#I’d definitely like to do a more extensive analysis of this in the future

[numbuhbee]

I probably need to brush up on my simpsons but I think the way it and the first season of Jimmy two-shoes in particular handle “dad treats son like shit” generational trauma kind of similarly. At least between Abe and Homer and Lucius vi and Lucius vii

[saturniiids]

A brief analysis of aosjk #6 spoilers ahead!!

The final issue of aosjk was far from perfect in my opinion but it wasn’t as bad as everyone’s making it out to be.

There’s definitely some pacing issues but that always comes with minis especially when they’re 6 issues long. The action feels a bit rushed and I do think that a little more time should have been spent on Jon’s fights with the separate justice league members. Or at least on his fight with Diana. Or alternatively we should have seen Jon release Bruce and Harley, maybe even freeing them in front of Clark because it’s that sense of action I believe the issue is missing.

Another option is to have a fight between Jon and Clark where Clark is always on the attack and Jon has to counter. I think that would have worked well to metaphorically emphasise their differences.

However, where people complain about the hug I’m starting to understand it a lot more. I believe looking at it from a narrative pov it’s an interesting contrast to the hug we see in soke. I also think it does make sense for Jon to do and that people are miss reading the intention behind it. The hug isn’t Jon showing sympathy or forgiveness or love, it’s a tactical move. Everything he does in that scene is a tactical move because giving Clark what he wants, letting Clark see his wife again (in some sense) and letting him hold his child, is what gets him to step back even for a few seconds. It’s so obvious that the hug is a distraction technique.

Jon doesn’t want to give Clark the hug and he doesn’t forgive him because that’s not his place. What he does is target Clark emotionally because he does not believe he would win a fight against him (he’s seen this Clark rip apart ultraman with his bare hands… also he’s probably aware of the collateral a fight between them would cause).

The thing is Jon is in a very unique position of being Clark in injustice’s motivation. So what he does is give Clark the thing he’s longed for and then tears it away from him. He shows Clark his and Lois’ disapproval of what Clark’s done for them, targeting his biggest weakness. What would have worked best is if he was then able to restrain Clark with kryptonite and leave him for the people of that world to deal with.

Another thing I’d like to briefly address is Jon’s seemingly lack of emotion through the issue. I think this is very reflective of his emotional state and how drained he is. I don’t think we have an exact time frame for these events but they do occur in quick succession and we’ve barely seen Jon rest since Ultraman is killed so he is likely extremely tired physically and especially emotionally. Which I think is interesting and can be seen as an extension of his attitude we’ve seen in SoKE #5 where he prioritises being superman and saving people over his own well being.

Also I’m annoyed we never got a reappearance of Val-Zod and Red Tornado and hope at some point that plot thread is resolved because I’m not a fan of how they just got forgotten.

I do hope we get another solo for Jon in the future but we will have to see.

[lulu2992]

Do you have any thoughtful character analysis on Anton Castillo from Far Cry 6 that you could possibly share?

To be honest, I haven’t had time to think about Far Cry 6 and its characters as much as I wanted yet because, when they announced the upcoming release of Insanity, I hadn’t finished the game! I hurried a bit to reach the ending before the release of the DLC and was then more emotionally invested in the Season Pass than in the main game. But I’d like to try to think about Far Cry 6 more now.

So, to actually answer your question, I don’t really have a “thoughtful character analysis” of Antón or a definite opinion, at least not for the moment... Of course, his (and Diego’s) final scene is what I remember most and what left the greatest impression on me. I’m still not over what happened and thinking about it makes me want to cry. Again. But since you’re asking for an analysis, there’s something I’d like to say about that scene because I disagree with some opinions I’ve read (not much here because the fandom seems surprisingly small and not very active). I really don’t think that what Antón did at the end is proof that he was selfish and emotionless. On the contrary, and even though it may not seem obvious, I think he did love Diego. Not just as his heir, his legacy, or an extension of himself, but as his son.

Clearly, there are many things we could say about his parenting methods, and I truly wish things had gone differently, but what Antón did in his final moments has a name: altruistic filicide-suicide. Before killing himself, he killed Diego because he didn’t want him to live what he had to live after the Revolution of 1967, when he too was only 13 years old. Antón was imprisoned and witnessed his father be executed by the revolutionaries. He then had to endure 15 years of forced labor, pruning tobacco, and kept the blade as a memento. It’s with this same blade that he will slit his own throat. Antón was terminally ill and only had a few months left to live, at best. In my opinion, he killed himself to rob Libertad of the pleasure of doing it and because he wanted to remain the master of his destiny. He didn’t want to let the revolutionaries steal his life a second time. But I don’t think he killed Diego for the same reasons or because he realized he wouldn’t be able to control him and his future anymore. He did it because he didn’t believe Dani and didn’t think his son could truly be protected “from the monsters”. Of course, Antón wanted Diego to succeed him but, in his final moments, more than anything, he wanted to be sure he could be safe. Sadly, because of what he endured after the Revolution of 1967, he thought it was impossible and that his son was doomed to suffer as much as he suffered (if not more). He knew Libertad had won, and the thought of Diego going through what he went through at the same age was too unbearable for him, so he did what he believed was necessary to ensure no one could ever hurt him. And, of course, if he then killed himself, it’s also probably because he had just shot his son and couldn’t live with that...

Again, even though I believe Antón loved Diego and wanted to protect him, I really hate that he chose this solution. But my point is that, at least when it came to his son, Antón was neither selfish nor emotionless. Life left him with a warped sense of morality and taught him to suppress his feelings, so it’s not always easy to understand him or the logic behind his actions, but that’s the beauty of complex antagonists, right?

I also think that he truly loved María and that her death greatly affected him… but that’s for another post.

[hmslusitania]

Honestly I've lost hope and it really hurts at this point. When I just watch the Buddie scenes in 4x13/14 it's all good but then I remember that they gave Buck and Taylor a solid foundation and they showed Chris clearly liking Ana and the three of them acting like a family so I feel like Buddie is done for at this point. I know I never should've gotten my hopes up, I know I'm a stupid idiot, and yet here I am crying over a fictional ship yet again

Hey Anon. I'm sorry you're in pain, that's a bad place to be.

Many, many people in this fandom are much better at meta analysis on these fronts than I am (I would even hazard to say most people, tbh) and they have written extensively on the relationships the boys are in right now and their future trajectories. I can't personally see either as having potential for an endgame setting, but we all see different things when we watch the exact same shows so your mileage may vary.

As far as hope and Buddie being canon, this is gonna get a little autobiographical here because as I said, I am not great at meta, so just like. bear with me.

I've been involved in fandom stuff (mostly fic writing; didn't start actually talking to people about fandom stuff until ff.net implemented their messaging system whenever that was) for fifteen years now. I don't think I count as a fandom old, but maybe comfortably middle aged. I have been involved in a lot of fandoms, and have been a fan of even more things that I never quite ventured into fandom spaces for. I initially joined tumblr for Supernatural, ffs, like. I have Seen Things, Anon, and a lot of them were ugly, and a lot of them were cruel to the fans on purpose, especially us queers here, and I have been sucked into fandoms specifically because of Tumblr's exceptional skill at finding all the little moments and giffing them and sharing these beautifully charged acting moments. I started watching Teen Wolf back in the day because of Tumblr telling me about Sterek and we all know how that worked out. And when I went from tumblr's eloquent and lovely gifsets that pulled out all the little pieces and complied a compelling narrative to actually watching the show? You know, it fell flat. It was definitely all there but it didn't have nearly the same prominence that I had been lead to believe by the talented and dedicated people here in this blue garbage can.

And so when a few people I'd been following for years started posting these gifs about 9-1-1 and about Buddie, I was like "oh, it's gonna be Teen Wolf all over again" but I needed to know the context of the grocery store fight and I needed to understand why a lawsuit would prevent Buck from talking to Eddie and Eddie's son (were they getting divorced? Who was suing who?) and so I read all the episode summaries that existed to that point (up to What's Your Grievance) and then I read a metric fuck tonne of fic, and then I finally caved and watched the entire show. I absolutely expected all the Buddie moments I'd seen giffed and referenced in fic to be small, throwaway things that didn't really stick with the plot or were played as a joke.

As a few of my friends can attest, I proceeded to send them about eighty billion texts of "HOLY SHIT ALL OF IT IS CANON WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING" and dragged one of them in all the way (sorry @starry-eyed-guttersnipe) and one by proxy (@rhysiana thanks for still talking to me anyway).

I am not, by nature, a hopeful person. I am primarily obstinate and spiteful, but like, I'm chipper about it? So do I recommend having hope about Buddie being canon? Meh. But I have never seen a set up like this in any of the seventeen hundred television shows I've watched in my life. And I will be shipping it until the show ends, and probably a little longer. If you can find it in yourself to hoist a hefty goblet of "fuck you" at whatever current nonsense canon's giving us, the still-shipping-despite club is a fun and comfortable place 💖

[inkykeiji]

ohhhh okok,,, ur writing is SO good i had to ask LOL

what are u planning on doing in the future career wise? ALSO IM A WRTING MAJOR N ,,,,NGL I HATE THE PROFS!!!!! i haven’t found a good one yet soo…i’ll be on the lookout

ALSO (last thing lol) what do u do in cinema studies? like i’ve heard of it before but like..hmmm what do u study? LOL idk if that makes sense but. yea.

(completely fine if u don’t feel comfortable answering this!!)

oh hello again hehe c:

AAAAH please i am so flattered hahahaha thank you so much <33

well the ultimate goal is to become a novelist!!! it’s kind of all i want to do with my life ehehe (*/ω＼*) i’d also really love to make films one day, but that’s like way way waaaaay in the future.

THEY’RE KIND OF AWFUL AREN’T THEY! okay okay that’s unfair to my good profs and i feel bad saying that hahaha but some of them were definitely :///// not good. i’d say about half of my english profs were good, which, after hearing about the horrors of science profs, is actually really good. i think the cinema department just spoiled me with amazing professors tbh 😭😭😭

well it really depends on the program itself!!! cinema studies can be anything from actually making films (hands on), simply studying film (history, theory, technique, analysis, etc etc etc there’s way too much to list here LMAO but u get it) or a healthy mix of both!! my department was incredibly in my opinion HAHA because they were more focused on academically studying film, but also offered a department run film club to teach students hands on & build their portfolios. so that was really cool to me, just having that option.

as for what we studied, it encompasses such a wide and extensive breadth of areas and topics; it was very interdisciplinary. there were specific core classes we had to take, which focused on the most important/prevalent theories + all (and i mean ALL) of film history (these were obv split up and spread out among a few classes; you had to take one each year). other than those few core classes, students were allowed to pick and choose which other classes they decided to take. for example, i took a ton of classical/golden age hollywood classes, and quite a few genre classes, as well as some feminist film classes. i also got into our screenwriting program (you had to apply from within the cinema program) which was super super rad!! but anyway our offered classes ranged from being focused on specific theories, histories or eras, to genres, to ethnicities, to social issues. i loved it so much :(

thank you for being so considerate!!! (´∀｀)♡

[theolympusfiles]

rereading the PJO and HoO - part one: the lightning thief

before i start, all italicized parts are from the lightning thief by rick riordan. they're not my words and these are not my characters. my thoughts are the only thing that are mine :)

• "mom, you're coming too." her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean. "no!" i shouted, you are coming with me. help me carry grover". - the first(ish) appearance of percy's fatal flaw! i love the early establisment, especially because it helps foreshadow to the sea of monsters when fatal flaws are formally introduced.

• "that's -" "pasiphae's son," my mother said. "i wish i'd known how badly they wanted to kill you." - sally is underappreciated. she's smart as hell and clearly took the time to research demigods. yes, she was a little bit selfish with keeping percy out of the loop and not sending him to camp. but can you blame her? she lost all of her family and if she sent percy to CHB at an early age, that most nearly means she won't see him often (he'll attract monsters because he's aware of his status as a demigod and will most likely be at camp full-time). but sally ensured that she knew enough about the demigod world to protect percy because she knew that her selfishness would come with consequences. best mom.

• i was crying, calling for my mother, but i held on to grover - i wasn't going to let him go. - percy's first loss as a demigod and i am broken. honestly, so sad to think of, especially knowing all the losses he'll face in the future books. this line is also his fatal flaw showing once again (refer to first bulletpoint)

• "it (america) is the great power of the west. and so olympus is here. and we are here." - if olympus follows the west, where would the next location be? obviously, america is still a big powerhouse in terms of western civilization but that's not going to last. my bet is south korea but who knows? would love a fanfic on this tbh

• "the truth is, i can't be dead. you see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. i could continue the work i loved. i could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. i gained so much from that wish... and i gave up so much. but i'm still here, so i can only assume i'm still needed." - how will it be decided that he's not needed? honestly, can't imagine CHB without him but chiron also deserves retirement

• i started to understand luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, hermes so okay, maybe gods had important things to do. but couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder or something? - percy has always showed some hesitance when accepting the demigod world, so i wasn't really surprised to see doubts like this pop up, especially with luke's influence. i'd think most demigods feel this way, luke and percy are just the ones who exhibit it the most in the series. i'm really interested in the parallels between the two and i'm looking forward to reading more and examining them

• "during the winter solstice, at the last council of the gods, zeus and poseidon had an argument. the usual nonsense: 'mother rhea always liked you best', 'air disasters are more spectacular than sea disasters', etc. - despite the fact that the gods are all-powerful beings, i appreciate the petty sibling spats that are mentioned briefly

• "so let me get this straight," i said. "i'm supposed to go to the underworld and confront the world of the dead." "check," chiron said. "find the most powerful weapon in the universe." "check." "and get it back to olympus before the summer solstice in ten days." "that's about right." i looked at grover, who gulped down the ace of heaers. "did i mention that maine is very nice this time of year?" he asked weakly. - this would be perfect for those 30 second trailers

• "gee," i said feigning surprise. "who else would be stupid enough to volunteer for a q uest like this?" the air shimmered behind chiron. annabeth became visible, stuffing her yankees cap into her back pocket. - the way he knows her pretty well already, i-

• the truth was, i didn't care about retrieving zeus' lightning bolt, or saving the world, or even helping my father out of trouble. - early on, we see from the get go that percy has a dislike for the gods. it's small mentions like this that really gets me thinking. he never really showed any dislike of the gods when he first arrived at camp (understandable) but he was hopeful for his father. it wasn't until luke planted the seed into his head that these thoughts came to light. i love this little detail, especially as we know that towards the end, luke does seem to think he can turn percy against the gods. his plan backfired a little bit on him in the end but like i said before, the parallels between luke and percy are so glaring. riordan definitely thought it out extensively

• do not be a pawn of the olympians, my dear. you would be better off as a statue - this is said to percy by medusa and again, feeds into his dislike of the gods. i wonder if monsters have some opinion on this. most would probably hate the gods but i wonder what their stance is on demigods. we know that they work with them (see kronos' army). the real enemy for monsters are the gods, the demigods killing them are just pawns to the gods so maybe that's how some monsters see them

• "so, what's your status?" luke asked me. "chiron will be sorry he missed you." i told him pretty much everything, including my dreams. it felt so good to see him, to feel like i was back at camp even for a few minutes, that i didn't even realize how long i had talked to him until the beeper went off on the spray machine. - there's no doubt that percy really considered luke a friend. he wasn't hesitant to tell luke about his dreams, something that he didn't share with annabeth or grover until later on the book. luke was a sort of mentor to percy and it was conveyed pretty well through their interactions, which makes his betrayal even more heartbreaking

• "you think you'll ever try living with your dad again?" she wouldn't meet my eyes. "please. i'm not into self-inflicted pain." - my heart breaks for annabeth and her relationship with her father. i've read most of the riordanverse books and the growth in annabeth's relationship with her family is definitely something i'm looking forward to watch grow as i make my way through the books again

• i looked over at the desk and saw a girl sitting there, also wearing a straitjacket - so i never paid the dreams any mind but now that i think about it, they're really good for analysis. for example, the straitjacket could mean something like the gods are keeping them restrained. maybe i'm overthinking it or have been analyzing text too much in AP english but i think that the dreams are worth some deeper thinking

• i pretended not to see annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend - i need to see annabeth play with cerberus again D:

• i turned and faced my mother. i desperately wanted to sacrifice myself and the last pearl on her, but i knew what she would say. she would never allow it. i had to get the bolt back to olympus and tell zeus the truth. i had to stop the war. - percy's growth as a character really shines through here. the lightning thief is a pretty short book and the journey they took was less than 2 weeks but despite that percy's grown immensely as a character. his goal was always to save his mother but in the end, he sacrificed her because he knew it was his duty to save olympus and i respect that

• "you have made an enemy, godling," he told me. "you have sealed your fate. every time you raise your blade in battle, everytime you hope for success, you will feel my curse. beware, perseus jackson. beware." - ares cursed percy to be unsuccesful in battle but does his curse ever take effect? i don't recall any mention of this curse later on the series. obviously, percy is the main character and a really good swordfighter but the curse might have affected some battles right? but then again riordan has a lot of plotholes so i wouldn't put too much thought in it

• i knew dionysus must've filled it out, because he stubbornly insisted on getting my name wrong. - i've always accepted the fact that dionysus called the demigods by their wrong name for humor. but what if it's deeper? what if it's a way to put some space between him and the demigods, just as an extra precaution so he won't get attached. or it could be a ploy to showcase that he's more powerful than them and that they are beneath him, which is why he doesn't need to know their name. i like the former headcanon more though :P

• i opened my eyes. i was propped up in bed in the sickroom of the big house, my right hand bandaged like a club. argus stood guard in the corner. annabeth sat next to me, holding my nectar glass and dabbing a washcloth on my forehead. "here we are again," i said. - the parallel

well, that's everything i had notes on. overall, i liked rereading it. i really do miss this series and i'm finding my love for it be rekindled by rereading. i miss the humor of the early books (i could literally make a whole post of underrated lines). the last time i read the series in its whole was when i was 7 and now that i'm 16, i have more thoughts and can analyze the story better. also loved seeing baby percabeth as they're my OTP. i'm excited to continue with the series. to the sea of monsters!

[danteinthedevildom]

A Royal Pajama Party “Analysis” - Part 6 (of 7)

We’re almost at the end (hooray - these posts have absolutely killed me to finish), so time to go onto the “platonic” route.

Unfortunately the Devilgram’s ending isn’t 100% perfect if you want a fully platonic route. I may be wrong here - it’s been a while since I actually read the Devilgram at this point, so my memories are a little hazy - but I believe the only way to really end it prior to the screenshots I’m about to show you involve responses that are a little more dismissive (from what I can remember, it essentially requires turning down everything, even the content that could be read as purely platonic). Which means, unfortunately, your options are generally “somewhere between romantic and platonic” and “no interest at all”. 

That said, this route is much easier to read as platonic, and I think is meant to cover ground for players who fall into one of two categories:

- Have no interest in Diavolo romantically

- Don’t want to end on a more suggestive note (since the kiss route leads to implied NSFW)

So you can read romance into it as much as you can ignore it. I like being able to focus on both sides, however, since sometimes you want the Devilgrams to explore more of the friendship between yourself and the brothers rather than an inherent romance - ergo, “platonic” route. 

That’s a much longer intro than usual, so I’ll cut it off there. As usual, this post covers content locked behind Story Keys, so here’s your cursory spoiler warning!

As I mentioned last post, you’re given an option to end the Devilgram in one of two ways: with a kiss (leading you down the more romantic route), or with a hug (by claiming you don’t want any funny business, to which he admits he just wants to hold you). We’re following the hug route.

I can likely guaratee you, after everything we’ve seen so far, Diavolo’s never had the chance to hold someone at night. No-one’s stayed long enough for him to spend time doing “nothing at all” with them, so it’s immediately clear that physical affection likely isn’t something he’s afforded often, let alone for the duration of a night - particularly considering the concept of a sleepover is new to him (as we saw in the first two posts) and just how generally awed he is by your continued presence and happiness being there. 

In other words, the changes of anyone having let him close enough to hold them before this point for this long are extremely slim. 

Which means, in turn, he’s almost definitely never been held. 

(There is, after all, a difference between holding someone who’s just putting up with it and actually being hugged back). 

The only person who might have done would be his father, when he was younger; I’m not wholly sure how close Diavolo is with the Demon King, but considering how overprotective he was, I’d assume he’d have given a little baby Diavolo at least a reasonable amount of hugs. Whether he did or not, however, that’s really it. That’s Diavolo’s list of “people who have held him for an extended period of time”. 

Even more likely, that’s his complete list of “people who have felt comfortable, happy, and content enough around him to let him fall asleep with them”. 

We already know that for a majority of his lifetime, it was just him, his father, and Barbatos - and before that, just him and his father. There really aren’t a lot of people he can put on that list, especially considering his status (and age) when the Demon King went to sleep. When the last of his restrictions were finally released.  

No wonder he’s so desperate for affection. No wonder he’s so horrifically touch- and love-starved. His entire life, he’s had practically no-one. Moreover, his only dedicated friends are:

- His butler (who tends to his duties with utmost professionalism, and with whom it wouldn’t be appropriate to form the sort of friendship and attachment he wants)

- Lucifer (who for centuries has been bitter over the oath, and takes his duties seriously out of pride and gratitude/servitude rather than affection - and has, in several situations, been genuinely put out/underwhelmed by Diavolo’s attempts to deepen their friendship)

- Queen Rose (who we’ve seen relegated to all of one visit per year, with an unknown connection and attachment to Diavolo, and who clearly isn’t important enough to have been given much of a story beyond the one event)

Demons he has no deep connection with, and is granted little to no physical affection from. 

Even the brothers have each other. Even at their very worst - with the issues between Satan and Lucifer, and the treatment they give Mammon - we’ve seen several images of them being physically affectionate. And that really does range from slumping over each other in sleep, to being used as weights for Beel’s training, to diving in close for group selfies. 

It doesn’t seem like much - and honestly, I do enjoy the headcanon that maybe as a species they just don’t tend to be as touchy-feely as humans - but it’s significantly more than we see (and hear) Diavolo get. It’s still physical contact that’s comfortable and affectionate; a physical show of care.

Diavolo has even said in Chats before (specifically in the one shared between you, him, and Barbatos) that he wants to stay at the House of Lamentation because they’re noisy and active. Because he’s used to silence and isolation and he wants to experience a place full of sound and activity and interconnecting relationships. Because he wants to be involved in something he doesn’t have. 

What you’ve afforded Diavolo in this moment is something so rare for him, it’s either happened very little in his life or never at all. 

This normal show of affection - something we can all get simply by turning to a friend, or a partner, or a family member; something we use as greetings and as comfort and often without a thought - is completely outside his typical experience. 

So, it’s bliss; by literal definition, “a state of perfect happiness, oblivious to everything else”. It’s not just warm, or happy, or perfect - it’s a feeling so outside of what he knows, it transcends all positive emotion. 

Your affection narrows down his focus away from the Devildom - from his worries, from his fears, from his unhappiness and his insecurities and his loneliness - and centres it entirely on you.

There’s a reason he wants to spend more time with you. A reason you’re his greatest person; a reason this night is so special to him. 

You give him everything he’s never had, but always wanted - and you do it as easily and thoughtlessly as drawing breath. 

For someone who’s struggled just to keep his desired friends by his side, that likely means the world to him. 

+

As his monologue continues on, we reach a sort of... wavering point.

This is the part that makes it a little blurry between the lines of romance and platonic feeling. You can clearly see how this dialogue is meant to be vague enough to appeal to both sides; by only lightly mentioning that he’s “feeling” something, you can read it as either romantic feeling or platonic feeling, albeit the second line tips it, initially, in favour of a romantic reading. 

However, I think this scene can still be fairly platonic when you consider that you are the only person to have ever made him feel this happy. 

Diavolo is a demon. He’s a royal demon. He’s the stand-in leader of an entire Realm, with hundreds of thousands of subjects under his command. He’s been alive for a relatively unknown but doubtlessly extensive amount of time. His concerns and worries far exceed that of anything a single human on Earth could fret over - because he’s not just fretting over a kingdom, or a nationality, but an entire race of beings that he holds direct responsibility for. 

A single human life, in contrast to that, is likely nothing more than a split-second blip on a radar. There and gone before he could even have seen it.  

Whatever he expected from the Exchange Programme, the importance of a single human likely wasn’t something he had in mind. Your importance as a whole for the future he wanted, yes; for what you represented, and what you could achieve, almost definitely. But for you, as a person? You, for all the good and the bad, the experiences and memories, the thoughts and feelings, that make you who you are?

In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter. That you are human and alive and perform well in the Programme to ensure peace between the Realms does.  

Because you will fade away in less than a second. Because you will be gone before long, and your existence to him is like fruit fly to us. Short. Uneventful. Insignificant. 

His infatuation with humanity doesn’t necessarily mean an infatuation with individual humans. You can be enamoured with rabbits and set up a sanctuary for them, but that doesn’t mean you’ll see the inherent nature and personal significance of any single one. 

He likely never would have thought that one of the Exchange Students would become this important to him. 

He likely never would have thought that a human, plain and simple as you are, would open up this many feelings, experiences, possibilities. 

(He likely never would have thought that you could change his life as drastically as you have.)

Why would he? After all, you’re just human. Your life is so fragile, it could end with the barest twitch of his finger. How could something so frail possibly have such an impact on him - do things that no demon has ever been able to do?

And yet, you’ve done so much. In a few years at most, you’ve changed his life in ways he’s always struggled with. You’ve given him all the things he wanted; all the things he’s missed. 

You. A human. A tiny, fragile, impossible little human. You’ve done things greater beings have been incapable of. Things even he - with all his power and wisdom and life experience - couldn’t do.

How could he have possibly expected that?

(He might have hoped for it. Hoped that something good would come from the Exchange Programme; hoped that he’d be able to experience those things he’d never been able to with someone new and fresh in his life. But he still can’t have imagined that it would happen so soon, so easily, so naturally. That it would have been entirely because of you.)

As a slight aside, though a very related one, I’m deeply interested by Diavolo’s second line: “Oh, but your humanity only makes you even more captivating”

Here’s an English Lit tip for all of you: if a character says “oh” like this, the utterance is almost always used to emphasise an already-intense emotion. It’s the little oh you see in fanfic; that single sound to release everything a person feels in one breath. It’s used a lot in epics, and especially in 19th centuary texts, when the narrator is lamenting or expressing woe. 

Here, it sounds wistful. Longing. Amazed. Dreamy. Awed. Reverent. This isn’t something he’s saying intentionally. 

These utterances are almost always kept to narration; to the depths of a character’s thoughts, where they can express themself the most in its truest form. They’re used to incite a reader’s emotion, their empathy, and to highlight the sheer emotive weight of a scene. It’s very rarely verbal, unless they’re utterly overcome with feeling. 

The fact that Diavolo’s saying it out loud, therefore, means it’s not intentional. These are his deepest thoughts said aloud, so intense and true it’s impossible for him to keep it locked inside his mind. 

That’s simple fact. He’s purely, utterly enraptured by you. 

The analysis on that sentence could end there. The admittance, unwittingly, that you are captivating as an example of how significant you are to him. However... 

While it does highlight that he already finds you awing, it also notes that it’s your humanity that makes you even more enchanting. Not just the fact that you’re you, or that you’re human and he finds the depth of his feeling surprising - but that the very notion of your humanity enthralls him. 

We’ve already seen his interest in humanity span decades before your arrival, if not centuries. We therefore know that the fragility of your life and the existence of your humanity means something to him in a way it doesn’t - or wouldn’t - to other demons. 

He’s fascinated by the concept of humans, and you are human. Naturally, he’s going to be awed that a human is important to him by default; simultaneously, he’s thrilled by the fact that you’re representative of the World he adores.

+

Moving on from that focus, the next scene. It’s the conclusion of this route, and thus the final shot in the Devilgram if you decide to end it this way. 

This, is mostly just sweet. I couldn’t avoid adding this in. 

It’s a callback to the start of this post - the fact that Diavolo has likely never been able to hold someone for the night, and that he’s thoroughly excited for the chance to do so with you. 

Diavolo wants to cherish holding you. He wants to savour having you in his arms as you go to rest. 

He knows it’s something that won’t happen often, if it ever happens again. So he wants to make the most of it. He wants to ingrain it in his mind, lock it up tight with the memories he holds closest to his heart. 

There’s a little more I have to say about the concept of sleep and especially willingness and comfort sleeping around another person, but there’s a better way to present that in another screenshot - one we’ll see in the next post. It deserves more space than I have left here, so I’ll relegate that to a few screenshots I wasn’t able to fit in elsewhere. 

It’s a bit of a topic change, but a good one. Do you recall the post wherein Diavolo reads his favourite poem to you? In that post, I went over the fact that he reveals you to be - in no uncertain terms - his greatest person. 

I also noted in the post that he doesn’t say this by default. You have to choose for him to say that by picking the option along the lines of, “Who’s your greatest person?”. The devs kindly allow you to decide just how close to Diavolo you want to be, and whether or not he’s comfortable admitting in such open terms how important you are to him. 

In the screenshots below, then, I’ve shown the other route; the one wherein you asked if Barbatos was his greatest person. 

Diavolo’s response?

It’s much more vague. He doesn’t even vaguely state that his greatest person is you. In fact, it sounds very much like he still doesn’t know who his greatest person is. 

At least until you consider that final line.

“Should that day come, you’ll be the first to know”. 

This comment speaks volumes. In a very subtle way, it’s Diavolo showing you that he trusts you most; that, out of everyone he knows, he’d go to you first to tell you who his most important person is. 

This could be because he believes you’d be excited to know. Maybe he thinks you’d be happy for him, and you’d celebrate the fact that he’s found his greatest person. Maybe it’s simply him acknowledging that he’s told you about the concept of a greatest person, and thus, you’d be the only one with the knowledge to care whether or not he’s found someone who fits that bill. 

It might even be him saying you’re just the first person on his mind beyond his greatest person. That when he has important news, the first thing he wants to do is tell you. 

But it’s also, I think, a hint. 

You could read it as dismissive; “I’ve not yet found someone better than Barbatos, but when I do, I’ll tell you.” It’s certainly one interpretation of the line, and what the above covers. Another, however, would be, “I’m not ready yet to confirm my feelings/I’ve lost my confidence since you mistakenly assumed it to be someone it’s not. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you - and you’ll know I meant you.”

It’s a perfectly valid reading to believe he already suspects his greatest person is you. That he’s implying you’ll know who his greatest person is before anyone else because he’ll be saying to you, directly, it’s you. 

It’s a sweet moment, either way. Whether he’s being coy about who his greatest person is or he genuinely doesn’t know yet, the fact remins that you’re important enough to him - that he believes you care enough about him and his happiness to want to know - that he’ll tell you before anyone else. 

You’re his priority, regardless.  

Another fact, one you might have thought I’d cover first, is the surprise of his prior comment: “the greatest person in my life would overshadow even him”. 

Barbatos isn’t Diavolo’s greatest person. From the previous scene - that alternate timeline where he’s more obvious about who his greatest person is - it’s clear that Barbatos doesn’t fill a lot of the requirements. He supports Diavolo, yes; he’s by his side, always, and he can’t leave - but he’s not there for him. Not the same way you are. 

Emotionally, mentally, physically, Barbatos doesn’t click with Diavolo the way he needs his greatest person to. Barbatos doesn’t spend time with him happily and freely; doesn’t let him get close and affectionate. Diavolo can’t be his true self around Barbatos and feel wholly, perfectly accepted. The butler-master divide makes that an impossibility, as does the origin of their friendship. 

Barbatos is still important to him, of course; there’s no denying that. After all, the greatest person in his life at the moment is Barbatos. That’s who Diavolo is using to gauge his greatest person against; whether or not they mean more to him than Barbatos, and he connects with them better than with his closest companion.

Diavolo’s just not fooling himself into thinking Barbatos is that person.

There is, however, something... a little more amazing to think about, knowing Diavolo’s requirements for his greatest person. 

They have to be better than Barbatos.   

Barbatos, the demon who helped raise him in the absence of his mother. 

Barbatos, the demon who’s been by his side since youth, patiently feeding him stories of the Realms he never got to see. 

Barbatos, the only demon who ever stayed, who wasn’t directly related to him.

Barbatos, the demon Diavolo knows best, the demon he’s known the longest. 

And in the timeline he confirms, openly, overtly, that you’re his greatest person, 

You exceed that. 

+++

And thus concludes part 6. I hope this has been enjoyable to read, because in parts, it was not enjoyable to write- I got a bit too picky and ended up editing this twice to add in more because I didn’t like how I’d worded it before, so guess how much time that’s eaten up OTL 

Still, with this post done, we’ve only got one more! Finally. It’s the concluding part, so it’s mostly going to be bitty details that didn’t perfectly fit elsewhere, as well as a better focus on another facet of the reading route - because, yes, not only do you get to decide whether or not you eat fruit or read, you also get to decide whether Diavolo reads to you or you read to him.

I really wasn’t joking when I said this Devilgram was spoilt for choice, before. I’m absolutely not used to these stories containing anything more than a “good reaction”/”bad reaction” response, or maybe a “platonic route”/”romantic route” divide. This Devilgram, though - damn. You end up replaying it like ten times just to see everything. And it’s all voice acted, too - it’s kind of amazing. 

So, if you’d like, please continue on to part 7! And thank you so much for making it through all this wordy babbling. 

[firespirited]

Se7en reviewed

So I watched Se7en last night, i’d followed a youtube essay rec to “The day Alien died” - spoilers I disagree- down a David Fincher CGI & details youtubehole and figured “hey I havn’t seen one of his biggest” (no I’m not watching Girl with a Dragon Tattoo). So I prep myself (internet long spoiled the end) and sit down with a big bowl of blended apple and pear. Okay okay this is going to be a “you wish mind-bleach exists” type of movie, then the electicity went out area wide for an hour just after ‘sloth’ victim.

and first of all: yikes what an image to sit with for an hour but not the worst yikes yet and secondly: i was utterly perplexed by just how this guys sin assignment & punishment system works for an hour with no access to the internet to try and figure out the internal logic.... I mean, I’ve never agreed with the system of seven deadly sins to begin with cuz ethical responsability is about how you harm others, not intent and sometimes with delayed diffuse consequences and can’t be clearly boxed into moral absolutes... Then the power comes back on and it turns out half the other crimes/victim didn’t fit either. It was a loose interpretation that’s more vaguely catholic and definitely not ethics based. Also the one punished with the deadly sin is sometimes the collateral victim not the victim per se (and sometimes by extension, us the viewers). ho-kay.

Honestly, I didn’t like it. Not worth the hype. Visually beautiful, well acted, even the randos are top notch actors, cram packed with (possibly too much) detail, we only see the aftermath of the crimes which both is respectful and more potent...

but the story was just edgelord sadism/nihilism with a vague catholic bent and the killer is written as a super villain. Bleh. Harlan Ellison and others wrote this exact same shite in the 70s (ya know: I have no mouth, The exorcist...) and by the time I’d devoured those books in my teens in the mid 90s I was so over it like get lost, it’s been done to death: in the future, in the past, in space, humans rabbits monsters cavemen demons computers spacewormgods, DONE to death.

Se7en really suffers from the contrast with

1/ Mindhunter, David Fincher’s recent netflix series about the FBI starting to take behavioural science seriously (of course we can debate how that went off the rails with profilers getting way over-rated for what they do). The show has the same beautiful horror and bleakness, same grit but the killers are presented as they really are: terrifying but also pathetic, prolific not because they’re geniuses but because cops are lazy and biased and so is society when it comes to certain types of victim. It practially works as a deconstruction of se7en and the serial killer/super cop myths. Good job on the growth Fincher, now for The Social Network part 2 plz

2/ The Hannibal Lecter franchise specifically Manhunter (1986) and the Hannibal TV series for their Dante and Milton analysis and their killers with a message or an internal logic. Of course this is a cartoon world where mystical shrinks hunt the murderous and in this twisted world, beauty is in transcending life.

3/ Countless TV, anime and movies delving into the devout* and their relationship to sin and or evil that make se7en’s script look trite. It’s always a fascinating topic to watch people grapple with faith and humanity so I can probably give you recs by denomination at this point.

*By devout, I mean mostly abramic faith frameworks with the occasional greco-roman point of view with a rare sprinkling of humanism/transhumanism. I havn’t seen any hinduism based value systems written by non westerners and only have one or two examples of muslim visual fiction that doesn’t get soap opera level wierd (Let’s all agree that Splinter Cell s2 didn’t happen) because I’ve been avoiding certain topics (real life atrocities) and countries (mexican, brazilian and turkish movies for example after getting burned too many times - I’ll be more likely to give a chance to mx br tk diaspora movies if that makes any sense). I’m absolutely open to recommendations from other perspectives and faiths but it could be a while before i’m actually ready to watch something that could be mentally painful again.

[ill-will-editions]

QUARANTINE LETTER #4

A fourth letter in our quarantine series, from our friend Icarus.

-----

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED

“They’ve already destroyed everything, all the structures we believed in, trusted. Maybe we’re in a transitional phase, you know? There’s some sort of substitution going on. Meanwhile, we’re navigating in a tremendous vacuum, vaguely oriented by the stars but with no true reference point. Our compasses have gone wild, spinning madly, attracted by thousands of magnetic poles. We might as well throw them out the window, they’re obsolete. It’s just us and the night sky, like it was for the early explorers, while we wait for new, more advanced navigational devices to be invented. My only fear is that the stars have somehow gotten out of place and will be no help as references either.”

- Ignacio de Loyola Brandao, “And Still the Earth”

Dear friends,

It can be strange to intervene in someone else’s debate, but I don’t believe you’ll hold it against me if I do. Over the past weeks, I’ve rather enjoyed the commentary and exchange of letters between my friends, August, Kora, and Orion.  Something about the reflections of my friends is missing for me still, so I’ll chime in without wasting too much time, I hope.

QUARANTINE: INCOMPLETE—WHAT WE THINK IS HAPPENING IS ONLY SOMEWHAT ACCURATE

Today, millions of people are working. In warehouses, in offices, in fields, kitchens and storerooms; from the computer, the sorting room and at construction sites, millions of Americans are sharing the coronavirus with each other and with their neighbors. Many of them are asymptomatic, a portion are not sick yet, and certainly some of them are still hiding their symptoms from their families, employers, and coworkers. No zombie apocalypse is complete without the inconsiderate hot-head who insists, deceptively, that his injury is “nothing, it’s fine, let’s keep moving”. Orion wrote that the virus imposes “its own temporality, which immobilizes everything.” If only.  

   Logistics, shipping, freight, warehousing: these are some of the largest sectors of the 21st century workforce, and they are all on overtime. From Whole Foods to Old Dominion, these disposable workers are simultaneously killable - insofar as the market facilitates their endangerment via assured contact with the virus - and indispensable, insofar as they must not be allowed to strike, unionize, or cease working that this society may minimally function. In these industries, overwhelmingly, black men and immigrants are crammed into job sites without any protective equipment. In other words, they are proletarians in the classical sense, and they are still at work. A true quarantine, a dignified exodus from the commodity society and its extensive productive apparatus, would halt all forms of labor and toil, a circumstance as yet unrealized. If we can say we are living in a quarantine, we must say that it is still incomplete.

AUTONOMY OR AUTOMATA?—THE PANDEMIC AFFECTS ALL OF HUMANITY—WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AS SUCH

What we once called "society" (an entity which now insists it can survive unity and distance simultaneously, even distance for the sake of unity), has been replaced by billions of apparatuses. These apparatuses constitute a vast ACEPHALOGRAM - a system of machines designed to trace and retrace the consciousness of a world that has definitively lost its head.

The period of real domination opened by the aggressive economic and political restructuring in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - “globalization” - has pushed a vast quantity of workers out of manufacturing and into service related industries. Services being overall less profitable then commodity manufacturing and heavy industry, other technological implements such as we see emerge from Silicon Valley have filled the gap, so to speak, of lost profits for the economy by allowing large advertising and analysis firms to mine directly the collective human ambitions in art, sex, politics, culture, and society. To open up this mine, which has produced an existential ruin comparable to the environmental ruin associated with mineral mining, the internet has developed as a global network of pseudo participatory information systems. The data thirst of these industries cannot be sated by the administration of facts from the center or top, they must be produced by the masses directly. But technology does not simply catch data falling naturally from the sky or running off the gutters of consciousness. It produces data by arranging relations such that they produce content that can be bought and sold. Under such conditions, the medical, political, technological and ontological crisis of a pandemic cannot help but be experienced as a video, a collection of tweets, graphs, memes, as background noise, as a conspiracy theory, as a genre in the endless relay of notifications.  

THE MIDDLE OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END—WHAT MAKES INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION POSSIBLE, MAKES COMMON UNDERSTANDING IMPOSSIBLE.

The truth is that social media has allowed billions of people to coordinate themselves into large and small containers of meaning and virtual energy. These containers, ecosystems of signs and signifiers, by dint of their polycentralized arrangement, function as an epistemological subversion of established truth-making infrastructures that require a certain amount of hegemony or global purchase: the scientific method, fact-checking, and debate. Occasionally, the understanding produced in these containers, theory-fictions more than anything else, incidentally conform to an intensity with physical correlatives capable of overpowering police infrastructures and seizing public space, as we saw across the world in 2019. More often, the echo chambers, as they are often called, curtail feelings of common dialogue and the perception of shared futurity that would be seemingly embedded in such a “global” sharing of information. This curtailing allows people of all “types” to be bundled together as data sets, insulated from the experience of true diversity of thought, of experience, of analysis. The polycentralized arrangement of the internet today may be even less participatory than previous eras of information sharing, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Commentators and critics have used the ongoing crisis to delay the moment of our collective education with unwavering ideological entrenchment. At work, it is not uncommon for me to hear small business owners and day traders talk about the failures of socialized medicine in  Italy, implicitly endorsing greater privatization in the US. Among activists, liberals, and leftists, it is impossible to imagine a greater indictment on the privatized, decentralized, healthcare system than what is taking place. Apocalyptic Christian sects believe the government is going to repress churches for gathering, and social justice advocates believe the coronavirus crisis will be “the same, but worse” on every oppressive axis. It’s hard to imagine another reflex.

While they recognize that the internet has plunged billions of people into a pulverized simulacrum, some of my comrades would have us devote ourselves to the dissemination of real news, of verified and sober analysis, of scientific rigor, in order to combat the prevailing disarray. This warms my heart just as it saddens my intellect. We have always been machine-breakers, in a way, revolting against the forward and crushing movement of industry to preserve a less alienated experience of reality, labor, and community. We aren’t wrong for that. We should be reliable sources of information, but not because we will convince people with our reports — which may no longer be so possible online — rather because we believe it is the right thing to do, and because we can at least proceed on a clear and shared basis with each other. But what other strategies could we utilize for analyzing the world that would allow us to act within the protracted vertigo, without trapping ourselves or others in ideological camps, and without losing revolutionary aspirations in a world where global verification of facts seems impossible, but where universal need for a transformation, fascistic or revolutionary, feels like common sense?

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED—THE SYSTEM REDUCES ITSELF TO A PURE FLUX OF DYNAMICS

“We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming

A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder”

-Roberto Bolano, “Leave Everything, Again”

For millennia, the administration of public facts was the cornerstone of political power, and stamping out alternative readings the chief objective of the repressive machinery. The ruling bureaucracy has organized itself to prevent any global loss of control. They’ve always done that. What is surprising is how readily, since 9/11 at least, perhaps much earlier, they have abandoned many important methods for doing so. As the possibility of imagining its own future became increasingly stamped-out, the reigning order abandoned any pretense of pursuing the ideals it propped itself up on, its sole promise being to ward-off unforeseen eventualities. Without embarrassing myself with long-winded arguments about things I am ill-equipped to discuss - certainly less knowledgeable than my dear friends are on such matters as philosophy and critical works - I’d prefer to refer to an argument advanced by Brian Massumi in his essay “National Emergency Enterprise”. In this piece, he argues that a primary strategy of governance is to identify all possible causes of a scenario. The market refashions environments that submit the living tissue of relations one and all to technological “dataveillance”, information which, in principle, allows the administrators of such a system to model its every possible outcome, translating every action into a trans-action, while ensuring that every aberration meets a form of control. He utilizes the example of a forest fire, but we can just look at the pandemic and it’s consequences.

   The ruling class everywhere, has argued and governed as if the coronavirus is "merely the flu", justifying late responses and insufficient care, while also closing borders and taking emergency measures as if we are living in a veritable plague. There are strategies attached to every discourse, interests silently advanced with each interpretation, and powers produced and mobilized by every kind of theory and operation. Anyway, we have been living in the fall out of multiple convergent strategies for controlling and responding to this situation.  The governors of the world, at least of the democratic countries, are basically throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks.  We can imagine that modeling and predictions are conducted endlessly based on analytics produced through data mining and network analysis purchased from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. As technocratic governments subordinate welfare states to the "science" of neoliberalism, the nihilism of the powerful today subordinates everything to the "science" of control.

Anyway, who organizes oblivion today acts with no principles and can only speak in lies. What does this mean for the rest of us?

NOTHING IS EVERYTHING, TRUE IS PERMITTED—TRUTH DOES NOT REQUIRE A SUBJECT ONLY LIES DO. LET'S KEEP IT REAL, WHATEVER THAT IS.

   We can and are responding to this situation. The most important thing, from my perspective, is that we develop a vibrant enough ecosystem of strategies, corresponding to the largest possible interpretation of facts, without dividing our sympathies and concerns into rival fiefdoms and ideological sects. There are benefits to arguing that nothing of the situation is unique, that in fact the worst off before are the worst off now, that today simply represents an opportunity for us, etc. I am not among the comrades advancing this position, but I want to see the results of that framework as soon as possible, if it does not in fact raise the threshold for meaningful interventions. There are benefits to arguing that the quarantine is not deep enough, that the politics of mobilization have failed utterly to devastate the economy, but that a true lock down of the world could resemble the worlds first ever international wildcat general strike. I want to hear advocates of this position contend with the possibility of carceral interpretations of this argument. For those planting survival gardens, for those running autonomous rent strike hotlines, for those training in firearms, I want us to develop a shared enough perspective to see that there is a simple unity in our strategies, which is what is precisely, and incorrectly, attacked in Kora’s most recent letter to Orion: our autonomy. Beyond any individualistic misinterpretations, it is my perspective that the ability of human beings to self-authorize our activity, to determine our shared destinies, to control supply chains, vital infrastructures, and means of subsistence without the mediating factors of the market, are necessary prerequisites for a dignified life on earth. This is not to say, as Kora has intelligently argued, that anyone could come to control the unfolding course of history - a delusion that preppers, governors, and revolutionaries have all held - but precisely that autonomous, self-organized, structures are the only structures capable of responding quickly enough to the destabilizing, frightening, and uncertain futures lying in wait regardless of what we or anyone else do. We must utilize the current situation to repolarize the circumstances to the best of our ability around foundational concerns of power: on the one hand, there are all of the people of the world, some of them bastards we would not live with, and our shared need for dignified healthcare, housing, sustenance, and livelihood; and on the other hand there are all of the bastards waiting this out on yachts, manipulating public data for the sake of a geopolitical PR battle, utilizing the pandemic to pursue totalitarian power fantasies and clampdowns. We don’t need to steer the ship forward, we need to be able to swim in the wreckage.

Sorry, I wrote too much. Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading what others think soon.

-- Icarus

04.11.2020

STATE OF EMERGENCY, DAY 40

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[apaganadrift]

Impromptu Book Review

So, I just got done reading Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. It’s a book that’s been on my list forever, but just hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now. It is an absolute treasure of anthropological, sociological, and historical work.

Originally published in 1979, then re-editioned in 1986, 1996, and 2006, Drawing Down the Moon is a personal and social account of the history and life of Neopagan and Wiccan communities in the United States. Through extensive scholarly work, Adler puts together a very detailed history of the growth and shifts in Neopagan and Wiccan/Witchcraft practices in the US, as well as Britain. With extensive fieldwork and individual interviews, Adler really brings out the oral history and lived experiences of Wiccans and Pagans from the early years of the movements in the US. The 1986 and 2006 editions are updated with new information, reflections, and interviews. The book is broken into 13 chapters with an epilogue.

The first three chapters (Part I) are focused on a general overview of “paganism.” This includes what the term means, how it’s been used overtime, how people come to the religion, how the communities exist, and general worldviews of the greater Neopagan community. Chapters 4-8 (Part II) are focused specifically on Wicca/Witchcraft. It includes an examination of the history of modern Wicca, a look at Wicca and Witches in the modern age, a chapter solely focused on an interview, a discussion of the concepts of magic and ritual, and an analysis of the relationship between Wicca and feminism. Chapters 9-12 (Part III) are focused on other Neopagan groups. Adler covers a wide gamut of other Neopagan groups from Greek to Nordic to Egyptian and many other groups. There is also a chapter on men’s spirituality in Neopaganism. The final chapter (Part IV) is a rather long chapter that really examines the current trends of growth and concern in the greater Neopagan community. It includes issues like changes in Neopagan festivals, the internet, and the future sustainability of Neopagan communities.

Ever since its first printing, Drawing Down the Moon has been the go-to book for the history of Wicca and Neopaganism in America and for good reason. Part of what makes the book so great is that it’s not just an academic text full of citations and the names of long dead people. So much of the book is built off of interviews with many in the community and Adler’s own personal experiences. It makes the book feel like it has a certain life to it. It’s not just the history of Wicca and Neopaganism in America, it’s the chronicle of the community and the culture. Adler also very expertly weaves in many issues involved with the Wiccan and Neopagan community. She discusses feminism, politics, race, class, LGBTQ+ issues (she uses the older form GLBT), religion and modernity, how people handle their religion and faith in their everyday lives, etc. What we learn is that many people in the Wiccan and Neopagan community have many different opinions when it comes to these kinds of things.

Reading through it really made me reflect on a lot of these issues, largely because they’re things that I’ve thought about many times before. Adler does a great job of introducing the issue, giving some explanations about it, bringing in the perspectives of people she’s done interviews with, and posing questions for further thought. It is a fantastic book, but there were certain things that she brought up that I really wanted more of. For example, the chapter about men’s spirituality is specifically focused on the “Radical Faeries” and the spiritual groups of gay men. It’s a very interesting and crucial piece of Neopagan history and culture, for sure, but I’d really like to see more examination of hetero men’s spirituality, particularly in the contemporary context of rethinking masculinity and trying to work through issues of toxic masculinity in America. I’d also like to see a bit more about the revival of non-European, traditional religious practices. One of the issues she discusses at the end of the book is the role of the internet in regards to the growth of the community and growth of practices. There’s definitely a ton more to say about that. These, I feel, are things that left me wanting more from her book, but I think that’s mostly because of the time period when she wrote it. Doing a new edition in 2021, 15 years after the last one, would no doubt bring in a lot more information as those topics I’ve previously mentioned have grown a lot since 2006.

Overall, it’s a fantastic, fantastic book. In many ways, it is the history of Wicca and Neopaganism in the US, not just a history book about Wicca and Neopaganism in the US. It should be required reading for anyone and everyone in the Wiccan and Neopagan community.

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

1\Hi Em! I’d like your typing help if you don’t mind but first I just want to thank you for your advice I read about a year ago to go out and be a Person first before being a Type. That advice pulled me out of a slump where I was way too hard up about defining myself and other people with theories without considering their empirical basis. Anyway, I suspect I’m an INFJ 1 (162?) but I’m a little sceptical of actually being this supposed rare unicorn hype-type and would appreciate your input.

2\I really like planning ahead – daily schedules, which classes to take each semester, etc. I’ve been organising my personal schedule with detailed monthly calendars consistently since I was 18 (I’m now going on 22). I get frustrated easily when there are sudden timing changes, like people cancelling or being very late, and tend to need at least a day’s notice to be mentally prepared, even if it wouldn’t really affect my other activities, which I acknowledge can be a bit irrational.            

           3\I’m a good listener – I’ve been told this by several friends. I haven’t always been the best at advice but my strat is to ask the heck out of the situation that’s bothering them to help them open up about all the different aspects of their concerns. I think it makes them feel thoroughly heard and I enjoy helping them to process their thoughts and feelings without sharing much about myself, if I can see they don’t have that capacity in the moment. Their confidence is rewarding for me too.            

4\However, I’ve realised this might be an unhealthy double-edged sword because I apply the same standard to people who’d like to share my burdens. I tend not to volunteer much info unless asked directly/shown clear signs that my listener wants to hear me out, leading me to dismiss the good intentions of my more easily distracted friends. Also I’d have analysed my feelings from 1000 angles before verbalising so I usually won’t open up unless I’m sure they’re willing to stick around for all of it.            

5\In middle/high school, I was naturally sporty enough/had decent enough spatial awareness to be selected to join sports teams (I did netball and then ultimate frisbee) but performed quite poorly in competitive training because I just couldn’t get a lot of basic stuff right. I also could never really get along with my teammates, who tended to be louder and more social, in contrast to how much better I fit in and how many more interests I shared with my more academically-inclined classmates.            

6\I read a lot of fiction, but ironically I’m terrible at telling stories about things that have happened to me. I remember random details about people like their birthdays and little habits, but when it comes to reimagining a specific event, I can never string together a retelling that comes across as engaging to a listener: either I rush it and give the gist/punchline too early or spend too long filling in atmospheric details that give the “vibe” of the scene but with poor narrative structure.            

7\I’m interested in analysing group dynamics! and how subtle behaviour can affect the overall atmosphere of a social setting. Lack of consensus bothers me, although I try to understand where each person is coming from and rationalise whether their logic “makes sense”. I picked civil engineering as my major because it felt like a waste to drop STEM subjects, which I’d been doing well in, but I’m increasingly leaning towards pursuing urban planning in future because of its sociological aspects.            

8\Other facts: I didn’t have much of a Rebellious Teen phase, I’ve kinda always been the good/smart kid growing up and am probably still lowkey elitist (though I’m working on that). Hypocrisy bugs me a lot. I track my expenses religiously and rarely splurge. I really enjoy learning but I’m all for conceptual understanding – having to do heavy memorising puts me off.   Thanks for your time in reading this and let me know if you need clarification/better examples on anything. Have a nice day!             

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Hi anon,

I’ll go through this but everything here sounds a lot more like the Si-Ne axis than the Ni-Se axis. I think aux Fe is possible but not guaranteed, and I’m not really getting anything for enneagram except possibly 6.

My guess is ISFJ, but there were a few things that implied a certain rigidity and I don’t know if it’s coming from Si+Fe, or if your Si is actually auxiliary. I’m pretty sure ISFJ is correct but if it doesn’t seem right, that would be worth digging into.

The part about disliking interruptions to your plans is more a high Ni or Si thing. The part that gave me pause is the super-detailed schedule because I’ve never done that and a lot of the high Si users or Ni users I know don’t - like, they have a clear mental schedule, and important appointments are obviously marked off, and they don’t like sudden changes, but unless they’re exceptionally busy (and maybe you are) a lot of it is purely in their head and not a detailed start to finish day. If I’m misinterpreting and that’s what you meant, then disregard this.

The part about being a good listener definitely sounds like an Fe approach. It also sounds like a possible low Ne approach. An INFJ wouldn’t really be approaching the problem from every possible angle or focusing on asking direct questions; you also note that you look for clear signs or cues that it’s okay for you to share, rather than making inferences. The extensive emotional analysis sounds like lower Ti, as does the interest in group dynamics.

The part about sports isn’t super helpful; I think a lot of exceptionally good at sports people have high Se, but mediocre or bad at sports doesn’t really mean much. Similarly I haven’t really seen a pattern of if someone can tell a story well and MBTI; there are at least two factors (recall and understanding what’s engaging to others) and you have to be good at both to be good at storytelling. The difficulty with your teammates sounds probably just like general introversion and perhaps some social awkwardness.

I will say your statements about picking civil engineering and group consensus made me briefly think INTP, but I think unless you’re fairly unhealthy your lack of spontaneity rules that out.

Finally: I want to cover conceptual understanding here. You are very specifically interested in very pragmatic, applied things: civil engineering and sociology. You provided a ton of details elsewhere. And then, at the end, you mention a preference for conceptual understanding with no details about it.

This doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it does call into question what you mean by conceptual understanding. I think people divide things into rote memorization and conceptual understanding with no middle ground between, and that’s a big factor in people mistyping as intuitives. I think very few people actually enjoy rote memorization; I went into the physical sciences and math, in fact, because I dislike the rote memorization of, say, biology, but I like things where you can reason through problems from a few first principles and derive things and do actual hands-on experiments.

If ISFJ seems really off to you, let me know, but in that case I would guess aux Ne with something else driving the ‘needs closure’ aspects of your personality, rather than anything with Ni.

[queen-swagzilla]

Born in Dreams, Forged in Blood -  Chapter 1

Rated: M (largely for profanity)

Summary: Katsuki Bakugo was not a good communicator. To be fair, neither was Izuku Midoriya. Looking back on their dumpster fire of a friendship, communication was probably the most significant missing piece in their interpersonal puzzle. Luckily, their translator is back in town, and they're about to take UA by storm.

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She kept her eyes glued to her phone, scrolling lazily as she ignored the whispers that sprang up around her. As each person entered the classroom, the murmurs grew louder.

“Who is she?”

“You think she’s in the wrong classroom?”

“She looks kinda mean.”

“She looks like a delinquent.”

Idiots. Did they really not realize how loud they were being? She kept scrolling, opting to read through the hero analysis forum instead of indulging their curiosity. There was some excellent information about Bubble Girl and Centipeder that she wanted to dive into. Nighteye’s sidekicks were always fascinating, and she’d much rather learn about them than deal with petty high school crap.

“What the hell are you doing here?” A gruff voice demanded from the doorway. Finally, she looked up.

“Nice. Really welcoming.” She replied dryly.

“Answer the fucking question.” Katsuki snapped.

“If you’re looking for welcoming…or friendly, Bakugo’s the wrong person. He’s more of an acquired taste.” A girl on the other end of the classroom joked. The one who had said she looked mean. She snorted but didn’t respond.

“Shut the hell up, Kirby.” Katsuki glowered. “Seriously Sana, why are you here?”

“BAKUGO! You are being very rude!” This time, it was an uptight dude with glasses.

“At least he fucking greeted me directly instead of insulting me within earshot.” She snapped, finally turning to glare at them. “You don’t fucking know me, and I don’t need you to tell me how shit works with Katsuki.” Glasses and Kirby both looked affronted, but Katsuki was grinning.

“Good. For a minute there I thought you’d lost your teeth.” He dropped into the desk next to her. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re sitting in my classroom and not explaining yourself.” He grunted. “Does Deku know you’re here?”

“Nope! It was supposed to be a surprise. Where is he?”

“How the fuck should I know?” He demanded. She leveled him with an unimpressed stare, and he rolled his eyes. “He’s in the infirmary after breaking his entire fucking body during training.”

“He’s still in the infirmary?” The annoying girl yelped. Sana rounded on her, eyes flashing.

“Hey, I’m trying to have a conversation. Wanna keep your big nose out of it?” She snapped.

“I MUST ASK THAT YOU TREAT US WITH RESPECT!” Glasses shouted.

She scoffed. “Like you treated me with respect? Whispering about me while I was right here? I don’t think you even tried to lower your voice. You—“ she pointed at the Kirby. “Said I look mean, and you—“ she pointed at Glasses. “Said I look like a delinquent. So step the fuck off me and stay out of my business.”

“Easy, Sana. They’re Deku’s best friends. Round-Face is Uraraka and Four-Eyes is Iida, our class rep.”

“If these are his best friends, we need to talk to him about his shitty taste in people.” She muttered to him. He snorted.

“Deku likes everyone. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be Deku. His friendship requirements are breathing and having a pulse.” He rolled his eyes.

“Whatever.” She turned her gaze back to the now tremendously offended duo. “Keep your noses out of my business. Same goes for any of you who were talking shit when you thought I wasn’t listening.”

“Seriously, dude, take it down a notch. You don’t want to be lashing out when Aizawa gets here. Pay them back in training.” Katsuki muttered. She grinned at him—a sharp, toothy, vicious-looking thing.

“Figured it out?”

“I’m not stupid.” He snapped. “I was surprised.”

“A good surprise?” She prodded. He glared at her mutinously, and her grin widened.

“No. You’re a pain in the ass and I hate you.”

“Liar.”

“Woah!” A surprised voice sounded from the doorway. “You’re talking to him and he’s not yelling! That’s awesome!” A spiky-haired redhead bounded toward them, followed by a blonde boy, a black-haired boy, a pink (like literally head-to-toe pink) girl, and a purple-haired girl.

“What, does he usually just scream at everyone?” She asked dryly.

“Yeah! Our boy’s feral, but it looks like you’ve got the magic touch. Only like…three people do, and it’s not exactly reliable.” The blonde one explained. She snorted. That sounded about right, but—

“I thought you’d grown out of that.” She muttered. He glared at her.

“Maybe they understand each other. She seems like she’s basically the girl version of Bakugo, ribbit.”

“Shut the fuck up Frog-face.” Katsuki snarled. “I don’t care what you think of me, but don’t you dare talk shit about her. You don’t know her.”

The silence that boomed through the room was deafening. “Being the girl version of you isn’t an insult. It’s not really true, but it’s not an insult.” Sana said after a long, surprised moment.

“Trust me, she meant it as one.” He snapped.

“Alright, problem children. Sit down and shut up.” Aizawa grumbled as he dragged himself into the classroom. The class hastened to comply. “First of all, as I imagine you’ve noticed, we have a new student—Sana Kimura. She was scouted by Principal Nezu after an incident with a villain in Kyoto. I trust you’ll all welcome her to 1-A.” He drawled. “Second, Midoriya won’t be joining us today due to his most recent set of injuries. Recovery Girl has informed me that she will not be relaxing visiting hours, so if you want to see him, you see him before 8 pm and leave as soon as visiting hours are over. If you try to overstay your welcome, you will be barred from future visiting hours indefinitely.”

Sana raised her hand. “Excuse me, sir. He usually bounces back faster. Is something wrong?”

“No. The damage was too extensive to be healed in one pass, so she’s keeping him longer. Her quirk drains stamina, so she’s keeping him in the infirmary. No need for concern.” He assured her. “You’ll find that Midoriya spends about half his time in the infirmary. The shock and concern will eventually fade.”

Katsuki snorted. “She’s more of a mother hen than my actual mother. Not a chance.”

“Shut your face.” She grumbled, kicking at his chair.

“Anyways,” Aizawa said, interrupting before they could start arguing.”We’ll be skipping team exercises until Midoriya returns, just so that we can keep the playing ground fair. Since we have a student with abilities that we aren’t familiar with yet, I’d like for you all to be on the same page when we start sparring while she’s included.”

“Sensei, Deku already knows what her quirk is.” Katsuki interrupted.

“That may be, but I’d wager he hasn’t seen it used in quite some time, let alone fought against it. The more information his classmates can gain, the less objective I can be regarding your ability to make quick evaluations or learn from previous experiences. I’d rather you all take on those challenges together. Besides, I’d like to have more teachers available when we do our initial evaluation of Miss Kimura’s ability and potential.”

Katsuki seemed to accept that logic, so he slumped back in his seat.

“So we won’t be training today? At all?” The candy-cane looking dude from the back asked, voice monotone. Iida looked rather sour at the thought, frowning deeply. She didn’t really care unless he yelled about it later. The guy was fuckin’ loud.

“I’m going to allow you to use homeroom as a study period, and for hero training, you can choose to either train physically or continue to develop your coursework. Some of you are performing disastrously in your core subjects, and I’d strongly advise you to prepare for your exams.” His eyes skated over the room, landing in a few key spots that she didn’t pay attention to. “Use the extra time wisely, and don’t do anything stupid.” Sana watched in amusement as the adult-in-charge whipped out a sleeping bag and curled up in a cocoon on the classroom floor.

“Yo, Bakubro—could you help me with the calc homework? I’m stuck on number ten.” The redhead spiky dude asked.

“Why didn’t you ask me last night, Shitty Hair?”

“You were asleep by the time I got to it!” He complained.

Katsuki sighed…well, growled, and held out his hand. “Let me see what you tried so far.” He turned to Sana. “This is Eijirou Kirishima. The blond one is Denki Kaminari. That’s Hanta Sero, Pinky is Mina Ashido, and AirPods is Kyoka Jiro.”

She gaped. “Woah, you actually learned their names? You must really like them.” She chuckled incredulously. He muttered under his breath, so quickly that it sounded like a growl to their companions, but she heard it clear as day.

“Shut the fuck up.” He’d said. “If they know that I actually like them, they’ll want to hang out even more.”

She threw her head back and laughed, but acquiesced. “Well, I trust your taste in friends. You’re more discerning than Zuku. He’d befriend a serial killer if he had the chance.” She said, still chuckling. “It’s nice to meet you guys.”

The redhead grinned. “Nice to meet you too! How do you know Bakubro and Midoriya?”

“Her mom went to college with our moms. I’ve been stuck with her since birth.” Katsuki snapped.

“Right, that’s definitely why you called me and Deku-screeched at me for an hour when you got accepted to UA.” She drawled. He glared at her, snarling.

“Deku-screeched?” Earlobe girl—Jiro—snorted.

“You know how Zuku mutters super fast under his breath? Well when he gets super excited about it, sometimes he does it really loudly. He sounds kinda like an auctioneer, but with Present Mic’s quirk.” Sana replied. “I thought he was trying to blow my eardrums out when he called.”

“First of all, shut the fuck up. Second of all, at least I told you that I got in. Third, Aizawa said you were scouted after a villain attack. You haven’t said shit about a villain attack. Start talking.” Katsuki demanded.

“I thought you wanted me to shut the fuck up.” She teased. The glare he shot her this time was different. Yeah, it could have melted glass, but it was a little more pleading. She sighed. “Can I tell you later? When Zuku’s here? I figured we could catch up on everything at once. I think between the three of us, there are some things we don’t want to talk about more than once, if possible.”

He glowered but conceded. “Fine. But we are talking about this.” His voice dropped again, too low for the rest to hear. “You and fucking Deku are going to give me heart attacks.”

She ducked her head, inky black hair falling into her eyes. “Of course we’ll talk about it. Sorry, Kacchan.” There was a dramatic collection of gasps, and she glanced at Katsuki’s friends. “What?”

“N-nobody but Midoriya is allowed to call him that!” Kaminari stammered. She laughed.

“Sorry, Zuku might have started it, but it’s a childhood friend privilege.” She replied. “He couldn’t pronounce Kacchan’s name when we were younger, and I liked it because it sounded cute. It’s really just for me and Zuku, though. At least, as far as I know.”

“Yeah, because I hate it, but I can’t get you two to stop.”

“Yeah? Then why did you blow up your couch the last time I called you Bakugo?” She snickered.

“Stop exposing me, asshole.” He growled, turning to the messy homework that Kirishima had slid onto his desk.

“While he’s making sure Kiri doesn’t fail, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Jiro suggested, pulling her chair closer.

“YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING!” Four-Eyes barked. “PLEASE FOLLOW MR. AIZAWA’S DIRECTIONS! MISS KIMURA MUST HAVE WORK TO CATCH UP ON!”

“What did I just say about minding your own business? I can make my own decisions.” Sana snapped. “But if you guys need to study, I can help! Kacchan and I can tag team!” She offered, switching gears from being pissed at Iida to smiling pleasantly at Katsuki’s friends, who were making her feel substantially more welcome than the rest of the class had.

“We’re actually caught up for once, and I think we can revise later.” Mina smiled. “We’re supposed to make you feel welcome, right? We wanna get to know you! But thanks for offering.”

“Yeah, I might take you up on that later. Bakugo’s smart, but he can be vicious.” Kaminari joked.

They all ignored Katsuki’s answering snarl. “Alright, then. Well, what do you want to know?” She asked, a little nervous. It was always nerve-wracking being the new girl.

“Where did you transfer from?” Jiro asked.

“Shiketsu. I didn’t apply to UA—it would have cost too much for me to get an apartment.”

“Even though mom and Auntie Inko both said they’d let you stay with us,” Katsuki muttered. She ignored him.

“Since you’re living in the dorms now, accommodations are taken care of. It all worked out. Even if I hate the reason the dorms were built.” She continued, shooting a nasty glare at the back of Katsuki’s head.

“I didn’t want to get kidnapped by shitty, delusional villains.” He growled.

“What’s your quirk?” Kirishima asked, leaning in.

“Uh…well, it’s called Kinesis. But I guess vibration is a simpler way to explain it.” She shrugged. “My hero name will be Aftershock.”

“That’s way better than King Explosion Murder.” Kaminari sniggered. Sana pinned Katsuki with another glare.

“That is not your hero name. Zuku and I worked really hard on your hero name! AND you helped me with mine!” She pouted. He ignored her. “I swear, if I see King Explosion Murder on your provisional license, I’ll start ruining your perfect, disciplinarian life routine, starting with your sleep schedule. You know I can.” She threatened.

“Give it a rest. It felt weird to use it with the shit going on between me n’ Deku. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the name.” He mumbled. She pinned him with a completely unimpressed look, and he knew exactly what it meant.

It meant ‘you can stop the shit between you and Deku whenever you decide to stop being a jackass, and you know it.'

“What hero name did you come up with for him?” Kirishima asked. Sana grinned.

“Ground Zero.” She stated proudly.

“That one’s awesome!” Mina cried. “Did you pick one for Midoriya too? I mean, Deku isn’t the worst hero name, but it’s not really as awesome as his quirk.”

She bit her lip. “Kacchan and I have differing opinions on that.” She stated, deflecting. Sure, she had an idea, but she had no idea if Katsuki did. Hell, she hadn’t even seen them since Izuku had mysteriously developed a quirk, and her little broccoli boy had seemed to want to keep his late development under wraps.

She’d still seen that quirk of his in action at the Sports Festival. It was amazing, and she wanted answers.

“Well, what’s your idea?” Mina pushed, leaning closer.

She pursed her lips. “I came up with it when he wasn’t that good at using his quirk. You know; he’d break his bones if he used it, but he still stood up for everyone and tried to keep his friends safe, even if that meant fighting off bullies quirkless. I thought he should be called ’Stronghold’.” She explained.

“And I thought that screwed with our theme—battle focused heroes with conceptual names.” Katsuki supplied, annoyed. Sana raised her eyebrows in surprise. He was willingly sharing information about his relationship with Izuku? “I thought he should be called Last Stand. Like the person who’ll keep going, even when they don’t think they’ll win.”

“Those are both great!” Kirishima cheered. “Super manly!”

“Why would you need his name to match?” Kaminari asked, face screwed up in confusion.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s a good question.” Jiro agreed, annoyed that Kaminari had thought of it first. Sana glanced at Katsuki who looked a little constipated if she was being honest.

But he surprised her again, dropping Kirishima’s homework and turning to the group. “When we were young, the three of us wanted to be a hero team.” He barked. “When we were coming up with names, it felt weird that our ideas didn’t fit. But that’s not a fucking problem anymore since we’re not a fucking team."

Sana pouted. “We’re not?”

Katsuki refused to look her in the eye when he replied, “Absolutely fucking not.”

“But Kacchan—“

“No.”

She huffed. “I go to school here now, you know. I’ve got three whole years to wear you down.” She reminded him. All of a sudden, Katsuki looked like he wanted to jump out of a window. “If you make it to graduation without caving, I’ll still have family dinners and holidays. You might as well accept it, Kacchan.”

“I don’t have to accept shit.” He grunted, going back to the homework in front of him. His four friends watched them bicker, eyes bouncing between them. They had to wonder—who would come out on top? And if it wasn't Katsuki, they wondered if he’d really consider it a loss.

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[ngame989]

The AMA scares me... everything said is word of god! What if something that places our Starco happily ever after in peril is said?

Fuck it I’ll actually do some literary criticism theory here because why not. Please stick around for all the points, even if it’s long.

1. The literal last thing a content creator who ends their work with a happy ending would do is casually word-of-god away the entire purpose of their story. At worst I’d expect some less-than-pleasing answers about stuff in S3 or 4, but even then, not really a huge deal.

2. Let’s talk about literary theory: you don’t even have to believe in “word of God” that much if you don’t want to! I’m by no means qualified to lecture THAT extensively on the subject, but simply put there’s a whole host of debate and personal interpretations for how much what an author/showrunner/creator verbally states outside the confines of their work counts towards the work itself (usually framed as authorial intent vs death of the author). 

Authorial intent, taken to its extreme, is the idea that the creator(s) of something are the only ones who can dictate what is or isn’t real in that work, forever. If you FULLY believe in authorial intent, if Daron went in her AMA and said “actually Star contracted terminal lung cancer from Cleaved and will die 3 minutes after the credits roll” you would have no choice but to take that as completely true within SVTFOE, even though all published material for the show had 0 indications of it. 

Under “death of the author”, though, just because a creator’s underlying intentions, or what ideas they have that aren’t in the work itself, don’t matter any more than someone else’s personal interpretation. Star vs the Forces of Evil is a completed TV show with 77 episodes and a few official companion books, and who is to say anything that isn’t officially published through Disney has to count more than something else? If I draw you a picture of a person standing in a field, and I tell you there’s a giant invisible cheeseburger next to him, should you believe me? Does the fact that I told you I intended for something to be in my artwork make it true even if you, very reasonably, do not see it in my finished artwork? 

There’s some caveats, though. Obviously, while the show was airing, anything the crew said had an inherent weight since they knew the future - this whole debate mostly applies to analysis of a completed work. But given that it’s technically possible for more content of the show to come out in the future, one could definitely make a reasonable claim that Daron’s word should be regarded highly because if she made more official content through Disney in the future, what she says on the internet might actually become part of the official show later. Also, note here that death of the author doesn’t mean “all interpretations are equally valid” either. If there are faint, mostly transparent outlines of a cheeseburger in the picture I draw and the person in the picture is taking a bite out of it and the artwork is titled “Person Eating Invisible Cheeseburger”, even if you personally didn’t see the cheeseburger that wouldn’t make it not there, so please don’t mistake this as “if someone thinks Star still loves Tom that’s equally valid because death of the author!” All DotA does is say that canon should be interpreted as an insulated body of work (show + books in this case) and that anything outside of that should have been added officially if it wants to be treated as anything more than someone’s personal opinion, even if that person happens to be a creator of the work.

It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, either. It’s a spectrum with Authorial Intent and DotA at the two extremes, and as someone viewing the show for yourself you’re allowed to assign partial weights. If Daron has a cute suggestion that you enjoy (like, for instance, that laser puppies stayed alive but lost their lasers) then by all means work it into your ideas for what happens after the show ends, but that doesn’t have to mean that “Daron said something I don’t like and therefore the entire story might be ruined” if you don’t want it to be.

Odds are still high that I end up obsessing over whatever relevant answers she might give anyway, though. Phew, that was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?

3. Even if she weren’t hung up on preserving the happy ending, and even if you still decided to treat everything she said as fact no matter what, she tends to not really give substantive answers about concrete details. Maybe that was just because she didn’t want to accidentally spoil anything, IDK, but... there’ve only been a small handful of times that Daron has given away information directly that wasn’t just completely present in the show itself. Usually it’s talk about production, or animation, or meaningless little fluff bits, or her own personal favorite things. Odds that Daron comes out and ruins any future headcanons are slim to nil.

I have no idea why I decided to actually answer this with my real thoughts rather than just give a snippy quip. S3 Ngame is leaking, I guess.

[mx-metronome]

Say, remember when I posted Thorton and I said I also planned on including a short essay about my art and true satisfaction? Well I have a few hours to kill before bed, so here is that essay. (Read More doesn’t work on mobile, I am so sorry)

I’ll start with establishing that everyone has that art. That one medium that really makes them happy, that sincerely drives them to improve if for no other reason than to learn and delve deep into their craft. Music, painting, knitting, it doesn’t matter.

Some pursue an art for the sake of wanting to impress others, then get frustrated when it doesn’t come easy. For them, practice is painful, and no enjoyment comes of it. It feels like a chore to them. But once they find that art, they stop caring about recognition, and they stop attaching their self worth to how skilled they are in that art.

My art is cross stitch. It has been for nearly a decade. Through all my years of high school, I desperately wanted to be good at something so that other people would like me. I wanted to define myself as an individual for everyone to see. Then one fateful day in April 2010, I picked up cross stitch, but not for any of the reasons above: I started because I felt it was something that I would truly enjoy. I always fancied pixel art, and I wanted to do something with my hands instead of a computer screen, so it felt natural to pick it up.

Right away, my life improved. I forgot about most of my social insecurities, and my self esteem began to climb. I started off small, with little pixel arts like Pokémon and Mario characters. The projects got bigger over time, but not big enough that I felt overwhelmed. I had a small part time job my senior year, and it paid well; I took all that money I made and immediately blew it on more supplies. Slowly, my collection of fabric, floss, and needles grew. My patterns started to as well, as I was itching to extend my skill as far as I could imagine. For the first six years, everything was fantastic.

Somewhere down the line, things changed. As I graduated college and my mental state worsened, I took steps backward back into my high school years when I was so concerned about what others thought of me. My projects got so absurdly large that it took so much energy to finish them, but I worked so hard to impress people.

At first, it worked: Barista Klug (2017) is a perfect example of this. Going into this doozy of a project, my heart was in the right place for the first three months, but as winter turned to late spring, my depression symptoms became severe. There were a handful of days where I couldn’t even move from my bed, the first days of their kind. My passion was dying, and it was frustrating to me. Cross stitch slowly ceased to be fun.

I saw him to his completion, but I was coping with a lot of stress at the time, so he didn’t feel as satisfying to finish as I had imagined. After I posted him on tumblr, and he didn’t get the notes on here that I felt reflected my efforts, things only got worse. I continued to start new, overambitious projects in an attempt to get people to notice me; I felt like a little fame and recognition would help me feel not so alone. But of the four or five massive projects I have started since, none of them have even come close to getting done.

Over the next year, the stitching just...stopped. I started a few more projects, sincerely believing a few times that my stitch itch had come back, but it never lasted long enough. I wasn’t doing anything with my hands, nothing was keeping my mind at bay. One particular day in 2017 stands out to me as the worst depression day ever, but the entirety of 2018 was my worst depression year. I was artistically stagnant, and although I knew cross stitching could be my saving grace, I never had the motivation to do it.

I finished a single cross stitch for the whole of 2018: a small, quick one of Ralsei from Deltarune, in a desperate attempt for stitching to fix my broken soul. Even though he wasn’t nearly as overwhelming a project, I stitched him for the wrong reasons: he was easy notes. It was another difficult time in my life, and I needed the attention.

This year, 2019, I feel is when I started to improve. I took a semester off of school to mentally heal, and in this momentary ceasefire, I tried to pick up cross stitch again through another overambitious project, Agent 9 the monkey. Upon completion, he will stand as my cross stitch project with the second most number of stitches, so he’s no picnic! Like Barista Klug, things were smooth for the first 3 or 4 months, but he’s since gone under hiatus, just like the rest, and I haven’t picked him up since.

So where did I go wrong? I asked myself for years. Why doesn’t this make me happy anymore? Why was I so satisfied with my work in my youth, but now I hate the mere thought of it? Saying it all aloud now, I’m certain the answer is crystal clear to all of you. But I wanted to pinpoint an answer in hopes of pursuing my craft so relentlessly and with wild abandon like I did a decade ago. I wanted a signal in this darkness...

After almost four years of complete darkness and confusion, at the end of June 2019, I received my signal. Still coping with my depression, I heard a new Pokémon game was coming out for mobile, and one of my fav (and super obscure) characters of all time would be in the core game. The clouds started to lift as my heart attached itself to an old lost fandom, granting me an urge, one that can only be granted by pure, distilled hype.

Enter Factory Head Thorton.

I knew I HAD to cross stitch him, to encapsulate the spirit that I hadn’t felt in so long. But this time, I did things differently: Why make a giant pattern with all the intricate details when this guy has sprites from the DS era, sprites that are easily transposable into a cross stitch pattern? I knew his sprite was small enough that I could finish him before school was back in session, but I’d have to work fast.

While I was working on the spritework for the pattern one July night, I had to pause and cry about it. To this day I am uncertain what triggered it, but working on this pattern filled me with such a raw happiness, the likes of which I’d never felt before. I was feeling true contentment for the first time in over half a decade, and I couldn’t contain my relief. As I began the stitching itself, that contentment carried over into my handiwork. I wasn’t stitching him because it would be a quick grab for notes (he’s obscure enough of a character as it is); I was making this stitching for myself, just a little something tangible that I made with my two hands. (If I ever came off as though notes on him were important to me, it was less for fame and more for shooting a flare into a dormant corner of a fandom and hoping I could make some new connections.)

Yeah, I felt satisfaction completing most of my other projects, but Thorton hit differently: Yeah, finishing him felt good, but working on him from start to finish felt even better, something I didn’t feel with Barista Klug or Ralsei. It was a sensation that sent me all the way back to high school, when I felt genuine passion and excitement in every stitch I made. This project was a meditation, almost a time capsule, even though I had only made the pattern a month prior.

From 2016 and on, none of my projects sparked joy. Thorton sparked joy, from beginning to end. So where did I lose my way? Well, I narrowed it down to two basic characteristics.

I think it was the spritework, what I suppose could be considered my traditional style when I first started in 2010. I moved away from sprites in 2015 or so, and it was about then that my art career started downhill. But going back to that style felt so perfect and ethereal, like it’s what I was always meant to do. I was very passionate about Barista Klug, but he wasn’t done in my old-timey sprite style.

Another contributing factor is likely whether or not I’m passionate about the subject and, by extension, whether I’m making the piece for attention over personal enjoyment. Am I considering how much I love that which I am stitching, or am I thinking about how much more people will love me once I’m done? Ralsei was indeed a sprite, but I made him for quick notes, seeing as I started and finished him while Deltarune was still at its peak popularity.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I stitched something that met both criteria, and it felt so powerful. I’m definitely taking this analysis to heart, and I aspire to pursue more projects like Thorton in the foreseeable future.

.........I say as I have already gathered $100 of materials for another HUGE latch hook project... Shame I figured this out a month too late, I suppose.

[absolxguardian]

Master and Apprentice Propechy Analysis

Alright, with Master and Apprentice giving us snippets of Jedi prophecies, it’s time for one of my favorite things, analyzing them with not just the hindsight of over 60 years of events on the characters, but with the knowledge that narrative imperative means that the prophecies cover events in the main story. So let’s go:

“She who will be born to darkness will give birth to darkness.”

I can very confidently say this refers to Leia. She’s Vader’s biological child, and her son will be Kylo Ren. The original prophecy was also in Old Alderaanian, making it even more relevant to Leia. Qui-Gon brings up a possible interpretation of the prophecy having already passed, referring a Malastaran duchess with an evil father and a Dark Jedi daughter. I’m going to say narrative imperative makes it about something the audience already knows about. And something involving the family of the likely Chosen One is going to give the events more weight to the Force, if you want an in-universe explanation.

“When the kyber that is not kyber shines forth, the time of prophecy will be at hand.”

Qui-Gon ends the book believing that the false kholen crystals on his mission indicate that his mission starts the time of prophecy. I don’t really agree with him. To start, there’s nothing about this mission that makes it more prophecy-like than any other mission Qui-Gon went on with Obi-Wan. It’s not their first, and it’s not the one right before TPM. Qui-Gon does have visions that end up being correct, but he didn’t even have them before the mission. And visions aren’t really prophecies.

If you assume the time of prophecy is the time periods covered by the movies (again narrative imperative and the Chosen One prophecy), either TPM or ANH/Rogue One starts the time of prophecy. Qui-Gon’s first vision after seeing the kholen crystals consist of them turning red, like bled crystals. I could see bled kyber crystals not being considered kyber because they’ve been damaged. If that’s the case, then TPM will mark the first time the wider Jedi order encountered Sith lightsabers in a thousand years. And so that’s when “kyber that is not kyber” shines forth. Or if the “time of prophecy” is the OT then the activation of the Death Star would be when kyber that is not kyber shines forth. The laser is powered by kyber crystals, but the modifications and impersonal activation of them could make it so they’re no longer true kyber. I don’t really have a preference for either marker, but I don’t really agree with Qui-Gon.

“When the righteous lose the light, evil once dead shall return.”

Obviously, this could be about the complacency of the Jedi Order leading to the return of the Sith and most likely is, but there’s another more specific reading for this prophecy. And that’s Maul. This would make the Jedi losing the light when they enter the Clone Wars. Now if the prophecy said evil once dead would return because of the righteous losing the light, then I’d say it’s definitely the Sith, because the survival of the Sith comes directly from the Jedi’s problems. Maul’s return is a less direct cause and effect, but the prophecy doesn’t require the return to be because of the Jedi’s problems.

“The danger of the past is not past, but sleeps in an egg. When the egg cracks, it will threaten the galaxy entire.”

Yeah, it’s the Sith. I don’t think there’s any deeper symbolic meaning of the egg part, it’s just that things grow in eggs, but can’t hurt anyone while inside one.

When Qui-Gon is musing over the whole idea of prophecies, he thinks about a prophecy that “said the Sith would disappear yet appear again”. We don’t know the exact text of the prophecy, but I could see it as being either of the previous two. Jedi studying that prophecy agree that it references to a possible return of the Order, which it obviously does. Qui-Gon mentions that it could be about Darth Wrend, a Sith who was assumed dead but then returned to fight the Jedi. Again, I think narrative imperative requires it to be former. I also think we can say that Qui-Gon studying this prophecy is why he’s so confident Darth Maul is a Sith.

“One will ascend to the highest of the Jedi despite the foreboding of those who would serve with him.”

Qui-Gon believes the prophecy refers to him, but since he never accepts the position of the council, it can’t be. And it’s clearly about Anakin. Thank you random Jedi Seer for having such a straightforward prophecy.

“Only through sacrifice of many Jedi will the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless.”

The most obvious interpretation is that the destruction of the Jedi somehow “cleanses” what they did to the clones. I’m not sure how the Jedi Order falling makes up for what happened to the clones, it certainly doesn’t improve their situation. The only thing I can think of is that it’s somewhat implied that Order 66 only works once (Tiin was only able to pull his Order 66 trick because the clones with the inquisitors were new, but Bilabla’s clones keep hunting Kanan. On the other hand, the few Imperial clones we know of aren’t obsessed with the Jedi anymore), and so with it fulfilled, they’re finally freed from the inhibitor chip. But it seems like a pretty bad deal, but I could imagine the Force or the Seer considering freedom from possible literal mind control enough.

Another reading I could think of is that the masses of the galaxy: slaves, clones, and exploited poor beings are the nameless because no one pays much attention to their plight. With the Jedi Order reset, the sin that was their complacency and being bound to the Republic is destroyed. You see that with Ezra, Kanan, and Ahsoka, but Luke clearly falls into the same trap. Qui-Gon says that the prophecies can be filtered by the Seer’s basis (so it’s a tool to learn about how they see the world), so it’s possible that the Seer just saw Rey’s new light-side Order as Jedi, or maybe Rey ends up calling them Jedi. Of course, this is if it does turn out Rey does the likely thing of forming a new and improved Jedi-like order.

“When the Force itself sickens, past and future must split and combine.”

The stuff about past and future made me think of the World Between Worlds, but nothing about that time really strikes me as making the Force sick any more than the Empire after Rebels. They were single-handedly causing climate change on Lothal, and with the Loth Wolves, the planet seems to be very important to the Force, but I can’t really see Ezra’s time travel as “splitting and combining”. Maybe the Force was just worried about Ahsoka, since she holds the spirit of the Daughter.

However, there’s another way to read this. With the Cosmic Force “awakening” in TFA and Luke noticing a change in the Force when Rey arrives, it’s implied that the events ST trilogy is affecting the Force itself. With them returning to Jakku, where the definitely dark-side abyss is located, it's possible that part of TROS deals with the Force being sick in some way. Rey learning from the Jedi of the past, but also using her own morality and ideas to create a better order and that’s past and future splitting and combining. Take what works from tradition, but make your own future. If my second guess is true, then it means that this prophecy has actual predictive qualities for us, and that’s pretty cool.

“A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored.”

So you know how I’ve said that I wouldn’t make a Chosen One theory without the actual text of the prophecy, well here it is. It’s also simpler than the several page mostly-censored version from legends. Well to start, unless there’s some translation gender weirdness (like the original language of the prophecy had no gendered pronouns and the translator’s own basis influenced them), Rey isn’t the Chosen One. But don’t get excited, Kylo Ren can’t be the Chosen One either, because the identity of Kylo’s dad is pretty important. In fact, the only way I can see the Chosen One being Luke is that “born of no father” isn’t literal, but instead, it's about how when Anakin fell and Padme rejected him, he forfeited the right to be Luke’s true father. I like that reading, but the ending of ROTJ seems to imply Lucas doesn’t agree with me.

In fact, I’m now firmly in the “Anakin is the Chosen One” camp, and I’ve left my “series of Chosen Ones” headcanon. The main reason is the “through him” part. It implies that it’s not Vader’s actions that cause balance in the Force, but that it’s an unintended consequence of his actions. Now people have joked that the two-ish Jedi and two-ish Darksiders after ROTS mean that Anakin balanced the Force then, and Rael even brings up that same idea, that balance is when light and dark are equal. But when the Empire rose, it was only the numbers of Sith and Jedi that were equal (and they weren’t even that equal, with the Inquisitors, short-term surviving Jedi, and the almost Jedi like Ahsoka). The Sith were clearly more powerful. However, as I mentioned before, there’s a good chance the Cosmic Force “fell asleep” after ROTJ. And there have been hints that extensions of the Cosmic Force like the Ones or Force Ghosts are actually aberrations. Anakin brings balance to Mortis by killing all of the Ones, and the Father seems confident Anakin will do the same to the wider galaxy. Now he may be wrong, but I’m more inclined to trust a Force god over someone like Maul. And Qui-Gon’s story in FACPOV makes it clear that when a Force ghost manifests, it’s an unpleasant and unnatural separation from the Force. Somehow, the end of the Sith caused the Force to smooth out the aberrations that are consciousness independent from the whole. Well, until TFA. And if that is true, it explains why the Force Ghosts couldn’t give Luke advice until TLJ.

“He who learns to conquer death will through his greatest student live again.”

Obviously “he who learns to conquer death” is supposed to be Qui-Gon, but the question is, who’s the greatest student? Qui-Gon becomes the master when he teaches both Yoda and Obi-Wan after his death, but I wouldn’t describe anything of what Yoda or Obi-Wan does counting as living again. Neither of them really live up to Qui-Gon’s temporal goals. Also, who is supposed to be the greatest? Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon’s only temporal student, and you can’t be the greatest when there’s no competition. But Qui-Gon only taught one thing to Yoda.

The fact the obvious interpretation doesn’t quite fit has led me to another reading, one that also predicts the future from our view as well. And that is that Luke ends up conquering death a lot more metaphorically through Rey. The TROS trailer has, what we have to assume to be Luke’s Force Ghost saying ��we have taught you all you know- a thousand generations live in you now.” It sounds like Luke is somehow speaking for other Jedi spirits or at least the contents of the Jedi texts. As I discussed earlier, Force Ghosts are aberrations in the Force. So Luke conquering death is more metaphorical. His beliefs in both the failings of the Jedi, but the need for the Jedi to exist will come to fruition in the form of Rey’s reborn Jedi. And Luke has had many students, but since they all either fell or died, Rey is certainly his best one.

[superbeitmenotyou]

Let’s face it. half the accessories administration “the top information” so you might seize improved landscape photographs are rather general. certain, straightening the horizon and photographing all over laureate Hour might also accept a favourable influence to your photos, but will they accomplish you a more robust columnist?

As a substitute of looking at these basics, I want to share 7 a little distinct but equally crucial guidance. This advice isn’t activity to immediately enhance your photography, however, they’re aimed toward making you a stronger columnist. make an effort to study and check out them, and that I suppose you’ll initiate seeing a difference in the close future.

#1. Landscapes aren't restrained to the ‘Golden Hour’

I wasn’t going to speak in regards to the golden hour listed here, however, it’s such a standard piece of tips that I will be able to support bringing it up. whereas most Americans myself protected some years in the past say that you should picture right through the break of day or sunset to get better photos, I’m going to alternate that this is not the case.

decent mild can take place at any time – don’t keep on with only photographing throughout the laureate Hour

yes, the gentle within the hours surrounding daybreak and sunset is smooth and smart, however, that doesn’t mean respectable mild doesn’t abide throughout the leisure of the day; it quite simply depends on what you’re photographing.

This may come as a shock, however many of my own favourites are photos captured all the way through the day i.e. not at Golden Hour. sometimes it’s a bitter climate that creates dramatic light round majestic peaks, different times it's harsh midday solar that gives wonderful patterns and lightweight within the deeply wooded area.

in place of limiting yourself to only photographing a couple of hours a day, be trained back the most appropriate gentle will hit the surroundings you’re planning to the graphic.

#2. The fee Tag of Your digital camera is irrelevant

to have you ever ever heard somebody accomplish a remark alongside the traces of “That’s graphics, you need to have an elaborate digicam ”? I’m certain that sounds generic to best. but is there any fact in this observation? Does a pricey digital camera at all times grasp more advantageous pictures? No…

It doesn’t matter if your digital camera prices $200, $2,000 or $20,000. that you may steal harmful images with probably the most expensive cameras and you may choose decent images with some extent-and-shoot.

An an old favourite that changed into captured on a budget digital camera

The essential issue is to be aware of how to consume the camera and to grasp its obstacles. on the conclusion of the day, it’s the columnist in the back of the camera who makes the image.

#3. study the suggestions in an effort to damage them

If you’ve examined any of my articles before, you understand that I don’t like to focus on suggestions in panorama images. I’d quite view them as guidelines that remember to be aware of.

It’s critical to be trained and take into account guidelines such as the rule of Thirds, main strains, and different compositional rules, but it surety's much more essential to grasp back to spoil them. the rule of Thirds can do wonders for your compositions but you could without delay restrict your adroitness if you abatement into the entice of following the manner for every single photograph, you are taking.

It’s crucial to understand the suggestions however even more important when to spoil them

Believe about it. some of Heritage's most excellent items of paintings ignore the ordinary guidelines and incorporate the exact opposite. Be originate to exploring with such ideas.

#4. Don’t at all times want a Tripod

No. I anchorage's lost my intellect I know you’re afraid your head presently.

Again, I want to argue that you simply shouldn’t listen to the ordinary a tip that tells you to always spend a tripod. I’d say here's absolutely disagreeable and will do greater damage than respectable to your photography.

There was no should use a tripod so as to catch this photo.

It’s vital to take into account should you want a tripod and if you don’t. There’s no abstruse that in certain cases a tripod is simple. here are the scenarios the place you'll want to spend one:

when photographing in low light instances and the shutter velocity is just too sluggish to get a sharp handheld picture

in the event you’re forced to increase the ISO in order to keep a brief bang pace

in the event you’re the use of neutral density filters or need to do long exposure images

In most other scenarios you usually don’t need a tripod. in case you’re photographing all through daylight hours and your shutter velocity is 11000th of a 2d and the ISO is one hundred, the usage of a tripod will now not accomplish a difference.

#5. explore Focal Lengths Don’t restrict your self to one Lens

I don’t think to make sure to restrict yourself to handiest the usage of one lens. once I aboriginal began panorama images, I handiest used a large-attitude lens; in fact, I didn’t personal anything for a 12 months or two.

nowadays I’ve got the entire range, from extremely-extensive-attitude to omelette and I always discover an area with quite a few focal lengths. accomplishing this has helped me pay more attention to the particulars surrounding me and it makes me search for facets that I otherwise would stroll straight by way of.

Exploring diverse focal lengths armament you to seem past the admirable panorama

#6. endurance outcomes in greatness

sometimes I wish it changed into so effortless that I might just arrive at a place and trap a few brilliant pictures right abroad but that’s infrequently how it works. top notch photos are often the result of endurance. excellent pictures are the outcome of returning to a vicinity over and over once again unless you’ve got the very best circumstances.

i do know this isn’t always viable when touring however so far as it’s viable, I strongly advocate returning to a spot until you’ve captured an attempt you’re in fact satisfied with.

#7. picture the Hotspots however be athirst to explore

Couturier media has changed panorama photography in many approaches and likely places are more established now than ever earlier than. It’s no longer not going that you justly be accompanied by lots of-of alternative photographers when photographing one of the most efficient views on our planet.

There had been many discussions about these hotspots and the way so-known as “bays hunters” are ruining the trade however I’m not so satisfied that you'll want to fully stop photographing the hotspots, principally if you’ve simply begun photography.

This arch offers one of the greater astounding angles on the Lofoten Islands and has to turn into a hotspot for panorama photographers

I are likely to view the hotspots as images with practising auto; you’ve viewed thousands of photos from there before and be aware of exactly a way to strategy the vicinity. This can be an advantageous way to put your self into the attitude of photographers you adore and, if you are trying, it could possibly help you remember why they’ve fabricated certain choices in the container.

But I don’t feel you should definitely keep on with the hotspots continually. I consider analysis is a huge half of outdoor images and once we lose the will to discover, adroitness directly starts crumbling. exhaust the abilities you’ve best up from photographing the hotspots and follow it in the field back photographing new locations.

in regards to the Christian Hoberg is an abounding-time landscape photographer who helps ambitious photographers enhance the knowledge

necessary to catch appealing and impactful photographs. The opinions expressed listed here are entirely those of the author. download Hoberg's changeless guide 30 information to enrich Your landscape images and initiate the doors to your dream existence. Hoberg is additionally the founding father of Capture Landscapes. which you could locate greater of his assignment on his site and . this text turned into additionally posted here.