reflective of quirrel moreso, whilst the parts with more character in the writing voice & insert 'personal' thought are lemm's (like the beginning 7 chapters of the fic). i think, especially with ch7 as a sort of turning point (fun fact they werent meant to confess feelings THERE but it felt rushed to me lmao), onwards from that point the narrative switches from them being separate people to finally being something new with each other. i find it really interesting how i managed to do that with the writing style itself!

i wrote THE scene so many times. i will never understate how hard it was to collect 80k words of pining & tie it all in a pretty bow in just one scene. there was so much left unsaid & more i could've put it -- but i needed to keep it fairly short & sweet as well :"O! overall pleased with the result although part of me wishes i made lemm say more -- but in true lemm fashion, he wouldn't have

i actually wanted to draw fanart for this chapter but i'm not the best artist (i'm only really good at drawing dnd-related things top my campaign specifically fsr). then i though about commissioning "p---l---c" but i think i'll do it in my own time for another chapter or something. plus my finals last til the end of this week ^^"

this confession scene was actually supposed to be at the end of ch15 & then ch16 was gonna be a date between them, but i thought about the pacing & it was just infinitely better for some semi-relevant fluff before the big drop. something something they still love each other despite quirrel leaving to travel something...

this fic is mostly from lemm's pov but something i wanted to discuss from quirrel's pov is that he was just as messy & a loser as lemm was, don't get me wrong. i tried to sum it up with the whole "quirrel is usually suave but is a pathetic nerd actually"; i feel like i haven't shown quirrel being kind of a wet cat enough sometimes because around lemm, he can't express that a lot? like if i wrote more interactions with him and hornet then DEFINITELY he would be a pathetic wet cat lad because she's cooler than him. but hornet ain't completely cool, she has like lace to compete with

when i originally began the fic, i was of the belief that silksong definitely would've been out by now LMAO so i'm actually a little thankful because i'd hate to have a major lore thing change somehow -- specifically the date range that hornet disappears to pharoloom; especially since that point is going to become relevant for some of the rest of the story

this fic has fully taken over my life & i'm already planning 2 other fics related to it -- the lemm prequel (as stated above) & also another secret thing which will be revealed around when ch19 is posted (i plan heavily in advance innit). there are some hints to it on my blog rn & also based on an ask i sent another tumblr user but shhh i made it anon lol. i debated writing something just solely on quirrel's solo travels outside hallownest but i decided it would be kinda boring since 90% of it would be "he walked through this place, here's a description, he did some stuff, he left"; plus ch 13 was REALLY hard for me to write in a way that felt satisfactory. i almost got rid of it completely but i was like 6k words deep & it had a Little relevancy with quirrel's whole situationship with feste in that

although i generally like post-embrace the void fics more due to void sibling shenanigans, i remember being pretty adamant when i began the fic that it would be a dream no more rebuilding hallownest sort of thing with hornet based on zelda totk -- the relevance of not having her past ghosts (no pun intended) with her was that i wanted her to move on, as sad as that is: same with zelda & the abandoning of her royal family/past primarily to help her kingdom. i imagine in an au of this that was embrace the void instead, a lot of things would go the same (with hornet taking a leadership position) except the royal family would be a lot more prevalent & the little vessels would be sooo annoying. i actually REALLY love the idea of lemm taking care of one of the vessels (not going to say anything much but that Will be in my lemm prequel fic) as a weird sort of companion foil to his sarcastic bluntness / wit for it to be met with utter silence! alas one can dream

finally, lemm's love language to receive is physical touch; to give is acts of service & quality time -- quirrel's love language to receive is quality time & words of affection; to give is quality time & physical touch <-- this was initially VERY different when i started writing, but despite this they love each other so so so much

if anyone reads this i'm so sorry. this is mostly a personal archive for my thoughts & feelings on this fic jic they get lost to time :") cheers lads + lasses + lays

chapter 16; "for i am the new husband and i am the comrade" / "the long-dwelling companionship ends"

this is essentially THE pinnacle of this fic. if you like lemm & quirrel finding home within each other, you will only now certainly be satisfied with this whole story! thank you everyone for following this for a while, means a bunch

story will continue with a brief navigation of their whole situation afterwards -- after all, i can't spend 80k words building up this relationship only for nothing to actually happen to it afterwards!!!

[grimae]

I'm so deeply fascinated and joyful about your Book of the Sun drawings, both from an audience standpoint and an artistic one. It's so distinct and wonderful, and there's so much detail and nuance to the texture and the line weight right alongside the intuitive concept of "gold lines on black." It's so great, I feel like I'm browsing an ancient grimoire. Some of my favorite art anywhere, period.

Do you have any tricks or insights you've learned artistically throughout the last 24 pages? You mention loving the problem solving aspect of art, and I'm so intrigued by that.

Thank you so much! Always glad to hear these pages inspire and fascinate other people. I wish I was better at sharing the lore behind them, but part of me always goes “nah you will just spoil things, don’t even know where to start” (what things? why? wouldn’t they just make people more interested?) and another part goes “the way you write this doesn’t sound 100% perfect yet, do not share unless it is perfect” (why must it be perfect? I have no deadline, I can always go back and explain more, too). I started working on these pages in November 2019, which was by all means an incredibly tumultous month, so it’s now been 18 months in which I did these 24 artworks, besides the usual progress in skill I can see with my normal art, I can also clearly see it in the BotS pages. Older pages tend to be muddy. And not focused. One page, the 4th for example is to this day the one I dislike the most. I drew it while I was stressed as I had to leave for a couple days and really wanted to get it finished - which was a mistake, I should have taken my time to fix what annoyed me. Another page, 9, suffers from a similar problem but in a different way. I finally figured out something plot related and desperately wanted to draw a page for it, but I didn’t know yet fully how to translate it - didn’t stop me, should have stopped me tho. 4 on the left, 9 on the right here. Now looking at them again I do see positive things and stuff I did well, though. It’s important to keep your eyes fresh. If I work on a picture well until 1 AM and then actually get it finished, I’d rather just close photoshop nowadays and sleep instead of getting overexcited. Goes for non-BotS work too. Goes for commissions. Anything. I’d rather sleep another night instead of handing in something I am not feeling all too well with.

Later and younger pages tend to be cleaner in a way. Something thing to focus on, ornaments are kept small and not distracting with a hundred lines. As example here pages 19 and 20 (below). One big thing to notice clear negative space which is only defined by this slight colour jitter (I’ve got several brushes to add those now, all slightly different). The upper two pages have these blocks of small ornaments and lines for no reason that make them difficult to look at and concentrate, in my eyes. Especially 4 suffers a lot from it. I could have grouped  them up, I could have not added that black splotch around Alazar’s muzzle, I could I could I could. Same goes for the unnecessary golden lines outside of the circle in 10. The rays, yes. The rest? Hm.

And here’s something more, which took me quite a bit to actually get fully - using tiny different changes in hue and value without actually rendering. Negative example is 5, once again a page drawn a year ago, the other two younger. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, it was the first page I wanted to experiment with bigger blocks of grey, and I had no idea what I was doing. I like the black and greys in the clouds, how dense they look and oppressing, but it was unnecessarily confusing. There’s too much going on in them compared to the bottom. I feel like it keeps pulling the view up, where nothing is, essentially. Drastic example I didn’t circle are Judrig’s arms in 21, I tried really hard to actually make them black (for lore related reasons) but the picture kept collapsing on itself, something about it got muddied too hard and made it difficult to focus - until a friend said that, yes, for lore reasons her arms should be black, but if you make her arms red, a colour you already used a lot in previous pages, you can use the black or dark greys for bigger areas and accents without sacrificing readability. Which was good. And I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Also I keep saying this in bad tones, “I dislike this page”, “negative example”, but I honestly do not hate any page. I’m happy with them, I’m happy with the progress I can see in them and it makes me excited for the next ones to come. I told myself I will not redraw any of these pages because if I start, I will never stop fixing mistakes no one would care about with a project that is already going way out of hand - but in a way I am proud of. There’s also older pages I really really adore, such as 8, or 6. In lore, the book is drawn and worked on by many multiple vampires, over multiple centuries. It feels a bit like an excuse sometimes, but it does help to explain the slight changes that come with me improving in general. At least to myself.

[memeadonna]

The Kingdom of Roses

You are the princess of Rusika, a kingdom neighbouring Novoselic. When one of your government’s high ranking officials is taken as a political prisoner, your kingdom retaliates by taking some of your own -- and they just might be more than you bargained for. 

Hello Everybody! My name is Jess and I’ve been a longtime fan of Danganronpa, from around 2012 or 2013 when I first played the games. I wanted to try my hand at writing a reader insert for one of my favourite characters (and my first ever husbando), one Kazuichi Souda. This beautiful art really inspired me (I scoured high and low for an artist credit, but I couldn’t find one. If you know who drew it please let me know and I will give them the appropriate credit), and I wrote an x reader. I hope you all enjoy!  Warnings: This work contains NSFW not suitable for readers under 18. Please do not interact with this post if you are under 18. 

Monarchies were a dying form of government. Most countries had established parliaments by now, but the Kingdom of Rusika, where you were born, and a few neighbouring kingdoms held onto their royal families until the very end. Novoselic was one such kingdom, one that until a few days ago had been your ally. Your father – beloved king of Rusika – had sent one of his most trusted advisors to negotiate a trade deal with the Nevermind family, rulers of Novoselic.

That advisor had been captured and held at ransom for some unknown reason. The Novoselic Kingdom really had no idea what they were doing, did they?

Sonia Nevermind was someone you had grown up with. The two of you had never been friends, per se, but you understood one another. You were Princesses tasked with leading your kingdoms towards prosperity. Your countries were similar enough – they had once been one, but after a civil war in 926, the country had been divided in half. While Novoselic’s exports consisted of luxury goods – wine, chocolate, and cheese – Rusika’s were more practical. Your main exports were related to geothermal energy and associated technologies, or mining precious gems. Your country – the kingdom of roses – was building the future. Hers was stuck in the past, weighed down by stupid traditions.

Your father trusted you more than Sonia’s father trusted her, and so you had grown up with more responsibilities. You had learned early on the burdens of leadership, and eventually began to find her boring. You made sure she never caught on, always giving her your full attention whenever she rambled about her silly life and silly problems.

Both of your countries had hit economic booms, so what need was there to worry? Gah, her philosophy was so stupid.

Today you woke up to find that your father had arranged the kidnapping of two of Sonia’s closest friends. She had just graduated from the prestigious Hope’s Peak Academy, and had apparently invited her entire class to Novoselic to spend their last vacation celebrating.

It was strange of him to make such a decision without consulting you first. You were supposed to be queen of Rusika one day, and he always made sure you had a say in decisions. Today you were instructed to dress the part of a princess and come greet your guests. You were to show them hospitality and make them feel welcome. You might have kidnapped them, but you weren’t monsters. They would literally receive the royal treatment, and you were to be put in charge of them.

As your handmaidens helped you dress (corseting you, doing your hair and makeup, and fixing your jewelry could be a six-person job), you went over what you wanted to say to your prisoners. How the hell were you supposed to make them feel welcome?

You had never seen a person with two different coloured eyes before. You had also never seen a person with pink hair. Based on the way they looked at you, dripping in jewels and looking your part, you doubted they had seen Sonia in all of her glory yet. You smiled as you introduced yourself, trying your hardest not to look like you were studying them. You explained the situation to them, told them they were valuable political prisoners and would not be harmed or imprisoned as long as they behaved, and did not try to leave.

The man with two different coloured eyes called you a fiend, as well as many other dark names as he promised his Princess would come for him. The man with pink hair affirmed “Miss. Sonia will rescue me!” and shook his fist at you, trying his best not to look starstruck.

Eventually, you got their names out of them.

“How long will we be here?” Gundham asked you over dinner that night. “I wish to return home as soon as possible. I have responsibilities.”

Realistically, you knew it wouldn’t be a quick endeavour. You and Sonia had spent three months as prisoners in a neighbouring kingdom as Rusika and Novoselic had laid siege to the capitol. That was when you had learned she was boring. She kept to herself in her room, and almost seemed upset with you whenever you would negotiate with your captors, or walked the palace grounds like a free woman.

“As long as it takes” you answered coolly, glad that Japanese was one of the languages your family had forced you to learn. Members of the royal family having to speak thiry languages was one tradition that Rusika had kept from its time joined with Novoselic. It came in handy when negotiating with foreigners. “I cannot provide a clearer answer than that.”

“Don’t worry, Gundham,” Souda spoke up. “Sonia will come for us!”

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

Gundham spent most of his time observing the animals on your palace grounds. Your late mother had loved peacocks, so your father had taken up breeding them. She had loved many different animals when she had been alive, so the grounds weren’t exactly wanting. He enjoyed speaking with the vain birds, whistling and cooing until they would fan their elegant tails. His hamsters seemed to enjoy their accommodations too, with more seeds than they could have ever hoped to have eaten.

Souda, however, wanted to remain as unaffected as possible. He did his best to refuse any luxuries you offered him. It was only after you found out he had taken apart every electronic device in his room did you ask Gundham. The Ultimate Breeder had warmed up to you quickly, especially since you were the reason his hamsters were so well taken care of.

After Gundham cryptically told you about Souda, you gifted the Mechanic with a set of tools and new appliances to play with. Boredom could be so cruel, and the last thing you wanted was undue suffering.

Seeing him slip shyly into your study made your gift worth it. He was so awkward as he stumbled out a thanks, looking everywhere except your face. He was blushing and fiddling with a screwdriver as he spoke. “I still don’t trust you. You’re Miss. Sonia’s enemy,” he pointed his finger at you. “And any enemy of Miss. Sonia is an enemy of mine.”

“Would you like a workshop?” you asked him calmly. “I’m sure your room is a bit cluttered with all of those appliances. I just want to make your stay comfortable, I bear no ill will towards you, Mr. Souda.”

His cheeks flamed up and he stammered out a non-answer, shuffling out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

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

Souda and Gundham had been with you a little over two weeks when the former finally cracked. He once more barged into your study, and looked you up and down. “I want somewhere to work,” he declared. He placed a crumpled piece of paper on your desk. “Here’s the list of everything I need.”

You saved the speech you were writing and logged off of your computer. “Come with me, Mr. Souda,” you stood gracefully, glad you no longer had to wear your ballgowns around him. It had always made you feel overdressed and obnoxious, especially considering he preferred to wear his jumpsuit rather than the clothes your country had provided him with. It had taken a lot to even convince him to let the servants wash the suit, let alone wear another while he waited.

In the end, you had commissioned seven identical jumpsuits for him, to match the one he already wore. At least he no longer reeked.

You paused at the door to the workshop you had set up for him. There was a guard stationed outside, but a nod from you dismissed him. Kazuichi’s eyes lit up as he observed all of the new-age tech he had to play with. He stammered out a bright-eyed thanks, and you gave him your brightest smile. You had done lots of research into what he would enjoy; he was your guest, not your prisoner. Right?

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

After a month, Novoselic struck up a deal with Rusika. A hostage for hostage trade: Gundham Tanaka for your father’s cherished advisor. Kazuichi had not been mentioned in the negotiations at all, something that did not sit right with you.

He tried to pretend that he wasn’t upset he had been forgotten, but it was obvious to anybody with half of a brain he was torn up. You made efforts to spend more time with him. You had him accompany you on walks around the castle’s garden, and even took him out of the palace for a few walks around town for a change of scenery. Nothing you said lifted his spirits. He barely even looked at you now.

You watched him tinkering with his toys, but even that seemed to have lost its shine for him. He looked so sad, so bored that it made you anxious.

“May I ask you something?” you questioned on one such walk. The two of you had been caught in the rain and had sought shelter underneath a quaint gazebo. He looked back at you with a curt nod. “How is your hair pink?”

He blinked at you for a moment before he burst out laughing. It was the first time since he had come to Rusika that he had laughed, and it made your cheeks flame up as he smiled at you.

“I dye it,” he told you after he calmed down. “I first bleach my hair to take the colour out, and then I use a dye to turn it pink.”

“Colour?” You blinked up at him. “What colour is your hair supposed to be?”

Instead of answering, he removed his beanie to reveal about an inch of jet-black hair growing in at his roots. Your eyes widened in wonder. “So, it must be bleached again on the new hair?” you asked.

“Yes,” he smiled at you dopily. “It has to be done every few months or the hair will grow in its natural colour.”

“Does it feel different?” you asked. “The pink and the black?” Instead of replying, he took your hand and placed it onto his hair. Your blush only deepened as you felt how soft it was, and noticed his cheeks were bright red too as you pulled away. “Do you wish to turn your hair pink again? I will send for my stylist.”

He smiled at you, soft but genuine. “I’d really like that. Then I’ll feel a bit more like me,”

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

“What are you doing?” Souda peeked over your shoulder. You smiled tiredly up at him and you stretched as subtly as you could. You had been taking daily walks with him for several weeks now, and he would always drop by every few hours to see how you were doing, or to show off his latest invention.

“I’m looking at the schematics for a new geothermal energy plant,” you answered. “I’m trying to sort out how we can make our energy extraction more efficient.”

Kazuichi looked over the blueprints on your laptop screen. “I’d have to do the calculations, but if you merged these two pipes here-” he pointed. “-you would cut down significantly on the energy wasted.”

“Pull up a chair,” you told him. “Let’s take a look together, shall we?”

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

Kazuichi had been in your care for three months now, and he hardly acted like a prisoner. He called you “Miss” (probably because you called him Mr. Souda), and tended to barge in on you whenever he wanted. He had repaired the castle’s heating system, boosted your internet connection, and even helped you overhaul the design of your new energy plants. These plants would be 46% more efficient than the last schematic, something that amazed you. You told him repeatedly how marvellous he was, if only to see his face light up.

Lately, he had started wearing the jumpsuits your family had initially provided him with – similar to his old one but stamped with your country’s crest on the back – and had been a bit more… touchy than before. He would put a hand on the small of your back while you walked, or gently brush a lock of hair from your face as the two of you had tea.

You were not experienced in the slightest with intimacy or wanting to be in a relationship – you were certain you would learn that after you became queen – but now he was all you could think about. You knew the basics, knew what to expect from a man, but your heart was uncharted territory. You had never loved someone before, and some deep-seated fear in your heart was worried he would think you were taking advantage of him.

“I was in love with her, you know,” he told you one day while you were out for a walk. The two of you were once more caught in the rain and taking shelter in the same gazebo. “I loved Sonia.” Sonia. Not Miss. Sonia.

“Did it hurt?” you asked back, and immediately felt stupid for asking. It was none of your business, why did you want to know?

“I guess?” he shrugged. “I don’t – she never treated me like I mattered. She made me feel like I was nothing. Just a pest. Like I was disposable.”

“Sonia is a fool,” you told him. You meant it, of course you did, but at that moment you just wanted him to smile. “Your contributions will certainly leave their marks on this world. You are a remarkable person with a remarkable talent. Anybody who would overlook you is an utter fool.”

Kazuichi reached into his pocket and pulled out a small speaker. He set it on the railing, and it began to play a soft, slow song. “Will you dance with me?” he asked shyly.

“Of course,” you smiled at him, holding out your hand for him to take.

His steps were sloppy and uncoordinated, but the feeling of his warm body in your arms made you feel safe. You wanted him to love you. Love you the way he loved Sonia, and then even more. A legendary love that would eclipse all others.

When he leaned down to kiss you, you automatically tilted you head to the side. It felt like the first time and the thousandth time all at once – something new and exciting, yet undeniably right. He grinned at you like an idiot and kept swaying with you while the song ended.

“It all feels perfect with I’m with you,” he told you. “Like it all makes sense.”

“I understand,” you smiled up at him. “I feel the same way too.”

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

He barely left your side now. He would let you work, of course, but wanted to spend his every waking hour with you. He held your hand on your walks, kissed your knuckles like a gentleman whenever he greeted you, and kissed you passionately when you were alone with him. You loved watching him light up at your presence – it was like his world began and ended with you.

His greatest joy was when he got to work with you. To see you listening carefully to his advice, offering insights of your own based on your knowledge. You worked to improve both your geothermal energy plants and plan for new mines. The number of precious stones mined this year was astronomical, and it wasn’t over yet.

Your father was impressed with the improvements he had made to the schematics he had been provided with, so he was gradually given more and more responsibility (along with his freedom, of course). Eventually, he began to receive an “allowance” as payment for the work he was doing. He spent most of it on new gadgets to tinker with or gifts for you. You would often retire to your room to find a vase full of flowers or a box of chocolates, and every time you saw them you would break out into a grin you could not stop.  

The two of you would text one another (he made himself a cellphone because he was “bored and wanted to try it”) until you fell asleep, and within those words he bared his soul. He told you about his horrific home life – about the man who had dared to harm him – and about the friends who had betrayed him. He told you how much you mattered to him, all of the things he would do for you. Give up for you.

When he told you about his father hitting him one too many times, you left your room and went to his. You just needed to hold him, make him feel safe the same way he made you feel safe.

You were glad you went when you did, because there was a woman dressed in black trying to drag him out of the window. You raised the security alarm, and she was apprehended. Mukuro Ikusaba – the Ultimate Soldier – was thrown into your actual prison, and you once more had trouble with Novoselic.

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

You answered the door with bleary eyes, but seeing Souda’s tired smile as he mumbled about not sleeping was worth it. You used your new nickname for him – the word in your mother tongue that meant little pink rose – and he melted into your arms. You didn’t care that you were wearing your nightgown, or that it was early in the morning, you had your prince charming and he was safe, and he was yours. Yours.

“I had a nightmare,” he was curled up among your pillows, snuggled up under your blankets. “You forgot about me like she did.”

“I’m not her,” you reminded him, pressing a kiss to his forehead before resting your own against it. You could feel his warm breath ghosting over your lips, and as you let your eyes slip shut your hands found his. “I will never think of you as less than extraordinary, my darling.” You promised.

He kissed your cheek, slowly painting his way over your cheekbones and down to your lips. You responded wonderfully, one hand cupping his cheek as you kissed him slowly. You opened your eyes to see him staring at you with pure adoration. He wasn’t wearing his contacts, and his eyes were a light, rosy brown colour. Stunning.

“I love you,” the words slipped out of your mouth unbidden. You were speaking in your mother tongue now, but based on the smile he gave you and the whisper of “Ai shiteru” you got in return, he had understood. More than understood.

Your lips met his again, a strange kind of hunger filling you. He must have felt the change too, the atmosphere crackling with energy as you traced your fingers over his body. As he traced his fingers over yours.

You both stripped completely and held one another, clumsy and laughing and so in love. “Tell me if it hurts,” he had whispered to you as he stretched you open with his fingers. You had kissed him in response, a smiling sort of kiss that you hope conveyed more than a simple “I love you”.

Your lovemaking didn’t last long, but it didn’t have to to be perfect. It felt like it was right out of a fairy tale, and your prince charming was here to save you from everything bad in the world. You were here to save him, in reality, but you were more than happy to indulge him in his fantasies, so long as you could play a part in them.

When you were done, he wrapped you in his arms and placed a kiss to your temple. He hummed softly and played with your hair, whispering his love over and over again. You smiled up at him, tired but satisfied, and when you fell asleep your smile did not falter.

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

Since that night you had shared, Kazuichi had been coming to your bed every night. You would fall asleep together and wake up together and talk until you couldn’t anymore. When you weren’t talking, you were either cuddling or doing something less… innocent. Your mouth had mapped out every inch of his body, and you knew what to do to make him open like a flower. He liked letting you do what you wanted to him – liked giving over the power and control and letting you make him feel good.

He loved it when you spoke to him in your mother tongue – no matter what you said he would squirm and turn bright red.

“Do you like it when I play with your pretty cock?” you asked him lowly, and he let out a sweet moan as his legs fell open. He could tell from the sound of your voice if you were being sweet to him or not, and you could tell based on the noises he made if he wanted you to be sweet or not.

You wondered what fantasies swept him away as you mounted him. When you pinned his wrists and mouthed at his neck, you wondered why he was mewling so much. Did he even know what he was begging you for anymore, or did his mind just go blank every time you began to kiss his scars?

You learned every embarrassing detail about his body, and he learned every detail of yours. He loved to have you on him – worshipping him, taking pleasure from his body – but what he loved most were the quiet moments after.

The moments when you would roll off of him and kiss him slowly and tell him how good he was. When you would worship every scar again, tell him he was beautiful. When he’d lay his head in your lap so you could weave your fingers into his hair and hum him lullabies. He always fell asleep in your bed after you made love. It was one of the most perfect moments you ever shared, and you felt so, so lucky to have shared so many of them.

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

Today you woke up alone. Novoselic had finally sent an envoy to negotiate Kazuichi’s release. Today was the day.

Last night, he had helped you pick out your gown. He had chosen a white one with ruffles designed to look like flowers – Rusika was the kingdom of roses, after all – and as your handmaidens helped you get ready, you felt powerful.

You went all out – you wore your crown jewels and covered yourself in diamonds. You did not want there to be any doubt that they were dealing with a princess and would negotiate on her terms. Your father had been surprised when you had asked for this responsibility but granted you the negotiation opportunity.

Mukuro Ikusaba was wearing several chains, including a rather nasty-looking pair of handcuffs. She was positioned in a chair facing towards your throne, and she glared at you as you took your seat.

Kazuichi arrived only a few minutes after you, and his jaw just about hit the floor as he took you in. You gave him a smile befitting a queen as your eyes roamed his body – he was wearing a finely tailored suit and a ring with your family’s crest on it. You realized then you wanted to cover him in jewels. He would look so good sparkling.

He bowed deeply before taking his place at your side, breaking you from your train of thought. It was an old Novoselic tradition for the ruler’s consort to kneel on a special stool while the monarch conducted business, but while Kazuichi did kneel on the plush cushion, he tugged it towards you so he could lie across your lap. The action startled you at first, but as he snuggled deeper into your skirts and looked up at you with a smile, your fingers came up to weave into his hair in the way he found comforting, and he closed his eyes.

That lasted for a blissful minute before the throne room’s doors burst open and Princess Sonia Nevermind was announced. Her entourage filed in with her, and Souda tilted his head to get a better view of them. You recognized Gundham, and vaguely recalled hearing about a few of the others from Kazuichi. Classmates, if you remembered correctly.

Sonia had brought the Yakuza boy and the Ultimate Swordswoman as backup. She had also brought a hulking man with matching scars over both of his eyes. This man was someone you had never heard of, yet he was flanked by the usual Novoselic military honour guard. You greeted her in your shared tongue before switching to Japanese. “Welcome. What brings you all to Rusika?” you asked.

The princess of Novoselic cleared her throat and began once more in your mother tongue. “Apologies for interrupting, Princess Nevermind, but not everybody here speaks our language. I would like to include our guests in the matters we will be discussing,” Souda shifted in your lap, and you continued playing with his hair, sitting with the elegance of a queen.

Sonia began again, in Japanese this time. “I demand you release your prisoners at once,” she pointed at you. “Keeping a soldier hired by my country to retrieve a prisoner does not reflect well on the alliance between our peoples. I would hate for a war to break out.”

You sighed. “As a show of good faith, I will release the prisoner Mukuro Ikusaba to you,” you made a gesture and a pair of guards removed her shackles. You could feel Souda playing with your ruffles. “Was that all?”

“We are here for the prisoner Kazuichi Souda,” she answered. “I demand you release him.”

“Kazuichi is not a prisoner,” you corrected. “He has full autonomy and can choose to leave anytime he would like.”

“You kidnapped him as a political prisoner!” Sonia snapped, eyes locked on him. “Do not tell me that he is doing… that of his own free will!”

You gave his shoulder a pat with the hand that had been in his hair and he blinked over at Sonia. “I have done nothing malicious towards him,” you answered. “I have not-”

“Liar!” Sonia cut in. “You must have brainwashed him with Stockholm. You truly are a woman with flexible legs!”

Kazuichi raised his head a bit. “Don’t talk to my Princess like that!” there was a certain bite to his words. You ran your fingers soothingly through his hair as he glared at Sonia. “Gundham knows as well as I do that we were never mistreated here. We were given free reign, and I just so happened to be appreciated. I’m not a second choice here. I’m not forgotten.”

Sonia looked visibly upset at his words. “We did not forget you!” she assured him.

“You rescued Gundham after a month? A few weeks?” Kazuichi was bristling. “I’ve been here for eight. Eight months and you didn’t even bother to see if I was okay.” Sonia watched Kazuichi lie back down. “Excuse me for being happy. I forgot you don’t like it when I’m too overbearing with my affection.” He shifted around for comfort, burying his face in the crook of his elbow before tilting it out to the crowd.

“Is he truly able to leave anytime he wants?” Gundham asked.

“I am,” Kazuichi bristled once again. “I’ve got a job and everything.”

Sonia said your name. No title, just your name. “I would like to speak with you in private, future monarch to future monarch,” she was clenching her hands into fists.

“I’ll allow it,” you gave Kazuichi a gentle pat on the shoulder and he reluctantly pulled away. You stood, and he stood with you. He followed you down from your throne, and as you escorted Sonia towards your study you noticed Kazuichi was making a beeline for Gundham.

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

When you were alone again, the first thing Kazuichi did was help you out of your dress. He was careful as he unlaced your corset, and as he helped you step out of it. He even hung it up properly so it wouldn’t get damaged. Then he was kissing you like he was about to lose you, pulling your body close and pulling you into his arms. He carried you over to the bed and tossed you into it, discarding his own clothes haphazardly as he followed.

“I love you,” he told you assuredly. “And nothing is ever going to change that. Not a single thing they say will convince me otherwise.”

You smiled at his words. “And I love you too, my little pink rose,” you gave him a deep, longing kiss.

It didn’t matter what the others thought or said. It didn’t matter what they did. All that mattered was what you and Souda thought. Souda was here with you. Souda loved you.

And no matter who decided to challenge that, they couldn’t take him away from you.

[fyeah-bangtan7]

SUGA: “This is the only thing I know how to really do”

On tvN’s You Quiz on the Block, SUGA told stories from before his debut. The period of his life when he struggled with how to live off his music. SUGA and BTS have kept going and going for eight years, and now he’s on their grounds, where he can do anything he wants musically. What began with that long journey is the story of SUGA holding his head up higher and staring at the future, reaching for it.

How are you feeling after your shoulder surgery? You’re doing physical therapy in parallel with work. SUGA: I’m all right. I’m keeping up with the physical therapy, too. I had surgery last year because I wanted to be able to go back to work sooner. I have nothing else to do except music.

You said that there’s nothing for you to do other than music in the “BE-hind Story” interview on YouTube, too. SUGA: It’s true. I tried gaming, but I have no talent for it. The people I play with online get so frustrated if I do. I mean, I’m working hard and got some recognition in my life, and yet people bash me so hard in games. (laughs)

I wonder if there’s a game you can do better in than you do in your career. You’re currently at your sixth week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 [with “Butter, at the time of this interview]. (laughs) How are you feeling these days? SUGA: When we were at number one for two weeks straight, I was like, Wow, this is so amazing! But after the fifth or sixth week, we really started to talk about it between ourselves: I really can’t believe this. Anyway, I feel like I have a responsibility. And I think I’ll end up thinking much, much more when we get ready for the next promotion. Even if I just try to enjoy this situation, it hasn’t sunk in. We can’t leave the country, plus there’s lots of issues in the world right now that are much more important than how well we perform on the charts.

As you say, it’s a tough situation, all over the world. How do you feel about releasing “Permission to Dance,” with its positive message, at this point in time? SUGA: It seems like everyone around the world is really tired of this situation dragging out. I wanted to convey a message that tells people to keep hanging on to hope until the very end. Whereas we released the album BE in this situation, seemingly without any certainty, I believe things will slowly get better now. I don’t know if we can go back to the way things were before, but I’m still working with the hope that we can return to a situation that resembles what we had before.

Aren’t you tired of the pandemic being in this prolonged state? SUGA: I look at it as, when you lose one thing, you gain another. I ended up being able to see my family more since I’m in Korea. In that sense, I feel more stable, so I’m not so much tired as hoping each day that things will become okay soon. I keep moving back and forth between work and home, and I’ve started to reflect on parts of myself I didn’t know about before. Like that I feel somewhat comfortable when I start and finish work at a certain time. While I used to have to go to bed at a certain time for work the next day or else I had a hard time getting up early, now I know I’ve figured out what time I should wake up at to make sure I feel good all day. What I pursue in life is emotional stability, and I don’t think there’s really anything too exciting or sad happening these days.

What effect do those emotions have when you work on music? SUGA: They don’t have a big effect on it. I think it affects the way I write lyrics a bit, but I’m not working on any lyrics at the moment. I’ve been making music for a long time, so I think it’s possible for me to express emotions I’m not feeling in the moment. And it’s good that we released “Permission to Dance” in this kind of situation.

You sing rather than rap in “Permission to Dance.” In addition to rapping, you started singing more both before and after BE. What did you learn about your voice? SUGA: “Permission to Dance” was a little bit difficult. I don’t draw a line between singing and rapping or anything, but it was different from our usual style, and the vocals were a bit high, too. So even though it took a while to prepare for it, I worked hard, and even when I asked some older musicians for their opinions, they all said, “It’s good the way you’re doing it. Don’t try to sing better—just sing more.” I think my only option is to sing more, like they suggested.

As far as style goes, you’ve been doing a smoother kind of pop music. Did any differences arise as a result of these changes? SUGA: All things considered, the English was the hardest part. I paid close attention to my pronunciation in “Butter” and “Permission to Dance.” It wasn’t easy to capture that smooth feeling in the songs, so I practiced my pronunciation quite a bit. And I end up breathing a lot when I’m doing an English song, but the rap parts were a bit hard for that reason. There’s a clear difference from Korean songs, since English has so many syllables. But I don’t have any one method I stick with for my vocals yet, so I tend to try lots of different things out.

What do you make of BTS’s achievements over the past year with “Permission to Dance” and “Butter,” as well as the group’s change in style? In the space of a year, you’ve released songs in a style different from MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 or BE. SUGA: As a producer, I think reactions are important to an artist who works within the field of popular music. With that in mind, speaking as a producer, “Dynamite,” “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” were the best choices. And musical tastes are different from country to country, and the cultures are different, too. Given that situation, I think it’s important that we’re a group who can send such a universal message out into the world.

BTS has really grown and changed a lot, starting with “No More Dream” and all the way to “Permission to Dance.” SUGA: I think it’s a natural course of event for those of us who make pop music. Artists mix and match different genres as they grow, and the music develops as the people of its time listen to it. I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately, and thanks to the times we live in, if I listen to a song a few times, they recommend me more songs in a similar style. And after listening to them, I realized the style of hip hop is also changing and is splitting off into different offshoots. Other than hip hop, I also listen to a lot of instrumental music. I’ve always liked Hans Zimmer’s music. There have been many times where a movie I like turns out to have music by Hans Zimmer.

What is it about Hans Zimmer’s music that draws you in? SUGA: I like orchestral music. There’s a lot of pop songs that are under the three-minute mark now, and whereas it’s sort of predetermined that they’re always written with intros that are four bars long, orchestral music can do a lot within its framework.

But, as can be seen in IU’s song “eight,” which you both produced and featured on, you broke out of pop music’s typical composition style and tried out a highly condensed progression. The composition of the chorus is very straightforward. SUGA: Yes. I insisted that the flow be roughly cut in half from that of a typical song, and I expect more pop music will be like that in the future. And maybe even shorter as time goes on. I mean, these days there’s songs that are under two minutes, even.

Regardless, I felt the chorus in “eight” is extremely dramatic with its structure and the melody of the chorus. I thought it was rather grand in scale as well. Would you say that you’re attempting to mix your tastes and things you want to do into the structure of pop music? SUGA: As you know, I love hip hop, so when I was first making music I thought it had to be hip hop no matter what and that I had to take pride in my own ideas and not accept any compromise. But while getting some experience at the forefront of pop music, I figured out that you can keep being stubborn or inflexible because there are people listening to you. There was a time I made music without any listeners before I became a member of BTS. But if someone were to ask if I stopped being stubborn about the music I’m making these days, the answer’s no. As I grew up and became an adult, I came to realize that I have to negotiate between what I want to do and the kind of music the public wants without compromising anything. When I give up on something I wanted to do, I ask myself, What will I get out of this? And conversely, when I want to do something, I ask myself, What can I get out of this? That’s how I keep my balance to make it to where I am now.

You have no choice but to think about those things when you work on other artists’ songs, especially when you’re a producer. SUGA: I’m BTS’s SUGA, and I’m Agust D, and when I’m producing, I go by “by SUGA.” But when it comes to by SUGA, I make perfectly commercial music. I’m the producer for those songs, sure, but the owner is someone else, you know? In that case, they’re commissioning my work. But they wouldn’t think about just leaving it all with SUGA. The artist’s label has to think carefully about whether to commission me for producing and consider my situation, too, and those people must be hoping for something commercial. That’s the most important part of working with outside people. Actually, that kind of work isn’t much of a benefit to me, to be honest. Oh, he can write this kind of song, too. That’s all. The more valuable thing I can get from it is the recognition and records the artist or the company will get with the song instead.

As you noted in your previous Weverse Magazine interview, when you discussed your “interest in the music industry in the US,” you seem to constantly think about the things artists can do within the framework of the music industry. SUGA: I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve become more certain since the pandemic started that I’m the kind of person who always has to be doing music. That much I know for sure, so I want to keep on making good music. And the pop music market is something that came about because there were people listening, and there’s a long history to the US music market, and it possesses the most influential charts in the whole word. So then I thought, Wouldn’t they have gone through all the same things that we have? And really, whenever I talk to other pop stars, the situation is always similar. The US is also more realistic about commercial results than any other country. I wanted an accurate picture of how those people work. Right now, Korean pop music’s spread is in full swing and we need more good artists to keep popping up. From a producer’s standpoint, if that’s going to happen, I think the key is how well we can mix our music and the characteristics of overseas music industries overall.

How did it feel to be in the lineup for the Grammy Awards, one of the icons of the US music industry? SUGA: The feeling was less immediate because we couldn’t be there in person, and it wasn’t a huge distinction, but the performance made me think, This is different, because it’s the Grammys. What changed my view from the first time I went to an American music awards ceremony was, the first time I went, I was really scared of the world’s biggest music market. But when I look back now, I don’t think I had any reason to feel that intimidated. To be honest, I have only now begun to enjoy the awards ceremonies; I wasn’t able to then.

It’s no exaggeration to say that you’ve achieved most of the things that you can as an artist in the music industry. What steps do you think are necessary for the artists who follow after BTS? SUGA: The way artists work seems so difficult. They make an appearance on a different music show every day once the promotional period begins, meaning the exhaustion artists face is enormous, and that fatigue often results in injuries as it adds up. That kind of music show is for promotional purposes, so it’s not like the artists can earn a proper income from them. On top of that, despite all the promoting, there’s no visible outcome, so they inevitably lose morale. If possible, it’d be nice to have one of the performances be really high-quality, even if it’s just the one, but in this environment I’d say that’s pretty difficult. And since our job doesn’t fit the common conception of work, there’s ambiguous boundaries when it comes to issues of legal protection as well. We need a lot of improvements to be made to the industry and its system.

They demand a lot of things as collateral for success, yet success is extremely difficult to attain. SUGA: The great thing about the label I’m with is they listen to the artists’ opinions. I think both we and the label know to a certain degree what kinds of activities would be best commercially speaking. But the question is whether the body can endure it or not. If the fatigue builds up as you continuously do those promotional activities, it’s hard to do them the way you did when you first debuted. In that case, I think the label ought to actively accommodate the artist’s views about what they can and cannot do. An attitude that’s just like, Oh, we made you kids, and as long as you just do what we tell you to it’ll all work out, so just do it—I think that really doesn’t make any sense. Of course, there could still be situations where the label has to be pushy like that, obviously. But I heard there’s been times where a label will just say, Do it, without any explanation to the artist, or, Why are you talking so much? I think that’s the biggest issue and it’s destroying the industry. If you just see the artist as a product, how can they do anything creative? I really think it’s very contradictory to ask the people on stage to put on an enjoyable performance when they’re experiencing neither fun nor enjoyment.

That reminds me of the music video for “Daechwita” somehow. You appear onscreen as both a rebel character and a king, looking as different as your situation when you first debuted with BTS and your situation now. SUGA: There was a lot I wanted to do in “Daechwita,” not just musically but also visually, and a lot of ideas came to me as I came to reflect on who I am as a person while working on the music video. It naturally occurred to me to separate SUGA, by SUGA and Agust D. The character I played in that video who wasn’t the king was a stranger. It takes place during the Joseon era, but then there’s cars and guns, which of course don’t belong in that era. I think we’ve been living our lives that way. Right from our debut, a portion of the hip hop lovers criticized us by saying, They’re idols. But at the same time, we heard things like, They’re not idols. I didn’t know which drumbeat to march to, so I think that’s why each of our albums took a different direction than people were expecting. But I don’t think I can call myself a stranger in this situation anymore. So these days my main goal is to keep going with BTS for a long time. Having a huge audience show up at our concerts is nice, but I think the goal for all of us is to make sure the group can keep making music even as we get older. I think right now we’re thinking a lot about how we can have fun and be happy on stage.

What do you mean when you say fun and happy music? SUGA: I think people are happier the busier I am, so lately I’ve been thinking that I need to focus a little more. I figure we should do as much as we can for ARMY since they feel happy watching us. We’ll continue to try our best, so I hope they believe in BTS and keep their eyes on us.

So that’s why you do music. SUGA: This is the only thing I know how to really do. Other than music and BTS, there’s nothing special about me when I look at this 28-year-old Min Yoongi. That’s why I want to keep doing this.

© source

[probablyevilrpgideas]

A friend asked permission to commission a drawing of a raggamoffyn OC, so I decided I should do up a basic style sheet they can hand to the artist as reference.

Raggamoffyns

Raggamoffyns are, basically, ghosts bound to fabric or otherwise constructed bodies. Specifically, they are the spectral essence of hands severed from people, then bound into some form of effigy or clothing. They don't retain any specific memories of the person they were originally part of, but may have something like muscle memory related to hand-oriented tasks of that person, meaning many are artisans, spellcasters or thieves, especially as these people are more likely to have their hands cut off.

There are, broadly, two major forms of raggamoffyns, those with fully humanoid bodies, and those bound to robes. Because of the simplicity of robes, these raggamoffyns are very common. If a raggamoffyn's physical form is a robe, there is very minimal internal structure to it, and the inside of it is basically a black void with two glowing eyes. The raggamoffyn may leave their hood open, or may use a mask to cover their internal void. If a raggmoffyn's vessel doesn't have eyeholes, this does not impair their vision in any way, and so some raggamoffyns use doll heads or the like.

Raggamoffyns with fully humanoid forms may look like anything, limited only to what their creator made to be their form, or how the raggamoffyn has altered themselves over time. Humanoid forms are often just what amounts to a fabric doll, which may or may not have stuffing. They do not need to have stuffing in their forms, as their spiritual essence can serve to fill out the form.

Most raggamoffyns will have at least one large opening in their physical vessels, which is another reason for the popularity of robes. Those with fully humanoid forms will often have mouths that open to their internal void. These large openings facilitate the raggamoffyn's spiritual essence leaving their vessel when they desire or feel it is necessary. Without such an opening, the essence must pass through the fabric, taking much longer.

When outside of their vessel, a raggamoffyn may be invisible, or appear as a formless black shape, at their option.

Raggamoffyns have relatively little emotional connection to their vessels, viewing them more like vehicles or clothing than their bodies, and they do not actually feel damage to their vessels. If a raggamoffyn's arm is ripped off, they are more likely to be angry or irritated than indicating any feeling of pain.

Raggamoffyns must repair their vessels when they have suffered extensive physical damage, leading to those who are particularly old, or who have particularly dangerous professions to often have very patchwork forms or large portions of their vessels stitched back into place. Raggamoffyns who come from seamstresses will generally have very good sewing skills themselves, and so have very fine, artistic forms, while those who come from people who didn't have remarkable sewing ability often have more "make do, whatever I can use to cut corners" repairs.

Influences

Raggamoffyns were conceived of after joking with someone on twitter about how muppets reproduce, their idea being that muppets do not reproduce sexually, but rather create a new muppet body and then summon a dark entity known as "The Possessing Hand." I have used this method of reproduction whole cloth for raggamoffyns, they are not born, they are made through sewing and necromancy.

Therefore, a major influence on the raggamoffyn concept is muppets, but spooky.

Other influences on the idea are mimikyu, sheet ghosts, and similar ideas, where some dark otherworldly entity is using a fabric form to interact with the material world.

The Name

"Raggamoffyn" is a somewhat obscure term these days, often used to describe an unkempt, ragged, or otherwise disheveled person, which is a fair way to describe individuals of this race. They are also often composed of stitched together rags and scraps of fabric, creating another connection to the term.

Raggamoffyn, or rather, raggamuffin, also was used to refer to a 19th century practice that is essentially trick or treating, but happened on Thanksgiving, and rather than dressing up as monsters or super heroes or whatever, children would dress up as beggers and hobos.

However, there does seem to be some connection to "spooky things," as the earliest known literally use of the term is in William Langland's Middle English poem Piers Plowman-

"So rise up Ragamuffin and break all the bars that Belial your grandfather beats your mother with." (translated)

In this usage, Raggamuffin functions as the name of a demon, deriving from "rag" and "muffin," which, possibly, has roots in Anglo-Norman words for "scoundrel" or "devil."

As for my specific spelling, raggamoffyn, eh, old words had a lot of different spellings, and I generally prefer the weirder, less commonly used ones, such "fae" instead of "fay" or "fey," and "faerie" instead of "fairy" or "fairie." Especially when it comes to things that are, by their nature, weird, such as fae and raggamoffyns.

[reversemoon255]

(This is the final of a three-part series chronicling the development and ideas behind “Dungeons ‘n’ Dragonites,” a Pokémon DnD campaign. This last entry will be about the final string of encounters, some of the later ideas for story elements, and a deep dive into the overarching themes of the campaign’s Starters. Speaking of, the fantastic art of them, along with many of the other original Pokémon seen here, was done by @extyrannomon on Twitter, and I highly suggest you check them out.)

Dungeons ‘n’ Dragonites - Phase 3: Fauxchemine

Like the Queen Durant, the Steelix/Glacix fight would have been a transitory battle between phases of the campaign, taking place right before the Starters were about to evolve for the final time. Glacix was an idea I came up with early in development. As Rock, Steel, and Ice have a relationship throughout Pokémon, having Onix evolve into a specially tanky Ice-Type rather than the physically tanky Steelix made sense. This was also a design I put a lot of work into the actual proportions, like stretching its face vertically as Onix is circular, and Steelix is horizontally stretched. Also, as Steelix has two long spikes on every other segment, Glacix has four smaller spikes in the same pattern.

Glacix was also the first of the four penultimate boss encounters before the close of the campaign, each representing one of the four sacred beasts of Chinese mythology. I thought it would be a pattern that players could recognize and possibly plan ahead for. Glacix was always planned as the Phase 2-to-3 transitory boss, but I actually had roughly prototyped the other three before I realized Glacix fit into role of the Azure Dragon (which I was missing).

The second of the bosses, representing both the Black Tortoise and Rare Variants, was a Dire Torterra. The idea was this Torterra was symbiotic, housing a Sudowoodo instead of a tree, and hiding its identity was a shiny Altaria capable of Mega Evolving thanks to the Key Stone that had replaced one of Torterra’s stone spikes. This was a rough concept, and I’m sure it would have changed drastically by the time the players would actually encounter it.

Third, representing both the White Tiger and Ultra Beasts, was Shora (from Shodo and Tora, the Japanese words for calligraphy and tiger). A pure white tiger that paints floating, metal stripes above its body with its brush-like tail. This was an idea I was very happy with, though I lacked the artistic abilities to render it effectively. If I remember correctly, the markings above its shoulder were based on the Kanji for Tiger. I also hadn’t settled on an ability for it, which was key for depicting Ultra Beasts in this campaign.

And the last of the penultimate bosses was Phanic, being a second Ultra Beast and representing the Vermilion Phoenix. Sadly, I had little planned for this guy apart from some concept designs, like the rest of them. I was working on these as the campaign was starting, and didn’t pursue finishing them after its premature conclusion.

Phanic (from Phoenix and Panic) is actually an Ostrich. If you picture a phoenix, you typically imagine great plumes of feathers around the head, wings, and tail, which are all things Ostriches specifically lack, and I wanted to subvert that typical depiction. I liked the idea that when it was startled, it would scatter its feathers resulting in an exclamation point forming using the spot on its face. It was supposed to seem unassuming compared to the many larger and more imposing bosses, though just as dangerous. Also, it was Electric-Type because it is frequently “shocked” *Ba-dum-tish.*

=====

Let’s talk about our players. One of the backstory elements our Grass Trainer, Ethan, had was that his parents’ restaurant was struck by lightning and destroyed some time before he went to school, and saw a Pokémon at that time. This left him with a fear of lightning (ironically picking an Electric-Type Starter). With this knowledge, and as I was using Ultra Beasts, I altered his backstory slightly so that it was caused by a Xurkitree, and would eventually encounter one during the campaign with his victory over it (probably with a lot of Wisdom Saves) curing his phobia.

Johnny, our Fire Trainer, had a goal of becoming an entertainer, but was vague about what kind. I had an idea for a “Streamer” Trainer Class he could run into. Someone who uses their Rotom Phone to live stream battles and get reactions and advice from their chat. (Let’s face it, if Pokémon were real, this would totally be a thing.) There was also DJ Tomomitsu, who runs Stelopy City’s Trainer Radio, and was a Gym Leader. The idea was to present a bunch of different Pokémon-based entertainment ideas and professions and have him decide which ideas he liked and wanted to pursue.

While our other players were aiming for careers, Orion, our Water Trainer, was more interested in exploring his relationship with his family. His father in particular; both he and his wife being high-ranking executives for Silph Co., and raising their children to also be successful. However, Orion had always wanted to be a Trainer, and it was his parents that prevented him from adventuring. I had it that his father was so against the idea was because he, too, was a Trainer in his youth. But not a successful one, failing many more times than he succeeded, and didn’t want his son to suffer the same disappointments as he did. His partner was Rhyperior, btw.

Lastly was our Fairy Trainer, Arthur. He wanted to be a Gym Leader, and cited specific interest in the Galar League. He also mentioned in his back story that his father was belligerent and against the idea. While the Leaders of the Galar League are entertainers by profession, if you look at the list of Gym Leaders and Kahunas in US equivalent regions, almost all of them have a profession and run Gyms on the side:

(Restaurant Owner, Museum Curator, Artist, Model, Business Tycoon, Pilot, Actor, Teacher, Rock Star, Mayor, Shop Owner, Police Officer; 12/15)

It felt like a hobby, rather than a career, and I ran with this idea as it seemed like Arthur and his obsession with the Galar League hadn’t noticed this fact (nor had his player), but his father had and was pushing him into a sports-based career (one that is usually lucrative and has off-seasons) so he could have a well-paying job and time on the side for his interests, similar to Orion’s father.

Though, no DM can control their players, and even by the end of our fist session I could tell I would have to change some things. It’s just good to have some idea of where to lead everyone, and adjust as you go.

=====

There’s one more Pokémon I want to talk about before we get to the Starters.

This is Necrotiti (Combining Necro with the Egyptian God Nefertiti), an evolution of Cofagrigus, evolving if it’s holding an item called the “Ceremonial Jar” (literally a jar filled with Yamask’s human intestines). It was meant to evolve from the Yamask they could catch during their museum field trip. The reason it exists is... silly. It’s another instances where I wanted to surprise my players, and giving the “Gardevoir Treatment” to what I consider the creepiest Pokémon was funny (which I feel is a reason I cite a lot). And I was really happy with this design, which is why it got commissioned.

A lot of the original ideas I had for this campaign were meant to either surprise or creep out my players. Everyone I was playing with knew Pokémon very well, so I had this fear that if I presented them with a standard adventure they would either become bored or be able to easily predict where things were going. Having a Pokémon adventure within a single city, having it be more a mystery than a collect-a-thon, and using new Pokémon were all ways I came up with to keep interest high and have them guessing as to what would happen next.

Back to Necrotiti, despite having a sarcophagus Pokémon, we didn’t get a mummy. I wanted to make the body effeminate without being overly so, which is why her body is very geometrical in specific areas. For the mask, I went with a typical Egyptian Nubian motif mixed with some of the overall design elements and basic lines from Yamask, and the colors and patterns from Cofagrigus. But despite how much I like it, I don’t know if I would have used it. It didn’t match the Mutant Evolution concept, with its only similarity being that it’s a rare occurrence.

Onto the Starters: Epipesis has evolved into Drachenura (from Dragon, Lichen, and Meganeura). Grass Starters are typically based on extinct animals, and Flymph’s line is based on a Meganeura (an ancient species of giant dragonfly). Apart from some bulking out and additional colors, the lichen sacks in its tail are now yellow, as the plant matter has evolved with it. It supplies it with so much energy that it has to constantly move while the sun’s up to burn it off. Its tail tip is also based on the X-15, the fastest aircraft to date, as it was designed to be the fastest Grass-Type.

Steared has evolved into Auradiat (from Aura, Auroch, and Radiate). Now a Fire/Ice-Type, it’s based on an extinct species of cattle found around the time of the Ice Age. Its ability to absorb energy with its horns has become so powerful that they have frozen over. When I was originally designing it, I was actually trying to base it on the phrase “Irish Bull” (meaning a paradoxical statement), but as I kept working on it, it became more and more Minotaur-like, so I kept the Fire/Ice-Typing and dropped the more abstract elements. As I did, I actually made it more bull and less Minotaur since all Fire Starters are bipedal, and I wanted to try and avoid that.

Knaval has evolved into Chivalazuli (from Chivalier, the French word for knight, and Lapis Lazuli). This was probably my favorite example of features naturally changing as it evolves, with the antenna growing longer and the shield and lance growing harder (going from carapace, to stone, to crystal). Some of the things you might not have noticed at first glace were his forelegs becoming sub-arms on his chest, him gaining the lobster nose and it becoming a face guard, and how his eyes recess into his head. Also, almost every Starter is symmetrical (apart from patterns), with the only exception being Torterra, so I designed it to be asymmetrical throughout.

And Uteteo has evolved into Makutah (from the Aztec naming scheme used for their Gods of wealth and abundance and Utahraptor). He’s Fairy/Flying, with the gold adornments that first appeared on Uteteo now on his head and arms, giving him a more bird-like appearance. The idea was to have him naturally evolve from a Dinosaur into a bird, with the leg bands making them look more like talons, and the face mask giving him a beak. Also, he starts out with the singular sickle toe raptors are known for, and gets a new one every evolution, ending with a full set.

The thing that sets these Starters apart from ones you’d find in the games is that these are designed to be a team. As such, there are a few themes they all share to help reinforce that. (This ignores Utaw, but) All the Starters, throughout their evolutions, have a distinct yellow detail on their heads (eyes, nose ring, and antenna). Furthermore, once they reach their final stages, they share colors between them, with Drachenura having red on its extremities, Auradiat having blue neck fur, and Chivalazuli having flecks of green in its gemstone. And on top of that, they also all have two overarching themes. First is they all represent different time periods, with Drachenura being pre-humans (Precambrian), Auradiat being prehistoric humans (Ice Age), and Chivalazuli being more modern (Medieval Period). Secondly they all represent DnD, with a Dragon(fly), Auradiat filling the role of a minotaur and its connection to a labyrinth/dungeon, and the adventurous knight who traverses them.

There’s also reasoning behind their types, as all three’s secondary Types are also strong against their usual counterpart (Grass and Electric are both strong against Water, Fire and Ice against Grass, and Water and Rock against Fire). Furthermore, Electric, Ice, and Rock are all strong against Flying, which is the reason behind Makutah’s Type (a joke against the player who joined late).

Makutah does fit into these themes, but more loosely as it was created later. Utaw and Uteteo lack the yellow facial details (though they do have yellow eyes), only really achieving this during their final evolution. He also doesn’t share any colors, as Fairy is outside the usual threesome. It does somewhat fit into the themes of the others, but not as cleanly. Utaw, being a Dinosaur, is still pre-humans, but closer to them than Flymph is, and having Aztec themes puts him past Medieval and closer to the Renaissance in terms of human history, but is very close compared to the other time gaps. Also, the gold was partly to fit him into the DnD theme, representing treasure.

=====

One of the first things the players were told at the beginning of the campaign, and was reinforced throughout, was that Pokémon from outside the Wellou Region were mysteriously popping up all over the place, with the Ultra Beasts being the most extreme example. As to the cause, there were a number of red herrings. Silph Co. employees could occasionally be seen in areas where UBs were with strange equipment, Tomomitsu could occasionally be found before something would show up, and there were a few other strange characters like the Regional Champion or Silph Co.’s president. The only definite thing they would know was that there was a strange, creepy, grey Charizard that would occasionally appear when they took something down.

However, it would eventually be revealed that the above were only trying to understand what was going on, and prevent the appearances of such dangerous Pokémon, like our heroes. And as a massive Ultra Wormhole appears above the city, they come face-to-face with the true mastermind. Not an evil team, or a lone conqueror. Merely a single, twisted Pokémon. And our heroes have interfered with its fun long enough.

“You stare up at the now familiar form of the grey Charizard, which stares back with unblinking, dead eyes... Its mouth stretches wide, wide enough to swallow you whole, and a hand appears. And another. And another. Four skeletal hands pry its maw open from the inside, stretching it until its skin falls down to settle on its hips. What looks down on you now, with a single, glowing eye, is a monstrous form made of bone and rotting flesh. And witnessing the four of you before it, it lets out a high-pitched, chilling laugh...

“‘Fofofofofo...’“

Fauxchemine. A sadistic Ultra Beast capable of warping time and space to its will. All the disturbances throughout the town, all the strange creatures that have appeared, all the monsters sent to terrorize our heroes; all the result of its twisted sense of fun, and the consequences of getting in the way of it.

So there’s a running joke among my friends that we all “hate” Charizard. Not actually, but it’s always pushed in marketing with new forms and such, even though its popularity has been dropping steadily over the years. As such, I thought it would be somewhat cathartic to have the big bad they have to beat up at the end be related to Charizard. ‘Chemine’s skeletal nature comes from trying to cinematicly picture the encounter in my mind, with the eerie image of the mouth stretching open from the dialogue earlier. With bone white and rotten greens, the skin wasn’t meant to reflect Charizard as a shiny, but rather with all its color drained from it, as it’s more a puppeted skin than an actual part of the Pokémon. And as many Pokémon draw inspiration from Kaiju, ‘Chemine does, too, specifically calling back to an Ultra-Kaiju named Greeza with space warping abilities.

It’s Steel/Dragon with Thick Fat. When planning encounters, especially this late into the game, Auradiat made things tough since its offensive Typing is insane, and that combination made it resistant to all of the Starter Types except Fairy. This was supposed to be the toughest fight in the campaign, so I wanted to build a Pokémon that would be difficult to deal damage to. A swift Pokémon able to warp around the field, summoning Ultra Beasts or other versions of Charizard as adds or for specific attacks, I wanted this to be memorably difficult.

Oh, and the name? It’s meant to rhythmically sound like “Pokémon,” with the ‘faux’ symbolizing its disguise, and the ‘mine’ representing its personality. Everything in this world is its to play with.

But that giant Ultra Wormhole wasn’t just for show. Part-way through Phase 2 our players were sucked through a Wormhole themselves, both they and Fauxchemine bearing witness to a titanic creature as they did, and upon its defeat, it is let loose upon the city:

Standing over 100ft tall is Wreknarogg (from wreck, to destroy, Níðhöggr, a massive world-ending creature from Norse mythology, and Ragnarok, the end of the world). A massive symbiotic group of four Pokémon from a dead world, the whale-squid Bayleige, the parasitic Serrasite, and the barnacle Rhizocano. This was actually the first symbiotic Pokémon I designed, and its creation sparked the others like Shiinotic and Torterra so this wouldn’t be the first time our players encountered one.

Whales are the largest creatures on Earth, so using one as the base for a kaiju-sized Pokémon fit. It also helped that the prototype designs for the Cloverfield monster were based on a whale, so I had something to go on. Secondly, I really like a lot of the eldritch design philosophy, and a lot of those are based on sea creatures, which is where the combined squid elements came from. Also, when I was prototyping the design and trying to make it creepier, a friend suggested having a parasite coming out of its blowhole, which is what sparked the creation of Serrasite and Rhizocano (as whale’s are known to have such parasites in real life).

This was a design very inspired by the world it was supposed to inhabit. Coming from a desert world where they are the only living things remaining, they symbiotically support each other to stave off their own inevitable death, with Bayleige able to create rain with its ability and Rhizocano able to make artificial sunlight to feed Serrasite. Serrasite then gives energy to Bayleige to allow it to keep moving, and Rhizocano takes energy from Bayleige. It’s an incomplete system where energy is slowly lost over time.

Stage 2 of the final boss wasn’t supposed to be as intense as the last one. A gimmick for this fight was, at the start of every round, I was going to roll a D100, and an event would happen. They would be things like their friends showing up with healing items, trainers they knew joining the battle, wild Pokémon they’d befriended getting in pot shots, etc. It was meant to be a fun, celebratory, “you’re at the end of the campaign” fight rather than an intense one off the back of another. I was even considering having everyone use their full parties.

But after it’s defeated, a thick, dark haze enshrouds everyone. With their allies gone, and left with just their Starters, our players are alone in a dark void. I did say there were four Pokémon earlier...

And the final encounter is Wreknarogg (Core). The Pokémon who brought the three titans together, and controls them while siphoning off some of their energy to survive. Similar to Phanic, this was another unassuming Pokémon. Designed to resemble a virus while calling back to aspects from mythical Pokémon like Jirachi or Manaphy. I understand it might not feel as climactic as there wasn’t any set-up compared to ‘Chemine, who was shown throughout, or the previous Wreknarogg, who was foreshadowed, but I wanted a 3-stage boss fight, and this felt like a good way of concluding it.

While stage 1 was supposed to be difficult, and stage 2 was meant to be fun and call back to the long journey, stage 3 was an un-losable, cinematic fight with a somewhat somber tone to it. It was the final fight, the end of it all, and there’s a certain level of sadness that comes with that in accordance with the jubilation of completion. It was also meant to see how much everyone had grown; how would they handle this encounter? Fight it? Catch it? Persuade it? Maybe I haven’t listened to enough DnD finalés, but in how many can you beat the final boss by being nice to it and calming it down?

=====

And that’s the end. There would be some sort of epilogue, picking up with our characters some months or years later, but that’s not something I could write without witnessing the actions of the players. I was debating having everything that came from an Ultra Wormhole be sucked back in after Fauxchemine’s defeat, including the Starters (pull a Digimon Tamers), but as Wreknarogg came from a dead world I thought that a little cruel.

And to end things how I usually do; Overall, despite not getting off the ground, I was very happy with this project. I’m the type to pick up and drop projects frequently, and the fact that I stuck with and continued to work on it for months was something I was really proud of. It was also a great learning experience on many levels. And who knows; maybe I might do something like this again in the future...?

[lastsonlost]

All this over the Japanese liking a game they don't like...

Ghost of Tsushima opens with a grand wide shot of samurai, adorned with impressively detailed suits of armor, sitting atop their horses. There we find Jin, the protagonist, ruminating on how he will die for his country. As he traverses Tsushima, our hero fights back the invading Mongolian army to protect his people, and wrestles with the tenets of the Bushido code. Standoffs take advantage of perspective and a wide field of view to frame both the samurai and his opponent in something that, more often than not, feels truly cinematic. The artists behind the game have an equally impeccable reference point for the visuals: the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa

“We really wanted to pay respect to the fact that this game is so totally inspired by the work of this master,” director Nate Fox said in a recent interview with IndieWire. At Entertainment Weekly, Fox explained how his team at Sucker Punch Productions suggested that the influence ran broadly, including the playable black-and-white “Kurosawa Mode” and even in picking a title. More specifically, he noted that Seven Samurai, one of Kurosawa’s most well-known works, defined Fox’s “concept of what a samurai is.” All of this work went toward the hope that players would “experience the game in a way as close to the source material as possible.”

But in embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.

Kurosawa earned a reputation for samurai films as he worked steadily from 1943 to 1993. Opinions of the director in Japan are largely mixed; criticism ranges from the discussion of his family background coming from generations of samurai to accusations of pandering to Western audiences. Whether intentional or not, Kurosawa became the face of Japanese film in the critical circles of the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a samurai stylist: Many of the director’s films frame themselves around a central conflict of personal ideology in the face of violence that often goes without answer — and not always through the lives of samurai. In works like Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, or his 1944 propaganda film The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa tackles the interpersonal struggles of characters dealing with sickness, alcoholism, and other challenges.

His films endure today, and not just through critical preservation; since breaking through to the West, his visual ideas and themes have become fodder for reinterpretation. You can see this keenly in Western cinema through films like The Magnificent Seven, whose narrative was largely inspired by Seven Samurai. Or even A Fistful of Dollars, a Western epic that cleaved so closely to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that director Sergio Leone ended up in a lawsuit with Toho Productions over rights issues. George Lucas turned to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress in preparation for Star Wars; he’d eventually repay Kurosawa by helping to produce his surreal drama Dreams.

Ghost of Tsushima is part of that lineage, packing in action and drama to echo Kurosawa’s legacy. “We will face death and defend our home,” Shimura, the Lord of Tsushima, says within the first few minutes of the game. “Tradition. Courage. Honor. These are what make us.” He rallies his men with this reminder of what comprises the belief of the samurai: They will die for their country, they will die for their people, but doing so will bring them honor. And honor, tradition, and courage, above all else, are what make the samurai.

Except that wasn’t always the belief, it wasn’t what Kurosawa bought whole cloth, and none of the message can be untangled from how center- and alt-right politicians in modern Japan talk about “the code” today.

The “modern” Bushido code — or rather, the interpretation of the Bushido code coined in the 1900s by Inazō Nitobe — was utilized in, and thus deeply ingrained into, Japanese military culture. An easy example of how the code influenced Imperial Japan’s military would be the kamikaze pilots, officially known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai. While these extremes (loyalty and honor until death, or capture) aren’t as present in the myth of the samurai that has ingrained itself into modern ultranationalist circles, they manifest in different yet still insidious ways.

In 2019, to celebrate the ushering in of the Reiwa Era, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party commissioned Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to depict Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a samurai. Though described as being center-right, various members of the LDP have engaged in or have been in full support of historical revisionism, including the editing of textbooks to either soften or completely omit the language surrounding war crimes committed by Imperial Japan. Abe himself has been linked to supporting xenophobic curriculums, with his wife donating $9,000 to set up an ultranationalist school that pushed anti-Korean and anti-Chinese rhetoric. The prime minister is also a member of Japan’s ultraconservative Nippon Kaigi, which a U.S. congressional report on Japan-U.S. relations cited as one of several organizations that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” The Nippon Kaigi, like Abe, have also pushed for the revision of Japan’s constitution — specifically, Article 9 — to allow Japan to reinstate its standing military.

This has been a major goal for Abe as his time as prime minister comes to a definite close in 2021. And from 2013 onward, the politician has made yearly trips to the Yasukuni shrine to honor the memory of war criminals, a status of which his own grandfather was accused, that died with the ethos of the modern Bushido code. Abe’s exoneration of these ideals has continued to spark reactionary nationalist sentiment, as illustrated with the Nippon Kaigi and their ultranationalist ideology. These traditionalist values have encouraged xenophobic sentiment in Japan, which was seen in the 2020 Tokyo elections with 178,784 votes going to Makoto Sakurai, leader of the Japan First Party, another ultranationalist group. Sakurai has participated in numerous hate speech demonstrations in Tokyo, often targeting Korean diaspora groups.

The preservation of the Bushido code that was highly popularized and utilized by Imperial Japan lives on through promotion by history revisionists, who elevate samurai to a status similar to that of the chivalric knight seen in Western media. They are portrayed as an honor-bound and noble group of people that cared deeply for the peasantry, when that was often not the case.

The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.

Unlike Kurosawa’s blockbusters, his late-career critical message didn’t cross over with as much ease. In Western films like 2003’s The Last Samurai, the audience is presented with the picture of a venerable and noble samurai lord who cares only for his people and wants to preserve traditionalist values and ways of living. The portrait was, again, a highly romanticized and incorrect image of who these people were in feudal Japanese society. Other such works inspired by Kurosawa’s samurai in modern pop culture include Adult Swim’s animated production Samurai Jack and reinterpretations of his work like Seven Samurai 20XX developed by Dimps and Polygon Magic, which had also received the Kurosawa Estate’s blessing but resulted in a massive failure. The narratives of the lone ronin and the sharpshooter in American Westerns, for example, almost run in parallel.

Then there’s Ghost of Tsushima. Kurosawa’s work is littered with close-ups focused on capturing the emotionality of every individual actor’s performance, and panoramic shots showcasing sprawling environments or small feudal villages. Fox and his team recreate that. But after playing through the story of Jin, Ghost of Tsushima is as much of an homage to an Akira Kurosawa film as any general black-and-white film could be. The Kurosawa Mode in the game doesn’t necessarily reflect the director’s signatures, as the narrative hook and tropes found in Kurosawa’s work — and through much of the samurai film genre — are equally as important as the framing of specific shots.

“I don’t think a lot of white Western academics have the context to talk about Japanese national identity,” Tori Huynh, a Vietnamese woman and art director in Los Angeles, said about the Western discussion of Kurosawa’s aesthetic. “Their context for Japanese nationalism will be very different from Japanese and other Asian people. My experience with Orientalism in film itself is, that there is a really weird fascination with Japanese suffering and guilt, which is focused on in academic circles … I don’t think there is anything wrong with referencing his aesthetic. But that’s a very different conversation when referencing his ideology.”

Ghost of Tsushima features beautifully framed shots before duels that illustrate the tension between Jin and whomever he’s about to face off against, usually in areas populated by floating lanterns or vibrant and colorful flowers. The shots clearly draw inspiration from Kurosawa films, but these moments are usually preceded by a misunderstanding on Jin’s part — stumbling into a situation he’d otherwise have no business participating in if it weren’t for laid-out side quests to get mythical sword techniques or armor. Issues like this undermine the visual flair; the duels are repeated over and over in tedium as more of a set-piece than something that should have a component of storytelling and add tension to the narrative.

Fox and Sucker Punch’s game lacks a script that can see the samurai as Japanese society’s violent landlords. Instead of examining the samurai’s role, Ghost of Tsushima lionizes their existence as the true protectors of feudal Japan. Jin must protect and reclaim Tsushima from the foreign invaders. He must defend the peasantry from errant bandits taking advantage of the turmoil currently engulfing the island. Even if that means that the samurai in question must discard his sense of honor, or moral righteousness, to stoop to the level of the invading forces he must defeat.

Jin’s honor and the cost of the lives he must protect are in constant battle, until this struggle no longer becomes important to the story, and his tale whittles down to an inevitable and morally murky end. To what lengths will he go to preserve his own honor, as well as that of those around him? Ghost of Tsushima asks these questions without a truly introspective look at what that entails in relation to the very concept of the samurai and their Bushido code. This manifests in flashbacks to Jin’s uncle, Shimura, reprimanding him for taking the coward’s path when doing his first assassination outside of forced stealth segments. Or in story beats where the Khan of the opposing Mongol force informs Shimura that Jin has been stabbing enemies in the back. Even if you could avoid participating in these systems, the narrative is fixated on Jin’s struggle with maintaining his honor while ultimately trying to serve his people.

I do not believe Ghost of Tsushima was designed to empower a nationalist fantasy. At a glance, and through my time playing the game, however, it feels like it was made by outsiders looking into an otherwise complex culture through the flattening lens of an old black-and-white film. The gameplay is slick and the hero moments are grand, but the game lacks the nuance and understanding of what it ultimately tries to reference. As it stands, being a cool pseudo-historical drama is, indeed, what Ghost of Tsushima’s creators seemingly aimed to accomplish. In an interview with Famitsu, Chris Zimmerman of Sucker Punch said that “if Japanese players think the game is cool, or like a historical drama, then that’s a compliment.” And if there is one thing Ghost of Tsushima did succeed in, it was creating a “cool” aesthetic — encompassed by one-on-one showdowns with a lot of cinematic framing.

In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.

A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.

[artemis-entreri]

[[  Sculptor: MD Dragons

Post-bake touched up version:

Another commission by Maga of MD Dragons! For the previous and first commission I got from her, visit here. That older post also includes more information about the artist and the process of commissioning her. Since I don’t have anything to say that wasn’t said before, please refer to that post for those details.

I really wanted another piece by Maga (and of course, more Artemis). This is also, as far as I’m aware, the first of her mounted character sculptures, so I really didn’t know what to expect. She’d done characters sitting in chairs before, but for this concept, the Nightmare was more of an entity than an object/prop, so the commission was treated as a two characters project. Maga was as wonderful as ever and discussed ideas with me before starting, I originally wanted another Artemis and Jarlaxle piece with both of them mounted on their respective Nightmares, but that concept wasn’t viable because as a singular piece, it would be too crowded. I could always commission a companion piece to this one of mounted Jarlaxle, but I don’t think that I will since I’m not as invested in his character.

Since I’d already given Maga all the various art references for the first commission, I left the design of this one entirely to her artistic liberty. She still ran some details through me to approve first, such as her idea for the background, but otherwise, the pose, expressions, and all the details were entirely her creativity. I did ask her to darken his skin after she showed me the original finished images (the first bunch). Even though she’d used the same clay for his skin as she did for my first commission, apparently clay colors can differ quite a bit from batch to batch despite being marketed as the same color. I was a bit worried about how the post-bake darkening would look, but it came out really well and I like it more than a straight up uniform color. The manual coloration adds a sense of texture and shade differentials as would be seen in real skin, so I’m quite happy with it.

As with the first commissions, there are so many wonderful little details, even in areas that aren’t readily visible, which really adds to the quality and sense of life of Maga’s creation. Observe the texturing on the saddle in the below image, with a belt strapping it to the Nightmare, the braided reins and cords, and the suggestion of additional supplies tucked beneath it on the Nightmare’s rear. Note also the details on Artemis’ boot: the belt, the kneepad, and higher up, the belts on his thighs. There’s also the end of a belt, knotted realistically, and the bone hilt of Charon’s Claw unforgotten despite the blade being sheathed.

The above picture was taken with normal ambient light and shows how harmonious the color is. Under camera flash, we can see all that there’s quite the range of hue. It’s also really cool that the Nightmare is a very dark midnight blue rather than pitch black. It also has an iridescent quality to it, similar to Jarlaxle’s skin in the previous sculpture.

In the below image, although mostly hidden away by other parts of the sculpture, is Artemis’ jeweled dagger, with its green gem. Beneath the sheathed dagger we can see the twin belts over his other thigh, and while the flash from the camera garishly makes everything too bright, it enables us to see that in all of these seeming shades of darkness, there’s actually a lot of different tones, with none of them being a pure black. You can also see the texturing on the tiny scabbard.

The next photo shows the details of an area that isn’t visible unless you’re looking straight down into the sculpture. You also need to be pretty close to it to see these details. Yet, despite this, Maga did not cut any corners. 

Here is one of the differences in Artemis’ armor from the previous sculpture: two belts emanating out of his cloak clasp insignia instead of one. I’d commented in my post about the first sculpture that this is how I prefer Artemis to be depicted since that is how he appears in Lockwood’s paintings, so I wonder if Maga saw my previous review? It’s pretty amazing either way. In any case, note the other details in this shot: the shoulderpads, the elbowpad and the cuirass. Each piece has been carefully and attentively worked.

Another shot from the same angle, tipping the camera further in. Note Artemis’ twin leg belts on both thighs. The buckles of the left ones are visible from the side, but the belt loop on his inner thigh isn’t, yet it’s still fully formed. The twin belts on his right thigh aren’t really visible from the outside, but they’re fully formed as well. Remarkable.

With the “Summer of Drizzt” announced, I wonder if some of the merch will be of Artemis and/or Jarlaxle. I had these, as well as many other items, done because there wasn’t any official merch, and honestly, I think that they’ll still be centerpieces in my collection even if official merch of Artemis is released. 

Again, here’s Maga’s site: https://mddragons.com/en/

I can’t recommend her enough. ]]