#I need concept art. It feeds the addiction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the-firebird69 · 2 years ago

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There's a Picasso in the tunnel and it's the tunnel it's a art piece and it's small and at the end of it there's a black and white figure on the outside and humans that are yellow and red holding up a ball of some kind in the middle of it symbolizes what Max is doing now and both sides are going after these doves my son said good does Mac have that kind of symbology today when he finished painting it you looked around and said yes so he's already running it and he said you'll have the childish version of it that's what it means having a paint like that but Dave is really saying is everybody looks disjointed their bodies are odd and it's hard to get out these concepts he got a real lesson from our son who said it's a lot harder than it looks and he revisited the painting and said you're right this guy is at us all the time and it's much harder than it looks and our son is a fighter he says I've never heard things come out of people that are coming out of him and Max says he's feeding it to him and her son says some of it cuz I need to verify cuz the frontal lobe.

It's a good chance that Tommy f is going to lose the planetoids today and will be a huge b****. We're going to go ahead and block him out and today we are discussing the automobiles in house they don't seem to even want to meet and they want to take him over we'll oppressed society and build just weapons and they think people are into it because they've seen so much stuff happen and they think they'll let it happen because of it and they're wrong so we're going to start taking over factories and it says it but in the upper Midwest and Midwest we're already taking them over but we're going to start taking them over in other areas they just want to let him sit there that's fine.

These people are not going after the empire it's just a warlock and it's not enough for them we've been through this like every week. We have areas in the United States and we have areas elsewhere and he said something makes sense we can make a whole bunch of vehicles there and we can make them elsewhere and pump them through there if we had to we don't really want to but if we had to go ahead and start taking them over they're going to put in for approval there are several Arizona Texas and the max are not interested and there people need vehicles too. There are other plants and they're just sitting idle and yeah if they freeze they're going to get ruined and they plan on freezing it as this guy Tommy f and these guys are fighting a lot. I'm going to become progressive and son has kind of a project he's getting help with and then have a couple and one of them is Bradley GT and Brad should be embarrassed to make of it and he sits there and says I'm an idiot and they've got an addiction and they're getting broken of it so he's got this Bradley GT idea and it's working there's a lot of people who are making the shell, it's just different from the other and they're making the kit for Volkswagens and there's a ton of them okay some people are trying to make Ferrari and stuff like that but they don't really care for it this is going along pretty quickly, there are probably 5, 000 Bradley GTS out in the area a day and driving around doing stuff going places and they say it like this it's what else people do we get things done. And they're just driving around but people are starting to make them and they're racing them. They're a couple times that came close to Fontana they're a couple race tracks that opened up to them couple times out in California for actual races the results are secret no Mac Daddy won he's actually the race and Ben Arnold was embarrassed and I couldn't believe it he couldn't believe it I could we have other news and stuff but it's kind of working on his project and then go ahead and start making the shell. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on the neck is going to be a problem day after tomorrow putting that on my list of things to do. There's probably 20 manufacturers of the kit and that's for GT1 and 2 and the first one looks different and the second one looks different most kind of adhered to the original design there's a couple that looks stupid and it sees two idiots and it doesn't perform well and really nobody buys theirs. Third cheesman has one it's almost the same down to a millimeter the only difference is their tail end but the vortex is still there and it's the same. Volkswagen went with a front wheel drive no still rear engine and people say no it's not and it's not and it is front-wheel drive and still hauls ass. Out of the 20 there's one that's selling about 3,000 an hour and it's picking up speed. It's a carbon panel and a frame comes with it it's not much of a frame but it is structural. The whole kit excluding the chassis drivetrain tires wheels rims engine goes for a 5200 and that's a decent price out here it takes tons of effort for these guys to get out of bed and they mold the panels and it's pretty quick out of the carbon the interior panels are simple like they should be the dash is not complicated but looks real cool and it's not a bad vehicle if it were real okay they haven't started it yet but they all have their ideas and their designs everybody's waiting for it to come out and then they have that thumb up their ass and it feels good it's a pain and more shortly

Thor Freya

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kyleledfordswriting · 2 years ago

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Recently, I had an epiphany about my own character. It came to me while listening to a podcast where comedian John Mulaney talked about his battles with drug addiction. I've had friends who struggled with addiction and some who even died because of it. So, I always thought that I was fortunate to have never fallen into that trap. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to be an addict, and I felt that I was too different from those who were. However, working in the music industry, I've come across serious alcoholics who could down an entire fifth of whiskey during a session. I thought that my drinking was vastly different from theirs, as I'd only have a couple of white claws. But after some serious introspection, I realized that I was wrong to judge others. I have a personality that approaches everything in my life like an addict.

The addict brain craves the rush of dopamine that comes with their specific addiction. Although I personally never fell deep into any particular substance or behavior, I now realize that I treated many aspects of my life like an addiction. For example, when I start a new job, I feel compelled to excel and surpass expectations, which feeds my addiction. I also struggled with my weight and went from 210 pounds to 130 pounds in just a few months, treating weight loss like an addiction.

Furthermore, I approached relationships like an addict who couldn't go more than a few months alone between relationships without a fix. I also believed that because I only had a few White Claws every night and knew people who drank six-pack after six-pack, I didn't have a serious addiction like those in the music industry.

In essence, I realized that I approached various aspects of my life with an addict's mentality. Whether it was my work, exercise routine, music projects, sexuality, socializing, dancing, drinking or relationships, I always pushed myself to the limit. For instance, I became fixated on collecting Star Wars books after reading one, and now I own 75 of them. Similarly, when I set out to do pushups daily, I had to reach a staggering number of 300. Even when I opted for non-alcoholic beer, I became addicted to trying every available flavor. It's bizarre, I know, who treats non-alcoholic beer like an addiction? Whenever I started a new music project, I would explore a new genre or a new instrument to feel the rush of accomplishment and hit of dopamine that came with conquering a new challenge.

I picked up martial arts during the pandemic and committed to a challenging six-month program. I dove deep into studying the concept of balance, particularly through reading the Dao. However, upon reflection, I realized that I was far from balanced myself. Like an addict, I was constantly chasing the next dopamine hit without pausing to truly experience things. This mindset consumed me, driving me forward without much introspection. I didn't have a specific addiction, but I would drink too much. I never let it interfere with my job, though. While I've had my fair share of mistakes and missteps, I felt like I was doing better than some people I knew who would sneak alcohol into venues or get kicked out of places.

I've come to realize that I'm addicted to writing and reflecting, but I've also recognized the power that an addict's mind can have if it's directed in the right direction. However, it's important to take it step by step and practice self-reflection and introspection, because the addict mind is wired to chase dopamine.

Now that I've become aware of my behavior, I can make conscious decisions about where to focus my addictive tendencies in a positive way. For example, I noticed that I was falling into the same behavior pattern when it came to potentially starting a new relationship. Even though I've never really dated before, I need to be mindful of my addictive tendencies and make sure I don't treat dating like an addiction.

It's crucial for me to be aware of my patterns, what's triggering my dopamine hits, and how I'm acting and behaving in response to them. I need to embrace the principles that I studied during the pandemic and strive for balance in my life. Living a life that's solely focused on chasing highs without reflection, introspection, or balance is simply the life of an addict.

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p5headcanonhellhole · 4 years ago

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Anonymous said to p5headcanonhellhole

Hey this quarantine has made me touch starved, so I was hoping for some imagines of the phantom thieves with a team mate/future SO that gives the best hugs and aren’t shy about being affectionate to their friends. Victory hugs, comforting hugs, whatever the reason if they want/need a hug SO is at the ready. Ofc! I’m in the same boat as you and I’m a very affectionate person.and I love to give hugs to everyone in my circle,,, and I give vry warm bear hugs yesyes

I did all the dudes first but if you also want the females just lmk with another ask!

Reader is Gender-Neutral for all audiences

Akiren

This man is literally so fucking touch starved give him more

I must preface that you have absolute fucking bear hugs like oh my god

Vry warm n strong would get again feels vry safe in your arms

On that note, he literally gets addicted to them

He’s been in danger for the entire time he’s been here

Risking his life against a pervert teacher, the fucking mafia, otherwordly beings in the metaverse

So finally having the feeling of being given what he dishes out as the leader of the phantom thieves... it feels really fucking good you have no idea im

The first time was when you were hanging out and you just gave him a big hug as greeting

Let me tell you-- mans fucking broke

Akiren.exe stopped working

He took a moment to process what was going on, then he just,,,, s o b b ed

“Omigod Akiren! Are you okay!?”

Akiren, through a waterfall of tears; “y-yeah,,,,,”

Baby boy baby

He keeps it calm in front of the others but he genuinely melts from them

Doesn’t help his affections towards you have grown for a while

He’ll return the hugs tenfold whenever he has the chance to

In private, he’s such a teddy bear oh my god

He will always ask for hugs when you’re both in private, LeBlanc is slow or closed, and just cuddle with you til the next day

This would cause you to get tangled up in the mornings sometimes

Long ass limbs got damn

He usually tries to return it with head pats but,,,,, man

Feed him these hugs he’s hungy

Ofc he’d have his moments of jealousy whenever you’d give the others hugs for a bit too long or high fives (he wanted one...)

But they were soon brushed off when you gave him his hugs accompanied by the innocent ruffling of his hair and your laughter

You are forgiven

Ryuji

He’s equally as affectionate so he adores the affection

If you’re female or female identifying/presenting he *will* get a little flustered though

You two always group up to wrap the whole group into hugs

You are both on a high affection drive and everyone must suffer the wrath of it

You sometimes compete on who has the tigher, warmer, safer hugs which you always somehow get everyone involved in and it even sometimes gets you two to try and hug the ever living shit out of each other

Everyone (except Futaba and Yusuke) has to pry you two from each other

But it’s all in good fun

If you’re not in a relationship(yet), you two usually platonically cuddle which of course leads to everyone assuming you are

You explain it’s nothing like that (yet) and that cuddles are just really great even between friends

Hugs hugs hugs give him hugs

Yusuke

Besides Akiren I’d assume Yusuke is also very touch starved

Have you *seen* this mans background

I honestly doubt this man has really ever had a hug in his life

So the first few times he was deathly confused

He knew the concept of hugs just

Never had one or understood it

So he just

Stood there, awkwardly patting your back

“Yusuke are you okay?”

“Yes of course. Why do you ask?”

“You’re kinda just... standing there.”

Silence

“Am I supposed to do something?”

Oh my god

You basically have to teach this man the basics of affection

“Oooh. I understand now.”

He gives you a hug as a thank you

Or just-- a hold in attempt to be a hug?

Progress I guess?

Eventually he gets there

His long arms help a lot in how good his hugs feel

Vry good yesyes

He doesn’t give hugs very often but loves every hug you give

Tries to see how to insert how it makes him feel into his art--

Believe it or not, very addicted

It gives him a very good feeling and motivation

Give the starving artist some love pls n thank

#p5 imagines #persona 5 #p5 #persona 5 imagines #p5 akira kurusu #p5 akira #p5 ryuji sakamoto #p5 ryuji #p5 yusuke kitagawa #p5 yusuke #p5 ren amamiya #p5 ren #imagine #imagines #x reader #x male reader #x female reader #x gender neutral reader #x nonbinary reader

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hompunkulus · 3 years ago

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Introduction to Vampyre Identified People and Otherkin

Vampyre Indentified People and Otherkin are part of the Occult experience not often talked about, especially among respected occult authors. The traditional viewpoint of past magicians on psychic vampires paints them as emotional leeches and people that lead a parasitic existence. Authors such as Dion Fortune and Anton LaVey push this narrative. Human blood drinkers, from True Vampyres to Medical Sanguinarians (many who reject the term 'vampire') are still ostracized from even vampyric groups and Satanists alike because of the dangers inherent in human blood drinking. The greater Vampyre Community seems to be more inclusive these days.

There are Otherkin for almost everything, from Therionkin/Therionthropes who identify as animals, such as Wolfkin or Bearkin. There are those that identify as mythological creatures and those as demons or angels. Within demonkin and angelkin there are also subgroups. There are also 'systems' that are collections of kin types within an individual, for instance a Bearkin can share a host body with an Elfkin.

Some Vampyre Indentified People consider themselves Otherkin, some consider it a medical condition and some an occult concept for ritual. It is all very confusing yet at the same time intriguing. This post isn't here to judge or explain these identities but to bring attention to an ostracized corner of an already still underground sub-culture and discuss some concerns.

Cautionary Tale

Something I have noticed from the Otherkin community is much of the literature seems to be written by young adults. As long as it isn't harming people then it is of no concern, whether pure fancy or actual identity. On the other hand such thoughts and feelings can sometimes lead to delusional thinking and destructive behaviors as they grow older.

Feelings of being ostracized and low self esteem in young age can lead to antisocial behaviors if gone untreated (note: being an introvert and having Anti Social Personality Disorder are two wholly different things). This treatment can be professional, but can also be helped with understanding and nurturing by friends and loved ones.

I also notice small groups of Vampyre Identified People and Otherkin claim the extraordinary when it comes to special powers and heightened senses. Some Vampyre Identified People and blood drinkers claim their senses, agility, and strength improve after feeding, and many Awakening stories of the two groups claim psychic perceptions and forms of psychokinesis developing as they attune to their new identities. The lines of reality and psychosis blur at this level. Age may be a factor, but even some adults claim the extraordinary. We see it in Guru worship and religious perceptions of internal martial arts.

A common factor I have come across on Otherkin are feelings of body dysmorphia and disassociation, often ameliorated when they Awaken to their identities. For Vampyre Identified People I have noticed a few patterns among the majority of them, mainly being the need or desire to feed on human energy and blood. Some connect on a soul level, much like Otherkin, and others believe it originates from a medical condition. If Awakening helps one feel connected to a community and a deeper part of themselves and they continue to mature as responsible individuals, then there is no harm. If Awakening is used as an excuse to deny reality and fall into the trap of drug addiction, emotional manipulation, and sexual predation (either victim or abuser) then it is obviously not a true Awakening and they should seek help.

This is mentioned because in the past people that identified as Satanists and vampires have commited atrocious acts. They are the exception and not the rule. Don't get too worried that if you identify as Otherkin, Vampyre, or Satanist that this article is trying to convince others you are somehow a criminal or pyschotic. Quite the contrary. It is a statement of fact that criminal behaviors exist in all subcultures. It is also a warning to young folks to be aware of predators, from online to those that run Covens/Houses as a facade for sexual predation. Whether they believe in the identity or not doesn't make them any less dangerous.

An Agnostic Approach

As an agnostic, I look to both the psychological and spiritual for answers on these topics. There is no evidence to confirm nor deny the reality of Vampyre Identified People and Otherkin but we can, and should, refute extraordinary claims. We should not condone nor enable perceptions and attitudes that can lead to psychosis, abuse, and criminal behaviors. You may feel wings, but they are never going to be physical without surgery. You may feed on human blood, but too much can cause disease and kill you. A firm grounding in basic biology and psychology are fundamental to the magical practitioner, especially one that identifies with non human consciousness.

Identity is important and it is important to have a safe place for Vampyre Identified People and Otherkin. This need for identity can stem from ritual or other spiritual encounters to the negative side of undiagnosed illness, developmental issues, or childhood trauma. It is important to be critical, especially on ourselves, when it comes to identifying with non human consciousness. The mind is a tricky and sensitive thing that is still being researched, so caution should be taken when working with its contents.

#mutant sorcery #syzygy of psyan #sub spiritual bacteria #elder itch #vampyrism #vampyre identified person #otherkin #kin type #non human #non human consciousness #fringe psychology #agnostic satanism #awakening

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lochsides · 4 years ago

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Yellow Metal - cathartic Review

Here’s something I did not expect to be reviewing this week but when Zayn drops a 24 minute rap track, you fall in line. I had to listen to it a couple times through before I could even begin to make sense of my thoughts because my brain sort of malfunctioned. I have never been prouder to be a Zayn fan. He’s such a nuanced songwriter and there is so much to unpack here.

I think this is the most unfiltered version of Zayn that we have ever been exposed to (and possibly will ever be). I am grateful that he said his piece in this because it needed to be said. As a brown woman, I felt so seen by this and I cannot explain what that means to me. Thank you Z, for your unvarnished truth in addressing racism and various forms of discrimination.

I’m doing a short lyrical analysis below the cut, but the TLDR is that this is a fantastic piece of art that deserves to be heard.

I wish he had released this as an EP because that would be easier to review than a single 24 minute song, structurally speaking. So instead, I have picked out some key lyrics, going from top to bottom, that really spoke to me and decided to study the song that way. His lyricism is hard-hitting in this track. It is beyond anything he has ever released before.

“The planet bleeds, the damaged trees. It’s never leaving until we ascend so fuck the fence.” — I have not seen this lyric being talked about in the fandom, because the lyrics that follow this steal the show, rightly so, but I wanted to give this line a moment because it’s important too. To me, this lyric speaks to where Zayn is at with his relationship with the physical world. He’s out on the farm (about which he even goes to say “tell you what I like, farm life and the tractor”) and I believe he’s happy in his space and he feels connected to nature (also see River Road). So it is a poignant and slightly jaded, but valid perspective that he shares on climate change. It’s never leaving until we ascend. The damage human beings have done to the planet won’t be undone until there are no humans left to do damage. It’s a single sentence that says so much about the depth of the climate crisis. I’m doing my PhD on urban air quality so this is something I care really deeply about and I resonated with.

“And until they stop killing colour, it’s fuck the feds.” — Yeah, agreed Zayn. The systemic racism that he calls out here is echoed throughout the song, in equal parts anger and boldness. I love that he isn’t glossing over it with metaphors, which he could easily do and it would be beautiful in a totally different way, but this makes it harder for racists to overlook. There is so much power in calling it like it is.

“Never lose me to fentanyl, scared when I take a Benadryl, keeping it green in general.” — It frustrates me to no end to see Zayn painted as this drug-addicted lazy musician that doesn’t care about his work, because we know how untrue that is. This narrative is tired and simply boring too, and I won’t get into the racist connotations of it when you consider it against his white colleagues who smoke as much as him but that isn’t one of their defining traits in the media.

“I’m racking up excuses while I’m slacking off on work … it was hard work that got me heard” — I love the juxtaposition in this verse. The public/media perception on his career is that Zayn doesn’t put in effort or that he doesn’t want it. This obviously stems from his leaving the band. It goes back to what I was saying before about narrative, when in reality, as Zayn has said on various occasions, he fights to make his own choices. And that doesn’t have to look the way everyone else expects it to (“I beg you, don’t include me. I might write it on my shirt”), he has his own struggles that have helped forge his path, but it is his path that he paved, himself. He works hard to be heard. He has to. It reminds me of something my parents used to tell me when I was younger about being immigrants: you have to work 10 times harder for the same opportunities just because of the colour of your skin or your name on the cv. It’s a harsh truth to grow up with but it was my reality, as it is for most POC.

“This life doesn’t give you no armour, a lot of myself can harm you. I swear on what’s good, that I’m here ‘til they take me. I pray that I’m wrinkled, at least over 80…” — There is something about the simplicity of these lyrics are the messaging that I love. He isn’t trying too hard to sound poetic but he still manages it perfectly.

“All I've been achieving, clocking miles in this region, moving like a legion. Promise that I made to myself, an allegiance. Do you still believe I’m a fool for ever leaving? Staring at the ceiling, can never put a cap on achieving. I’m just here for the rap, then I’m leaving. // I’ve had about enough of being my own enemy. It’s time I grew up, a long way from 17. Always went against the grain, struggles in my life. Got some things to say when I stand up on the mike.” — This is the only 1D-related lyric I’ll make reference to because this song is about so much more than that. That said though, we cannot overlook Zayn’s experiences in the band because that is part of his story. The tongue-in-cheek of “I’m just here for the rap, then I’m leaving” is hilarious to me. The line about not wanting to be his own enemy anymore and growing up from 17 reminds me of that quote Taylor (Swift) mentioned in Miss Americana about celebrities getting stuck at the age they got famous. I think this verse is similar to that. None of them ever wanted to be in the band and I don’t care what anyone says, Zayn leaving and proving success outside the band gave the rest of them the courage to follow their own solo careers. Sure there was drama surrounding the split but he did it for himself, to tell his stories the way he is now. Whatever else you have to say about him, you cannot deny his authenticity.

“I ain’t dropping this for fame, I need this time, like therapy, it’s just to keep me sane.” — I think this line tells us 2 things, the first being that this song was not leaked. Z knew what he was doing and his twitter likes tell us as much. He didn’t release it for any sort of attention, otherwise it would be widely available on streaming platforms and for purchase. Which leads to my second point, he released this song to get everything he talks about on the track off his chest. Its referenced in other lyrics too, like “now you see where I come from, the world don’t.” This was for whoever cared to listen, not the world. It’s inaccessible for a reason. I love that he threw those lyrics in. It makes the song feel more like a private conversation or listening to a friend rant. It creates a different form of intimacy between himself and his fans.

“Lessons that I’ve learned, I’ve tried teaching to myself. What I’ve learnt from certain people is that they’re better than myself. So I surround myself with real ones, and you feel the plastic melt.” — This one is for anyone that buys into conspiracy theories surrounding Zayn’s personal life. He surrounds himself with real people, real friendships, real connections. I have never bought into the bullshit that he has zero autonomy over his personal life. I love the use of plastic melting as a metaphor for ridding his life of fakeness.

“Feeling trapped. This industry is a cage.” — Zayn is obviously not the first person to say it. Many artists talk about how suffocating the industry is ( which he further comments on in the sung portion: “I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be, a part of this, no, I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be, a part of this”). Fame is such a wild and unnatural concept and the exploitation and politics of the music industry only feed further into it. The industry being a cage makes me think of zoos and how celebrities are animals on display, when they should be free in the wild. I also really like the musical interlude following this part.

“Nobody’s speaking the truth, I’m offended by the State. Look at the state of the news, I’ve decided the argument, reciting my views.” — Zayn toes the line between keeping to himself and speaking out on important issues, sometimes not very well. I am his biggest cheerleader, but I’m not up his ass. There have been many occasions where he could’ve done better. But I cannot fault him for being offended by the State because same, Z, same. I love that he took this song as an opportunity to real speak out, no punches pulled.

“See I’ve been facing the racists from back when I were a kiddie. Born up in 93’. Living in Bradford City, they kicked me out of the school. Said they had a problem with me hitting the kids that would call me p***, still sit in the classroom, chilling. I’m angry now that I’m older cause I see they treat us different. Got me thinking I’m the problem ‘cause they never dealt with these issues.” — See what I meant about no punches pulled. He said that! He said it like that too. There is so much in this verse that I relate to, it hits a little too deep. I grew up as a brown in predominantly white communities where the colour of my skin was the reason I was outcasted. We know when that’s happening, clear as day. The lyric “got me thinking that I’m the problem cause they never dealt with these issues” says it all. I have many racial traumas that I’m dealing with as an adult because the adults around me when I was a child didn’t deal with racism in the classroom. They do treat us different!

“20 years later, I’m still in the same boat. Tryna treat me like my grandpa, say I came up off the boat. Came to tell you what I stand for. Man I think you’re shit, a joke. How can I be civil when they got me by the throat? // Pushing my feelings down, you ain’t got it like them. ‘Boy your skin is so light.’ Ok motherfucker, take my name up on a flight. Try to convince immigration that your bloodline’s half white.” — Zayn talking his shit is my new favourite art form. How can I be civil when they got me by the throat? Something that I will always be enraged by is that POC are expected to de-escalate situations of racism. We have to push our feelings down, as Zayn says in the verse, because the institution is against us. All of the institutions are against us. The fact that he takes it a step farther to say that his name makes him a target for racism, even though he is half-white just nails his point home. Also, can we please quit the whole ‘Zayn is white-passing’ bullshit. He alludes to it again later in the song (“asian in my face, but still my race you can’t define”). Its not a compliment to erase someone identity in favour of white-washing them.

“My name ain’t on the list unless they label it ethnic.” — Oh, the amount of times we have heard that age old (v. racist) saying ‘{celebrity of colour} is the new [insert white celebrity here]’ as if POC aren’t allowed to succeed in their own right. It is wild to me that Zayn has to deal with this given his level of success.

“Start to understand why they think that I’m threatening. I move in certain ways, couldn’t slow me with ketamine.” — There is a subtle nod to racism (and Islamaphobia) in this line, because of course the brown man is a threat, but I like the way Z turns it around. I also like the rhyme scheme.

“Raised on the benefit for whose benefit? They’ll never learn shit, man, if the shoe fits.” — Okay I might be reaching here, but this is just my interpretation. We all know the benefit system in the UK sucks. Being raised on benefit implies a lack of money growing up, but the benefits aren’t really all that beneficial to the families that rely upon them.

“Dealing with the hurt, they should know cause they don’t deserve it, it hit deep cause I hit the nerve.” — Well, okay then, just call me out. It’s fine. I seriously feel like he’s talking to me directly with this line. I imagine a lot of us do. Its one of those lyrics that are a bit too honest but that why we love them.

“Cathartic, I’m an artist. Trying to put my heart in” // “Freedom fighter, Yellow Metal is my name.” — So do we have an alternate persona for Zayn now? Alright, I’m down. I think these two lines are tied together, because both are mentioned in the song title. (I think of the song as cathartic, by Yellow Metal, aka Zayn, or Yellow Metal as the name of the EP if this was officially released). The lyrics that accompany both title lyrics, along with the subject matter of the song as a whole, suggest that his heart is in standing up against injustices. I said it earlier, this is the most unvarnished version of Z that we have ever been exposed to. Almost like the complete picture to the puzzle pieces we’ve been putting together over the years.

“They’re tryna kill us with disease.” — Why did this line scream out ‘COVID-19 outbreaks in developing countries’ to me? Again, I might be reaching, but there is a disparity between how COVID is treated amongst minorities, along with many other diseases, and not to mention rich, primarily white countries hoarding vaccine supplies while places like India (and my beautiful Bangladesh and I’m sure Pakistan too) suffer needlessly.

“Started something sick and on my mind is what’s next. Just became a dad so now I’m taking all the cheques. Better know I’m staying and paying like it’s debt. Imma get it done, if it’s taking all my breath, sweat, and down I ain’t messing around ’til I’m the best.” — I think this lyric shows off Zayn’s sentimental side more than it does his ambitious side, because we know he’s in this for the long haul. Others may doubt that but his fans never have. But hearing him talk openly about being a father on a song is something else. It’s like Khai added this whole other layer of meaning and purpose to his life and it’s beautiful to watch. I’ve been here since the X-Factor auditions guys!! It makes me so emotional to witness him like this.

“Aint many of me around, p***, I’m just different. Certain stages to this level aint here because fame is to the devil, fuck a label, imma do this from the ghetto.” — God, we’ve been waiting for a fuck the label moment in this house, haven’t we? I won’t get into my theories on his label or his team, but none of us deny the fact that they should be doing more for him than they are. He has the potential to be the biggest thing with the right team and promo because he has a built-in fan base that would go the mile for him. Obviously, there’s also his aversion to promo to contend with and that’s his decision. Even without it, he could shatter every ceiling. Another thing I want to mention about this verse is the nod to the complete lack of South Asian representation in contemporary Western media.

“Don’t know what’s worse: the way that you live your life or the way that you write a verse.” — I’m just putting this in here because it made giggle. Also going to take this space to say how much I love his energy in this song. He knows he’s the shit, as he should!

“Can’t be louder … so free Gaza on my banner.” // “They’re hating on Palestine ways.” — I love that Zayn has always supported this movement, years ago, before being ‘woke’ was a thing. But now, he has a daughter that has Palestinian heritage and I’m sure that makes this hit that much deeper for him, personally. The apartheid in Palestine is heart-wrenching. It’s so strange to me to watch it happen, because I never thought I would witness something like this happening in 2021, yet here we are.

“Like vipers, I see the sly ones, the snake that’s called Biden, none of them abiding what they might put in writing. We should be used to it by now, say whatever for the vote and then just choose another route. Say they’d never kill another unless that brother’s skin is brown. I’m just telling you the facts, if you can’t take it, the truth naked, to bare bones and my thoughts lately, spitting politics.” — This verse is straight up savage and I am living for it! I find it hilarious that he called Biden a snake. This verse addresses the truth about politics, that even electing a left-wing leader doesn’t fix the system.

“I’m Tony Stark, still embarking on a dream” // “Gone green like Bruce Banner” // “He taught me like Ra’s Al Ghul. Felt like living in Gotham, the people were rotten.” — And to tie it all off, I wanted to take a goofy moment to mention all the superhero lyrics Z added in this song, really showing his personality because I’m such a nerd when it comes to this stuff and it makes me wish that we were friends so I could annoy him to death about it.

#reviews #zayn #yellow metal #cathartic #zayn malik

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thaliaxpetrova · 3 years ago

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Welcome student [#13] who happens to be a [PRIVATE COLLEGE STUDENT]. Around campus you have been told you look a lot like [LUCA HOLLESTELLE]. We hear that your name is [THALIA PETROVA] and that you are [21] years old. We hear that you can be [SPONTANEOUS] but also [IMPULSIVE]. Lately you have been saying [PUPPET BY FAOUZIA] relates to you a lot in life, and that [3AM INSPIRATION AND COFFEE STAINS] are your most common muse. We heard you decide to major in [ANIMATION] at North Chancellor and we can’t wait to welcome you.

MUSINGS || CONNECTIONS || PLAYLIST(S)

GENERAL STATS:

NAME: Thalia Petrova AGE: Twenty - One GENDER: Cis Female PRONOUNS: She/Her HEIGHT: 5′7

HEALTH

PSYCHOLOGICAL: ( undiagnosed ) Borderline Personality Disorder PHYSICAL: None SMOKE: Sometimes DRUGS: Sometimes ALCOHOL: Frequent

PERSONALITY:

POSITIVE TRAITS: Spontaneous, resilient, assertive NEGATIVE TRAITS: Impulsive, guarded, stubborn MBTI: ENTP-A ENNEAGRAM: 7w8 TEMPERAMENT: sanguine

FAVORITES:

MUSICAL GENRE(S): Indie pop, pop, alt rock MUSICAL ARTIST(S): Faouzia, Hayley Williams, Lorde, KWAYE, Joji, PVRIS, The Weeknd, Nothing But Thieves, Fall Out Boy, All Time Low, CHVRCHES, The 1975

BIO: ( TW: abandonment, drugs, addiction, abuse )

( Full bio linked here )

sparknotes version:

- grew up in the foster care system, bounced from house to house

- repeatedly being tossed around really messed with her self worth and sense of self in general

- developed lots of defense mechanisms, most of which unhealthy.

- She falls back on self sabotaging quite a bit, essentially ruining anything good for herself before it’s ripped away from her. at least here, it’s “in her control” rather than feeling like her world could be ripped from underneath her at any second

- when she was thirteen, she was placed with the Petrova’s, who actually showed her the compassion and care that she so desperately needed and longed for. she tested them a lot since she felt like it was too good to be true.

- slowly but surely she let them in, but in a two steps forward one step back kind of way. when she was 14, they officially adopted her

- fast forward a bit, and YIKES her birth father found her and reached out to her! as one could imagine, this sparked a lot of overwhelming emotions in Thalia, anger being a very predominant one... but curiosity won, and she agreed to talk with him.

- he said all the right things and gained her trust within a few minutes... but every other time they spoke, he wanted money.

- eventually she literally had nothing left to give him, which was when he suggested taking something from her adoptive parents since they were so well off financially.

- This is when Thalia drew the line, but he just broke in their house and took what any valuable looking thing he could

PRESENT / MISC

- thalia is VERY private, and likely will not speak about her childhood at all. if she had her way, no one would know she was even adopted, and that she just always was able to live in a life of luxory.

- she really doesn’t care who’s a private school student and who isn’t, but she may act like she does just to cover her tracks

- She’ll make acquaintances with just about anyone, but it takes a lot for her to consider you a genuine friend. She definitely has quite a few trust issues

- if you’re friends with her, expect lots of random texts, especially in the middle of the night

- is always up for an adventure, this girl will do anything to keep herself from being trapped in her own head

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

- confidant -- someone thalia actually TRUSTS ( a bizarre concept, I know ) this could develop overtime, or we can plot out how these two became close.

- Tutor/study buddies -- essentially someone to keep thalia on track academically

- Bad influence -- where they just kinda enable each other and feed off of their bad habits

- Good Influence -- opposite of above

- art buddies -- someone to keep her company as they work on projects until 3am

- ex’s -- ex friends or ex romantic partners ! both can make for glorious angst

that’s about all I got for now, but I’m open to just about anything!!

#nchqintro #intro #abandonment tw #drugs tw

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lozislaw · 3 years ago

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Hey!! I think a while back ago I gushed (through anon again) about how much I love your south park fics, particularly the alien one (gosh it's still delicious) and now I have returned, older and more wise, to say that I've read the antibody fic too and what the absolute heck man ??? I read it all in one go even though I meant for it to be graciously spaced out and UGH how do you DO THIS????? You've really gotten into Kyle's head, so much so that it feels like he's got complete autonomy and he's so real here.

My particular favourite aspects for the fic are Butters and Kenny, because dude, it's them, and honestly I didn't know I needed to see some semblance of a friendship between butters and kyle till you pumped this out. Wendy and, damn, cartman? Or should I say Erica? Is such a concept too! Whenever they come into the scene I get excited hehe. Scott was a bit of a surprise, but I'm curious as to whether he will genuinely grow close to Kyle. Ah gosh, don't get me started on Kyle. Feels like watching a train wreck and on one hand you want to coddle him and go Nooo it's okay honey, other hand, you kinda wanna see how much further he can go, and third hand, it's painful bit in a good way? Might be biased because it's just from his pov but feels like Kyle seriously fared the worst after the 'divorce'. His mind and thoughts are so hectic and how that manifests itself in your writing is so gold. My heart aches every time he talks to Stan but it's so addictive seeing how they bounce off each other.

Small side note though, Kyle was so fixated on Stan bringing up ice men it made me laugh. And Stan being so smug about Kyle calling the idea of him being him up hot is hilarious, make me wonder if Stan goes into, for lack of better phrasing and apologies for possible crudeness, gay panic at the sight of Kyle just like how Kyle does at him. Well Kyle hasn't changed much appearance wise but nevertheless .... <<

Also Stan mentioned something about how he expressed his feelings three times and kyle rejected it? Or am I remembering wrong? Is this a reference to something in canon or is this some sort of hint :'00 I need to reread these 8 chapters and scrutinise everything better

Oh Bruh I'm so sorry for such an obnoxious long ask I should've commented on ao3! But still, thanks for feeding the world with your amazing writing and frankly mind blowing art. Hope you have a wonderful day <33

I too, Anon, have come back to you older and wiser, and by doing so I can return to you with an eloquent response, instead of the torrent of childish emojis and button mashing that my heart so desperately wants. Because you fucking angel - how dare you come into my house and say these things to me raw no rubber. And because of that, I'll try and respond your theories as "wait and see" free as I can.

I'm so flattered that you like the way Kyle is being written, and I'm pretty pleased with his character in the story myself. Because yes, I very much intend him to be a sandy butthole of an antihero protagonist, and I want him to hurt as much as possible in this plot. I'm just spit roasting this guy until he's sizzled and cooked and at his lowest. Because what does the boy have to lose anymore? No friends, a bad reputation, a truckload of unwanted therapy and no way out of the situation. Or so he believes.

Kenny and Butters? My absolute favourites in this story, apart from everyone else because I love every character and the role they play - even poor Dr Debby - I mean Teena, Downer. They’re at peace with each other and living a world behind the scenes that Kyle refuses to accept as anything but being buttbuddies that kicked him to the curb so they could go and fuck each other without a third-wheel.

And Butters and Kyle, yes! I love love love their relationship and exploring it, even it’s not much done in fandom, considering in the show they almost have a younger/ older brother relationship. I jump onto that dynamic in the story, where Kyle tries to look out for Butters even if he doesn’t like showing it (as any older sibling does), but Butters was trying to break free and be rebellious in life and he was carrying a wet blanket around who hated the mere idea of change so much that he still wears his disgusting carrot orange jacket and thinks it fits. Hmm, kind of reminds me of Post-Covid Kyle...

Now to the part I hate to say, but Stan is my biggest secret in the story and I’m not spilling anything big, until the time comes. But yeah I think it’s at least obvious that he thinks about that “hot” comment Kyle made in his dying last words. Of course it is - just imagine if Post-Covid Kyle called Stan hot and then passed out and just fucking died. Stan would be obsessing over that shit for a looong time.

Ah yes, and those drunk confessions;

You’re right to wonder if those rejections happened in canon or later in the story, and I’m gonna go ahead and rip off the band-aid that it’s from both. But who wants to hear about that? Moving on. :p

You call it long and obnoxious, I call it beautiful and perfect. Don’t you dare ever apologise for writing this ask, you don’t know how often I read this for two days before I started drafting this response.

My new chapter is nicely in progress and hopefully you’ll enjoy it and not hate me for tugging your balls like I have this whole time. Thank you so much for reading this fic so far. It’s my favourite I've ever worked on (and alien fic is a close second!!).

Here’s the link to the fic for anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon this messy response and wonder what all the big fuss is about. And I thank you in advance.

Have a great day too anon, I smooch your hands. <3

#i can't seem to post anything under the 10k word count anymore #and now asks are getting involved too #south park #south park fanfiction #sp fanfiction #i don't want antibody but you

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lutiaskokopelli · 4 years ago

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I have a question, be honest on a scale of 1 to 10 how much to you feed off of positive feedback, which is not a bad thing. I run my own art blog and I will admit positive feedback is like a fresh cup of coffee for artists

I’d say... Probably between 7 and 8, but I’m biased. I honestly can’t tell for sure, as the true scale easily changes from day to day.

Had a good day and feel like doing more exciting/productive stuff? I could be working on the comic for hours nonstop just from that alone, with or without feedback.

Had a bad day/worked so much lately that I’m not tired enough to sleep, but still too tired to do anything productive? Even a dozen of positive reviews won’t be enough to make me draw. Heck, sometimes, getting genuinely positive reviews while I’m on a bad day might make me feel pressured because I want to draw but can’t. Quite the paradox!

Generally speaking, positive feedback is definitely a giant push for motivation and mental health, as it is the case for many artists other than you or me. In my case at least, though, feedback is hardly the biggest factor.

I’ve drawn/written stories online for more than a decade, and up until hardly 3-4 years ago at most, I barely had any feedback at all. Whether related to the quality of my stuff, related to the fact that up until 2015 I was doing stuff exclusively in French, or related to bad luck alone, the fact is that I couldn’t rely on feedback to motivate me for a very, very long time. It was far from easy and I had a lot of moments when it was hitting hard on me to never get feedback from anyone but one or two close friends, but here I am now!

What motivated me during that period was, aside from my legendary determination to find creative ways to make me suffer (I’m looking at my education-related choices there), the almost bestial need to create stuff. I always wanted to create stuff that could be shared with others, but since others didn’t seem too interested anyway, I also created for my own sake. Two main reasons I can think of are, for one part, “If I don’t write this down these story ideas will haunt my brain forever”, and for the second part, I suffered a LOT from the “If you can’t find the content you want to read then you gotta do it yourself” syndrome. Therefore it went to the time-capsule concept: “A few years from now I’ll have almost completely forgotten what the story was like! So I’ll be able to go back and read this as if it were someone else’s work! That way I’ll truly be able to read the story I wanted and enjoy it with limited spoilers.”

So... I guess I digressed a bit, but if you want my two cents: I used to be able to rely on my own determination/need to create alone, but now that I finally have a community of sweet people who enjoy my work(s) and kinda sorta rely on me to give them some fun content every once in a while? Well, positive feedback is definitely something you get addicted to very fast lmao. It pains me to say, but it truly is addictive like a drug and the dependency to it grows way faster than it should. I’m saying that last part not as a “artist ego is bad” thing, but just as a fact -- and as a warning, since, well, not getting feedback for too long gives negative results on an artist’s psyche. That’s, sadly, just how drugs work.

Also in my specific case it’s probably why, if I take a bit too long to finish an update, I’ll slowly lose motivation because the last time I had some feedback was more than a week before, and it just results in me taking even longer to finish the update. It’s a really bad spiral to get stuck in.

(And for the followers, small update for the next update: I just finished page 7 out of 10, wish me luck for the remaining 3 :’) They aren’t hard to draw, it’s just... I dunno. I love my job but my PhD is taking a lot out of me lmao.)

#ask #the5thsave

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sebastianshaw · 4 years ago

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@sammysdewysensitiveeyes - And finally, Shinobi for World of Darkness, three different versions/games! Under cut because like always, it’s long!

For a vampire, he’d be a Toreador. They’re the type who will turn someone just because they’re pretty, then get tired of them within the week, and that’s how their ranks get flooded with dilettantes who don’t posses any artistic talent, like Shinobi. Toreador are famous for being the most emotional and passionate and in touch with humanity, but in truth, many are emotionally hollow, chasing fleeting highs of false feelings that are shallow and brief despite their deceptive intensity. This leads them to become callow and callous, trying forever to breath life into themselves through new experiences that become banal all too soon, leaving a trail of broken mortal hearts and lives behind them, to say nothing of fledglings that, like, Shinobi, are pulled into this world they’re not ready for and typically destroyed by soon enough. While many people deride them as romance novel vampires, I think they’re actually a very clever subversion of that, and in their own way as horrifying as more famously frightening ones. Shinobi, bitter and wounded over being rejected and abandoned by his sire, has become exactly that kind of Toreador himself. He also strives to be as seductive and glamorous as other members of the clan, and he has the image down, but it falls apart quickly when others question or reject him. He’s also a very young and weak vampire, so he has no political strings to pull, and since he has no art, is looked down by his clanmates as a poseur. All this just makes him more pathologically driven to prove himself and gather allies who will love and respect him, even as he fails at it every night. Also, the Tories are often called divas and “Degenerates” is literally a nickname for the whole clan, it’s perf. I also think he’d make a good Ghoul. When someone---be it a human, animal, even a fellow vampire---drinks the blood of a vampire three times, they become Blood Bound to them. In the case of animals and humans, this makes them the vampire’s ghoul, and the vampire their domitor or regnant. The blood bond is one of the most powerful tools of vampirekind, as the victim is completely enthralled to them, forced to obey. The ghoul is obsessed with them, usually in love, and will do anything asked of them. Continual drinks reinforce it, and the ghouls WANT this, for vitae---vampire blood--is addictive. And the longer they serve a vampire, the more they’ll need it not just out of addiction, but to survive. Ghouling a human (or animal) will freeze them at their current age, just like a vampire, and even grant them some vampiric powers...but when the blood stops coming, all those years catch up with them...all at once. It’s not pretty. Some ghouls who manage to escape their masters---usually by the latter’s death--become vampire hunters in order to get their vitae fix, drinking from different ones in order to avoid the “three strikes and you’re out” Blood Bond. As for what vampires get from this, ghouls have any number of uses, from daytime bodyguards to managers of mortal affairs, messengers, servants, it goes on. The sad, cursed existence of a Ghoul is in many ways worse than that of a vampire, and with none of the benefits. I could see him either as a group ghoul, perhaps, serving a coterie (small group) of powerful female vampires...but I feel like that’s more his fantasy than anything. The reality is probably that he went looking for his birth father, tracked him down successfully, and got a lot more than he bargained for...but hasn’t aged a day since either. Much like Ghouls serve vampires, Kinfolk serve werebeasts, and out of a very different sense of being bound by blood. Kinfolk are the human and animal relations of a werewolf or other werecreature, and breeding with them yields a higher chance of a Garou offspring (since, remember, the offspring of two Garou is a sterile, deformed metis) A Garou birth will still be rare, and most or all of their children will just be Kinfolk, but maybe the next gen will have a Garou, or the next. Because of this, the Garou (or Bastet, or whatever they may be) maintain close ties with their Kinfolk, watching them like shepherds over their flocks. There’s a dark side though. Their primary role ultimately is breeding stock, and many tribes treat them exactly like that. They’re automatically seen as part of the Garou tribe to which they’re related (or worse, its property) and are thus beholden to its regulations, owing them their loyalty, but get none of the respect and glory that the Garou do in return. They’re "valuable second class citizens" at best. Besides breeding, other roles they take includes childcare (since the werewolves are off battling the Wyrm), financing, politicking, and bureaucratic maneuvering on behalf of the Garou, directly or in their interests, are all examples, but there are dozens more things an individual Kinfolk might to do serve their family. Sebastian would definitely be a Shadow Lord werewolf as described in Fabian’s section, and Shinobi his unfortunate Kinfolk pup. A disappointment twice over, firstly for not being Garou, secondly for not even being the USEFUL kind of Kinfolk. All the tribes have an individual approach to their kin beyond the general basics I just described, and Shadow Lords tend towards the abusive. To quote the canon, “[Shadow Lord] Kinfolk don't receive much coddling, however. Weaklings and victims don't deserve to breed.” So not only is Shinobi not supposed to be sticking his dick in anything that can get pregnant, he’s supposed to purely serve his father’s interests while also growing up a society where he will NEVER be good enough. Which...look it’s horrible, but you can’t deny it FITS! (Also: While Sebastian def would be a Shadow Lord himself as a werewolf, he also could easily just be a human "target" of one as a mate. To quote canon: "Female Shadow Lords are sometimes drawn away from the flock toward men with power. A ruthless businessman, a brilliant crime lord or even a military dictator may find himself overpowered by a stalking suitor.") Since Shinobi is half-Japanese, he could be a kuei-jin if he was born/raised/died in Japan or a place with a strong Japanese (or other Asian) culture. Now, the kuei-jin are very problematic, White Wolf (the game company that does all this) mashed together a bunch of different Asian cultures together (even “kuei-jin” is a combination of Japanese and Chinese) and appropriated a bunch of terms they used incorrectly (ex: dharma) but I really like them and I’d like it if one day they could go back and fix them like they have with other creations they made that were really problematic at their conception (most all of this shit was made up by white nerds in the 90s) So, kuei-jin are vampires of a sort, but an entirely different sort than the Kindred are, despite some calling them ‘the Kindred of the East’. Firstly, their range has more to do with culture than geography. They populate Asia, but have begun emerging in the West in places like Chinatowns where Asian cultures are prevalent. Which brings us to the second difference---they are not Embraced like Western vampires, they rise from the grave on their own. Something drove them so hard that their souls clawed their way out of Yomi World and back into their bodies...well, usually their bodies, there have been cases where they came back in a DIFFERENT body. The goal of the kuei-jin is to remember what this something was, for they believe it is their purpose, and they must then accomplish it. In order to discover their purpose and fulfill it, they will choose different paths that they think will be best for this. These paths, called Dharmas, are liked clans, but, as I said, can be chosen, and even changed. Shinobi’s Dharma would be the The Dance of the Thrashing Dragon, also known as the Laughing Rainbows. Yes, they all have names like that. Again, white nerds in the 90s. The Thrashing Dragons are the Yang-Aspected paths, they seek to defy their undead state through frenzied revelry and acts meant to celebrate life (in all its beauty and bloodcurdling savagery both). These Kuei-jin are as alive as the undead can be, believing creation is a rainbow – illusory, but too colourful to ignore-- and their ideal is to experience each of those colours as vividly as possible. As a result, Laughing Rainbows shun society's restrictions, are often messy and vulgar, indulging themselves with wild feasts and drunken orgies - celebrations that usually feature living "entertainment," too. In their calmer moments, a Thrashing Dragon can be gentle and compassionate, nurturing life even though they consume it---the kuei-jin are still a type of vampires, and they feed on chi. They can get it from flesh and blood, but, as they get older and more powerful, can suck the pure chi out of the air from a person. But the Thrashing Dragons like to eat their prey raw, and often alive. They’re violent and combative, in addition to shameless, impulsive, lusty, and having a tendency towards nudity. What’s interesting is that in life, many Thrashing Dragons denied the flesh, and believe they came back due to their repression during life. Some ferociously carnal people do return to finish what they started in life, but most Laughing Rainbows learned to laugh only after they died. So perhaps Shinobi had a sad life that ended prematurely (COUGH DAD COUGH) and now that he’s come back, he’s “living” large at last. Or perhaps he’s one of the ones that was ALWAYS a hedonistic idiot and he was actually brought back as a lesson to live a better life, but he hasn’t learned it yet. Kuei-jin have two souls, the Hun and P’o, and they struggle against the latter. The Hun is higher, rational half of the soul, akin to morality, conscience, honor and devotion to duty. The P’o is the evil bestial half of the soul, akin to “the Beast” that Western vampires struggle against. Each person’s P’o takes one of several archetypes, based on which is most likely to tempt a kuei-jin off their path, and Shinobi’s would be The Monkey. The Monkey is a creature of the moment, its each new pleasure or distraction being the most important thing in the world. The Monkey is capable of concocting elaborate plans to achieve small or momentary goals, but it’s in no way concerned with any overarching mission that the Kuei-jin might have. Indeed, the Monkey seeks, at every turn, to waylay Shinobi from his appointed goal, to divert all of the his attention and energy to lesser, transitory things. So basically it tempts him to be HIMSELF. (As a note, I think the Adversary would translate REALLY well as a P’o for a kuei-jin Haven; India is part of Asia too!) Finally...I might be typecasting him too much by race, but there’s also the kitsune. The kitsune, as one would expect, are the werefoxes of East Asia, mostly found in Japan and China. They are the youngest of the Changing Breeds, and the story goes that when a fox named Bai Mianxi was brought before Gaia (who created all the werecreatures) by Luna (the moon) for playing tricks that created havoc in the world, Gaia’s punishment was that Bai Mianxi be given a duty. Bai Mianxi tried to trick her way out of it, claiming that Gaia's other children were all adequate enough in their duties and she was not needed. Gaia's wrath at Bai Mianxi's impudence shook her residence, but after soothing words from Luna, Gaia promised the fox that in return for their service, the fox-people would one day become the BEST at something, better than all the other werecreatures were at it, whatever it is. Like all other were-types, the kitsune are born in animal or human form, and the offspring of two Kitsune will be born in hybrid form and be stuck that way until their First Change. Unlike the Western metis of the Garou and many other fera though, these “shinju” as they are called, are NOT sterile or deformed, nor are they looked down upon by other kitsune. But all kitsune, no matter what form they were born in, carry a curse, and that is that when a kitstune is born, at least one of its parents will die. Usually, it is the non-kitsune parent, and there is also a one-in-ten chance that the Kitsune parent may die, either instead of, or along with, their mate. So my thinking is kitsune Shinobi was born in human form in Japan to a kitsune mother, but has a human white dad in America (Sebastian obvy) who despite the great distance still passed away mysteriously at the moment Shinobi drew his first breath. And so Shinobi grew up raised by his mother and her Kinfolk, and he never saw his father and he grew up feeling loved and wanted, and now he is a happy healthy adult werefox who will indeed be the best at something one day! You can see why I wanted this for him ^^

#world of darkness #vampire the masquerade #werewolf the apocalypse #kindred of the east #out of shirt

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jlf23tumble · 5 years ago

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Top 10 Niche Interests

Fixations? Obsessions? This is incredibly hard because I have wayyyy too many niche interests, so instead of stressing about it, I tried to channel the 10 things that immediately speak to me and maybe aren't so obvious from what I post here, like how much I'm obsessed with wigs, doll furniture, incredibly specific blogs, all forms of clothing with pockets, swimming pools, whimsical bus stops, over-the-top bathrooms, etc. etc Instead, I opted for some specifics that feel a little more evergreen and long tailed, like, so LIFE-long tailed that it's tough to nail down when or how they became part of the national psyche. I thank @alienfuckeronmain for the initial tag, and I'm tagging her AGAIN for round two because I know she has a billion additional niche things, and she'll post them, and I'll scream because it'll trigger five other things I neglected to post here, and I'll probably post my own round two, arggggh, insert aggressive sighing. Anyway, I tag ANYONE who wants to do it, just tag me so I can see!

1. Indoor Trees

I have no idea why this concept PULLS so hard because houseplants are kind of meh to me, but you want to plant an entire-ass TREE indoors, in the place where you live? Me, too, and I'd add a conversation pit plus a combo gold/red bathroom, among other things, and, bam, we're in my imaginary dream home, which I have literally, constantly ALWAYS mentally constructed from the time I was about six or so. (If you're curious, it has multiple themed rooms, and the closest I've seen to it recently is the outstanding Dita von Teese AD feature, but Amy Sedaris’s apartment comes close, too). There are two (2) 1960s houses in Long Beach with magnificent indoor trees, but I can't find them online, so have this modern interpretation and cry with me about how I can't visit the multi-story fake tree inside Clifton's Cafeteria for a good long while:

2. Conventions of Fans of Any Kind

One thing that I don't think I'll ever lose is how much I *love* people who are fans of SOMETHING, people who have a passion and create something about it or cosplay it or simply gather to celebrate it and connect to other people through it. The Internet provides in all kinds of ways, but I'm talking specifically about IRL conventions and the way my heart pitter pats when I first walk in those doors, SWOON! And it doesn’t matter how big the convention is or how random, I've been to smaller events like CatCon and the My Little Pony convention all the way up to biggies like WonderCon and Comic Con, and I have yet to be disappointed. I might know jack shit about what I'm walking into, but I want to see the merch, hear about the panels, and check out the people who are fucking PUMPED to be there. Sadly, I think it's gonna be a lonnnnng time until these come back, but I can live vicariously through my old photos, sigh:

3. Dutch Wax Fabrics and African Fashion

I'm not the snazziest of dressers, but textiles, colors, and patterns have been an obsession that has soothed my visual soul for as long as I can literally remember. Wax fabric marries all three of those touchpoints, plus throws in a healthy dose of style, and I count myself lucky to have seen two big exhibits on the subject (this was one of them), oh, how I wish there were more! For sure, there's a fucked up underlying colonial/imperialist history here, but there's also humor and color and vibrancy, a reclamation of sorts, and multiple levels of fashion that take my breath away. I cannot do the different patterns justice at all, but the fan motif is one of my faves:

4. Hearst Castle vs. Madonna inn

These two fall into my #home tag because they're where I'm from, and they speak to me as equally sublime and ridiculous, camp and kitsch writ large and small, different (yet similar!) versions of Xanadu that two rich white men built as shrines to their own personal "taste." And the irony is that a lot of people shit on Alex Madonna for being tacky (the Madonna Inn is...uh, something else), yet praise WR Hearst for all the high-class art and architecture, most of which is fully lifted from desperate churches between and after world and yet they're both more or less the same concept (lodging for weary travelers, self-aggrandizement, questionable taste-mixing). Hearst Castle edges out slightly for me because it's bigger and has spectacular scenery and history, plus it gives me doses of LA noir thanks to the way Hearst killed a guy in a jealous Charlie Chaplin-related rage and Hedda Hopper covered it up, all kinds of old Hollywood shenanigans happened up there, etc. But I'm low-key an expert on both houses of the holy, I'm OBSESSED with both, and we can leave it at that. I mean, come on:

5. Snow Globes

I had to cull my personal collection slightly just to fit it all on the dedicated shelf in my bathroom, and I seriously need to refill all the water lines, but nothing beats a snow globe in terms of memorable souvenir, especially when you put it in a bathroom. The majesty!!! The jewel of my collection is the one from Sherwood Forest because WHY NOT celebrate a historic place and moment in the basic way?? He robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and the gift shop about 100 feet from the tree he hid in does the same! The circle of life! The irony of all the watermarks on this blessed image...protect:

6. Highly Specific Museums

Look, we can all agree that the more venerated museums in the world are a form of garbage in terms of what they represent, what they've done, and who runs them, but I'm here for the museums that collect and celebrate things that tend to get overlooked. There are too many to list that I love that are still thriving, so I'm going to say goodbye to four recently departed faves. RIP to the Pez museum, I'm so glad I saw you and purchased your stale candy souvenirs. RIP to the museum of terrible food, you were a pop up when Phoenix and I saw you, and I will forever think about the worker describing people literally vomiting during their visits. RIP to the currywurst museum in Berlin, I've had currywurst exactly once and it was not for me, but I respect the Journey you took me on, including obscure east German TV shows that helped make you so popular (??). Finally, RIP to the velvet painting museum, there's no way to mince words, the person who owned you was crazy AS FUCK and had zero clue how to run a business, but I'm so glad I saw you multiple times and purchased my own velvet treasure (not this exact one, but remarkably similar):

7. Liminal Spaces: Grocery Store Edition

Confession time for those who don't know me all that well, I'm a big time voyeur, and nothing fills my heart with joy like a walk at 7 or 8 pm, the witching hour when people haven't pulled the curtains, and I can scope out their decorations/furnishings without it being "weird." Another confession is how much I unabashedly adore grocery stores in other countries and will spend at least an hour wandering aisle by aisle, falling in love with how much everything is different yet completely the same:

8. Agatha Christie Novels:

As a child, I was a fairly compliant reader--I had to read something for school? Okay! For my mom? Sounds good! But the books that sparked the initial fire for me to read something purely for myself were second-hand (probably fourth- or fifth-hand, judging by cover art) Agatha Christie short story anthologies, which were the gateway drug to full Agatha Christie novels, then other mystery novels, and so on. But getting back to Agatha, I obviously loved all the stories, but every decade spawned incredibly good cover art (like, exceptionally good), and this particular artist's are right up near the top for me (I go back and forth on a lot of the '50s and '60s ones):

9. Scopitones

I link my obsession with scopitones both to my love of music videos in general and a shop in Austin, TX, that sold DVD compilations of them in particular, but either way, they're underappreciated and kitschy all in one! Francoise Hardy and the rest of the ye-ye's are my forever girls for this medium, but seemingly every country cranked them out, both actual set videos and "live" performances? If you don't know what they are, scopitones were machines that played music videos in French cafes in the '60s (??), so it was sort of your proto-MTV way to see your faves sing and dance. Oh, Francoise...so moderne!!

10. Cover Songs

I have so much patience and love for cover songs of any stripe, the more genre-bending and/or surprising, the better! My only minor beef is the trend in slooooooooowing down songs to make a point, but even those ones have a special place in my heart if they're effective. Live Lounge feeds my hunger the best, but my meta fave for representing this concept is Pulp's Bad Cover Version, which was already lyrically INSPIRED, a song about bad cover versions in terms of relationships, but then they did a video that was a visual "bad" cover version, with actors lip synching over an audio "bad" cover version, and all of it just worked? The cover for the single is someone in the band as a boy, making his own bad cover version of a Bowie album cover, it's meta meta meta, and I love love love, here's the video, if you're curious. In the more sublime cover category, I'm absolutely addicted to all of Orville Peck's covers, I truly hope he officially releases them sometime soon, but I wholeheartedly support any artist who does it:

#tag games #niche interests #god i have a few

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thesteadydietofeverything · 5 years ago

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Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go.

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people.

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again.

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

#outer wilds #death stranding #eliza #anodyne 2 #control #judgment #resident evil 2 #fire emblem: three houses #Ape Out #Amid Evil #games #video games #GOTY

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wordsasweapons112 · 4 years ago

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On Literary and Real World Violence: A Response to Morrison, Laymon and Faulkner

I’ve been in school for two weeks now, and literary violence is at the forefront of my mind.

Toni Morrison’s collection of criticism, Playing In The Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination, has been a faithful companion since the beginning of the semester. Morrison is adamant about education. Her eloquence and grace seeps off the pages, defining African Americanism (“an investigation into the ways...a nonwhite, Africanlike (or Aficanist) presence or persona was constructed in the United States'' (6)), its place in Western literature, and the impact of harmful representation. Morrison speaks for those pushed into the role of “The Other” in America, and, consequently, in America’s great novels as well.

Kiese Laymon begins his essay, “I Am A Big Black Man Who Will Never Own A Gun Because I Know I Would Use It,” addressing this idea as well, zeroing in on the personal impact of one of the country’s most treasured writers.

Laymon describes his fascination with William Faulkner, who is often viewed as a father of the literary subgenre, southern gothic. As a teenager, Laymon read all of his novels, and felt that Faulkner was one of the more progressive writers of the early 20th century. Laymon was encouraged by his mother and teachers to strive for work adjacent to his; the writer could essentially “protect [him], ironically, from white men, white men’s power, and all men’s bullets.” However, as Laymon grew up, he saw that despite Faulkner’s intentions, he was tired of “white writers who simply could not see, hear, love, or imagine black folk as part of, or central to, their audience.”

“I Am A Big Black Man Who Will Never Own A Gun Because I Know I Would Use It” was written in between visits to Faulkner’s home in northern Mississippi. Laymon finished a draft on the front porch, taking note of how he could see the house of Callie Barr, the Faulkner family’s help, from his peripheral. Laymon studied the relationship between Faulkner and Barr from a vantage point of nearly a century, documenting his findings in his essay. Barr, who passed away in 1940, left an impression on the novelist, who delivered a heartfelt eulogy at her funeral, speaking of her fidelity to his kin as if she were one of the family. He addressed Barr’s “devotion and love for people she had not borne” straightforwardly.

When reading this, I couldn’t help but think of Dilsey, the Black help in Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury. Now aware of Barr’s life, I can see the influence of the loyalty that Faulker felt she employed. Dilsey, along with her sons and grandsons, care for the fictional Compson family; particularly the youngest child, Benjy, who is mentally disabled and depends on her well into adulthood. Fidelity to the family comes up frequently, and is extremely problematic. It’s what Laymon later reflects upon, understanding that “black fidelity and devotion to white families that are not our own are a terrifying part of our story in this nation.”

Laymon’s essay is not necessarily a piece of literary criticism. It is a vitally important call to action to end the violence against Black people in our country. He writes of America as a “desperate culture,” where ego and destruction come before the safety and livelihood of our children. For Black, brown, and indigenous children, this complex is a matter of life and death (“...why a nation that parades its big guns thinks it has the moral authority to audaciously tell its children and its black folk what to do with their little guns”). For white children, it is the risk of “moral annihilation;” the fear of being caught, of having an image tainted when they end up making headlines for racist or murderous acts. I think of the Kenosha shooter now, of seeing childhood pictures of him on my Twitter feed, holding an AK-47, with dreams of joining the police force at the forefront of his mind. White children grow up with the comfort of knowing they have the police on their side. They have the ability to own firearms before they are out of grade school. They have the ability to use them to kill, and still sleep in their beds that night.

They have the privilege of returning to their lives; the privilege of another day.

In a piece written shortly after Emmett Till’s death, Faulkner wrote, “If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.” Laymon criticizes this overly optimistic view; they are words that are still on our minds today, and that still aren’t compensated for. He writes, “Faulkner would have known that you cannot love any child in the United States of America if you refuse to accept that this nation was born of a maniacal commitment to the death, destruction, and suffering of black, brown, and indigenous children...Faulkner would have accepted that there has never been a time in this desperate nation’s history when American grown folk have refused to murder children.”

To make this country a better place for those who come after us—to make it a place that meets basic rights—we have to advocate and fight for those who have been left behind. We have to fight for everyone to have the chance to begin again; to wake up in the morning in their own beds and carry on another day. But, as Layman states, “If we really wanted to make this country less violent, we would tell the truth.” The truth is an accurate representation of marginalized bodies in the art we make. The truth is creating space for those bodies.

Though Faulkner was once a staple of Layman’s education, he is aware of the importance of nothing where gaps lay. Faulkner was still a white man who used derogatory language in his prose, and his Black characters were still representative of a harmful past. He isn’t the only one. I’m reminded of some of America’s most prized pieces of pop culture: Gone With The Wind, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, amongst countless others. The list is grossly incomplete.

I’m aware there is actual physical violence happening in the world; it is why I am writing this essay instead of being in class. But in the context of Layman’s devotion to exploring a literary past—and as a student studying literature and how to, hopefully, write my own one day—we have to acknowledge the violence that occurs on the page as well. Morrison paints the picture clearly. It occurs within the words actually printed; in the harmful descriptions of those of us viewed as Others. It occurs when the words are forgotten; an erasure that speaks without words.

There is a truth that needs to be told. Layman emphasizes that, “if we bring [it] into every space we enter, every space we long to bring a gun...our children will not be safe, but they will eventually be safer and far less addicted to violence than we are.”

As artists, it is our job to make our work inclusive. I was once a child of words, and am coming into my own as a young adult yearning to weave her truths within them. Literature has been my safe haven since around the time Layman first discovered Faulkner. And, like him, I no longer want to fall victim to the metaphorical gun resting just outside the page.

We have a responsibility to create art that speaks to more than some. We have the ability to help reconstruct what we’ve been taught. The call for creatives in the modern age is to make work that goes against the American concept of violence, for American violence seeps into every aspect of everything we do. It is in our language, our novels, our records.

The question is not whether we can, or have the ability, to begin; it is whether we are willing to do so. Layman proposes an important question: “Do you care enough about the children of this country to begin divesting from all forms of American violence?”

Our silence can sometimes speak just as loud as those firing guns.

Originally written in September 2020.

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