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recurring-polynya · 3 years

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Do I mind if I ask how you approach writing longer fic? I've always struggled to write anything more than maybe two chapters long and I'm curious if you have a particular method to how you approach such stories.

Thank you so much for this ask! I absolutely love it when people ask me for writing advice because it makes me feel like a Smart Person Who Knows Things.

Before we start, here is one grain of salt to take all of this with: I have a naturally long-form brain. It is very hard for me to write something less than 1k. Short fiction is great, and there is nothing wrong with sticking to short things if that's what your brain likes to do.

So. You have decided to write a story. This is going to focus on "stories". Some people write fic that's more freeform or whatever, I am not going to cover that. What I mean by a story is this:

It starts

Some stuff happens

It ends

It is highly probable that your story contains a change of state, which could be that a villain is defeated, or a goal is reached, but it could also be that character falls in love with another, or someone learns to like broccoli.

I like to start out by completing the sentence, "This is a story where _______". This is basically like coming up with a summary for an ao3 post, except that it doesn't need to be catchy. Lots of different kinds of things could go in that blank! It could literally be what happens: This is a story where Ichigo goes back in time and punches young Aizen in the nose. It could be about what you want to explore: This is a story where Hitsugaya gets a better understanding of his zanpakutou. It could be about the vibe you want to achieve: This is an AU where everyone is in a punk rock band and has cool hair and outfits. The idea of this is to clearly define what you, the author, is interested in writing. Make sure it feels right! Maybe you pick the first one, but when you say it out loud, you say, "You know, I really just want Ichigo to go back in time so he can horse around with young Renji and Rukia and punching Aizen in the nose is just an excuse for that." That may sound dumb, but it's fine, actually! Most people don't read stories strictly for the plot, they read stories for the implications of those plots! Will my favorite two characters kiss? Will there be funny interactions between these two groups of characters? Will there be sick fights? Stories are excuses to have scenes. Sometimes, you will have a story where the interesting sequence of events is the draw, but the point is to know what you're about.

Once you feel happy with your "mission statement", you need to decide the bounds of your story: where it starts and where it ends. It may be easier to start with the end. In some cases, it may be obvious from your mission statement: everyone gets home, a villain is defeated, Kenpachi realizes the meaning of friendship. On the other hand, let's look at that punk rock AU. You've picked a vibe, but you don't really have a natural story arc. It has to have a destination, though, otherwise, it's not really a story, it's a recipe for 3 chapters of an abandoned fanfic. So brainstorm a little: Maybe they get a record deal? Maybe they win a Battle of the Bands? Maybe Byakuya accepts that the band is actually good and tells Rukia he is proud of her. Do not settle for a plot just because it works. Pick something that makes you excited! You're the one who is gonna have to write it!

I said that we needed to pick a beginning point, too, but I'm actually going to skip that for now. The next thing I do is think of all the Big Scenes I want to write, the ones you are hype to write, the ones that pop in your head as you think about the premise. Make a bullet list. They don't need to be in order. The descriptions don't need to be super detailed, but write down anything about it that is important to you. If there's a mood or a snippet of dialogue or a joke you want to make, go ahead and jot that down so you don't forget it later. What you're doing now is putting broad blotches of color on a canvas, filling in space and leaving the detail for later.

Once you are pretty happy with what you have down, try to arrange it in chronological order. Put your end at the end (if it wasn't one of your big scenes, add it now). The next task is figuring out how to traverse your scenes. You've already picked out where you want to spend the majority of your energy. The rest, I regret to tell you, is your slog writing. Now, it often happens that you will find joy in some of these scenes and your best writing may occur there, but that's serendipity. These are the scenes that you are gonna have to make yourself sit down and write, so you honestly want to limit them to just the ones you need.

So how do we do this? Look at the first thing on the list. Can you start there? If so, congrats, that's your beginning. If you can't, what needs to happen to get to there? Where can you start so that you can get to your first fun scene as soon as possible? There. That’s it. You’ve picked your beginning, good job! Now, go through the rest of your list, and add in things that must happen, even if you don’t particularly look forward to writing them. The characters need to travel from geographic point A to point B. Shuuhei needs to say something that Izuru hears and misinterprets. The Central 46 makes a new law. If you have a good idea of how these things happen, go ahead and write them down, but it’s okay if you don’t know yet. Fill in all the blanks so that if you think of each bullet list as a scene, you could read it as a story, start to end. Once you get writing, you might add more scenes, or move things around or whatever, but you should have a thing that functions as a story.

If you struggle with this, an alternative is a story with a very strong structure that is going to guide you though what you have to write.Here are two examples from my own stories Hold On, Hold On (which is only one chapter, but the principle is the same) is structured around the 5 stages of grief. Not Broken, Just Bent takes place over roughly a week, and I just decided what happened every day of the week. See You on the Other Side takes place in the middle of a bunch of canon events, which worked at mile markers.

Congratulations. You’ve just made a rough outline!

Special note for avoiding burnout!: I am a slogger. I will drag myself through the broken glass of an interminable plot to get to a single thirsty scene. That's why, at this stage, I try to look at the ratio of what I want to write to what I must write. It's gonna vary for everyone, but this is a hobby, and if looking at this proto-outline makes you feel deeply tired, maybe this isn't a good story to be devoting your time to! Can you carve it down? Can you chuck two scenes you really want to write and get rid of 80% of the slog? Or maybe you can't! In that case, just write that thirsty scene as a standalone drabble! Or just go work on something else! Maybe in the future, this one will come back to you and you’ll have a fresh idea or a renewed enthusiasm for it.

Another thing I sometimes like to do at this point is to write out some notes about my characters and their motivations and moods. Character A is homesick. Character B is so determined to defeat the enemy that they are having a hard time being sympathetic to Character A. Character C cares for both A and B and is trying to support them both. This is sort of background info that you want to keep in your head as you are writing. Depending on the type of story you are writing, this might actually be the main plot, or it might be happening subtly, but adding to the emotional impact of the story. It’s very easy for me to write these sorts of emotional arcs, but if you struggle with that, you may wish to go ahead and made a more detailed outline for that, too.

Now, it’s time to start writing! I am great at beginnings-- it is very often the case for me that the opening scene was one of my Big Tentpole Scenes. (Before you hate me too much, I make up for this by being double horrible at endings; just let me have this) Usually, I will start at the beginning and write linearly for as long as I can until I get stuck. Then, I will look forward on my outline and do the next chronological scene that I feel like writing. In general, if I sit down to write and there is something I have an urge to write, that trumps everything else. Inspiration is a precious commodity, and you should embrace it when it hits! You can slog any day. I will occasionally hold off writing a scene that I really want to, because I am saving it, like a prize for myself for getting that far. This is a very personal process of figuring out what motivates your brain and then giving your brain what it needs to be its most productive.

Eventually, you will run out of things you are excited to write, but the good news is, you’ve got a bunch of story now! Odds are that what’s left is going to be a lot of those connective tissue scenes, and you’re just going to have to do them, except that now, because you’re connecting two concrete points instead of two abstract points, it will be a lot easier. You can continue running jokes you’ve started. Maybe you invented a cafe in an earlier scene where your characters hang out and you can have them return there. Try to think of ways to make these scenes more fun, both for yourself to write and for your reader to read.

Around this time, I like to start refining that rough strokes outline into what I will call an “as-built” outline. (This is an engineering term where you update your plans or models for something to reflect any changes that had to be made along the way). This is a great activity to do at times when you feel like you have writers block. I write down every scene I have written as a 2-3 word blurb, in order. I break the scenes into what I think makes logical chapters, and I will do a word count on those prospective chapters and write it down. As you do this, you will realize that maybe you can move a scene from here to there, which will make it 1000% easier to write. Things may be happening too much, or you’ve got the characters eating three times in the same chapter. If you have subplots and dangling threads, this is where you make sure they get closure. I know this sounds very headache-y, but you are so far along in the story at this point that it’s really not-- it’s a way to look at the problems you have left. Use some sort of formatting (I like to bold things I haven’t done and sometimes I put them in red) and it gives you a very visual to-do list.

You specifically mentioned multi-chapter fanfics and I admit that I don’t tend to think in chapters, I tend to think of the story as a whole and just break it up where it feels natural. The as-built outlining I described is very helpful in making sure that my chapters feel balanced. They don’t necessarily need to be the same length, but I like them to have the same amount of stuff in them. One chapter may basically contain one long scene, and other may contain many short ones. I don’t tend to, but you can certainly have a fanfic that varies between short and long chapters, that can actually be an interesting effect. But like I said, I always like to know what I am doing, and so having it mapped out, you can say “welp, this is what I’ve done, how do I feel about that?”

Polynya, you may be saying at this point, do you write the whole fanfic before you post any of it? and I regret to inform you, the answer is yes. A lot of people write as they go, and I have made one attempt at this and I didn’t like it. I don’t like locking myself in, I just need to be able write out of order and go back and change things. Here is the story of a little in love: someone gave me an AU prompt and I got mildly obsessed with it, and wrote 5 snapshots drabbles in that universe, ending with a slight cliffhanger ending. I probably should have stopped there, but I decided to keep going. I wrote out an outline of 5 acts where the first act was detailed to the degree of each chapter being specified. The chapters here were much smaller than I usually make chapters: 1-2k. I wrote act i and ii and it was actually great, and then I hit act iii which required a lot of set up for misunderstandings and a mini romance arc. I couldn’t wing it, but nor could I figure it all out with outlining. I write dialogue in almost sort of an improv “Yes, and...?” style, so until I do it, I don’t know what’s going to happen. So, what I did was treat the second half of act iii as a complete story in the process I describe above, wrote the entire rest of it, and then posted it. One might notice that the chapter lengths grew to 3-5k each. I have two more acts to go, and I haven’t decided how I am going to do them yet, but I suspect I will treat each of them as their own mini-stories.

(I will admit that in Heart is a Muscle, I tend toward chapters that are about 10k long, and this is honestly too long, someone should smack me. If you like punchy chapters, 1-2k is good. I think 3-6k is probably an ideal chapter length. Is this how long the chapters are in my latest fanfic? Absolutely not.)

Okay, so there’s one more step, which is quality control. I am habitual re-reader-- I read my fanfics-in-progress over and over and over while I am working on them. I understand that not everyone does this, but I am usually the primary audience for my own writing, and this is the actual fun part for me. Nevertheless, you should re-read your work at least once, to make sure it hangs together.

This is purely optional, but I recommend it: get a writing friend (if you don’t like re-reading your work, I recommend this even more strongly). If you can get a full-service beta reader, that’s great, but if you can’t find someone, or if receiving that level of critique stresses you out, it’s perfectly valid to just find a friend who will read your stuff and a) shower you with compliments, b) reassure you about parts you aren’t sure about (or suggest ways to help) and c) point out any huge problems you missed. When I am writing a long fanfic, it is a huge motivational factor for me to be able to send my beta chapters as I finish them. If you are already an established writer, and you have people who consistently comment on your fic, they might be overjoyed to get a sneak peak at your work.

And that’s it! That’s the way I do it, anyway! Some people are able to sit down and write a very detailed outline and the write it start-to-finish. Good for them, I say! I have tried this and it doesn’t work great for me. I will admit that some of my fics (especially my early ones) I just sat down and banged out whole-cloth like an insane person and they are generally better than the ones I actually plan out, but that’s not a reproducible process.

As one final mechanical note, I usually write in Google Docs, which I can access on multiple devices (I used to write a lot on my phone), has convenient sharing functionality, and I use the ao3 html formatting script add-in. I generally have two documents for a single story-- one is the outline, and any other notes I want to have handy. I’ll usually put a trashcan space at the bottom for scenes that got cut but I don’t want to lose. The other is the fanfic itself.

I hope this is helpful! Please feel free to follow up with other questions and good luck with your writing!

#writing advice #longform writing

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jackrrabbit · 4 years

Text

it will come back [pt. 2] /// Yandere Shigaraki x f!Reader

Summary: You have a bad habit of picking up strays, and the half-dead villain you find bleeding out in a dumpster is no exception. [Part 1] [Part 3]

A/N: Title from the Hozier song—“don’t let it in with no intention to keep it / jesus christ, don’t be kind to it / oh honey don’t feed it / it will come back.”

Tags/warnings: yandere, violence (not directed toward reader), crying, Shiggy REALLY likes you, reader needs a friend and a good night’s sleep, non-explicit sexual content. [In later parts: 18+, sex, other stuff]

He—Tomura—keeps visiting.

At first you think it’s because of the free medical care, and you wish you had the spine to tell him to suck it up and go see a professional. After a couple weeks turn into a couple months and his wounds fade into ragged purple scars, though, you start to think differently.

Within a short time Tomura has figured out your work schedule, and he does a decent job of not showing up after your long shifts. The unavoidable consequence of this is that he ends up monopolizing your precious days off, but you come to the realization about a month and a half in that you don’t actually mind. You like it. It’s like spending time with a friend.

Mostly you guys talk. It doesn’t seem like Tomura really has anyone to talk to the way the two of you do, but that’s probably just you projecting. It’s usually shallow stuff—TV shows you like, video games he plays, funny stories from patients you treated. Sometimes when you’re cooking for yourself, you make extra for him. (It happens a lot, actually, and at one point you bring up how much his appetite is costing you and the next time you see him he brings a bag of rice and makes you a porridge that crunches between your teeth when you try to eat it. You can’t finish yours, but he eats an entire bowl and insists that you’re being picky.)

Sometimes he sleeps over on the couch, but he’s always gone when you wake up.

The two of you skirt around the heavier stuff, and you know it’s intentional on his part. You have to resist the urge to ask him about being a villain—he’s all but confirmed it for you, and it’s human nature to be curious, isn’t it? In the same way you can’t help looking at a car crash, you want to poke and prod and find out what it is, exactly, that Tomura does for a living. That part of his life is suspiciously absent from your discussions—if you didn’t know better, you’d think he spends all of his time sleeping and playing games and breaking into your place.

On the other hand, you don’t want to know. Plausible deniability. You can accept criminality in the abstract, but you’ve treated too many victims of the bullshit hero–villain battle to be comfortable really knowing why Tomura avoids public places.

So you don’t ask about it, and Tomura doesn’t tell, and you don’t look up his name. And it’s easy. It’s nice. You’d forgotten what it’s like to come back to a home that isn’t empty.

And then one day when you get off a few hours early from your shift, you stop by a convenience store to pick up some snacks for yourself (hey, you’ve been working hard, you’re entitled to binge a little on foods that you’re afraid to look at the fat content for), and you think, Hm, I wonder if Tomura wants some.

[You: 7:49 PM] > Are you coming over today? [T: 7:49 PM] > Yeah why [You: 7:51 PM] > Getting snacks > Want some? [T: 7:51 PM] > No

[T: 8:12 PM] > When r u coming back to ur place

[T: 8:58 PM] > Hey where are you

[T: 9:39 PM] > (Y/N)?

There’s a man with a gun in the convenience store.

It takes you a second to process at first. You’re standing in the snack food aisle seeking out Oreos and debating the merits of Double Stuf vs. Mega when you catch the mumbled demand and the metallic clicking noise you’ve only ever heard in movies before. It’s a gun—you know that, but your mind dismisses it because it’s ridiculous. Guns are rare in hero society. People don’t go around robbing bodegas at gunpoint anymore.

(You should know better. You work in a goddamn ER. But you compartmentalize, and the crimes you see written across your patients’ bodies stay out of the realm of your personal life because you need them to.)

It’s only when you see the muzzle of a hunting rifle pushed up to the cashier’s sweaty neck that you really understand what’s happening.

You drop to the ground immediately, looking toward the exit but it’s shut and there’s some kind of metal…thing holding the door closed. The cashier mumbles a denial and you can hear him fumble around with the cash drawer for what feels like ages.

It’s real. This is real. You’re in the middle of a robbery. Where are the heroes? Why isn’t anyone doing anything?

God, you’re a hypocrite, cowering behind the aisle divider and waiting for someone to step up while the robber’s demands get increasingly louder and more frantic. He wants money, and the cashier (who, you remember, is a man in his sixties with hands that shake with Parkinson’s when he holds out your receipt) isn’t being fast enough.

“That’s it? There’s no more? Are you fucking kidding me, there’s gotta be a safe or something—“

“No! No, p-please, I’m sorry, this is all I have!”

You cringe, crushing your eyes closed as if that will make it go away. You’re surprised you can hear at all over the sound of your blood rushing in your ears.

“Don’t fuck with me old man, I know there’s more! Show me the safe or I’ll blow your goddamn brains out!”

No! You have to do something. You can’t just sit here. You’ve heard plenty of death threats from your patients (not to mention that one from Tomura), and you know the difference between a bluff and a serious warning. Maybe you can catch the robber off guard, try to pull the gun away? You stand up quickly, hoping against hope that you won’t regret this, but in a split second you see that the cashier has the same idea and he’s trying to pull the rifle out of the robber’s hand and—

BANG.

Something warm and wet splatters across your face.

///

Tomura is angry when you get back to the apartment. As soon as he hears your key in the lock he rises from your couch so he can grab your collar with three fingers, jerking your head up to force you to look at him. “Where have you been? Do you know how long I’ve been waiting—“

But he cuts short in the middle of his sentence. Maybe because he sees the look on your face. Or maybe he just notices the traces of blood you haven’t been able to wipe off.

“What happened,” Tomura says. It’s not a question. He adjusts his grip slightly so it’s not quite as punishing, but you hold still anyway.

You have to force your mouth open in order to speak, but when your voice comes out it’s more steady than you thought it would be. “It’s not my blood. There was a robbery at the store. The cashier got shot.”

“Oh.” He releases you and frowns. “That’s it?”

“Fuck you.” You push past him into the kitchen to get yourself a drink with trembling hands. Pantry’s out of shōchū, whiskey will just make you sicker—ahh, there it is. Baijiu. The glug glug glug of the liquor into the glass does nothing to put your nerves at ease, but you pour yourself a double anyway.

“Wait—wait.” Tomura’s hands twitch and rub over his arms like he’s trying to stop himself from grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you. “Calm down. Why are you so upset? Don’t you see this stuff every day?”

You do. You’re an ER nurse. There’s no injury you haven’t seen. But it’s not about the blood. “I...I knew him. The cashier. He was nice. He had a grandkid on the way. I—“ You bite your lip and down the baijiu in one gulp. It burns.

Tomura clearly doesn’t know how to comfort you; probably doesn’t even really know why you need to be comforted. What does it mean that death is so meaningless to him? you wonder. But you need someone to listen to you, clueless or not, and Tomura will have to do.

The baijiu is still bitter and hot down your throat when you speak again. “You know something? Know what they asked me when the heroes finally showed up and pulled us out of there, me and the corpse?”

“…What?” Tomura asks warily.

“They stuck a camera in my face and asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to the hero who saved me. Any words of gratitude I wanted to share,” you spit. Now it’s your turn to feel your hands making fists at your sides. Your fingernails scratch into your palms like the pain can be an outlet for the sudden overwhelming fury spilling over you. “They didn’t save him. They were too late.”

Tomura’s eyes widen, and through your curtain of anger you can tell he’s looking at you in a way he’s never looked at you before. It’s unlike him to even look directly at you, and when he does it’s usually in disinterest or half-sincere irritation. This, though…this is different. He’s watching you like a believer watches a prophet. You can tell—or at least some deep, ugly part of you that you hope is wrong can tell—that he’s trying not to smile.

“I hate this,” you say, and the first tear drips out of your eye and runs down your cheek. It’s awful. You don’t want to cry in front of Tomura. You don’t want to show him how weak you are. But before you can wipe it away, Tomura’s hand comes up and does it for you, smearing the tear over your cheek in a gesture that—for him—is oddly tender.

Then he hugs you.

It’s stiff and awkward, like he’s forgotten how to do it, but the intention is clear. His arms fold around your back, pulling you into his chest while his chin makes its way to rest on your shoulder. He’s leaning into you so deeply that your spine is arched back, and you stagger away from him only for him to step closer again to make up the distance.

“It’s not fair, hm,” he murmurs into your hair. His tone is the closest thing to sympathy you’ve ever heard from him, but there’s an undercurrent of excitement you can’t ignore. “They’re always too late, aren’t they? The heroes… And everyone will watch that video of you thanking the heroes, and they’ll think they’re safe too. They’ll keep going about their lives and think that nothing bad can happen to them because a hero will always be around to save them…but you and I know that’s a lie.”

It takes you a second to recognize the emotion that’s raising goosebumps over your arms while Tomura rubs circles into your back, but when it clicks you shiver because it’s fear. You’ve never really been afraid of Tomura before, even when you should’ve been. Does he realize he’s backing you up with how forcefully he’s pushing himself into you? The backs of your knees hit the arm of your couch and you topple onto it with Tomura following.

He holds himself above you on his hands, legs tangled with yours. His eyes are wild and he’s not even trying to suppress his grin now. You’re trapped lying on your back under him—pinned like a butterfly under glass.

“Get off of me,” you say as calmly as you can.

“It’s all a lie, all of it…” A hand comes up and strokes your cheek, rubbing with two fingers at a stray fleck of blood on your neck. “I’m sorry it had to be like this, but I’m so glad you understand…”

“Let me up now, Tomura.”

He holds still for a long moment—waiting, thinking, considering—and then sits up, still straddling you but loosely enough that you can scramble back away from him on the couch. Your heart is racing, but you try to slow your breaths so he doesn’t pick up on how scared you are.

“Don’t freak out. You’re no fun,” Tomura says, and you exhale a sigh of relief at how normal he sounds. You never thought you’d be so happy about him looking at you like you’re nothing.

“I think you should go,” you say carefully.

He rocks back on his heels and runs a hand through his hair. “Are you mad? I thought I could stay here tonight, like usual. Since I waited for so long.”

“I’m not mad. I just…want to be alone.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone tonight. Not after what you’ve been through.”

Oh, now you care. “Fine. Okay? Fine. You can sleep on the couch.” You’re too tired to argue any more, and you’ve never really been good at convincing Tomura to do anything he doesn’t want to. It’s a miracle he listened to you when you told him to get off you. Considering how often he breaks into your apartment, it’s not like you could keep him out anyway.

So he stays the night. He doesn’t bother you when you take a shower and go to bed, he just lies on the couch in his street clothes. When you wake up in the morning he’s disappeared like he always does, and for the first time since you met him you’re truly relieved that he’s gone.

///

You always thought it would take some level of courage you don’t possess to actually bite the bullet and look Tomura up. To do so would mean saying goodbye to whatever strange relationship the two of you have built over the months, and you’re just not brave enough to risk it.

Turns out it’s not courage that makes you type his name into the search bar. It’s cowardice. You’re lying in bed under the covers when you do it, and the blue-white screen of your laptop is the only light in the room. Your comforter is pulled up almost over your head like it’s a wall that can block out reality.

“tomura”, you enter into the search bar, but you don’t hit return. Instead, you look at the search suggestions.

> tomura shigaraki > tomura shigaraki league of villains > tomura shigaraki decay

Something about it sounds familiar. But you’re not ready. Still, after everything, you’d rather keep your eyes closed. You backspace and snap your laptop shut, and when you do your room is so dark that you think the emptiness might swallow you up.

///

[T: 5:52 PM] > Are u going to be at home tn

[T: 6:14 PM] > Hey check ur phone

[T: 6:42 PM] > Stop ignoring me > (Y/N) > (Y/N) > (Y/N) > (Y/N) > (Y/N)

[T: 6:46 PM] 3 MISSED CALLS [You: 6:50 PM] > I’m at work [T: 6:50 PM] > Don’t lie > you finished an hour ago

[T: 7:13 PM] 1 MISSED CALL [T: 7:14 PM] > You said you werent mad [You: 7:15 PM] > I’m not [T: 7:15 PM] > Then stop being a brat > im coming over > ill bring takeout

You’re nervous about seeing him, but in the two weeks since he pushed you down on the couch you’ve found yourself…missing him. Like it or not, he’s made himself a fixture in your life. So when you get home you’re brimming with anticipation, wondering who you’ll get when you open the door—the normal Tomura you’ve come to like over the past few months, or the one from that night. The villain.

But it’s just him. Good old Tomura, laden with plastic bags and containers of greasy fast food for the two of you to gorge yourselves on. You tease him for being cheap and he argues that you’re just a snob and everything seems so normal that you can almost forget the look in his red eyes when he told you that you understood.

Almost.

///

You probably have no idea how good you look when you’re crying.

Of the couple thousand views on the news channel video of your “rescue” from the convenience store robber, at least a tenth are from Tomura. Eventually he just downloads the video onto his computer so he doesn’t have to read the inane comments that the other viewers leave on the webpage. It seems like everyone but him thinks you should feel lucky that you were saved by a hero before the robber could get to you, too.

As always, the public are a bunch of shit-soaked morons. Reading the comments makes him angry, so angry he’s tempted to look into a few of these brainless sheep and see how lucky they feel when they’ve caught the attention of a violent criminal. But that wouldn’t be productive, so he saves the video externally and leaves the news website alone. It’s for the best. Besides, seeing the “views” counter on the website tick up and up by the dozen every time he refreshes is just another reminder that other people are watching this; other people are seeing how delicate and vulnerable and pretty you are with tears spilling out of your eyes and the cashier’s blood sprayed over your clothing.

Thousands of useless fucking NPCs are looking at you just like Tomura is. They’re probably thinking about how sweet you look, just like he is. And they’re probably imagining all the ways they can take advantage of your fragile emotional state, just like him.

You’re too trusting for your own good. Tomura used to think it was a virtue, and it is, but only when it comes to him. Whenever he thinks about how your face is slapped over a dozen different news websites for the whole world to see, he has to dig his fingernails into his neck to keep calm. It’s better when he can just watch the video and pretend he’s the only one seeing it.

And it’s not like not watching the video is an option. Tomura can’t resist your crying face. There’s a point around the three minute mark where your voice breaks in the middle of your statement, and sometimes Tomura skips there in the video just so he can hear that pathetic little sob and replay it over and over and over. Maybe it’s sappy, but Tomura really does feel his heart skip a beat at the way your eyes and nose are rubbed red from your misery.

How fucked up is it that he gets off watching you cry?

Would you be angry if you knew? You probably would, but you put up with so much from him already. Maybe you’d be okay with it if he told you he really and truly tried to hold out. The first dozen times Tomura watched the video, he refused to touch himself no matter how tight his pants got while you choked out your stilted answers to the reporters’ questions, but at this point he barely has to click “play” on the video before he gets hard and takes matters into his own hands.

At the end of the day, it’s your fault. Everything about you is so erotic, from your shaky voice to your pouty, bitten-red lips. Isn’t it completely normal to be aroused while looking at the person you like? And Tomura likes you, he really likes you. He doesn’t have any pictures of you, and with the high definition of the news channel’s video he can see every perfect contour of your cheekbones, every pore in your skin, every glistening wet eyelash.

It’s not that Tomura doesn’t feel sympathy for how upset you are in the video. He does! Not even just sympathy, even—he’s empathetic. He knows exactly how it feels to be let down by the heroes. How dare they tell you you need to be grateful while you’re still trying to wipe brain matter off your shirt? Always too little, too late. It’s not fair.

But if he’s being honest? As miserable as you are, Tomura is happy that you were in the store when that robber came in and that you had to watch a man you knew get his brains blown out in front of you. You need a wake-up call to lose faith in hero society. If you have to suffer some emotional trauma in the process, that seems like a fair price to pay.

And the fact that Tomura gets to jerk off to it? It’s almost like destiny.

➠ [Part 3]

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shibalen · 3 years

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♡︎ 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒖𝒑 𝒇𝒐𝒓 🧩𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒏

...

𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 i match you with . . .

𝒎𝒊𝒅𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒚𝒂 𝒊𝒛𝒖𝒌𝒖 !!

so the main reason for this pairing is that you're both sweethearts. no, i don't accept criticism.

Izuku is extremely ambitious and passionate, focusing on the future ahead. you prefer to daydream and imagine possibilities beyond logic as well. this is the kind of relationship where you make up for what the other lacks!

Izuku doesn't judge by appearance so it doesn't matter to him that you come off as cold. he thinks you're adorable, and with each new side he sees he becomes moreand more enamoured with you ♡︎

your mischievous behaviour may spook him at times but soon enough he learns how to go along with it. he feels guilty laughing at your jokes but he can't help finding them funny.

worried bby won't let you get into any trouble should you and your friends end up having too much chaotic fun ミヽ(。＞＜)ノ

in all honesty, you do have to take on the role of a therapist for him sometimes. not as in the heavy, emotionally consuming sense, but Izuku appreciates if you're there just there to hear him out and say what you think.

he's full of emotions and easily gets carried away rambling so to have someone who understands everything he is saying would be nothing short of ideal (︶ω︶)

the first time he accidentally ranted to you and saw the sparkles of curiosity in your eyes instead of confusion was probably one of the first moments you also captured his heart. you'd never seen a smile so big and precious.

but as i said, this sweet boy is far from selfish so he won't overwhelm you with his talks! like you, he gets stressed easily, overthinks and analyses too much for his own good; he emphasises with all your feelings and tries his hardest to be there when you need him.

it's convincing listening to him comfort you, since he knows how you feel and what to say to make it better on most cases.

yet from a single look Izuku can tell you may not be in the mood for a talk at all. without a word, he'll wrap you in a comforter and hold you close. if you'd rather be alone, he'll be waiting with open arms.

let him be your hero.

𝒎𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 *:･ﾟ✧

i can imagine you met on a train, sitting on opposite seats facing each other. Izuku was scribbling down some hero notes when he suddenly felt a gaze on him.

after a while of thinking the feeling would just disappear, he still couldn't shake it off. could it be that a villain was tailing him? carefully, he raised his eyes from his notebook and peered around.

there you were, a stranger right in front of him, staring directly at him with a hazed expression.

all sense of danger immediately evaporated in Izuku, replaced by shyness and embarrassment. why was such a beautiful person looking at him? did he have something on his face? was he looking stupid writing down all those memos?

he sat there, face beet red and sweating nervously for a straight minute with all of those abstract possibilities running through his head :0

little did the poor guy know you were just daydreaming. your eyes had only fallen on him by accident. in truth, you were off in your own peaceful world, and it was only when Izuku had finally gathered his wits and asked you if he can help that you snapped back to reality.

it ended up being an embarrassing situation for both of you. however, when you spotted Izuku's notes you complimented him on them without a second thought.

even from afar you had been able to make out all the details and the praise slipped off your tongue before you knew it. rip Deku 2.0

and that's how you both found a new study buddy. he immediately sat next to you, eyes sparkling with excitement and showed you the rest . you weren't particularly into heroes but you did like how meticulous Deku was.

you had sensed a connection from the beginning but it did take a while before your realtionship extended into something more than just writer friends. as they say, slow and steady wins the race (￣∇￣)

𝒃𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒃𝒔 *:･ﾟ✧

Izuku is shy when it comes to showing affection directly. he wants to show he loves you but things like holding hands or even a kiss on the cheek will fluster him in the beginning and he'll hesitate :(

thankfully you can read him pretty easily and notice, for example, when he reaches for your hand on a walk. just take his instead and silently assure him he's doing fine, because you are feeling exactly the same.

he got sad when he realised he can't get you a cat so for one of your dates he surprised you with a cat café instead. now you go there regularly at least once a month.

Deku has at least a dozen pictures of you petting or playing with the cats and looking just so damn pretty.

is overall your biggest fan ♡︎

you leave him tiny notes, reminding him to take care of himself and his heart squeezes every time he sees one.

other times the notes are jokingly threat-like which sends his heart racing for a different reason.

"don't break any of your bones today or an All Might figurine may find itself in a similar situation <3"

"remember to take water with you or no movie marathon tonight :)"

Deku: 川(；・∀・)

you don't really mean any of that but you know this method works well hehe

speaking of movies, you rarely watch sad ones anymore because both of you have ended up crying every single time in the past.

whenever it looks like someone is about to die in an action film Deku will reach out for your hand. it's almost like a reflex at this point and you have to remind him not to crush it (*´_ゝ｀)

this all applies when it comes to books as well btw

you leave little kisses or run your fingers over his scars when he's feeling under the weather, telling him he has come too far to give up now.

he makes that ugly-cute expression where he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to cry.

you're so dear to him, he swears to give you all the happiness in the world ♡︎

♫︎ 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒄 𝒃𝒐𝒙

— Sunflower vol. 6 by Harry Styles

— It's you by Ali Gatie

— Socks by Out of Luck

— Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex

— Lover Boy by Phum Viphurit

♡︎ runner up: Shinsou Hitoshi

⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 i match you with . . .

𝒂𝒍𝒃𝒆𝒅𝒐 !!

i put you together because i feel like you would be able to understand each other. Albedo's mind is complicated and never still, like clockwork, thus it takes someone alike to compliment him.

give it some time and the trust between you becomes unrivalled. although there are no doubt some bumps in the beginning, they serve as stepping stones towards a deep, faithful connection ♡︎

you both are completely facinated with each other.

romantic emotions aren't something Albedo is aquianted with but he's willing to learn them with you. you match his intellect yet you bring warmth and life with you wherever you go. that captivates him in a manner unlike any phenomena or person has before ♡︎

although Albedo generally sees maintaining relationships as troublesome, you are rare exception. he finds time spent with you pleasant, and your shared moments actually give him energy rather than drain it. he could listen to you for hours, an intense flicker in those otherwordly eyes.

whether it's his long and detailed alchemy reports or the philosophies of life, the knowledge Albedo shares with you leaves your mind with fresh ideas every time.

he brings the consepts you've dreamt about to life, at least to an extent. he adds more to them, builds on them and at times you make an entire research topic out of what you've discussed.

the days you spend in Dragonspine conducting your experiments feel magical with Albedo. after hours of trials and errors, you sit at the camp by the fire and retell your experiences, protected from the blizzards outside.

on other evenings, you simply watch the snow fall in peaceful silence and a single blanket ( ´͈ ◡ `͈ )

as much as he indulges in detail, Albedo analyses everything the exact right amount. he has learnt how to put your mind at ease after noting your little habits and tendencies to overthink.

gradually, your thoughts become at peace with Albedo. he doesn't push you to talk because he finds idle chatter unnecessary himself. his words may be blunt but he will always listen and he will understand. even if he doesn't, he will ask, wanting to free you from the prison you subconsciously build for yourself.

he uses quality time as a means to show his affection. being busied by his captain of the investigation team duties, spending time with you is a great way to relax. you don't have to be talking but he would like to hear about your day or anything that's going on in your mind for that matter.

also gifts, albeit usually random. Albedo is the type to pick up a flower or a pebble and it will remind him of you ♡︎

𝒎𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 *:･ﾟ✧

Mona was the one to invite you to come have lunch with Albedo and Klee. you had been a good friend of hers since she arrived in Mondstadt so you thought it was just a casual invitation.

the situation was slightly awkward at the designated meeting, though, even after you, Albedo and Klee were introduced. you couldn't wrap your head around the whole destiny topic your friend and this alchemist were having an in depth discussion about.

so you stuck to listening them while playing small games with Klee.

at some point though, the topic switched to sources for further philosophical reading and you easily listed some books Albedo could try out. you explained the books' contents and themes in such detail even Albedo didn't have any questions once you finished.

except that when was your next day off to meet him for desserts and a long discussion.

he could effortlessly tell from the way you talked that you had much insight to share on many subjects of his interests. besides, intelligence was something he really fancied in passionate people.

by the time you were done it was already late afternoon. hours of talking about what you enjoyed with a person who understood your ideas went by like minutes.

Mona was looking quite satisfied with herself as well for some reason. you figured she was glad to have had two paid meals instead of one, considering you had a small dinner at the traven as well.

or was it was written in the stars all along for this meeting to take place?

𝒃𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒃𝒔 *:･ﾟ✧

as much as Albedo loves listening to your stories, it's impossible to finish one without him interrupting it at least a dozen times to ask annoyingly rational questions.

"i am curious about how did the dragon hear the cat speak. considering the average size of a common cat, it should be scientifically impossible for this one to produce a sound loud enough to reach the dragon's ears. surely the communication—"

"geez, Albedo, this isn't the real world—it's magic. anything is possible! now, please let me finish the first chapter." (*´ｰ`*)

actually he does this on purpose because he loves teasing you. he just pretends to be oblivious ehe

on bright side, the tales you've told him inspired him to make up some for Klee as well. they're super efficient when he needs her to quiet down. when you're not busy, you go to tell her some yourself and she loves you.

write him love letters pls he collects them ♡︎

since you're into poetry, Albedo has picked up researching symbolism. not only is it a curious topic, considering it exists everywhere in Teyvat, but it also helps him understand you better.

he's come to like the meanings of flowers the most. to think a single plant can express emotions that words would take books to describe just by existing. it's perfect.

so, from time-to-time, you'll find red roses (Kaeya's suggestion), camellias (yes, he did go to Liyue for those) and forget-me-nots on your desk, accompanied by a small note.

sometimes when he's next to you and you end up drifing off into a daydream, you absent-mindedly tangle your fingers into his hair. instead of trying to call out to you, however, Albedo is content with letting it be.

he doesn't mind if his braid comes undone or his hair gets messy, your touch is comforing and he happily leans into it（人´∀`*）

plus, it's amusing later when you realise what is happening and try to apologise. Albedo just chuckles and from that you'll know he's enjoying your reaction a little too much.

your dates would include: stargazing, dessert dates (to see the world's most beautiful smile try making something yourself, i guarantee he'll love it), wandering through the grasslands of Mondstadt and finding research materials or beautiful sceneries to sketch, and ice skating♡︎

ꨄ︎ 𝒈𝒊𝒇𝒕 𝒃𝒐𝒙

— you two could be seeing each other every day and still write small letters to each other istg. Albedo's handwriting is surprisingly messy but he always adds little doodles to the end for you❁

— Albedo's sense of time is probably a little messed too. sometimes he just forgets the world exists while doing experiments so you have to drag him outside so he wouldn't die (and give you attention). he apologises with lots of soft kisses dw.

— making desserts for your evening tea and bringing them to Albedo's study to seat them together ♡︎

— late night cuddles after a long day of work shoothes any headache. Albedo hold you like you were a priceless piece of gold.

♡︎ runner up: Diluc Ragnvindr

hello and how?? looking out of the vehicle window only makes me want to die💀 but that's interesting to know still, thank for the answer!!

i don't have Albedo myself (god i wish i did, 2.2 i am begging) so i had to use the wiki and other hcs for his personality. i really hope you like this though! have a great day and remember to stay hydrated ♡︎

#len's matches #genshin impact matchups #genshin matchups #bnha matchups #mha matchups #🧩anon #this matchup feels a bit messy or is it just me??

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randomnumbers751650 · 3 years

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Sometimes people ask a thing like “how did it get so big?” This is almost like any meme in the internet and sometimes even whatever is in the Top 10 bestselling books of any list. Due to being a historian of economic thought, I’m study the ascension of the idea of the entrepreneur as a hero, how it happened and its consequences, both good and bad. Therefore, I couldn’t avoid Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. It wasn’t a good experience and I’ll talk more about it under the cut.

I think we all know how much of a controversial person Ayn Rand was. But it worked. She’s one of the most influential writers of the 20th century whether we like it or not. Like, a lot of people say she hates the poor and minorities. It’s even a meme, like there’s a joke SCP that makes everything it comes into contact unnecessarily verbose and one of the incidents was a sticky note written “I hate poor people” that becomes a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

After reading her work, I can safely say these are traps she set up in her own work. Not only that, these traps hide the true problems of her work.

In first place, we need to consider her demographic target. That wasn’t me, if I wasn’t researching, I wouldn’t even bother reading it. Like, I remember I saw in the internet a game called “The Jihad to Destroy Barney” and someone commenting: “because 20-years old thinking they’re funny were obviously the demographic target of Barney the Dinosaur”. Rand knew what her demographic target was, after working in Hollywood for so many years.

One might think that her demographic target was people like her, but it’s wider than that. Through all her book, producers (she doesn’t use the word ‘entrepreneur’, but it’s obviously the same) are the protagonists. Dagny shows her dedication to her railway, always looking for ways to improve it, to hire the best people to work with her, to deliver the best product she can, always treating others with respect. All the producers are people full of passion for what they do. They do not just for the money, they do it to express themselves (but still want/should be paid).

Meanwhile their enemies are the government organs that want to curb them, by introducing legislation to make everything equal, like people are forbidden to be fired, prices are controlled and so on. And they are evil, they are hypocrites who don’t really believe in the altruistic values they spouse or they are too dumb to realize they’re being hypocrites. They are always men in position of power, evil bureaucrats, quisling industrialists, hypocrite union leaders (though the union leader, Fred Kinnan, interestingly is the most sympathetic of the villains, and actually gets away scot free, to the point some think he’s a Galt agent undercover).

Rand aimed for the real life entrepreneur identify with the “heroes”. All the companies have names of their founders in their titles, Taggart Terminal, d’Anconia Copper, and so on. Their enemies show their true faces by naming themselves with abstract titles, like National Union and so on. She aimed the person who ever had to deal with the Health Department, with the Labor Department, who has to fills forms and more forms and say “Wouldn’t the world be a terrible place if it wasn’t for you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you didn’t have to do all of this? If you just had the opportunity to truly express yourself? Free from the prying eyes of government inspectors? Rejoice, because I have the answer!”

Rand answers this with the Galt’s Gulch – a utopia of freedom, where the word “give” is taboo, while leaving the outside world of looters and moochers to destroy itself. All the producers are gathered to escape the terrible collectivist world around her. Everyone has money and, since they’re all enlightened by the principles of greed and selfishness, the prices are small, even symbolic. Monopolies are good and rivals are always being taken down, and they rejoice with it, both winner and loser, because they contributed to the expansion of human spirit.

When John Galt says “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”, he’s implying all men who belong to this valley. They are not ashamed of taking low jobs, because they know their true power is what they do with their minds and hands. Francisco is shown to be perfect in everything he does, makes one think he’s a Gary Stu, but it’s because, according to the book’s philosophy, if you’re a true man, anything you do you become the best. For this reason, Galt’s Gulch is quite diverse, because it has not only industrialists, but also factory workers and small businessmen who share their ideals. And not only workers, but also artists, intellectuals and others.

This is why I think the argument “this books hates poor people” might not be accurate. The low worker whom Eddie Willers meets in the beginning is actually John Galt in disguise. This I think it’s the most important part to understand why Atlas Shrugged was so influential with small businessmen when published: John Galt is where the Übermensch and the Everyman meet. “Who is John Galt?” Anyone can be John Galt – the same way anyone can be Bella Swan, anyone can be Ritsuka Fujimaru (at least before the 5th singularity), anyone can be Kirito Kirigaya – the idealized self of the entrepreneur.

Thus, one is not born a “man”, but becomes one. Dagny and Hank’s entire character development is to become “men”, to learn to love themselves more than what they create, no matter how passionate they are. This contrasts with Eddie Willers, Dagny’s right hand man, probably the most tragic character of the tale.

Eddie loved the railway just as Dagny. He’s been her friend for so long, and even developed feelings for her. But the book constantly observes that Eddy doesn’t have the capacity to lead something as important as a railway. But he does it nevertheless, dedicating all his resources and passion for the railway. But, unlike Dagny, he doesn’t learn to look for greater things. Thus, he ends the novel stuck in a railway, defeated and probably left to die.

This is controversial, so much everyone still discusses his fate. In the movie adaptation, they deviate from the novel by having the heroes making a point to rescue him from his fate. In Jennifer Burns’s biography, she mentions a letter Ayn Rand received asking about Eddie and she replies that in a collectivist society, Eddie would’ve perished, while in a free one he’d be living okay. Nevertheless, this reveals a truth about that world: not everyone will become a “man”. Eddie would never become a “man”.

Since pity is against Galt’s doctrine, Eddie cannot be pitied. He has to live under the mercy of his Galtian overlords. He has only two options: either worship the feet that trample him, expecting his breadcrumbs fall from their banquet table, or to question his place in the world, thus denying that A is A, and be trampled harder. It really doesn’t matter his kindness, his dedication, he’s not a “man”, and thus has more in common with the looters and moochers than the heroes. Thus, if Eddie ever becomes an obstacle to the productive forces, even if unintentionally, he has to be trampled.

While one might think that I’m being unfair, it should be reminded that Ayn Rand openly advocated the people who were killing Natives during the American expansion to the West were doing nothing wrong. The Natives were actually privileged for being trampled by the productive forces, thus creating the great nation. The same argument can be made for the colonized people and even to the “essential workers” of this pandemic – since apparently people who take this book seriously are one of the most resistant forces to lockdowns and mask mandates, you can guess why.

And this is why Rand hated the environmental movement, because it puts an obstacle to the productive process. Nature can only react with deaf indifference to Galt’s speech. For Rand, this is unforgivable. Would it be surprising if oil tycoons were fans of Rand’s work?

In the end, the producers execute their revenge against the world that rejected them. Galt’s speech caused a lot of disturbance and the last chapters deal with its consequences, with more villains being evil for no reason and more showing how awesome their heroes are. Galt becomes more and more like Jesus, even with a gnostic Judas in Dagny helping him. In fact, in the funniest part of the book, where it comes THIS close from being self-aware, he says to his tormenters, when they asked to cooperate with him: “It took me three hours on the radio to tell me why”. It gave me angry laughter.

In the end of the day, what matters? This is a work of fiction, where caricatures of men and women fight each other. The entrepreneurial process works nothing like described in the book. It takes a naïve view of selfishness, upon saying that if everyone was selfish the world would be a better place, when in reality, if you expect selfishness, it’s what you’ll get.

It’s never explained how they invented their inventions, only that they did it and it’s awesome. The One-Man Industrial Revolution trope is one that I loathe a lot, because it misrepresents the innovation process. It requires so many factors, including government funding – scratch that, it REQUIRES government funding because technologies like touch-screen used to be so risky that no private company would take seriously and government can fund because it doesn’t go bankrupt the same way. Even if we take it as a metaphor, it doesn’t work when you stop to think.

Rand belongs to the same class of writers as Stephenie Meyer and Christian Weston Chandler. But she wanted to influence the world, she wanted it to be more than entertainement, much more. Thanks to her publishing network and appeal to real problems, she did it. This is why the problems of her work require critique. And I hope anyone reading this try to understand better what “relatability” means, this is what relatability can do. Stop trying to look for relatability everywhere, let it just come naturally and if it doesn’t come enjoy the story!

#politics #i'm not revising this #i hope i don't have to think about this book #for a minimal time #it shows correcting a wrong interpretation about a harmful idea #can explain how worse the actual idea is

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opbackgrounds · 5 years

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So...let’s talk about Galdino.

What has struck me most out of these Little Garden chapters is how needlessly cruel Mr. 3 is. And petty, let’s not forget petty.

There is no nuance here. Mr. 3 is stark raving mad, delighting in the suffering of others and calling it “art”. He can hardly go three panels without waxing poetic (heh) about how much better he is than everyone around him. His a narcissist whose preferred method of murder is an elaborate and prolonged form of suffocation. Which, by the way, does not require him to get his hands dirty at all, because getting your hands dirty is for plebs and amateurs, amiright?

He’s also the character who ends up freeing Ace from his chains.

Now, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mr. 3′s character development starts around the time we learn his real name.

(This principal also works for Mr. 2, who got the bulk of his character development back in Alabasta, but does have a sort of reaffirming moment during Impel Down when he comes back to save Luffy after initially running away).

It’s during Impel Down that Oda uses Mr. 2 to inspire Mr. 3 into helping Luffy save Ace, which puts into practice Mihawk’s observation during the Marineford War that Luffy’s greatest strength is his ability to make friends.

We’ll dive into that more when we actually get to Marineford (it might take us awhile to get to Marineford) but the fact that Oda even chooses to give Mr. 3 a big moment like that is remarkable. The dude is a total asshat, and other than learning about the Power of Friendship, he doesn’t really change. Mr. 3 doesn’t become a better person. He’s still an amoral criminal clinging to whatever power he can get to, only this time he’s doing it with someone he actually considers a worthy friend and ally in Buggy the Clown.

This plays really well into the abstract morality of One Piece. Kuzan says it best during Robin’s flashback, what is considered justice changes shape depending on where you stand. It’s cliche and trite, but Mr. 3 doesn’t think of himself as a villain. After all, he’s just going after a bunch of pirates, right? Who cares that he wants to turn them into wax statues when the Government wants them dead anyway?

And Oda does this kind of thing a lot. You can almost guarantee that there will be one antagonist per arc that will pop up later in the story in some capacity or other. Jango, Hatchi, most every member of Baroque Works, the list goes on. Hell, even Lucci has a sympathetic moment with the rest of CP9 during his cover story, though he for some reason still is part of the World Government post-time skip.

The formula is simple: Once a villain is no longer a threat to the hero, they can no longer really be a villain. Antagonist, yes; villain, no. By the time Impel Down rolls around Luffy outclasses Mr. 3 so much it isn’t even funny, and without that inherent antagonism Oda has the opportunity to grow him as a character. So while Mr. 3 is a roadblock who only helps Luffy’s escape attempt from Impel Down under duress, he’s also the one who gets to unlock Ace’s seastone cuffs.

There is a rather vocal portion of the fandom that wishes that Oda would kill off more characters, especially pre-time skip. And to a certain extent I would agree with them. But unless their name is Brook, a character can’t develop any farther after they’re dead. So, had Luffy straight-up killed Mr. 3 in the Little Garden arc he would have forever stayed a one-note antagonist, the villain of a mini arc who didn’t do much but cackle like a crazy person while raving about his own superiority. And, from a more practical point of view, Oda would have had to either come up with a new character (who the audience is less familiar with and therefore less likely to care about) during the Impel Down arc, or restructured the plot so that Luffy could escape and (temporarily) save Ace without him. By keeping characters alive Oda gives himself more tools in his toolbox for future arcs and events, which is just efficient storytelling.

As someone who is more interested in the character side of things, I like how Oda gives us variety. Not everybody gets the same amount of development or redemption. Sometimes, as with Hachi, the difference between appearances is profound. Other times, like the Lucci example already mentioned, it’s simply a few moments that helps the audience see them in a different light. But always, always, is Oda willing to let even the vilest, most despicable pieces of trash have a little bit of depth. And I just think that’s neat.

#opbackgrounds #one piece #ch122 #long post #mr. 3 #character analysis #character development #I don't actually have much to say about chapter 122 #so I'm gonna make up for it with long posts instead #ch532

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the-awful-falafel · 4 years

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Rick and Morty - S4E6 "Never Ricking Morty" Podcast Summary/Breakdown

So y'all probably expected this based on how often I've been talking about these official companion podcasts. I recommend listening to them yourself either on the official Adult Swim YT channel or the official website, but I thought I'd go ahead and make bullet point breakdown of some key points for this particular podcast, because trivia and behind-the-scenes knowledge really appeal to me. And this episode is pretty divisive in the fanbase, so I think this podcast will assuage some fears even if you still personally dislike it in the end.

For some reason, the title of the podcast calls this S4E7 instead of episode 6. It wasn’t commented upon, so I assume either it was a typo or it was 7 in the production order and got swapped shortly before release.

The interviewed staff involved in this episode were Carlos Ortega (character design lead), Erica Hayes (director), James McDermott (art director), and Jeff Loveness (writer)

The idea of this episode was conceived in October/November 2018 as a "one-up" of anthologies and clip shows. They didn't want to do a straight anthology because many other TV shows had already done that, so they tried to go more experimental and bold and basically went balls-deep with the metanarrative as a result

It was a substitute for Interdimensional Cable (which they were going to do instead but it fell through for unknown reasons)

"We had to go so far up our own ass, because if we didn't go far enough, people would be mad that we didn't."

The writers intentionally mocked themselves as much as the fans, pretty much, and it was meant to be all in good fun

The artists really enjoy designing all the weird aliens in the show, as well as getting to reuse/repurpose them when applicable. Apparently next episode (Promortyus) is going to be reusing a lot of designs for something (but they obviously can't say due to spoilers)

Compared to other episodes, "Never Ricking Morty" went pretty smoothly once it got to the art stage. That doesn't mean it was easy, but there weren't a ton of revisions they had to do

There was a joking spoiler about Rick becoming pregnant later this season. At least I think it's joking.

While writing this episode, the writers came up with a huge whiteboard list of complaints about the show, misconceptions about the show, etc. to consult for the meta jokes. Loveness later clarified that it wasn't quite about attacking "complaining" though, and it wasn't meant to be mean-spirited

The Bechdel test skit came from them realizing they hadn't done much with Beth and Summer this season, which definitely can be considered a flaw. Therefore, as part of their self-mockery, the writers decided to force them crudely into the episode as a joke, while also making fun of men who write women characters poorly and reductively.

The Jesus Christ / Rick suddenly being Christian part was written in response to the writers asking themselves "what would kill Rick and Morty as a show?"

Jeff Loveness said this in the "Inside Never Ricking Morty" video as well, but he really loved the "old man is really ripped and ready to kick your ass" trope and is partially responsible for it becoming a running gag this episode along with "cum gutters". Apparently cum gutters return in season 5 (also said jokingly, so who knows)

One of the Q&A callers called multiple times, with different phone numbers, and kept asking about potential crossovers for some reason

"A lot of people are saying that the show is fucking with their fans. Is that accurate?" "I think some of those fans deserve to be fucked with a little bit."

They point out how some fans feel entitled to the idea they should be pleased by the show all the time, and the writers feel like the show should ideally surprise the viewers in a good way, but you still may not like every episode and that's alright

At the same time, the episode wasn't meant as an attack on the fans, it was more of a "we'll do this our way, be experimental, and push the envelope of what we can do" message they were sending. Jeff Loveness promises that there's "good stuff coming up" that he thinks the fans will be happy with, presumably in late Season 4 or even Season 5

"Just because we showed it this way and you'll probably never see it this way again, that doesn't mean we're dropping these storylines completely." There you go, everyone! The ongoing story threads are still happening at some point, and the message of the episode wasn't about dropping continuity or mocking people for caring about it. Although if you were hoping for resolutions similar to what was shown in this episode (Evil Morty w/ a giant army, Tammy VS Summer with lightsabers), those scenarios are almost certainly not going to happen canonically based on this statement. Let's hope that what they do come up with is both unexpected and awesome.

The episode is intended to be non-canonical, similar to past once-a-season clip show episodes like Interdimensional Cable

Story Lord was inspired by characters like Mysterio and Q, and the writers created him late in development as a type of villain they hadn't done before. Dan Harmon also put a lot of self-mockery into the character with how much he loved narrative structure and the story circle. The character artists even initially asked if Harmon could be the design for the character but that received an immediate "no", as it was perceived as being too on-the-nose.

Jeff Loveness was surprised the Rick/Birdperson musical made it to the final episode since it seemed like the sort of thing that would be cut or lost in development. He was also surprised the Jesus thing stayed in mostly untouched

The Story Train was intended to be an actually purchasable product by the time the episode aired-- the writers were emphatically excited about that being the culmination of the joke in the writers room-- and they were surprised that it didn't go through by the time the episode aired. They guess it's due to the coronavirus pandemic interrupting merchandising plans, but they're ultimately unsure because the decision isn't discussed with them

The artists do receive some limitations on how much gore they're allowed to depict, but they can show as much blood as they want, so for the most part they can still be creative with gruesome violence (like the Tickets Please guy ripping in half in this episode)

The artists are credited for elevating most of the fight scenes in the show, sometimes with only vague script direction which they use to be very creative

In response to a viewer calling in and asking the question about whether Pickle Rick will return: "I think there's a conversation to be had about: do we want these things to return or it better to do a one-off story?" So my take on this is that not literally everything will factor into the continuity-- they put thought into what ideas have more long-running potential and they build those up. Which is kind of obvious but the question was silly anyway. (They're still ambiguous about whether or not Pickle Rick will come back, by the way)

They aren't going to do an outright Star Wars parody in Rick and Morty because other shows have already done that, but they can still parody what Star Wars represents rather than doing a "branded commercial" for it. Apparently there is a lot of that specifically coming up this season (although indirect in the way they're describing). I assume this is referring to the upcoming "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri" episode, so I’m curious about how they’ll reference Star Wars in that one.

The COVID-19 reference this episode was thrown in last minute, presumably with just alternative dubbing and changing the lip sync animation. They say that sometimes episodes are still being worked on up until the moment they release on television. Referring to a previous episode as an example, the character of Shadowjacker from the dragon episode was thrown in last-minute

With the exception of James McDermott, most of the staff interviewed had no control or participation over the commercial product placement work, such as the Wendy's/Pringles commercials. They don't mind them for the most part and find them funny

The writers try to avoid being too topical because the scripts take so long to turn into animation that any references will become outdated by the time it releases. Therefore, they try to be "timely" in the sense that they're writing about things that are happening in the world, but in a more abstract/thematic sense. Jeff Loveness implies that the next episode Promortyus will have a lot of that

In response to another viewer Q&A: There is no Rick and Morty movie currently planned. They wouldn't mind one, but nothing is really in development at the moment

The staff say they're excited for the next batch of episodes and seem pretty proud of their work on this season

They don't plan on making a Rick and Morty musical episode at the moment, as they feel like other shows like South Park and the Simpson have done it excellently and don't feel like they're capable of doing it better. The Rick/Birdperson bit in this episode was the most we're going to get

The code inside the broken-off throttle lever was intended to just be a bar code decal (to show it's a toy) and doesn't actually mean anything. James McDermott jokingly said it's "where the bodies are buried"

The Rick army / Evil Morty scene was huge from an animation standpoint and they almost couldn't do it due to how ambitious the shot was. They were going for a "Lords of the Rings", faux series-finale vibe, where they "give the fans what they THINK they want". Justin Roiland insisted they do it

There are definitely more big animation setpieces planned for the future

And that’s it! I’ll probably do more of these for the future episode podcasts, if anyone is still interested.

#rick and morty #never ricking morty #companion podcast #q & a

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undoundue · 4 years

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a season in hellsite - chapter 1

chapter 1. in which horatio and bacchus play chess

now the tale tells that darkness gave way to light, or else light filled a space where light had not recently been. the issue is theologically contentious, and at the time no one could be sure.

the light played an important role in the events that were to come. first it hit bacchus’s eyes. then it hit horatio’s eyes. then it hit bacchus’s eyes again, then it hit horatio’s eyes again, and this process repeated several thousand times in the next few seconds, until the light took a break.

the light did not hit the same spot each time, because of angles. it hit a narrow circle very well, and then a wider circle less well, and then an even wider circle far worse than that, because light is by nature a specialist.

now individually, these halos were not exciting, though everyone had his or her preference: but the width of the aureoles varied intriguingly, unlike the areas the light had not touched, which were all the same shade of black. so the boys ascended their subjectivities, refracting the light from their convex lenses as it bustled to describe the scene.

we may morbidly wonder how horatio and bacchus felt in this moment as the red sun dawned and with it their damnation. however, it took them a minute to realize what they were looking at, and in the interim they did not have interiority, so we cannot truthfully comment upon their thoughts or feelings, though we can surmise that in a certain qualialess way they too felt the soul-crushing dread of existential freedom—this being the onus upon all souls who wander the afterlife accurst, unguided by the voice of instinct that, after all, is only borrowed from God.

but what the tale says with confidence is this: one day horatio and bacchus looked up and noticed that they were in hell. neither of them remembered how they had gotten there, but neither of them were surprised.

“—,” horatio said, and he moved as if to speak, but then he saw bacchus starting to speak, so he stopped.

“—,” bacchus said, and then stopped for similar reasons.

“—,” horatio said, starting up again, but then he saw horatio starting up again, so he stopped, and then bacchus stopped as well.

“your move,” bacchus said.

“sorry, i was developing interiority,” horatio said.

“it’s ok,” bacchus said.

“yeah it’s okay,” horatio said: and he played 1. e4.

now when it was bacchus’s turn he did not blithely reach for 1…e5, nor the sicilian. oh no. instead he conjured two quartz goblets and poured in blood-red wine.

horatio said, “where did you get the wine?”

bacchus said, “i can infinitely generate wine, it’s one of my god powers.”

(note at this juncture that bacchus is class DYING-AND-RISING GOD, level 1, while horatio is class GEOMETRICA FRAUDULENTUS, level 1.)

“what the fuck,” horatio said.

“yeah, it owns,” bacchus said. “except it doesn’t really affect me because my blood is like 30% GABA at baseline? but it’s cool at weddings and such.”

so they drank. and bacchus made like he was going to move 1…e5, but instead he just grazed it and said “j’adoube.” horatio gave him a look.

and bacchus said, in a voice of ambiguous irony: “if i did move that piece, we would be much akin to those frozen center pawns: stuck in the zugzwang of existential freedom.”

“and also we can only capture on our diagonals,” horatio said.

“yeah,” bacchus said, “or, i don’t know, man. i suspect it's my history of epub piracy—that, or sometimes i've said something that sounded like it was nice, but by adhering too close to the letter of the law, i was actually deconstructing that niceness, mocking it, and God knew. that, or it was a sin of omission. that, or—and here's what's most likely—every decision i’ve ever made has been five degrees off-course. i trusted my instincts, and my instincts were good, but then i ran into the error margin, and unfortunately, i was too consistent, too kantian, too tragically good, perhaps, which—and i’m not trying to exculpate myself here, because if i did something wrong i would be the first to admit it—which could happen to anyone.”

now bacchus drank. and he stood and dusted the knees of his toga, and looked up at the heavens, and down at the earth, as if the two had been briefly confused.

“look,” horatio said sagely.

“yeah?” bacchus said.

“in the field of anthropology, it has been found that nearly every system of morality prohibits acute angles,” horatio said.

“yeah?” said bacchus.

horatio said: “so i suspect i went wrong in a similar way.”

now horatio took a drink. and from whence he was prone, he rolled supine, and felt the wind move over him: west, then east, then west, then east, a little weaker with each breath, folding in on itself like a blanket.

“also, my only charitable cause was wikipedia,” horatio said.

“same, of course,” bacchus said.

“dude, seriously,” horatio said, “it’s your move.”

but bacchus did not want to move. and so a long time passed in which they were kind of bored and did not know what to do. every few days one of them would feel the urge to eat or sleep, and so they would do

that, though the summoned pad thai got samey after a while and sleep was a time-skip without rest or even a recuperative panel of black, and their ghostly eidolons didn’t have to eat or sleep or perform any other bodily function for that matter, but it was a distraction. even so, now and then they looked up and noticed they were in hell: and neither of them were surprised.

“okay,” horatio finally said, “do you want to play a chess variant?”

so they played:

courier chess (german chess)

fortress chess (russian chess)

xiangqi (chinese)

jangqi (korean)

scottish chess (white moves once, then black moves twice, then white moves three times, and so on)

senterej (ethiopan; both sides start playing at the same time and make as many moves as they like until the first capture)

shatranj (persian)

shatar (mongolian; in which the king cannot castle, and the knight cannot deliver mate),

and then they briefly played connect 4. they thought about but did not play scrabble. they played checkers. and then they played:

turkish checkers

canadian checkers,

and then they dropped canadian checkers like so many rules and played go: go was fun, but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi; they switched to blue-red hackenbush. then they played chess. they played:

shogi (japanese chess), including but not limited to: micro-shogi, whale shogi (pieces with variant movesets, named after whales), tori shogi (birds), hasami shogi, trishogi, hexshogi, masonic shogi, space shogi (nine 9x9 shogi boards stacked vertically), and taikyoku shogi (402 pieces of 209 types on a 36x36 board)

atomic chess, kamikaze chess, avalanche chess, dunsany’s chess, and hexagonal chess (variants: brusky’s, de vasa’s, mccooey’s, shafran’s, gliński’s);

meanwhile bacchus kept them amped on high-tannin wine—tossing aside used goblets and summoning new ones—it was a cantrip that cost him not a soul point (SP), the class equivalent to horatio’s knack for summoning abstract games.

"do you think tannins are funny?" bacchus asked shyly. then, hearing his voice and finding it mellifluous, he became bold: “yeah…i'm thinking tannins are funny.”

“tannins are kinda funny, yeah,” horatio said.

name prime numbers (basically, they competed at naming large prime numbers, but eventually horatio named the biggest one and they had to stop)

but they felt like they were running out of steam. so they played all the games listed above, but as drinking games, wherein every time one spotted a pattern one had to take a drink. as a consequence of this behavior they became quite drunk.

“i don't know…….” bacchus said dysarthrically, “i feel like i messed up….…”

“what is this! i thought you didn’t get drunk!” horatio exclaimed.

“no!…i said, wine didn’t affect me,” bacchus countered, “but my ebriety [vocab word] can still be perpetuated by the endogenous, xanax-like molecule that floats in my ichor, i.e. the blood of the gods…!"

bacchus tripped and then caught himself. he smiled at gravity with the warm antagonism one holds for a cartoon villain, then turned his 18 charisma on horatio. but horatio, whose alignment was lawful neutral, was unimpressed.

“well, you did mess up,” horatio said, “you’re in hell.”

“yeah, but i don’t think i should have to feel guilty on top of that,” bacchus said, “guilt is un-dionysian! it’s bluepilled!”

“okay, so then don’t,” horatio said.

“okay,” bacchus said, “then i won’t!”

“okay!” horatio said.

“okay!” bacchus said.

they both felt better after this interaction. soon bacchus was puking into an ink-black river.

"yeah, i'm feeling it," bacchus said.

"you're feeling it?" horatio said.

"yeah, i'm feeling this is dionysian as fuck," bacchus said.

now the river was utterly opaque to light, so one would expect it to have the consistency of tar, but the boys were surprised to observe that to the touch it was thin as water. so they went uphill and upstream to a slow-moving pool and rinsed their hands and splashed their faces and hair. in the pool, dark nymphs with sporty swimsuits swam until they became silly with paresthesias; and the satyrs leapt in chortling menacingly like hoo hoo hoo and ho ho ho and the nymphs would giggle with elusive allusive illusive knowledge, and within a few minutes both had forgotten lifetimes, staring at each other like babies in a warm and curious fog.

by the time the boys had looked up from the river that did not show their image, they had forgotten most of the engrams their souls had contained.

“word,” bacchus said; though this should have come earlier.

“yo,” horatio said, “i’m pretty drunk.”

“yeah,” bacchus started to say, but for some reason he stopped and instead stared blankly.

“yeah,” horatio thought about saying; but he was too tired, so instead he stared blankly too.

the next one hundred years were spent in a hangover.

some of the games they played during the hangover include:

moving their hip flexors

moving their knee extensors

moving the plantar-flexing muscles of the feet

moving their hip extensors (meta-breaking)

moving their knee flexors

moving the dorsi-flexing muscles of their feet

by this point their enthusiasm for the lower extremities had dimmed—horatio bored when he had solved the path to the game’s solution, bacchus discouraged when the flapping of the map recalled to him the territory—and the psoas and quadratus lumborum muscles were given only a cursory trial.

their attention moved superior (we are skipping over the reflex arcs and smooth muscle contractions that took place automatically, such as laughter, sneezing, and vasodilation, though the boys became skilled at those too) as the boys practiced other forms of iterated narrowing choice: the brash trapezius giving way to the stoic biceps, the careful flexors, the presumptuous precision of fingers and thumb closing three pixels away from the yearned-for dimensionless point. they considered past encounters with such discrepancy: ah yes, these were the angles who ached to lose themselves in intersection. three pixels. electricity clenched efference on no choice at all.

“we could play chess,” horatio attempted to say.

but he had forgotten how to speak. horatio gestured with his hand (though not in a way that was interesting or original or which had semantic meaning) and briefly he felt good (due to dopamine) because he had moved (which felt like an accomplishment) but soon he stopped moving (and the dopamine faded) and then he was still.

“uhn,” bacchus said.

to explain these profound deficits is difficult. we must note that, in addition to the known amnestic effects of alcohol and the river lethe, their circadian rhythms were off. managing the boar-driven chariot that drew the sun across the sky was not a highly-sought position: the black sun rose during the day, and the red sun rose at night; but the red sun did not rise every night, and though the black sun was more timely it was directionally impaired: rising in the south and setting in the north, rising in the northwest and setting in the northeast, or rising in the north and taking a strange zig-zag pattern to the south and back—possibly an attempt to draw a “cool S”. we can also say with confidence that the grayish vapors disseminated from the cracked obsidian of the forsaken earth did not have a salubrious effect. finally, we must note that the boys’ amnesia could have resulted from the omnipresent rule of demonic soul magic, in which what is attended to becomes real, and what is not attended to, does not.

now at this time horatio and bacchus girded themselves with determination, even though it caused them sadness, and tried to recall language. it started with a sharp inspiration and then a slow expiration, “ooooooo”; which got a laugh, and with pursed lips they varied the number of oo’s for a while before settling upon 6 to 8 as the optimal (i.e. funniest) range. then they widened the distance between their lateral commissures to make eeeeee, and they dropped their mandibles and flattened their tongues to make aaaaaah, and these too were amusing, if admittedly juvenile in the way of all unperturbed air. hence the consonants: one would lead off with a gggggggg and the other would breathe the metronome of expectation and listen to gggggggggggggggggggggggg continuing past all semantic purpose until with some internal wrenching of sockets this noise would give way to eeeeee, and they would laugh.

various orderings of consonants and vowels were tried as the sophistication of their humor increased. now with words they recalled meanings, and with meanings they became capable of irony, and shortly thereafter they were back to their old ways.

“1…e5,” bacchus said.

“holy shit,” horatio said.

and so the boys continued to game systematically, but not as systematically as they once had; and they continued to drink, but sometimes in moderation.

“do you think there's a psychological typology of chess openings?" bacchus asked, “like, certain types of people prefer certain openings, to clarify?”

“yes,” horatio said.

“yeah, i think so too,” bacchus said.

2. Bc4 Nc6

3. Qh5 Nf6??

4. Qxf7#

now by this time horatio fundamentally understood bacchus, and bacchus fundamentally understood horatio, but not in the way that allowed them to make predictions about individual actions, so they kept being surprised. for it was evident that the light that limned them had exhausted innumerable other options before settling upon this one, because the scene had purpose and harmonious proportion. and even though the light vacillated across moments of perception, in each moment, it seemed that it could be no other way.

“yeah man,” horatio eventually said, “my take is, you can be in a bad place, and still make a good thing of it.”

horatio tilted the white queen and rolled her base across the fatal square.

“in fact, maybe it's better to have a good time in a bad place, on your own terms, than to be in a good place, conditional upon doing what you’re told,” he said.

“well,” bacchus said, spinning the board, “maybe.”

and with a desultory sweep, horatio brought pawns and knights errant to the frontier of their steady-state, while bacchus, kneeling, with three arcs of divine manumission lifted pawn, queen, and bishop directly to their native squares.

chapter 1 - END

#a season in hellsite #ash #horatio #bacchus #chess

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enbyleighlines · 5 years

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This is going to be a jumbled mess, but I’ve been thinking about the symbolism in sarazanmai all day and I need to vent

Okay so there is so much to unpack in this show

The first thing that really confused me from the very beginning was... why the butt stuff? Like, butts are an extremely prevalent theme in the show. But why?

I mean, obviously there’s a lot of metaphors about anal sex going on. The show is rife with phallic imagery, with the opening scene where that phallic looking building rises up between three interlocking circles, obscuring our view of the middle one, so that it looks like a dick with balls

There’s the cucumbers, an undeniably phallic vegetable

And of course, the shirikodama. It’s a mythical organ that resides inside a human’s anus, and stores human desire. I certainly can’t be the first person to realize, uh... sounds like a prostrate, yo. Y’know, the male g-spot?

Which makes the shirikodama extraction scenes so... disturbing, when you think about it

They defeat villains... by diving into their anus, and tearing out their shirikodama

And if this is a metaphor for anal sex... well, why is it so violent?? It reminds me of yurikuma arashi, where the metaphor for cunnilingus is... bears literally eating people alive

(Or, alternatively, licking honey off of a flower)

It portrays the sex as a violent act. Which could tread into problematic territory since these are both sexual acts that are associated with gay sex

But then again, that’s the whole point in yurikuma arashi, which deconstructs the predator lesbian myth. In media, a woman’s sexual desire for another women is often depicted as predatory, dangerous, or filthy. That’s why Ginko and Lulu are depicted as villains in the start of the anime, but then the script flips, and we realize that they aren’t villainous at all

No, the real villain was the silent storm (aka homophobia) the whole time!

(I could go into a whole other spiel about Ikuhara’s obsession with the distinction between lust and love. Because homosexual desire is always treated as a topic of lust, not a topic of love. And, society says, if you REALLY love someone, you won’t corrupt them with your dirty sexual desires.)

Buuuut without getting too off track, let’s return to sarazanmai

Because I was confused why a metaphor for anal sex was portrayed LIKE THAT in this anime. It’s not just that it’s violent, because that’s not really the focus

It’s primarily portrayed as... comedic

Yes, the absurdity of the scene is certainly what caught my attention first, but beyond sheer shock value, you have to admit that this image is extremely funny

It’s FUNNY to see a villain get defeated, on their hands and knees, like this

And that always unnerved me. Why portray anal sex as something so... funny? And then episode 10 hit, and I think I get it

Because Mabu, as a kappa zombie, doesn’t fight kappa Reo. He doesn’t even face Reo. From the very beginning, he is facing away from Reo, and offering up his shirikodama. From a plot standpoint, this is because Mabu WANTS Reo to see his desires

But it also shifts the tone of the process

This scene is not played for humor. This is sad. This is Mabu admitting defeat, knowing that his true feelings will never come across to Reo unless he completely sacrifices everything. Because he knows, once Reo retrieves his shirikodama, he will die

No, worse than that. He will be erased

That’s another thing that was initially played for laughs. The first one that comes to mind is Otone’s boyfriend. We never get to learn or care about this character, and we later learn that he’s basically a womanizer with no intention of settling for only one girlfriend. When Otone forgets about him, it’s not a sad thing. I mean, she’s better off without him anyway, right?

But when Mabu is forgotten... we realize how horrifying this process really is. They’re erased, and exiled from the circle (aka society)

And it’s about now that I started to realize just why this metaphor bothers me so much. It’s about WHY we think of the image of the zombie kappa on his knees is so amusing

It’s because we’re taught that anal sex is funny

Think of however many insults we have. “Get bent”, “kiss ass”, “get fucked”... and then there’s “sucker”, which implies someone who gives blowjobs

None of these are inherently gay. They could be read as sexist, because the problem about them is that they’re all about the submissive partner. To be bent over, to receive anal sex, to perform fellatio... it means performing “the woman’s role” in the bedroom

Or think about prison rape jokes. “Don’t drop the soap”, or “he’ll make you his bitch”. The shame comes from being the submissive partner, from being feminized

And that’s... homophobia, folks

The image of a monster on his hands and knees, receiving metaphorical anal sex, is funny because of... homophobia...

Which is a brilliant way to turn the audience’s thoughts back on themselves. The first time, it’s funny, but by the time we get to Mabu... suddenly it’s tragic. And it’s supposed to be that way. Because now the audience realizes that it really wasn’t funny. I mean, we were supposed to find it funny at first, only for Ikuhara to yank back the cape and go “ta-da!! you thought that was funny because of HOMOPHOBIA”

And I might be wrong, but, when we think about all the kappa zombies... weren’t they all subs, too? All of them, with their various kinks... all of their desires were heterosexual in nature, but in their fantasy scenes, they were all playing the part of a submissive partner. The man who wanted the woman to step on his balls, the guy who liked to be treated like a cat...

The only obvious exception is Otone’s boyfriend, tho I also don’t remember what his specific fantasy was about

And then their fetishes are revealed, and then... poof. They disappear. They are wiped clean from existence

Which is basically every queer person’s fear about coming out, about their desires being found out... their desires will be seen as funny, as a joke, and then they will get booted out of all social circles

BUT I’M NOT DONE

This metaphor goes further

Because when we talk about submission, we can’t not talk about the other side of submission, the nonsexual part. What does nonsexual submission look like?

Well, we tend to call that “letting yourself be vulnerable”, which is what you need to do in order to build friendships. It’s the very thing that keeps the three main boys from making connections. They don’t want to be vulnerable. They don’t want to share their secrets to each other

We’re right back at the theme of connection

Because, contrary to what Ikuhara’s shows might claim, there doesn’t have to be such a huge divide between love and lust, connection and desire. It’s just, that’s what society wants us to believe

Like Mabu can only stay with Reo if he refuses to admit that he loves him, romantically. He’s allowed a platonic relationship with Reo, or no relationship with Reo. And when he admits it, when he prostrates himself (wonderful idiom, by the way, since it’s so apt to this situation), when Mabu makes himself vulnerable and submissive... he disappears. Mabu is forgotten, because he chose desire over love

Or at least, the type of love that society deems love. Because homosexual desire is incompatible with love

Except, of course, we know that’s bullshit. Ikuhara knows that’s bullshit. And that’s why he parodies these lessons in his shows, and portrays them with such absurd metaphors. Because these lessons we’re taught ARE absurd, they’re pure fiction

Sometimes it just takes us to look at these issues through abstract symbolism for us to realize that

#sarazanmai #long post #symbolism #gif #anime #episode 10

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minhyunluvr · 5 years

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look | reconcile

"What was it that you wanted to speak to me about?" Your classmate pulled his chair out, placing his tray on the monotonous, planate table that stood between the two of you. His vision was focused on the cold soba in front of him, yet it sat untouched, even after he seated himself. The boy seemed different, drastically so. Your training together had ceased after his mother burned his face, and it was apparent that it had taken a toll on him. He had been a sweet boy in your year of knowing him, but now he came off as cold. Distant, even.

Clearing your throat along with your thoughts, you began to speak. "Can you recall training with a girl when you were younger?"

His eyes flicked up to your face in inspection. You attempted to keep your face as blank as possible around other people, but it was possible that he would be able to recognize you easier if you lifted the corners of you mouth. Begrudgingly, you carried out the action. Shouto's mother had always talked about how you were prettier with a smile on your face, and although you respected her, keeping a neutral face was more strategical. As you twisted your features into the unnatural form, his eyes widened. Instead of correcting his expression as a way of following what the two of you had been taught to do as children, the look of incredulity continued to stay glued to his face.

"Yunseo?" Letting out a breath of relief, your fake smile went away, only to be replaced with a smaller, authentic grin. To anyone other than the two of you, the small twitch of your lips would have gone unnoticed. He caught the movement, but the usual reciprocation was left undone. His eyes flashed with contemplation before returning to his normal, stoic facade. "How has training been going?"

Air blew through your nose in a silent sigh before you responded. "It's (Y/n), now. Training is similar to how it was with Enji, but consisting of a lot less... abuse. It's not direct, but Jinho has thrown me into rocks as if I were a rag doll on multiple occasions... It helps, though. I've become more resilient. You?"

The saddened look he shot your way was too much. Averting your eyes, you stared down at the food in front of you as he began speaking. "It's still the same. Stretches, gym training, hand-to-hand, then quirk training... You know the motions." Pausing, he flicked his eyes to the ceiling, hands fiddling under the table as he regained his composure. It wasn't that talking about life was the problem, it was that you had been his lifeline back at the beginning, and now you were back. You and his mother... "I've grown a lot, too. Sometimes I regret staying here, but once I graduate, I'll be free from him."

How tiring must it have been for him, a child, to scrape by all of the familial carnage that he had witnessed alone? It was clear that he had been raised differently to most people, his irregular maturity hinting toward it. It was a miracle that he hadn't ended up as a villain.

The two of you sat in silence for the next few minutes, reminiscing your childhoods. At the beginning, it was just you in an adoption home, waiting day after day for someone to take you. As the children around you grew older, the hope that they had once harbored was extinguished as the years passed.

'Why does no one want me?'

'Am I not good enough?'

Even though you had only been four years old at the time, watching people come and go had flicked a switch in you. A switch that shouldn't have been flicked for many years, a switch that some never turned on. The light that poured out of it was one of realization. The realization that humans are shallow, selfish creatures. The type that only care for themselves and what benefit them. Then again, isn't that the right way to live? Without any concern for another being, chasing after the prime version of you? Leaving the weak behind and taking in the strong as allies was the only way of succeeding in the abstract form of time that we call "life".

But then Jinho came in. In the world that had always been covered in a dark hue, he had shone a new light upon it. Jinho was a loving father figure for some time, Woojin being a supportive older brother. But once your quirk manifested, all of that changed. He sent you off to train with Endeavor, leaving little time for relaxation at home. Sometimes, you just stayed at his house over night. Woojin was a thing of the past, as he was busy training with his father, but he never changed when you saw him. He was still the same funny, overprotective and adorable brother you had always known. Jinho, however, became a distorted, fun-house mirror version of Endeavor. His morals became dubitable, fatherly affection scarce, and his old, empathetic nature was left behind. To this day, you were still curious as to why the drastic change occurred, and it would quite possibly stay that way, as it had for the past decade.

Before you knew it, the bell had rung, and you stood up to throw away the untouched food. Shouto followed behind, a dark look upon his face.

The next day, classes seemed to roll by slowly. Even more so than the first day, if that was possible. You had opted to sit by Kaminari that day, goal being to strengthen your relationships with your classmates. Iida had been sitting with Uraraka and Midoriya, the latter two not exactly being your type of people.

"So, (Y/n), how are things between you and Todoroki?" The red-head sitting across from you asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "My name's Kirishima Eijirou, by the way."

You dryly chuckled, face devoid of amusement. As vague answers were best when you weren't entirely sure of an answer, you kept it simple. "We're friends."

"Oh. That wasn't juicy at all." Kirishima whined, slurping up his noodles. Jirou Kyouka winced from his left, scratching at her temple. You glimpsed a wire-like object sliding away from her earlobe. It seemed to plug into the side of his arm, resulting in a screech from Kirishima.

"You know, (Y/n), you don't have to deal with his shit." She said, retracting the extension. She lifted up the cup and took a sip, effectively turning into a meme. "He's a little bitch, if I have anything to say about it. Which I do."

While Kirishima rolled his eyes, Kaminari clung onto your forearm to keep himself from falling off of the chair in laughter. 'God, he's extra...'

As people filed back into the classroom, murmurs began to start up about the next class. Hero Basic Training, the class taught by the one and only All Might. You stayed in your seat in the back of the room, eavesdropping on other conversations.

"I'm gonna fucking crush that number one hero!" Bakugou.

"I wonder if his smile is as bright in person as it is on screen..." Ashido.

"Let me stick my balls to his muscles!!!" ...Mineta?

"...I have come through the door like a normal person!" A tall, masculine figure called as it hopped through the door. Gasps of excitement chorused throughout the room as the students came to the realization that it was, indeed, the All Might that the students had been itching with excitement to meet.

"Welcome to Hero Basics Training, the class that will give you all sorts of experiences to mold you into the great heroes you all aspire to be!" 'Only someone as comically acceptable as All Might could utter those words without sounding like a psychopath...' You thought. "No time for dilly-dallying! Put on your hero costumes and get out to Ground Beta for battle training!"

Sighing, you stood up with much less ambition than the other students. You just never saw the hype with All Might; he had a boring enhancement quirk. Nothing special, yet he had become the number one hero. Or maybe that was why everyone looked up to him? Because he was so... ordinary?

As you strutted into the facility, a few heads turned in your direction. Your quirk wasn't really anything that needed extra costume enhancements, so when you received the request form you thought, 'Why not wear something sexy and avant-garde just for shock value?' So there you were, with an arguably too-revealing bodysuit covered by a cloak and pointy sneakers. Shouto walked in behind you, making his way over to the wall. He gave you a look that said, 'Come stand by me so that you don't do anything dumb.' Reluctantly, you padded over to your old friend. He nodded down at the cloak in silent implication to show him your outfit. Rolling your (e/c) hues, you moved so that you stood in front of him before opening the cover-up.

Shouto took a glance at the slightly scandalous attire before waving his hands for you to cover yourself back up. With a condescending smirk rested upon your face, you leaned back against the wall beside him. While re-buttoning the cloak, you missed the bright shade of pink that tinted his cheeks.

Hua's Talk

here’s the costume

[m.list]

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #fanfiction #x reader #manga #anime #shouto todoroki x reader #shouto todoroki #katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #izuku midoriya #look

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ultraericthered · 5 years

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Linkara’s Team Galactic Bad Take

So I finally found this video, which is what inspired that little controversy regarding Lewis Lovhaug’s take on Cyrus and Team Galactic five years ago, where he made that long ass bitchfest post in response to me asking what his problem with Cyrus in Platinum was.

Contrary to my and I think many others’ views, Lewis seems to think Cyrus was a worse villain/character in Platinum than he was in Diamond & Pearl due to the whole “vague and incomplete spirit” factor getting more pronounced as opposed to just leaving it at the simpler, easier to grasp “I want to become a god.” ‘Cause Lewis wasn’t able to grasp that “spirit” = soul/mind/essence of a person that encompasses emotion, knowledge, and willpower, and “incomplete” = constraining and limiting humanity’s full potential rather than fulfilling and advancing it. Basically, the problem is that Lewis was hearing Cyrus without actually listening, or in this case, reading without actually comprehending and making an effort to understand.

And as funny as his reaction to randomly encountering “the Team Galactic asshole” was, and as agreeable as what he said about Black & White having a stronger story than D/P/PL was, there were three fallacies I found in the stuff Lewis said:during his “I hate Cyrus” ramble.

1. Talking as though Team Galactic being stupid was a mark specifically against them. Even when, as I’ve pointed out before, nearly all grunts in all evil teams are idiots in some way. Galactic and Skull are probably just the most notably stupid because those teams have the youngest grunts compared to the others. And in terms of their plans and actions being stupid, Galactic is nowhere near as horribly idiotic as Teams “destroy the environment in order to protect the environment” Aqua and Magma, Team “kill everyone with a horribly ill-defined bogus weapon so we can own the world as it’s ruling elites ‘cause we’re smarter, wealthier, and more fashionable than anyone else!” Flare, or even Team “Come back to us, Giovanni! We’re totally lost without you!” Neo Rocket. Galactic at least make some degree of sense!

2. He sang the praises of Team Plasma without even mentioning the team’s actual boss, Ghetsis, and let’s be real, Ghetsis has less valid motivation for aiming to achieve what he wanted to achieve. Is “I can recognize the limitless potential in Pokémon’s uses, so therefore it stands to reason that only I should be able to use Pokémon to RULE ZEH WORUDO!” really that much more motivation than “I hate this vague and incomplete thing called spirit!”? I’d say the one thing it has going over Cyrus’ thing is that it’s easier to grasp in a Pokémon- based context as opposed to being based so deep in abstract philosophy and theology.

3. The character he did mention, N, while undeniably sympathetic, was really just as wordy with repetitious and sometimes nigh-nonsensical dialogue as Cyrus was. Aside from using math equation allegories, he says stuff like “As long as Pokémon are confined in Poké Balls, Pokémon will never become perfect beings!” (he says this “perfect being” things again later on!) and “What I desire is a world for Pokémon, and Pokémon alone. I will separate Pokémon from people, so Pokémon can regain their original power!” that come off as being “DEFINE YOUR GODDAMN TERMS”-worthy as well (Like, how are Pokémon as an entire worldwide race not “perfect beings” just because a handful of them get caught in Poké Balls? If you want to make a world “for Pokémon alone”, how can that co-exist with a separate world for humans unless you literally commit total human genocide? What are Pokémon’s “original power”, how do you know about it, and how will segregating Pokémon from people allow them to magically regain it?) Truthfully, I can understand the basic gist of what N is saying, but not everyone will, and the same is true of Cyrus, so him going on and on about spirit and “incompleteness” really isn’t much a writing issue so much as it is a translation issue.

Oh, and fun fact about that Omicron fan-game Lewis was playing there? Cyrus AND N later show up to tag team against the player. They also help the player too, since neither of them are true antagonists in this game. Which is a good thing, ‘cause I love both characters.

#Pokemon #Diamond and Pearl #Platinum #Team Galactic #Cyrus #linkara #lewis lovhaug #opinion #criticism #hatedumb #misaimed fandom #completely missing the point #double standards #hypocrisy #I disagree #shut up

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thereddeath2093-blog · 5 years

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2020A_CW-210 personal blog post

DOOM

By Steven Bunch

I spend a lot of time thinking about doom. It’s a rather abstract concept to preoccupy oneself with, but still I find myself living a “doomed” life. I listen to doom metal, I watch movies and TV shows full of doomed people on doomed worlds, I fantasize about the doom of the planet and my own personal doom. It even gets so much more specific to the point of absurdity; my favorite rapper is MF DOOM, my favorite super villain is Dr. Doom, I even play DOOM the video game.

Half of my time spent thinking about doom, is trying to understand what the word itself really means. What is doom? What does it mean to be doomed? This as you can imagine inspires all sorts of philosophical questions about life and death, fate and inevitability, as well as many others. For all my pondering, I can’t really come up with a solid answer or something definitive. Sure, I could go with a typical dictionary definition of the idea, but it is more than that to me. It encompasses too much to be summarized and completed in a single or simple string of sentences. It’s an aesthetic, an ideology, and a state of being to me, something transcendental unto itself.

The aesthetics of Doom are easily recognized but much like the idea itself, abstract and difficult to definitively explain. There are rather obvious tropes and visual elements that appear in art and media that are representative of what I’m talking about; ruined buildings, smoke filled skies, destroyed cities, dead bodies, anything apocalyptic really. However, the idea is much deeper than that. A piece of art, or anything visual, that can inspire feelings of dread, despair, or hopelessness exemplify this aesthetic in its purest forms. This has a place in the greater sense of the word and the idea of Doom itself.

The ideology of Doom, unlike a lot of ideologies, is not one that is readily “chosen” in the same way one might choose to be a democrat or one would take up the cause of conservation. This is a kind of mentality that people usually fall into, and more so often than they might realize. Unlike the aforementioned aesthetics, the ideology is easily explained and familiar to most people. While chiefly the mentality is signified by feelings of doom or feeling doomed, it is a little more complicated than that. A true ideology of doom comes when this mentality is reflected out into the world as a whole rather than the individual. More than a simple feeling of personal helplessness, an ideology of doom encompasses the whole of humanity, to see the entire human race as doomed. As you can imagine, this is not a particularly hot-take, especially these days. That being said, embracing this fact would be the key difference between someone who is merely cynical and someone who is waiting with baited breathe for the apocalypse. Which is essentially what I’m talking about.

People would scarcely admit to themselves, and even more so to each other, that they want the world to end. But the fact of the matter is that most people on some level do. Being a “doomer” has even become a popular internet meme. You get a sense of this feeling anytime someone has a particularly fashionable doomsday prophecy or something like this virus breaks out. People talk about “what if this gets worse?” and “what if this is the ‘big one’?” and they do so in very practical sensible ways, but it’s not hard to see something under the practical nervous façade everyone displays. There’s a part of it that is exciting to everyone. There’s a little voice in every one’s head that says “well fuck, if the world ends, I don’t have to go to work on Monday”.

Now that might seem rather funny like a Sunday newspaper comic, but there’s something deep in the psychology of that mindset. People don’t want to have to go to work, but more than that, they don’t want to be expected to participate in the societal machine that makes people go to work and earn money. Part of being an adult is accepting and fulfilling obligations that are somewhat thrust upon you from outside regardless of how one feels about those particular obligations. People are to a degree forced to participate in a society that they don’t agree with, or at the very least, do not like their position in. An apocalypse frees the shit scrubber and the burger flipper to eat his boss and give a finger to the man free of any guilt of any financial or typical consequence. All of us have someone higher on us on the ladder we wouldn’t mind making a meal out of.

Naturally this all extends outside of working relationships and obligations, but to the far reaches of civilization as a whole. Every person from pauper to prince is well aware, that the “system” in place is not only incredibly flawed and corrupt, but also antithetical to the very human soul itself. Obvious injustices such as bigotry, war, poverty; as well as little things like traffic, wasted time, rudeness, all support the notion that something is wrong .“The system” as your local pothead would call it, isn’t designed to crush people into machines and thoughtless consuming automatons, but one can’t be faulted for believing it so, considering how often said system produces such hollow beings. One of the mindset of “Doom” recognizes that the easiest way for these things to change, if they can be changed, is to wipe the slate clean entirely.

This is the point where most people will close this page because I’m starting to sound like a cultist of some kind. But, those people aren’t remiss to do so. This is the kind of mentality that leads people into cults. Nearly every cult is a “doomsday” cult of some kind. Even Christianity for all its pomp and circumstance, is hardly ever different. Some of the most colorful and interesting passages of the Bible come from the book of Revelations and the prophecy for the end of the world. That’s how natural this all is, how prevalent it is in the human psyche. We have always been waiting for the end of the world, because unlike most animals, we are very poignantly aware of our own mortality, and this awareness manifest itself in strange ways. The strangest of all being embracement.

This leads to my final point about Doom itself as a state of being, the embracement of death. Now again, I’m not trying to get all death-cult on you, but there is something to be said for not only accepting one’s own mortality, but embracing it. The fact of the matter is, life sucks, and not just these days or in a particular circumstance. Life, on the whole, is a tragedy. We are born into fragile bodies against our will, bodies that will very slowly decay with us trapped inside them. We are born into families we do not choose, with people who do not know but are entrusted with our entire existence, and then as an adult expected to serve someone else entirely. We are expected to work and struggle and to get sick and to suffer until we are physically incapable anymore. And if you whine about it, there will always be someone to chime in and remind you that your particular suffering isn’t even close to the breadth of suffering humans can experience because “someone always has it worse”. This is a world where a good death is considered “getting old”, which is essentially just fermenting and rotting longer than anybody else.

To be “Doomed” in this sense is a recognition and rejection of fighting these things. If we are all going to die, then there can be no “good death”. All death is natural, all the world is transient, a passing image. Nothing, least of all people, last forever. You spend a lot more time dead than alive in the grand scheme of things, and in that, being dead is more of the default state. That’s not to say that this is a suicidal feeling at all. This isn’t some philosophy of suicide in so much as it is a philosophy of embracing the inevitable end of all things. Someone in the “doomed” state of being isn’t going to go out and seek the end of their own life, but they aren’t the kind of person to shy away from it either. They allow themselves to fall away and let go of life’s worries much more readily. There is a reason that coming to terms with one’s own mortality is a huge part of Zen and eastern spiritual learning.

Why would you shy away from death and doom if the world is a bag of ass and you’re going to die anyway?

After many hours wasted thinking, I have come to the conclusion that this is where I draw my artistic inspiration from. All of my world view is painted with a funeral veil. I find myself obsessed with the aesthetics of doom because I constantly live in that state of being. I can’t help but feel a compulsion to drive this aesthetic as far as I can. I feel the innate urge to draw visions of monsters, destroyed cities, and the sky shredded by cosmic terror so naturally. I can’t help but express this feeling through my artwork. Something within me wants to say to people, or remind them; “hey, not only are things like suffering and death very real, but sometimes they are the only thing that is. They are inevitable and they shouldn’t not be cowered from, but embraced and mastered.”

Now, maybe I’m projecting too much. (I tried not to be too first person, oh well). Perhaps I’m just trying to explain my own morbid fascinations I can’t otherwise do so with. Maybe I’m just too edgy for my own good or it’s because I have a very strong belief in the afterlife. Though it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there’s just some people out there (myself chiefly included) who are just sort of depressing, death obsessed freaks. However, I gamble a stamp, that considering how many depressing death obsessed freaks are really out there in the world, that I’m not entirely off-base when I talk about these things being prevalent in the subconscious of the human race as a whole. I believe something deep in the human psyche craves a change, craves destruction to make way for something new. Something in each of us wants these things no matter the cost, something in each of us, craves Doom.

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21secondsofchristoph · 6 years

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Here is a full translation of the interview with the FAZ:

Mr Waltz, statistically you're a rarity. Only five percent of all actors in Los Angeles manage to get enough jobs to get accepted into the SAG. And out of that group, only about five percent earn enough to make a living out of their art.

Becoming an actor is like becoming a father: really easy. Being and staying an actor is much harder.

We're meeting today, because you're not playing the villain for once, but some kind of action-hero in James Cameron's Manga movie "Alita: Battle Angel"

As a futuristic doctor you revive a cyborg from Mars, so you're basically working on the interface of human and machine

Haha, you could put it like that! I like that!

When the story was published as a comic in 1990 it was considered Science-fiction. Today, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos actually work on brain implants and dream of colonies on Mars. Have you dealt with such things as preperation?

I don't take Elon Musk seriously. His behavior strikes me as ridiculous and you can't forget that he has a commercial interest in the topic's sensation. I've already watched moon landing's and flights into space as a child. Is it really necessary to introduce billionaires into space tourism? Well, we will see what happens. I am interested in new technologies but it's difficult to seperate them from journalism of sensation, even if it's dressed seriously.

In time, a lot of things might be possible that I can't even imagine right now. But there is another question: the question of necessity.

The market economy drives our world into an orgy of uselessness. It damages our planet and our lives on it. Who wants to live on Mars? That we will all be unemployed and the environment destroyed is in no relation to any use.

Can one stop the progress if it's useless?

Not as long as someone benefits from it.

What about the desire for disruption?

Disrupting something is an easy action, replacing it with something useful is not.

I'm always ready to disrupt something if there is a useful counterproposal. Not necessarily until then.

A lot of things are turned upside down in film industry. Netflix not only revolutionized the concept of television, it also produces exciting movies. And Youtube even has its own celebrities among the new generation.

Over the past few months I've watched some movies which hadn't been produced without Netlflix. For example the winner of the Venice Film Festival "Roma". Movies like that wouldn't run longer than 3 weeks in theaters. Through the premiers and prices it now receives the attention it deserves. And after that it's on Netflix. As superficial as I can see that, it's not the worst thing.

In contrast to that, I don't have a hard time with not watching Youtube. It's probably a cultural matter and depends on how we want to shape our lives. Of course it's also a generational matter. But why is that? Just because someone is younger, it doesn't mean they are predestined for entertainment through videoclips.

You have 4 children. You have to be familiar with this world. Where do you see the difference to your generation?

In school we were always confronted with things we didn't like, but which we couldn't dispose of.

That's where the wonderful word "Bildung" comes from, which doesn't exist in English. Education refers to an information value. "Bildung" goes further than education through its cultural formation. When I was in school I also didn't understand why I had to study Latin. But not wanting to learn Latin would have never occured to me. Just because no one speaks it anymore and learning it seemed uncomfortable.

And did you like it?

It created connections within a language, trained precise phrasing, as well as logic and discipline. It's certainly more challenging to learn an abstract language than watching a funny Youtube video.

About for or five years ago you warned Facebook might be a breeding ground for the fast growth of terror organisations. Are you surprised that it also seems to threaten western democracies now?

Not at all. History has taught us that medium and structure can be more dangerous than the message, because it's easier to handle the problematic movement than the well oiled machine that keeps it going. Especially when algorithms control the dynamics in the networks, those networks can become independent.

Some hope that societies might improve through a "Wutbürger"-culture and a crazy government.

At best, all of that just has entertainment value.

So maybe not anyone should always add their opinions?

If you don't have anything clever to say you should shut your mouth. But actually it's the other way around. Apart from this choir of stupidity being really annoying, people who haven't developed the resistance and sensors might fall for the noise. Whoever shouts the loudest ends up being heard.

You are known for keeping your private life private. How does that match marketing's and fan's expectations?

Fame is an unsolved problem, not only for me.

You either remain an anonymous observer without a bigger platform to present your realizations. That is an unfortunate paradox because the people who get the chance to move in public have to deal with growing fame while they also distance themselves from the influences and experiences of real life.

Studies have shown that introverts would handle most jobs better. But they tend to get cast out by the loudmouths.

I can imagine that. Self- and foreign perception are a tricky thing. I can remember the first Loveparades in Berlin which I saw on TV. I always avoided the event myself. In the interviews, people were saying things like: "We celebrate our individuality!" And there were one million people that all looked the same. The music was a monotonous bum-bum-bum and I always tried to spot a moment of individuality.

You've been living in the centre of individuality for a while now. Do you still consider the United States of America governable?

Maybe not as a federation. The question I'm interested in is whether the USA as a federation are still worthy of governance. California alone is the fifth largest economy in the world.

In an interview from 2003 you talked about posing, about film makers who eroticise themselves and about how to stand yourself

Oh God, I remember.

Are you currently able to stand yourself?

Sometimes. But it's not easy.

At that time you weren't a Hollywood star and you made yourself very clear in interviews.

"Schindler's list" is mendacious because Spielberg might have thought "that type of movie still lacks from my collection of movies about dinosaurs and UFOs

Or that Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" is "crap" because it communicates that it's alright to laugh about concentration camps. "when it's a tender laugh"

Do you still dare to say such things now that you constantly meet other Hollywood stars?

In Germany, yes. In America, no.

Do you believe it's better to become famous later in life? And does aging feel better when you're at least famous while you're aging?

Hopefully both, right? As a young man you often experience the world through tunnel vision, because you impatiently want to experience everything, even though you can't sort a lot of things right. If the attention hits you at that point in life, you get in danger of stirring towards a dead end where you don't develop well.

Do you believe you became more careful and more lenient over the years and success?

You're becoming more careful and more lenient. I never thought of that before. I thought: Now I suddenly step back a little. You become more lenient when you connect yourself to it. In a strict German way you could call it cowardice, because you gain another point of view, the insight. And apart from the experience and the success it might be due to the abrasion of the testosterone-related edges.

#christoph waltz #alitabattleangel

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myfandomrambles · 6 years

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Peridot Character Analysis

Facts:

Member of the indoctrination culture of Homeworld

Told her only use is to be the engineer/kindergartner

Considered a lesser Era Two Gem lacking the same powers of an Era One

Starts of with limb enhancers

Monitors the genocidal weapon of torture

Really likes building things

Captured and stopped by the Crystal Gems (CG)

Helps stop the cluster explosion and learns to trust the GCs and appreciate earth culture

Lives with Lapis in the barn after a rough start they become close

Takes up farming

Was abandoned by Lapis

Attends the wedding

Helps fight the diamonds on earth and homeworld

Analysis:

Peridot is a Mid-to-low-level member of the Homeworld culture essentially the tech person of the culture. She truly believes in the way of homeworld due to the indoctrination of homeworld. She acts as an agnostic for a period of time as she tries very hard to complete her mission. After becoming stranded on earth she is able to build close relationships with the Crystal Gems (CGs) even becoming one over time. Peridot likes structure and missions. She enjoys the way technology works as a pattern. She is never cruelly vindictive or overly violent to others when she is fighting the gems enjoying messing with them some but mostly is agitated by people screwing with her job. When she does come to earth she struggles a lot with concepts of friendship, leisure time and understands the CG or earth cultures. She does learn over time to appreciate the way the world works and grows to love and want to protect the place she comes to call home. the process of seeing the way other ways to think and be in a place where she is allowed to do fun things like watch TV and connect with others. Peridot struggles with communication due to a combination of factors; not understanding earth customs, dealing with the programming from the great diamond authority and her own personal struggles with interaction with others even more so than other Gems. Peridot does learn how to interact with others better through her time and friendships with Steven and Amethyst. She also grows to appreciate earth and freedom allowing her to start to shrug off th programming and learn to respect Pearl as her own entity, become comfortable with garnet and find ways to enjoy earth without a mission. These new found friendships also propel her to mouthing off to Yellow diamond for the sake of the people who she has grown to care for. Peridot is extremely self-confident. She is proud of her skills and believes she can and should be involved in things. This self-assuredness is a big contrast to many of the other leads who all struggle with identity and self-worth. She deals with stress and fear a lot but does a good job and finding ways to grow and be better. Peridot does learn new ways to fix problems like trying to understand a corrupted gem. We do see some feelings of being second best as an Era 2 Gem who has no base power like weapons making, however, she does learn she does have Metallokinesis which is very impressive and she is deeply proud she can do these things putting in time to master this skill. Helping Poof Jasper and being able to use a tin trash can lid to fly. Sometimes Peridot’s self-confidence can cross into some distorted self-perception thinking she is more important or skilled than she is, but she learns to not attempt to hold these over people and putting into being Thrown at and insulting Yellow and Blue diamond and having no fear taking on the Diamond ship mecha(?). Peridot’s relationship with Steven was paramount. Even when she was a “villain” he treated her with respect and less anger than the other CGs. He didn’t understand the gravity of the situation to some extent, but also pulled on his ability to be deeply empathetic. After they do catch her he is unwilling to leave her bubbled as she isn’t a danger to herself and others like Centipeetle/Nephrite was. Giving her companionship and support gained her trust allowing her to be able to stop the cluster. He shares his bathroom and helps her with rain and social skills. Even helping her be able to compensate for her beloved tech via a recorder and tablet. He understands the importance of listening and giving her tools to communicate herself. Amethyst is also crucial to her development. She occupies an interesting position on earth, almost the same as Steven. SHe is very clued into human customs and communication giving her a more authentic connection to share with Peridot bout her home. Amethyst is also usually pretty casual her laid back style offering more comfort and is disconnected to soldiers and the war she easily trusts Peridot more. She also helped her learn sarcasm and humour through modelling and episodes of miscommunication where they unintentionally hurt each other. Like Peridot seeing and understanding she is technically "defective"/off coloured to some extent and not understanding saying so would hurt, and Amethyst having to respect some of Peridots behaviour she doesn’t get like there fight about Peridot’s tablet. They care deeply for each other and enjoy spending time together having fun quite a bit. A large part of the fandom also believes they might have crushes on each other, but there is nothing confirmed/canon on that. Lapis Lazuli’s relationship with Peridot is also extremely important. At this point, Peridot considers herself part of the team and connected to earth. She has been shown more love, compassion and freedom by these people and really loves her barn. Having to learn to live together was difficult. They had the past experiences of being on kind of opposite sides when Lapis was employed as an informant by Jasper and Peridot. Lapis also is in a shitty place and unwilling to really budge after malachite. Lapis can be cold and controlling of Peridot in a way that is deeply uncomfortable. They clearly care for each other becoming close and way more than just roommates. Fixing up their house, building “meep morps”, growing plants and marathoning Camp Pining Hearts. This extends to them taking ownership of making Pumpkin Dog something they had to raise together. However clear signs of unhealthiness are present. Lapis never really apologising for breaking Peridot’s things or being willing to be understanding well of Peridot’s perspective. In raising the barn Lapis expects Peridot to do whatever she wants. Peridot admitted to being genuinely frightened to share her perspective on not wanting to leave earth, trying to stall for as much time as possible almost giving in. There is also a rather poorly sot scene if Lapis wasn’t meant to be the bad guy. We see her close her hand tightly on Peridot while making decisions for clearly making Peridot uncomfortable. She can’t even explain till later how much this hurts. Peridot even apologises when Lapis didn’t for not sharing her feelings with Lapis when she was scared and Lapis never does. Lapis then steals all of Peridots stuff except Pumpkin making her homeless. Peridot becomes deeply depressed after Lapis leaves. They had been living together for a while. Considering the barn their home together, Pumpkin is theirs, they are best friends or girlfriends depending on who you ask, but clearly very close. When Lapis leaves Peridot is distraught to lose someone important and had to deal with the shock of losing a person and her home and all she had. Peridot does learn to deal though, Amethyst and Steven try hard and let her live with them. We also see Peridot experiences a similar guilt o Amethyst. While she was not personal responsibility for the Kindergartners on earth or the cluster she does feel bad that she was apart of this system after seeing how she could make life via farming. Peridot becomes a fully fledged Crystal Gem, being able to experience the wedding as part of the party and fighting Yellow and Blue. She is also part of the team who fights on Homeworld even getting close that now show the rebellions logo of a star. Peridot is really funny and has a pretty flawless character arc. She gains independence from her assigned roles and her old tech that only did a job. Peridot also gets tight bonds with people and a cause that propels her forward via the cluster and being a new CG. However, she doesn’t change herself completely. She still has a pretty distinct form of comedy and communication. Is allowed to still love Tech and transfers her best skills to new problems. She changes and grows without any kind of “makeover trope” other than wearing clothes and getting a new outfit after being poofed.

ND Headcanon

Autism:

Comfort objects: Limb enhancers, Recorder & tablet

Doesn’t understand body language & expressions

Echolalia

Extremely literal about things

Has to reframe abstract concepts like resting and music. Struggles to understand things like abstract music till she can understand it as a pattern than understand it well

Hates change and disrupted schedules she makes

Info dumping about things like Camp Pining Hearts, and Diamond tech

Meltdowns, including flailing limbs and things like that

Mirroring other people to learn things

Scripting, like; “Gee Thanks”

Special interest in kindergartenering/Farming/Gardening, camp pining hearts

Struggles to understand implied communication, jokes, and sarcasm

Struggles with communication especially about feelings

Struggles with social norms

Trouble forming new relationships

Requested by: TheIntrovertedRavenclaw over on Archive of Our Own

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yeswevegotavideo · 5 years

Text

Support AO3, or don't, but leave it the fuck alone

(I wrote this rant quite a while ago and never posted it, but seeing as people are On That Bullshit again, I figured it was time.)

I feel like people (you know which) who bitch about AO3 holding fundraisers to support their business, even though said business hosts content they don't approve of, are rather analogous to anti-vaxxers, or anti-unionists.

The online fanfiction world before OTW/AO3 was much more dangerous and much less regulated and much harder to control, and innocent people were getting hurt all over the place.

Content creators could destroy other people's work with impunity under "copyright infringement" claims that weren't even valid. Web hosts could discover that a fic writer was posting written erotica or fanfiction in general (see copyright infringement above), on their servers (usually after being alerted to it by someone with a grudge) and respond by taking down their website, deleting their work, and banning their IP. They didn't even have to tell you if they did this, you could discover it by accident. And this happened a lot, because companies were skittish about anything even potentially legally problematic, so they erred on the side of enormous banhammers.

And on the fan creation side, there were no real content standards. There was no way to know whether what you were reading was potentially triggering. Tagging wasn't a thing. Warnings weren't standardized. There was no system, no way of either protecting yourself OR your work. And trying to find things you wanted to see was sometimes even harder, and involved associating with people you might not want to. I entered fandom (at 17, I might add) at a time when the primary way to get fanfic was through Yahoo!groups. Message boards. I had no control over who I did and didn't have contact with. I honestly don't even remember if there WAS a way to block people. And there were definitely some creeps. There were definitely some people I would never want to associate with.

When the OTW was created, it set out to fix both of these problems at once. The legal side dealt with the fair use and transformative aspects of fanwork, and AO3 dealt with the content moderation aspect. And I think they've done a damn good job with both. Of course it's not perfect, nothing is perfect, but the fact that I can go to AO3 right now and filter out just about anything I don't want to see with extremely good results tells me that they've achieved what they set out to achieve.

But people who weren't here for the before don't see the former world. Anti-vaxxers don't think of disease as a threat because they haven't been exposed to it. Anti-unionists think unions are worthless because they weren't there for life before the 40 hour work week and child labor laws. They only see what they can criticize now.

And beyond that, they come to their criticism with misinformed, ignorant, and harmful ideas about how the whole thing works. Like anti-vaxxers and their autism myth, and anti-unionists and their worship of capitalism, these people have a worldview that, frankly, scares the shit out of me.

They seem genuinely convinced that writing about something means fully endorsing it. That only the sick and twisted and perverted would ever, could ever, write offensive or gross things, write about characters who enjoy those things, explore scenarios that would be horrific in reality. That fiction not only influences and is influenced by society, but creates reality, IS reality. That abstract concepts in a story are, themselves, crimes against humanity equivalent to rape and murder. That these things ARE rape and murder. That writing a story that doesn’t explicitly condemn rape or abuse is not only endorsement but incitement. As if fiction writers were causing these things to happen in real life, to real people. They’ve said as much. If you write rape fantasies, you’re a rapist. If you write incest, you’re a pedophile. Period, end-of, no gray area, no exceptions. Though of course, the only writers for whom this is true are fanfiction writers.

Funny how they’re not going after the published authors like this. Is anyone seriously going around calling Stephen King a pedophile because IT has a weird, uncomfortable and frankly unnecessary child orgy in it? Because it totally does, for some weird fucking reason. (Coke. The reason was lots, and lots, of coke. Also the 70s.) He made thousands of dollars off of that story, he will collect royalties on it for the rest of his life. But no, he’s fine, we can leave his career alone, his book can stay on the shelf. We should definitely instead destroy the unpaid passion project of some 40-year-old housewife who writes out her fantasies to feel just a little less alone, some 16-year-old abuse victim trying to make sense of the things currently happening to her, some 25-year-old receptionist whose only escape from her soul-crushing job is exploring the inner workings of human dynamics through the characters she most resonates with, or finds the most fascinating, or most inspire her to write. These are the real villains, am I right?

AO3 protects ALL OF FANDOM and yes, this includes the unsavory and the distasteful, because it must. Because content censorship is creative death. Once an authority is allowed to decide what is and isn’t acceptable subject matter, it’s a matter of time before those subjective, arbitrary decisions start affecting people it shouldn’t. What happens when one of the decision makers goes power-mad? When they get into a disagreement with a writer and decide, oops, all their shit is banned, and anyone who commented positive things on their stories is banned, too. When somebody gets hired to do the job, and you know what they really find inappropriate and gross? Interracial dating. When somebody decides to erase all the stories involving the “wrong” kind of trans person. Or all trans people. It’s not remotely farfetched to imagine something like this happening. One trip to Fanlore and you can find dozens of incidents like it in the past. Over, and over, and over.

And the thing is, once these tools are put into place, they are never, ever only used as intended. They are never, ever only used to the benefit of the “good guys”. We don’t want censorship on AO3 for the same reason we don’t want a leftist president with unlimited power - because the people in charge today might not be the people in charge tomorrow. Because no one should be allowed that kind of authority, even people we agree with. Because humans are fallible and make mistakes and make bad choices, and we have no choice but to let them, but we sure as hell can prevent them from doing too much damage.

Writing down a rape fantasy that someone is already fucking having because they are among the most common sexual fantasies on the fucking planet does not cause tangible harm. Destroying someone’s creative outlet? Tangible fucking harm.

These people want to take away the only bastion against the wider world that fandom has, because a small percentage of it contains upsetting, triggering ideas. Not calls for action, not instruction manuals, not advocations - just ideas, put together to make stories. The site HAS self-censoring mechanisms, that's one of the reasons for its existence, but the ability to actively avoid the content they don’t want to see isn’t enough for them. That scares me, and it should scare you, too. Because once they decide you’re “problematic”, you’re next.

Because they are advocating for authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is not your friend.

#this might be the first post that loses me followers #we'll see #I'm okay with that tbh #fandom #AO3 #protect fandom #support AO3

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