#a lot of countries aren’t so academics focused!

[sevenines]

its interesting the show didnt seem to go the "kid with immigrant parents" route with connie especially since its a common thing for immigrant parents to be so strict both because they want their child to seize the opportunity given to them by them moving away from home and with cultures in especially asian countries being so harsh on academics.

[burins]

Other Appalachias: A Booklist

As requested, the anti-Hillbilly Elegy booklist, plus annotations! When possible I tried to include books that were by Appalachians and got at lesser-known aspects of Appalachian life and identity, especially modern Appalachian life. When creating the original list I was also limited by books that were in the library network I work at, which is a) a public library and b) not actually located in Appalachia. Y’all get some bonus titles that weren’t in my library - hopefully they’ll be in yours.

A note: I have not read every single book on this list! This is the nature of creating booklists as a librarian. I trust the sources I used to find them, but if there’s something on here that you’re like “oh I read this and it sucks actually,” let me know. And if there’s a particular aspect you’d like more books on, also let me know!

General

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, eds)

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

If you read any two books on this list (especially if you aren’t from Appalachia!) make it these two. The first one is a collection of essays and photographs, the second by a single author, but both are fantastic for the basics of “hey was your entire idea of a huge stretch of the US defined by Deliverance and some NYT op-eds? perhaps it should not be” 

Appalachian Fall: Dispatches from Coal Country on What's Ailing America by Jeff Young

Leans a little more “plight of the white working class” than I absolutely love, but this talks a lot about contemporary workers’ rights and local activism in Appalachia and is a good counter to Vance’s narrative of “everybody sits on their ass all the time.”

Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks

Hey did you know bell hooks was from Kentucky? bell hooks was from Kentucky! As always her writing is deeply insightful about who is allowed to claim a place and what it means to have roots. 

Rx Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky by Lesly-Marie Buer 

The opioid crisis has defined the region (much as alcoholism came to during Prohibition); unlike a lot of writing on the topic, this lets people tell their own stories. 

Race and Sexuality

Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

Excellent counter to the narrative of Appalachia as unrelentingly white, and also painfully good writing on what happens when the folks you grew up counting on let you down. 

Loving Mountains, Loving Men: Memoirs of a Gay Appalachian by Jeff Mann

This 2005 memoir got a re-release in 2023, and thank god because it makes me cry. Really beautiful writing on what it means to come back to a place and carve out a space for yourself.

Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (Z. Zane McNeill, ed.) 

Another essay collection! There will be more; I like an essay collection for getting a sense of a subject beyond a single voice. Touches on everything from disability to race to Mothman. 

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future, Zane McNeill and Rebecca Scott, eds. 

This wide-ranging collection of essays wasn’t on the original list because it’s pretty hard to come by (academic queer theory is not a bastion of your average public library collection.) Just based on the table of contents I am going to try and get my hands on a copy ASAP. 

Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown

Focuses specifically on Harlan County, Kentucky, drawing on a ton of oral history interviews of Black residents to talk about the Great Migration, Blackness in Appalachia, and identity formation in the region and beyond.

Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia, Katrina M. Powell, ed. 

This just came out in June! In a place so often defined by how many generations of your family have lived there, it’s worth considering who gets removed from that story.  

Their Determination to Remain: A Cherokee Community's Resistance to the Trail of Tears in North Carolina by Lance Greene

The history of Appalachia is pretty obviously incomplete without talking about the policies of Indian Removal. Greene tackles a tangled story of assimilation and cultural survival. 

Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

The only fiction book on this list, but the main goal of the list was to let Appalachia speak for itself. Clapsaddle is a member of the Eastern band of Cherokee; the novel, set in western NC during the 1940s, talks about (in)justice, assimilation, and belonging. 

History, Labor, and Environment

You can’t talk about the history of Appalachia without talking about coal, and you can’t talk about coal without talking about labor, and you also can’t talk about coal without talking about the environment. 

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll 

An economic/environmental overview of Appalachia covering the shift from homesteading to resource extraction. To understand what’s happening economically in 2024 you need to understand what happened economically in 1750-1850, and this gives a general and fairly accessible throughline. 

The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising by Robert Shogan

An older book on the most famous event of the West Virginia Mine Wars, but is a very readable narrative that also touches on Blair Mountain’s wider context.  

Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction, Wess Harris, ed. 

A much more in-depth look at specific aspects of the Mine Wars and labor history, rather than a general overview, but worth reading for its coverage of more recent events (it didn’t end with Blair!)

To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice by Jessica Wilkerson

Focusing on the 60s-70s and LBJ’s War on Poverty, a good discussion of historical grassroots organizing.

Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners & the Struggle Over Black Lung Disease by Barbara Allen Smith

Seminal text! First published in 1987, with an updated edition released in 2020. 

Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia by Chris Hamby

After being mad about black lung in the 80s, you can also be mad about black lung today, because it didn’t go anywhere. 

Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher

Very “legal thriller focused on one guy,” but extremely readable. A great book to get your liberal mom fired up.  

Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, Jessica Cory, ed.

This list has been almost entirely nonfiction, so here is some lovely prose about what folks love about the region with both literary nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. It’s got a wide geographic focus to boot. 

Food and Culture

Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People by Erica Adams Locklear

Great deconstruction of how we talk about mountain food and culture (scandal! Sometimes great-grandmas used Bisquick.) Will make you hungry and also question what authenticity means and where your family recipes actually come from. 

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard

West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard talks about pro wrestling, Fallout 76, songwriting, and coal camps. Appalachia in the 21st century. 

(Finally, a shoutout to the various bookstores whose lists I used as jumping-off points, especially Appalachian Mountain Books, City Lights Bookstore, Firestorm Books, and the Museum of the Cherokee People.)

[dovesndecay]

for your queer muslim friend (giving them my salaams! <3) 

queer muslim charities they can look into (both for events etc and also those charities have many online resources): unity mosque, hidayah, muslims for progressive values (also has the best and most comprehensive reasons i’ve seen for why our religion doesn’t condemn queer people), salaam canada (it recently closed but the website has lots of great info and resources), the naz and matt foundation (not specifically for queer muslims but they are a large portion of the people involved in the charity), inclusive mosque

reading (all fictional or memoirs or poetry collections — none are like academic texts etc) : a queer muslim memoir: we have always been here (the author, who to my knowledge uses they/them pronouns now, also has a few articles on guardian and a great project here on tumblr called something like ‘just allah and me’ that photographs and tells the stories of queer muslims across the world), radiant fugitives, hani and ishu’s guide to fake dating, the henna wars, guapa, if they come for us, blood orange by mx yaffa, love is an ex country, zachary ying and the dragon emperor (one of the few on this list i haven’t read, but i’m pretty sure the mc is muslim and implied to be gay), you exist too much. only this beautiful moments is about characters who were raised muslim but faith isn’t a big part of any of their identities (i think, it’s been a while since i’ve read this). but it’s about queer iranians, and so it definitely explores being queer in muslim spaces and the intersection of that… it touched me deeply and that’s why i’m adding it here.

some queer muslims to follow on social media (all are out): blair imani, sufi and anjali were a youtube channel i followed a few years ago (sufi is a queer muslim, anjali is a queer hindu, the channel is about them and their relationship), reeta loi

queer muslim spaces on tumblr: queer muslim culture is, religious queer culture is (not only about queer muslims, but often is, and the mod is a queer muslim i think), we are not haram. dyemelikeasunset is a queer muslim who has a wonderful comic up on webtoon, and whilst their blog is a personal one and not focused around being queer and muslim, you may enjoy their comic! (their characters aren’t muslim, though, but they’re queer). bigenderrevert and mlmrevert are personal blogs run by queer muslims, but their blogs often do focus on being queer and muslim.

tv and movies that i know have at least one significant queer muslim character: the bold type, we are lady parts, breaking fast (2020)

Ahh, thank you so much, nonny!!! (I adore Blair Imani, I'm so glad to see her on your list!) Passing this along immediately!!

[addierose444]

Reacting to My Pre-College Self

It was just over four years ago that I made the official decision to attend Smith College. For more about why I chose Smith check out my second-ever blog post. A few days ago I attended my very last class. It wasn’t as emotional as I’d perhaps envisioned and this is likely because I had and still have a fair amount of remaining coursework (exams, projects, and papers). With that said, I definitely felt something in my final EGR 410 class a few weeks back as the class is exclusively seniors (technically some of them are J-grads) and I’d already finished up the respective coursework. Looking forward, I have one more day of reading period and an additional four days of finals. Thus, next Friday the academic part of my college career will officially come to a close. Absolutely crazy, I know! A lot has happened over the last four years and much of it is documented here on my blog. I really can’t believe that in two weeks' time, I’ll be an official college graduate! I’ll probably do a ton more reflecting during senior and after graduation, but for now, I’m just looking back and reacting to a letter I wrote the summer before Smith to my future advisor as part of some sort of advising information form for new students. I find this to be a fun post format, so if you like it, consider reading my reaction/response to my 7th-grade self.

As Smith was my top choice, I am so very excited to be attending next fall. Sort of surprised I didn’t include an exclamation point here, but perhaps I edited it out to be more formal or whatever. The other college I was considering was my state college, UVM (with a full-tuition scholarship). I don’t think I’ve written about this publicly before, but yeah I gave up a full-tuition scholarship to be here. This decision also meant forfeiting financial assistance from my parents for graduate school. Ultimately, I’m so glad that I made the decision I did, but I’d be lying if I said I managed to stay regret free for the full four years. I am excited about Smith for its engineering program paired with a liberal arts education. I really love the small and tight-knit engineering community of awesome faculty and students. However, the small size of the program can at times be limiting. In my case, I had the unlucky timing of being a junior/senior in years when we didn’t have many electrical engineering professors. That said, there will be a new electrical engineering professor next fall who folks are really excited about. As for the liberal arts part, while I did ultimately become a double STEM major, it really has been valuable attending a relatively small college with housemates and other peers who aren’t exclusively technical people. I am thrilled that I will be able to continue my study of French (which would not have been possible at UVM). I did take three French classes here at Smith but initially envisioned taking more. We’ll see if I get back into language learning after college as I really did find the language learning process to be fun. I want to keep my options open for study abroad in France (or another French-speaking country). I ultimately decided against studying abroad. A key factor in this decision was not wanting to miss another semester on campus. There was also just the self-awareness that my majors were more important to me and that realistically I’d be too focused on academics to really make the most of the experience. I plan to pursue a B.S. in engineering and fulfill the Latin Honors requirements for the breadth. Even though this is what ultimately happened, it wasn’t that simple as ultimately I took on computer science as a second major! I plan to fulfill a good chunk of the Latin Honors requirements with French courses. Fair enough, FRN 120 counted towards the foreign language requirement and FRN 230 counted towards literature. I also look forward to taking a bunch of computer science courses. I definitely did that as I took a total of 12 computer science courses during my time at Smith! I was originally considering a CS systems minor, but I think I will just take as many CS classes as I can and ignore the specific requirements for the minor. Haha, well turns out I took on computer science as a second major!

I consider myself introverted, but my peers see me as more extroverted. I’d say this is still fairly accurate as I’m introverted but very talkative and definitely not shy. I think that writing is a weakness of mine and I do not really like studying history. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that writing is a strength of mine, this blog has definitely helped me feel more comfortable with informal writing. My technical and email writing skills have also improved during my time here. With that said, I still find writing essays to be a bit scary and anxiety-producing. You can check out some of my prior reflections on writing at the respective link. As for history, I’m still not very interested in studying it, but to be fair I didn’t really try (in part because of the essays I’d have to write). I think I am fairly good at computer programming and time management. I’m obviously an even better programmer now! As for time management, I'm not totally convinced that it’s a strength of mine. What I am good at is ultimately getting the work and for the most part, doing it well. My challenge is that I’m not always as efficient as I’d like as I can be a bit of a perfectionist. As of now, I am just super excited about most aspects of college. The stuff I am most nervous about is having a roommate and just the general transition. I was fortunate to have a great first-year roommate, but also to have a single in all subsequent years. As for the transition, I really don’t remember it being that hard. I will say I’m a lot more nervous about my transition to the real world as I’ll really be on my own. It is of course also very exciting. I am slightly concerned that I will be super busy and not read enough nonschool books. While it’s been a busy last four years, prior to senior year I really did keep up with personal reading. Well, that is only a half-truth as I primarily listened to audiobooks, but I did do it every day and got through an average of a book a week. With that said, senior year has been insane and I’ve hardly done any personal reading. I’ve got a few months before my full-time job starts, so I will hopefully read a few books and work on rebuilding the habit.

[uselessdancedata]

I personally have never seen a single dancer get killed for being disrespectful in class so do not worry, they do not kill dancers for standing wrong. Even when I was at a Russian school for a bit (although some of the teachers made me feel like they would if they were allowed!) Most that will happen is getting kicked out of class. It is not that hard to be respectful. It is not like you have to break your back just to show respect. You just have to stand properly and concentrate on what the teacher is teaching and not look around basically. That is not very hard if you have 2 working legs and a proper attention span. I do notice people from the west seem to have an issue with this? I do not notice this as much from dancers who aren’t originally from the west. It is definitely a stark contrast. (I live in Australia for context but have travelled/met people who have come to Australia from non western countries) People in the west seem to be more shocked at doing this? I think this has a lot to do with western culture being very individual focused. I am not completely sure of the words for this. Showing respect is not that bad or hard I swear. 😭😭😭

i am very much not western, and i've never connected the dots before, but it does kind of make sense? there could def be a link between western individualism and competition culture where the corps skills and classical culture aren't taught well.

but as someone who was taught ballet in a country that is relatively new to ballet (newer to it than the usa), i think it's also just that we don't have 100% of the academic culture that comes with it. i had never heard of the "respecting the barre" thing until you mentioned it - we have other cultures of respect, it's just not phrased and taught the same way. i imagine something similar happens in the usa, though it must also depend on the individual school and how rooted they are in the classics.

[pikachikaa]

November 2022 check in,

I’ve been going through a bit of a rough slump. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t focused on my studies as much as I’ve wanted to and have wasted the time on petty things like boys (who aren’t serious about me and don’t treat me well), Instagram, pictures for Instagram , online shopping, Netflix. All that destructive stuff!

When i started my journey of preparing for the exam to be a diplomat i was pretty confident as i had a lot of time, but then the self doubt crept in as you know its the most difficult exam in my country and I’ve never had an academically stunning resume to back up my confidence. I’ve never given my absolute best effort ANYWHERE in my life and i really regret it because when it comes to the time when u do have to give your 100% and u don’t have anything to anchor your self esteem to, you lose yourself to the ocean of self doubt.

I’ve decided to start over, time to get back on my drivers seat! I still have 10 days till November ends and i will try my best to get the best out of the remaining 10 days! Here are some of my 10 day goals-

Mental Goals

- Don’t give in to self doubt!

If you keep doubting yourself you will stay where you are and wont move forward. It’s better to be delusional and work hard and get some skills than be sad, pitying yourself and not doing a thing!

- Don’t be distracted by boys, specially boys who don’t care about you and only see you as a ticket to sex!

I’ve been a hopeless romantic throughout my life so I’ll have to control that aspect and realise that most men are not brought up to be Prince Charming or to even desire love, most boys are brought up by superheroes comics, violent video games and porn. Don’t put the boys on a pedestal! Most rich men see poor wome n as hookup material sadly.

Habit goals

- Be more consistent with Hair Care, skin care and excercise

Study Goals

-Complete modern history

- Complete art and culture

- Start Physical Geography

- Keep up with Current Affairs

YOU CAN DO IT BABYY!!

[miekasa]

speaking of college boys, what do the college au aot babies study??

Okay, okay, I think I’ve talked about this in an ask before but I can’t find it 😭😭 but it’s okay, I love college aus, so I’ll talk about it again! Plus, now I’ve got more thoughts for more characters, so here we go

Levi — neuroscience and psychology of human behavior

He started out on track to do a bachelor of arts in psychology, but when they touched on the anatomy and biological parts of it during his first year lecture, he switched to a bachelor of science.

The focus is still psychology, but through a more clinical lens. Essentially, he gets the best of both worlds this way. He’s intuitive and analytical, so clinical and mental diagnosis is easy to dissect for him. He’s also canonically good at math, so the calculus and stats parts aren’t too bad, either.

This major also leaves him with a few options post-grad, which is a nice bonus for him. He’s likely going to medical school, but that’s not the only route open to him: law school, therapy, lab work, medicine and pharmacy, even teaching are all viable options without going to grad school.

Do not talk to him about Freud unless you wanna get punted off a building.

Be careful with him, because with a single glance he’s already got scarily accurate predictions about your parental and emotional attachment styles, your behavior in social settings, and the onset (or seemingly lack thereof) of your frontal lobe development.

He thinks he’s so smart making comments like, “I see those synaptic connections aren’t working so well for you today,” like mf come here let me lobotomize you and see how well your synaptic connects are working after that🙄

Eren — general health sciences

He’s interested in science and the discovery aspects of it, but picking a specific field of focus right now feels too final. He likes it this way, because his schedule and requirements are less restrictive, and he has more room to find out what really interests him.

He does best when he’s doing something he loves, so picking a major with a bunch of reqs that he couldn’t care less about would have sucked big time for him. It also would have affected his grades. There are still some classes he has to take that he’s not fond of (see: chemistry), but that’s to be expected. Science in general is cool to him and he hopes to make his own discovery some day, even if it’s microscopic.

He also plays a lot of sports, keeping his schedule flexible is important. The sports end up helping him excel academically, which is a nice bonus. Honestly, Eren uses his time at university to learn more about himself than anything, so having control and freedom to do what he likes the majority of the time was important to him. 

He uses his elective credits to take philosophy or history courses of his interest, or maybe even a course that you’re in just to spend time with you. He also uses you as a live model for his homework bye, congrats on being patient number one to him.

Armin — astronomy and physics

He’s still interested in marine biology, but unless he attended a school near a coast, or with a specialized integrated program for that, it’s unlikely he’d major in it during undergrad.

Space and ocean exploration aren’t all that different. Both are vast, largely unexplored domains that reel-in Armin’s interest for discovery. So, while studying astronomy, he still gets to study evolution and make his own predictions about what could be out there because there’s so much to know.

Physics comes with the territory of learning about planetary science, and he’s mathematically inclined, so it works out for him. Learning about the different physical properties of other planets and space masses is honestly pretty sick to him. Because math isn’t a struggle, he actually considered aeronautical engineering, but he didn’t want to be a part of the college to military pipeline; that is, he didn’t want any potential design of his to be weaponized. 

He still gets to study animal biology through his elective courses, and might even find a few focused on marine animals to satiate him. Plant and cell biology are also of interest to him, and are just further applications of his primary study anyway, so he’s got plenty of room to work with.

This boy is interning at NASA and still, with his whole chest out is like, “I don’t need to discover a new planet, you’re my whole world.” Armin, go check on the Mars rover or something please.

Mikasa — anthropology + minor in japanese language studies

Anthropology is virtually interdisciplinary in nature, and Mikasa is a pretty well rounded student, so she’s able to excel in a program like this. She gets to study history, science, cultural studies, and even a bit of art all at once.

She’s still debating between going to law school vs med school, so anthro this is a good in-betweener. She gets a taste of science through her anatomy and kin courses; and lots of practice with reading and dissecting texts through the historical and cultural lectures. So, when the time comes to decide, she’ll have some experience with both.

Don’t know whether it’s confirmed that she’s (part) Japanese or not, but either way I headcanon that she speaks/spoke some second language at home. She wanted to delve more into it, and courses were offered at the university so why not?

Cultural studies courses end up being her favorite. She likes learning about the history of people and their cultures, and it encourages her to learn more about her own family history and culture. It also propels her to apply for a study abroad opportunity, so she spends at least one semester doing an exchange program and absolutely loves it.

She would also encourage you to apply and go, too. You guys might not be in the same program, but if there’s an applicable program in the same country she’s going to, then she’d definitely want you to apply. Spending the semester away with you would be a dream come true.

Hange — bioengineering + minor in political philosophy and law

It’s almost self-sabotage to be in an engineering program and have a minor; the coursework for engineering alone is backbreaking, and bioengineering has the added weight of human intricacies, but of course Hange makes it possible. 

They’re nothing short of a genius, so of course they have time to work a completely unrelated minor into their schedule. It doesn’t surprise anyone that they go on to complete an MD-PhD after undergrad. Insane. 

Bioengineering is essentially the synthesis of chemical engineering and health sciences; Hange spends their time exploring biological sciences and applies the engineering aspects of their coursework to their understanding of (and interest in creating) medicine. Truly a one of a kind mind. 

They also have an interest in philosophy and justice, so when they found out they only needed a measly nine or ten courses to minor in, they went for it, of course. In honesty, they don’t find the studies all that opposing: both law making and medicine making both have some kind of philosophy or method to them in their eyes. 

Hange has... little to no free time pls. They don’t mind it, because they love their coursework, but this means you are essentially ducking into their labs or scrambling to find them in-between their classes during your time in undergrad. They appreciate every second spent with you tho, and will gladly rope you into long discussions about their work. 

Jean — biochemistry + minor in art sustainability

He was undeclared his first year, and took a little bit of everything: art, science, history, anthropology, english. Basically, anything that fit into his schedule. It was hard for him to pick one thing—he liked the science and lab applications of STEM courses, but not the math; and the obvious painting and creativity of art, but hated the pretentious air about art history.

What he wants to do is make a difference, which is how he ends up knowing that he wants to go to med school after, so he picks a science-heavy major, but uses his elective spaces to take art courses. When he mixes the two, he ends up on sustainability—and the complexities about it that are applicable to both science and art are what really reels him in.

Interdisciplinary studies end up being his forte. He can approach sustainability from a science perspective which impacts his art style and materials; and tuning into his creative side allows him to think about science not just from a purely clinical perspective, but from a human one, too—patients are people after all.

He believes that everything is connected somehow, even things as seemingly opposite as art and biochemistry. And he works towards finding the unique intersection where everything overlaps. His studies are pretty cool, and he’s very passionate about them, so ask him about it 😌

The art he makes is pretty sick, too, and often commentary about science; he’s proving they’re not so opposite. You also heavily influence his studies in both areas: caring about you so much inspires him to take the healthcare focus seriously, and your very nature is inspiration to his art. 

Sasha — nursing

She’s friendly and good at working with people, so nursing was an easy choice for her. She accredits most of her motivation to being around her younger family members, and learns that she finds a simple kind of joy in helping to take care of others.

She struggles a bit her first year when it’s mostly all grades and standardized testing, but when she starts getting clinical experience and working in the hospital on campus, things round out for her.

Patient care is her strongest point. A lot of people often forget that knowing everything isn’t everything; if you don’t know how to calm or even just talk to your patient, you’re not that great of a healthcare professional.

Pretty certain that she wants to work with kids in the future, but she’s open to public health and even being a travel nurse if she finds opportunity there!

Of course, she’s pretty doting when it comes to you and all her friends. She might want to go into pediatrics, but the basics of nursing and health care extend to everyone, so you’re guaranteed to be well taken care of with Sasha around. You might even have to switch roles and take care of her sometimes, because her coursework can get pretty out of hand.

Connie — computer engineering with a focus on game design

He might not look it, but Connie has a brain under that shaved head of his. Computer engineering is cool to him because he basically learns about how simple things he uses every day (ie: phone, computer, microwave) works.

Systems and coding are actually the easy part for him, especially when they get into the application of it and aren’t just stuck looking at examples. That’s how he gets into game design.

The part about math and electricity and magnetic fields… well let’s just say he needed to make friends with someone who likes math and hardware his first year to get through it. But the struggle was worth it, because by his junior year he’s found a professor willing to mentor/supervise him as he works on his game and other projects, so life is good.

His school work is definitely hard, which is why the lives by the mantra of “work hard, party harder.” It’s only fair. 

He makes you a little avatar so you can test out his games for him <33 best boyfriend things <33 He’d also… build a game about your relationship. Every level is a different date you guys went on, and he definitely includes something cheesy, like “There are unlimited lives because I love you forever babe <3”

Porco — kinesiology + maybe mechanical engineering

He’s pretty into athletics and working out, but didn’t wanna go down the sports psychology route; he wanted something that left him with a few more options, so he ended up in kinesiology.

He was surprisingly pretty good at biology in high school, so something stem-oriented works out in his favor, and it turns out he’s pretty damn good at anatomy, too. He’ll probably end up in physical therapy after graduation.

He’s also got a knack for cars, which is where the engineering comes in, but he doesn’t care so much for the math part of it (he doesn’t care for it at all actually, fuck that); he just wants the hands on experience of building/fixing things and working with his hands. So, if he can get a minor in it and not struggle through 4 years of math, then he’d do that. If not, he’d take a few workshop-like classes.

Because he wants to go into physical therapy, you are essentially his practice patient. Your back hurts? Not a problem, he’s basically a professional masseuse. Muscle aches? He’s got a remedy and understanding of why it’s happening. Don’t let him catch you hunting over your desk grinding away at your homework, because he will poke your neck and correct your posture (he’ll also massage your shoulders, but after the scolding).

Pieck — classics + minor in philosophy

Ancient studies interest her, but more than that, the language of ancient Greek and Roman culture fascinates her, so classics is the way to go.

Because her focus within Classics ends up being Greek and Latin language studies, she is essentially learning both languages at the same time. She gets farther with Latin that she does with Greek. For whatever reason, the former comes almost naturally to her, so her written and translated work is more complex in Latin.

However, she finds cultural studies relation to Greece more interesting than that of Rome, so it’s a give and take with both; better at languages for Roman studies, better at culture and history for Greek studies.

Her minor is a natural evolution from her primary coursework. Ancient Romans and Greeks set the foundation for a lot of modern day philosophy, so it comes up in her major classes, but she wanted to delve further into the philosophy, and not just look at it historically, so she takes more courses to fulfill the minor.

Can be found laying on a blanket in the quad on a hot day, with her books spread out all around her, highlighter in hand as she works through her reading. You’re always invited to sit with her, and more often than not, it ends up with Pieck’s head in your lap, a book in her hands, and your own schoolwork in yours as you both read in each other’s company.

Bertholdt — computer science and coding

He’s level headed, good at planning, and above all, patient, so he’s cut out for this. He doesn’t consider himself to be particularly creative, which is why he doesn’t pick a speciality with lots of design; but he’s good at streamlining and ideas to life.

The patience really comes in when his code doesn’t run. It’s frustrating to scroll for two hours just to find out that the issue is a missing semi-colon in line 273 that he overlooked, but Berty will sit there until he finds it.

He’s also good at fixing issues. That’s not limited to issues in the code itself; it can mean finding shorter ways to produce the same function or loop, or integrating new aspects into existing code.

Also, he’d just be so cute, coding away on his computer. Just imagine: Berty working on his homework in the library, he’s got his signature crewneck + collared shirt look going for him, his blue-light glasses, a cup of coffee nearly as tall as him sitting at the corner of his desk. Adorable.

He’d make little codes/programs for you, too, even if it’s silly. A simple code that helps you decide what to eat for dinner or where to go on a date, one that shuffles different reminders for you, hell he’ll even forgo the torture of design engineering just to build you a little robot that says “I love you” to you.

Reiner — english + minor in justice & political philosophy

Everyone expects Reiner, star quarterback of the university’s rugby team, to be a business student or communications student; but no, he’s an English major, and he loves it.

Just imagine a guy as huge as Reiner absolutely manhandling someone on the field, just to show up in his lectures with a tiny paperback of The Great Gatsby tucked between his fingers with his reading glasses on. It’s so precious.

He’s always running a bit late to class—either coming from the gym, or practice, or oversleeping from exhaustion—but he’s so sweet to his professors and genuinely interested in the literature that they don’t give him a hard time about it. They can tell that balancing school and sports is difficult, and they just appreciate that he takes his studies seriously.

Yeah he’s in a book club and he dog-ears his books. What about it. They’re doing poetry this month and Reiner actually likes Edgar Allen Poe. Who said jocks can’t be sentimental.

He also reads a lot outside of his classes, and has a soft spot for coming of age stories. He usually empathizes with the main character somehow. His ideal weekend plans after a week of grueling games and essays is taking a long, relaxing shower at your place, while you both share a bottle of wine, and maybe even get you to read a chapter or two of his current book out loud to him.

Annie — clinical psychology/neuroscience

Almost scarily analytical and methodic, so this major was calling her name. Localizing brain legions is… insanely intuitive to her it’s incredible. She’ll be an insanely impressive doctor someday, even if she doesn’t end up working with patients directly. 

She doesn’t care too much for the more philosophical/reading heavy parts of psychology. Even experiments and research closer to the social end of the spectrum aren’t all that interesting to her; but the brain science behind it it.

Nobody should be good at cellular biology. Nobody should be able to ace cell bio and neuro and calc and work towards their thesis proposal in the same semester, but Annie proves it’s possible.

Ends up working in one of her professor’s labs by her junior year. She was offered three TA positions working with first year students, but she swiftly turned them down. Teaching isn’t her thing.

She doesn’t bring up her studies to you unprompted, but if you ask her about them she’ll explain it to you. Her notes are color coded and it’s super neat, and very cute; coloring them is somewhat relaxing for her. She usually saves the coloring part for when you guys study together; there’s extra comfort in doing it with you around.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Canon Harry, Hermione, and Ron?

Given my absolute trashing everyone else and sparse comments on Harry, you can probably guess.

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this.

I guess we’ll start with Harry.

Harry Potter

First, sorry guys, Harry is painfully stupid. It’s not that he doesn’t try hard academically, that he’s not book smart, or that he’s just acting his own age, he is honestly, truly, painfully dumb and is consistently an idiot throughout the entire series.

Let’s take third year as a random example. Harry’s informed there’s a mass murdering Death Eater on the loose that has the country in such a panic that they send dementors to Hogwarts, he is told directly that this guy has motive to come directly after him, he even notices that he’s kept a close eye on that summer in Diagon Alley.

Harry decides that his life is a bottomless pit of despair if he can’t go to Hogsmeade every month with everyone else. Not even if he doesn’t get the candy, Hermione and Ron bring him that afterwards, but not going at all brings him misery. And I get it, it sucks to be stuck in the castle when all your friends get to go on a field trip. BUT HARRY, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHY EVERYONE’S MAKING YOU STAY IN THE CASTLE?! Harry’s response is he isn’t afraid of death because... he isn’t afraid of death. Really, it’s not so much that he’s that brave but more that he hasn’t thought this one through. 

Harry finally gets to sneak out to Hogsmeade and is thrilled and it takes Hermione pointing out that Sirius Black may very well know these other entrances (which he does) for Harry to even realize this is a possibility (even though Harry didn’t make the map). His response to Hermione is surprised Pikachu face for two seconds then, “No, there’s no way, Sirius Black could never figure out something as cool as this.” Then, when Harry’s finally caught, it takes both Snape and Lupin calling him a dick who dishonors his parent’s sacrifice and entire nation trying to keep him safe, for Harry to realize that maybe sneaking into Hogsmeade was a pretty shitty thing to do. 

We also have the whole firebolt incident in which Harry’s sent a very suspicious package that could very well kill him with no return address. Harry gets unbelievably pissed that Hermione narks on him, even though he does eventually get the broom back. How dare Hermione get in the way of his quidditch!

This is just one book, mind you, we could go through all seven and find equally mind bogglingly dumb moments. Harry’s just not a bright guy (he also is very academically lazy, but that’s not the same thing.)

Otherwise, Harry doesn’t just have a little anger issue, he has a serious problem and I’m convinced he’s a psychopath. 

Whoa, you say, hold on! Where does that come from?

Well, not so much the earlier books. While Harry is a dick (and yes, guys, he is) he doesn’t show really worrying tendencies. The worst he gets up to is icing out Hermione when she becomes inconvenient (see Firebolt fiasco), treating Neville like trash (Harry bails on Neville to sneak out to Hogsmeade), and just being generally self-centered. 

I’m talking about the Order of the Phoenix onward. First we have HARRY’S RAGING CAPS-LOCKS FOR AN ENTIRE NOVEL. Granted, he’s an angry dude in a stressful situation, but that was... a lot. But it’s really Half-Blood Prince were I start grimacing.

We have his reaction to Ginny. It never really seems like Harry ever likes Ginny, it’s more that he has this green rage monster in his chest that wants to possess her. It is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read in my life. Or, well, one of them. So that’s... a thing. 

Then we have the whole Draco thing. Harry becomes obsessed with Draco Malfoy, more so than usual. And yes, Draco was up to no good, and sure we can tilt our heads and say it’s pretext for Draco/Harry. Except guys, Harry’s scary about it. Take out the appeal of the slash for two seconds, Harry stalking Draco is that problematic thing that if Draco were a woman we’d be saying “ABORT ABORT ABORT”. It of course, culminates in the bathroom incident. Now, you say, Harry didn’t know what that spell would do. Well, he knew it was for enemies and even afterwards, though he panics and feels bad, what he really seems to be bad about is the potential consequences to himself not the action. he focuses more on the fact that the beloved Halfblood Prince was Snape than he does the fact that he nearly murdered Malfoy. If I’m remembering correctly, Harry in fact makes out with Ginny not long after, got to set that chest monster loose, y’all. 

Then in book seven Harry starts using the unforgivables with absolutely no regret. Torture for you, Bellatrix, I am edgy now. It’s very clear that Harry only cares superficially about morality. He generally follows the rules and various ideals because he likes the idea of being noble and virtuous, he isn’t actually a virtuous guy at all. 

I’m not even sure he really understands friendship. Harry’s friends are people who are great and all except when they become inconvenient, then he can treat them like the trash they are until they come back around (if ever). 

He’s kind of a monster actually. 

He’s also the poster child of why Voldemort may have a teensy-tiny point that the statute of secrecy as it stands around muggle children is not sustainable. Really doesn’t look good for the cause when the most famous child in the wizarding world is raised by extremely abusive muggles and grows up extremely maladjusted because of it. 

Hermione Granger

Now, I give Harry a lot of flak for his treatment of Hermione, but Hermione’s not a barrel of roses either. She may be friends with a pair of assholes who don’t really like her all that much, but she kind of dug her own grave.

First, Hermione has a bit of a superiority complex, even when she’s completely friendless. She absolutely looks down on girls like Pavarti and Lavender and part of the reason they hate her so much is because of that. That’s part of Hermione’s issue, she’s too good for everyone, and so she eventually becomes friends with famous Harry Potter and Ron Weasley who barely tolerate her because she was too good to be friends with, say, Neville.

Hermione never realizes this.

She also deeply enjoys, I believe, being the smartest person in the room and much smarter than her friends. Granted, this is what she defines herself as, and it means she’s needed by everyone around her for this reason, but she still does like it just a little too much.

And oh my god is she horrifyingly righteous.

This we see in what happens to Marietta, Umbridge, as well as her own parents. She permanently disfigures a girl for snitching them out to Umbridge, never telling anyone this was the consequence, and is smug when we see what happens to her because “snitches get stitches”. It’s pretty heavily implied by canon that Umbridge was raped by centaurs (first they’re centaurs, that’s what centaurs do, second we next see Umbridge in the hospital wing looking catatonic and the gang laughs and makes horsey noises). Yes, Umbridge is a vile evil woman, but that Hermione’s so proud of her vengeance is.... concerning.

Finally, her parents. Hermione, without asking her parents’ consent, wipes their memories and rewrites their entire lives. Congratulations Hermione, even more than Harry you are the poster child for Voldemort’s cause of “what goes wrong when muggles raise a magical child”. Hermione essentially kills her parents, treating them like no more than dolls, and the most she’s upset about is what it did to her. To Hermione, her parents aren’t people, not really.

People in general aren’t people, or at least, Hermione is more than willing to go to drastic lengths if she feels she has been slighted or betrayed. Never get on Hermione Granger’s bad side.

Ron Weasley

Shockingly, I’m not really a “Ron the Death Eater” kind of person. Ron clearly has an inferiority complex, he sees being friends with Harry as a way to make him special from his brothers, he’s overly ambitious and easily jealous, he’s academically lazy, kind of an ass, and he has many flaws as a person.

That said, he’s not the same level of scary asshole as Hermione and Harry. Ron doesn’t cut up Draco Malfoy in a bathroom or even disfigure the guy. He’s just your more or less normal dude who doesn’t realize he’s friends with lunatics. 

TL;DR Harry and Hermione are assholes. Ron’s kind of an asshole too but shockingly less so than the other two.

[thedreadvampy]

Ok like I'm sorry for all the Elias discourse but stepping off from OGlias for a moment I legit saw someone saying it was a mischaracterisation to assume Jonah Magnus was himself a rich white dude which

uh

Let's leave aside for the moment that Jonah Magnus not being wealthy and privileged utterly sucks the meaning of of a lot of what the podcast has to say about class and exploration because hey, that's a matter of interpretation

What do we know about Jonah Magnus (from all statements mentioning his original incarnation)?

1816: Interacts as at least an equal with Albrecht von Closen, who has at least one family estate and an aristocratic pedigree and thus could be expected to be at least middle class if not wealthy. This is relevant because Georgian class was very stratified and cross-class mixing heavily discouraged, 1816 is probably fairly early in Magnus' career, and Albrecht doesn't address him as one would a social inferior.

1818: Established the Magnus Institute, apparently without external funding partners because he's the only one ever mentioned in connection with its organisation and his friends talk about it as his own project; it certainly isn't associated with an existing university or academy as far as we can tell.

1824: not a lot of additional information, except that again Magnus' friends are all moving in wealthy, upper class circles

1831: In a position to hire professionals for Millbank under good terms. We learn more about Albrecht, he's definitely painted as wealthy old money, which continues to speak to this association

1841: reasonably close friends with Sampson Kempthorne, workhouse designer, who expresses the expectation of Magnus agreeing with him about workhouses and the treatment of the poor through work. At this time, Magnus is living in an Edinburgh townhouse, by which I'm guessing we're talking about one of the New Town Georgian 4-floors-plus-servant's-quarters which that name implies. Those aren't mansions, but they weren't where a clerk or shopkeeper would live - they were built for ship owners, lawyers, doctors, the upper-middle and upper classes, and as the name townhouse implies they were generally occupied as one of several estates, with the usual occupants being likely to also have a country place.

Beyond specific statement letters, Magnus largely crops up via his association with his wee gang, all of whom are wealthy upper-middle or aristocracy (Smirke, Rayner, Lukas)

He has the resources and social clout to devote his time to pursuing what is, effectively, a hobby; his interest in the supernatural doesn't bring in much income and, conversely, often costs him to chase up. He doesn't appear to have a full-time job at any point; he works on Millbank with Smirke but he doesn't appear on the records, meaning this is unlikely to be a paid management role. His friends refer to his supernatural work as a hobby or interest, not a job, and make it clear that at least by the 1830s-40s this is his whole life (he's "rattling around with his books and letters") - ergo he does not have a need to support himself beyond that.

He had the resources and funds to, by himself and for his own purposes, not only shape the building of Millbank but also to set up an independent academic institution which is still running 200 years later

Like, is it explicit that he's a rich white man? Not per se. Would all of this information make sense if he wasn't? I suppose it's possible but it's a reach, and one that I'm not sure why you as a writer would make without making pretty clear. To be able to move comfortably in moneyed Georgian circles without being born to money, and to be able to do the things Magnus does without having substantial disposable income - that would be exceptional, and would surely merit some sort of comment.

(I've talked about the race politics of Georgian Britain as relates to Jonah Magnus before, but just to sum up: in a time before the abolition of the slave trade and during massive colonial expansion into Asia, being a British man of wealth and not being white was pretty unusual. We can see this in the description of Rayner; he's very specifically described as Black, but also his Blackness is notable to a contemporary narrator. so again, not impossible for Jonah to be a person of colour, but definitely unexpected and it would be an interesting choice to write that unremarked)

just by way of historical context, as I say, class was very structured and immobile in Georgian Britain for the most part. It was also, as I understand it, much more discrete. Whereas now, the lines between working class, middle class and upper class are pretty fuzzy, in the 1800s they were a lot more clear-cut - the working class worked for little money, had little to no education past basic literacy and numeracy, and the entire household would work; the newly developing middle class made a living through highly-skilled jobs (artists, doctors, lawyers, clerks, shopkeepers, factory owners, shop owners and pub landlords, for example) and would have enough disposable income to buy property; and the upper class/gentry may work (but only appropriate to their station; academia, law or the church, largely, and of course a lot of them in the 1810s made bank from Caribbean plantations and their imports) but substantially they lived off the profits of investments, ownership and estate management, built off heritable wealth. 

There’s a big range of middle class though, although it was a small segment of society. At the bottom end, you have your grocers, pub landlords, shopkeepers, clerks and so on - they probably own their homes and business and have money to buy things outright rather than renting. At the top end, we have some really pretty substantial wealth - we’re talking multiple houses and estates, large-scale business concerns, tens of permanent staff, and only one person in the family needing to work. The difference between upper middle and aristocracy isn’t necessarily in quality of life, aside from blood it’s really just a question of whether the majority of your income comes from work or from investment and property management. So for example, Smirke is upper middle, but very wealthy - he has a career in a high-profile trade, he’s notable and welcome in high society, but ultimately his wealth is dependent on him continuing to get work. Von Closen may have more or less material wealth than Smirke, but his money is old money and he does not work; he’s very much a gentleman of the upper crust. Particularly with Industrial Revolution and the profit that the slave trade and the expansion of the Empire were bringing in for traders, the middle class was abruptly getting a lot richer in at the start of the 19th century and if anything class was getting a lot more discrete - urbanisation and industrialisation meant the poor were getting poorer (and less able to exist outside a monetary economy) and the working rich were getting a lot richer (until of course after a couple of hundred years the upper middle class almost eclipsed the idle class as the Rich and Powerful)

So the gentry/nobles/old money/upper class were the only class whose wealth wasn’t to a high degree reliant on them working, and so honestly being a Georgian gentleman was stultifyingly boring. That’s why so many comedies of manners crop up from the lower end of the upper class - you have to find something to keep you busy and social politicking is something. But it also meant a lot of gentlemen scholars - men with time on their hands and nothing they desperately needed to be doing, who got really into eccentric hobbies and niche interests (like social engineering, or art theory, or the occult, or unpicking weirdly specific theological concepts, or a bit earlier experimenting with light and lenses, or a bit later investigating the origins of species, or getting super into a specific aspect of the classics). The idle rich weren’t the only ones doing academia or research, but they had the time, money and resources to devote to really deep dives into things without much financial use.

So my personal take is that, given that by 1818 Jonah Magnus had the capital, the social heft and the time to found and run an independent academic institution focused on his relatively niche interests, and to do so with enough resourcing that it still runs 200 years later, the safest bet is that he was born a gentleman. At the very least, all the people he socialises with are securely upper-middle or gentry; he has a visible disdain for the poor; he owned substantial personal property by at least middle age (the Edinburgh townhouse); he had the social clout to get involved behind the scenes in a major social architecture project - it seems like the lowest this could possibly place him is mid-to-upper middle class at birth (he could have made that much money from working and lucky investments, but to get into a position where by middle age you can afford to become the Idle Rich, spending all your money and time on an obsessive personal interest, you would need to have started off with at least the capital and clout to get a high-level education and/or make significant business investments (say, buy a series of factories or build a shipping empire). You could make a case that he could work his way up from being born to a middling-middle-class family - maybe a country vicar or a shopkeeper - but friends can I show you some numbers I googled?

In the 1810s, being mid- or upper middle class (fourth or above) meant you were richer than 94.5% of the civilian population. Upper middle and above (like literally every person we know of who had social ties to Magnus except maybe the architects)? Literally top 1%. (well. 1.25%).

The middle class in Georgian Britain was the elite. They weren’t the elite of the elite, but they had money, land, property, staff, clout and privilege. You can’t project the class politics of 2021 onto 1818 (that is, in fact, why pure Marxism still requires an updated reading, bc in even the last 150 years the specific distribution and attributes of class and wealth has changed substantially (although the same people do stay at the top and bottom)). 

I think our perceptions are altered by the worries and perspectives of popular contemporary authors. For example, Austen characters often bemoan their lack of wealth, and are firmly Middle Class, and compared to the upper middle and the gentry they are living frugally and on a budget, but with “cottages” that are often six- or seven bedroom houses with several parlours and one or two servants, plus a town house, and with only one breadwinner per family and enough invested wealth to live entirely off the interest (that’s what the incomes of these characters are), they are living in a degree of wealth that would be unthinkable to 95% of their contemporaries, and it would be fair to assess them as rich by modern standards.

You can argue that Jonah Magnus wasn’t aristocracy. You cannot argue realistically that he wasn’t rich. Not only does that make no thematic or character sense (again, that’s a matter of interpretation, but it seems to me to be Pretty Key to his character that he’s an examination of inborn privilege) but it also makes no contextual historical sense.

[falling-pages]

Fight for me: Hikaru x Renge

Renge tends to Hikaru's wounds after he gets in a fight to defend her.

-

Renge Houshakuji x Hikaru Hitachiin

Genre: Fluff, hurt/comfort, first kiss

Warnings: None

-

Hikaru knew how to throw a punch, but holding his own against three men was above even his own skill level.

It was amazing he had lasted so long in the fight until Mori spotted him and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck like a kitten, tossing him from the circle and finishing the fight himself. Those three upperclassmen didn’t stand a chance--yet he felt his blood run hot at the thought that he had to be saved when he was trying to save someone else.

Toui Kendarishi and his dumb fucking mouth just had to get under his skin, again.

A sharp scrub against his cheekbone jerked him back to reality. He hissed, going to swat at it, before the girl grabbed his wrist and pushed it back down.

“Don’t get mad at me, I’m just trying to help you,” Renge grumbled.

Yeah, some help she was. With every dab of the cotton ball and slab of ointment he relived every moment of the fight, every right hook and gut punch and kick he had endured for her, and she had no idea. The only soothing thing about this therapy appointment was her nails scratching his scalp, but only to distract him from a bad bout of pain.

He only rolled his eyes, jerking away as she moved on to his mouth. “I know you didn’t just roll your eyes at me,” she said, tugging at his bottom lip. His top lip had taken the brunt of Kendarishi’s fists, and all he tasted was his own blood in the back of his throat. He was sure he was a monster to look at, blood staining his teeth and tongue. As it dried against his skin, Renge thumbed it away, smearing it against her hand before she took a washcloth to it.

“So observant,” he hissed, resisting the urge to spit at the taste clouding his senses. Sarcasm was his trusted defense mechanism, and he relied on it heavily now to distract himself from the feeling of her fingers playing with his lips.

A harsh scrub against the wound was her own way of backtalk. “Sass me again, and I’ll stop, and you can explain to Kaoru why you look like a fucking Picasso,” she said.

“Tch.”

But he listened. The blood and spit and pain rendered him essentially mute, much to her amusement, as she worked. His eyes wandered around her bathroom, impossibly pink and frilly for a college apartment. Like the rest of her place, it was like Paris had vomited itself inside, the chunk of the concoction muddled in the bathroom. A pink fuzzy rug was below him as he was perched on her gilded toilet, a gaudy shower curtain boasting images of the Eiffel Tower, and even her mirror was embossed with rhinestones. Everything, from the toilet paper pile to the cosmetics cases, were perfectly stacked and organized, with not a speck of dust or dirt to be found.

Geez. And he thought her shrill demands of perfection in high school were bad. Their host room was spotless thanks to her dictatorship, but this was on another level.

“Admiring the bathroom, I see,” she said, sucking in her cheek as she fiddled with opening a band-aid. Her nails, long and purple, couldn’t quite find the purchase to pinch the covering from the adhesive side.

His life and health were quite literally in her hands, but Hikaru couldn’t hold back the snicker from his bleeding lips. “It’s mental,” he said, reaching up to help her with the band-aid.

Renge ripped it away from him, glowering down her nose at him in the most egregious French expression she could muster. He hadn’t known her in France, but he imagined that was the look she gave every servant, every waiter, every busboy who didn’t fit her exact demands. “I’ve got it,” she spat, turning her back to him. Her shoulders shook, but because of the effort of unpeeling the band-aid or some unknown emotion, he didn’t know.

“Here,” she resumed, turning to face him, and Hikaru’s heart cracked at the tears welling up in her pretty brown eyes, the heaviness in her voice. It sounded so heavy, despite its usual nasal tone, and exhausted, defeated. What had she gone through when her back was turned?

He made her cry. He knew he could take the teasing too far sometimes, but bringing a girl to tears was childish, a middle school prank he had sworn to leave far behind him. But he had done it again, not even to a nobody, but to the girl who was fixing him up, his friend, whom he had grown up with and bruised two ribs defending.

As she leaned down to apply the bandage to his cheek, he tried to meet eyes, to apologize without aggravating his poor lips, but she evaded his glance, pursing her lips and focusing on her work. Her hands shook, lightly grazing his temple.

“Renge, hey, I’m--” he grabbed her wrist, and she jerked away, stepping back until she hit the wall. His voice forced more tears from her eyes, and she buried her face in her hands as she sobbed, massive pink bow bobbing with every movement.

“Just stop, Hikaru, stop!” she yelled, muffled by her closing throat. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t keep stitching you back up when you snap, I can’t take how mean you are. We aren’t in school anymore, we’re adults, we’re in college, and you’re just puffing your chest like you’re invincible, picking fights and losing them.” She finally showed her face, anger and fear and… something he couldn’t place etched into the lines beneath her eyes. “You want to know what’s mental?” She gestured to him, waving her hand up and down his whole form. “This is mental. You getting into fight after fight and not learning a damn thing from them, that’s what. It’s amazing you didn’t break your nose.”

Blood and anger coiled in the back of his throat. He lunged forward and grabbed her arm again, firmer this time, and yelled out, “I did this for you! I got in this fight for you!”

Renge pressed further against the wall, but she stopped fighting. Her hands shook in his tight grasp. Eyes as big as a silver dollar gazed up at him, heart thrumming wildly in her chest. “What?”

“I got in a fight with Kendarishi, right?”

“Yes.”

“And who is he to you?”

Renge blushed, letting her eyes drift to his chest. She spotted a new bruise mottling on his collarbone. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“Exactly.”

Hikaru released her wrists and watched as they fell to her side, like all the resistance had been sucked out of her. “Every time I fight with him, it’s because he said something bad about you. And then he started saying stuff about me fighting for you, so I just can’t win. I just have a lot of motivation and a lot of anger.”

“Why do you care so much what he says about me?” she asked, still not meeting his eyes.

“Because it was some bad stuff, Ren,” he said. “And I know we haven’t always gotten along, but you’re my friend, and I’m not gonna stand there and while he calls you a ‘fucking French whore who screws every guy she meets.’”

She swung at him, but he blocked, whining, “Hey, he said it, not me!”

When he put his hands down, she was shaking, with rage and sadness and something that looked an awful lot like determination in her eyes. “Bold of him to call me a whore when he’s the one who cheated.” Her hands ball into fists, and her eyes scanned him again--with a less medical glare, this time, and more of a vengeance. “And he did this to you?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be back.”

“Wait!”

Hikaru grabbed her by the back of her shirt and suddenly realized exactly how Mori must have felt watching him fight it out on the academic lawn. Renge’s feet scrambled on the tile, but he held her in place, dragged her back in front of him to block her path. “What, so you’re going to go fight him now since he fought me?”

“That’s not a good enough reason?” she pouted.

“No, but…” Hikaru rubbed the back of his neck. “You were just lecturing me about fighting him. Seems a little hypocritical to me, Ren.”

“Don’t use words you don’t understand,” she huffed, leaning back against the wall. She didn’t fight him when he leaned in closer, securely caging in her body. “You were just defending my honor. Let me do the same.”

“Mori dragged me out of the fight, so I’d say he fucked them up good enough,” Hikaru said, and his heart thumped especially hard when she laughed. Oh God, it was like the tinkling of a bell, cool and clear and exactly what he imagined confectioner’s sugar to sound like. He felt himself dragged with a current, down the slope of a well, but he didn’t mind; he looked into her eyes and allowed the feeling to bouy him along. If he weren’t bleeding, he might have just kissed her, but he didn’t need her slap adding to his injuries.

Renge’s breath hitched when he leaned closer, resting his forearm parallel above her head. She was so busy in high school that she never noticed how soft his eyes were, almost golden, like the rising sun over a field of wheat. It reminded her of mornings on her family’s country estate, when she would meditate and do yoga and drink tea while the world quietly joined her in consciousness, when everything was soft and drowsy. Such beautiful eyes, bruised and marred and bloodied for her.

“Renge, I--”

“Don’t,” she whispered, lacking her usual venom. “Let’s enjoy what we have right now.”

Hikaru bit his lip, immediately regretting it as the pain surged back through him. When Renge laughed again, he couldn’t help it; he leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers, drinking in that sweet, drawled perfume that he so often used to make fun of her for wearing. She smelled like a doll, but she was anything but--smart, outspoken, a firecracker all wrapped up in that pretty pink bow.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, lowering his hand to her hair without thinking. He caressed the silky locks, trailing his fingers down to touch her temple, tucking the stray hairs behind her ear. “And so soft.”

“You know I’m anything but soft,” she grumbled, but his touch was warm, and like a moth to a flame, she went to him, brushed her knuckles against the bruises on his collarbone. If it hurt him, he gave no indication; from the way he was looking at her, an asteroid could have hit earth and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

“Sound pretty soft right now.”

Renge rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

“Gonna make me?”

Never one to turn down a challenge, Renge pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed him, as gently as she could manage. In an attempt to avoid his wound, her mouth only landed on half of his, but he could still taste the cinnamon on her breath, the stickiness of her lip gloss on his skin. Some hell of a first kiss, but at least it was a kiss, so he didn’t mind.

He ran his hands up her sides, tickling her ribs above her shirt. She broke the kiss with a giggle, bumping his nose with his as she threw her head back in laughter. What a beautiful sight he had there, all at the expense of a busted lip and a bruised eye.

“Remind me to get in a fight more often, if this is the payoff I get,” he whispered, grinning at her pointed glare.

“Don’t you dare,” she ordered. “You need to let this lip heal so I can give you a proper kiss.”

Hikaru raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a proper kiss?”

“No.” Renge lowered her eyes back to his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him back in. “Once you’re healed, I’ll show you how the French really kiss.”

-

Kofi & Commission

[celestialblushxoxo]

Hello for the future spouse game my initials are V.A.S my pronouns are she/her and I’m straight/male preference that’s all and thank you!!

Hey love! Im so happy to start the reading with you after a long hiatus! Thank you so much for being patient with me and hope you like your reading!

What I see about your fs is that he comes from a happy family a healthy home and had a very fulfilling childhood where in he got everything he needed and wanted. A very stable home and loving parents and maybe a sibling or two. This is the reason they are someone for whom family is important and they look upto their parents in the hope that they find the perfect match like their parents do! Your fs is a very loving individual who are filled with love and they aren’t someone who has a long dating history and maybe they havent dated at all! They hope to have the same family with their spouse and kids! (I Also heard br**ding k*nk ajhsbshshs😂) anyways moving forward they also have been raised to be independent and maybe they left home early to some other state or city or country for education so they are independent and stable and very intellectual, their general knowledge is spot on and it’d intrigue you a lot! They may have gone under transformation and have changed from the person they were before, earlier they were scared and worried about what people think and now they just dont care they what they love and pursue what they love, an adventurous soul. When it comes to career I feel they are still in their early 20’s and they maybe pursuing business or starting up something from scratch and they are working super hard for it like literally started from the ground and now they are movin steadily! Tho right now they aren’t balanced but as the business grows they’ll be successful! Their family sees them as someone who is hardworking and resilient, passionate and a risk taker, adventurous, total sweetheart, loyal and family oriented as well, oh and ambitious they are also self reliant and someone who is determined and motivated! A true multitasker as well and they might have more than one source of income as well! Looks wise they may have fair to tan skin, light brown to blonde hair, American came up, could have Mexican too in their lineage, mix race, they get lotta compliments for their looks but I see that when they were in their teens people weren’t really Paton attention and he might not have taken care when it came to looks as he was very much focused on academics and then when he started taking it into consideration boom all eyes on him like a glo up! He is a pretty balanced person who is super hardworking but also knows when it’s Tiring him and he needs to rest, he is self aware and is competitive as well someone who knows what his prioritise are and where his morals and values lie, he’d never cheat in Any case(felt the need to say it for some reason) bug the only thing that might annoy you id his mood swings lmao like you never know which mood is he in tht very moment! And he might not back down that easily when yall may have an argument or something! As a lover he is someone who would love to spend as much time he can and cuddle you all night if he can as well as spoil TF outta you with gifts and kisses🥺🥺 he would literally have heart eyes for you and admire you so much and he will adore you a lot literally you are his world💖✨

Signs: Major Water Placements, specifically Pisces and Cancer,a little Libra somewhere, Sagittarius and Aquarius

Their clothing aesthetic:

Very light and comfortable aesthetic! Love it!

Hope you enjoyed your reading love and do lemme know if it resonates in some way or if it didnt either way feedback is very much appreciated! Sending across love, light and hugs🥰💖💖✨

[arcticdementor]

In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.

[coldtomyflash]

I've seen your speech pattern analysis on Flash characters. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to create speech patterns for OC characters?

oh heck this is one of the coolest questions i’ve ever received.

i’m gonna try not to go overboard/overwhelming and just give a bit of advice, and then if you want more details please come back and follow up!

There’s a few things to think about up front with character voices / speech patterns. The biggest and most obvious is language and cultural background. The second is personality. The third is personal history. Fourth, briefly, is gender. And the final one I’d say is idiosyncrasies to avoid ‘same voice’.

Culture and Group Dynamics

Depending on the setting, there’s a decent chance you’ll be writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. Even if you’re focusing on a single culture, there will be subcultures. Even if you’re focusing on a single narrow group of people, there will be age and generational differences.

Think about where your character is from. If it’s a fantasy world, that’s still (and even more, in some ways) important. What country, what ethnicity, what mother tongue? Did they grow up urban or rural? High socio-economic status or working class? What sort of educational background and peer group did they have growing up (and presently) and how does that factor into their vocabulary and mannerisms, if at all.

All of these can influence how people talk. There are regional accents and different modes of speaking to signal your group membership. There is code-switching across groups, for those who have had to learn multiple linguistics codes to survive and thrive in society. 

How much slang does this group and therefor this character use? What references (modern, outddated, topical, etc) do the rely on? What kind of references (pop culture, music, academic, etc)? What colloquialisms and proverbs do they say? Are these the same or different to their characters, even within the same culture, subculture, or group, and is it because they’re from a different place/sub-group or because of their idiosyncrasies?

You can use these to help your reader get to know more about your character’s background without having to spell it all out directly. Speech patterns and style are a great way to show instead of tell when it comes to details that are hard to drop in organically in other ways.

An important caveat: don’t write a bilingual character who switches languages in speech unless you’re ready to do a bit of research on that. In AATJS I did an absolutely horrific job of this because I was thinking more about fronting the fact that character was Italian rather than thinking through how people actually talk, and it came out exotifying and embarrassing. It’s important to make sure that the way you use language to bring in a character’s cultural and/or ethnic background feels authentic and manifests is a way that respects that language and its users. You can write a character with a complex cultural history without using multiple languages if you’re unprepared to do research and talk to bilingual speakers.

Personality

Probably the most salient thing in a writer’s mind when they’re trying to write character voices: is this the funny character? the serious one? the brainy one? etc.

Don’t overuse stereotypes and archetypes for creating speech patterns (or characters in general) if you’re trying to make a rounded, 3-dimensional character. Instead, go about three levels deeper.

Think about whether they’re introverted or extraverted, whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, whether they are introspective enough to express their own emotions clearly or whether they stumble when asked why they did a particular thing or feel a particular way (most people don’t or can’t clearly articulate exactly why they did something or how they feel, and come at things a bit sideways to circle around their motives and interior realities when pressed to make them external and concretely verbal).

Is this character calm, is their voice soothing, do they speak slowly? Are they excitable and loud and is their speech free-flowing? Are they angry? Do they swear? Do they use references for humour or are they more into puns? Do they laugh at their own jokes? Do they talk with their hands?

This character has social anxiety: how does that manifest in her speech? Does she clam up and get very quiet when she gets nervous, or does she go rapidfire and a little too loud (does she process by turning in or by distracting herself by turning outward)? Does she get very careful and deliberate in choosing her words (is she a bit high-strung?)? Ask yourself which fits best with the other elements of her personality and what you want the reader to know/interpret about her. 

This character is incredibly smart and a bit awkward: how does that manifest in their speech? Do they tend to use 5-dollar words, or do they expend a lot of energy choosing their words more carefully (how considerate are they to their audience when speaking and does that influence their speech)? Do they stumble over their words and explaining things, or are they good at making points with clear language learned from a lifetime of tutoring and helping others?

This character is the bff, who tries hard to make sure everyone else is happy first: how does that manifest in his speech? How does he switch between his happy-mask versus his more authentic self, and what changes in tone, word-choice, and inflection come in when he does?

-

Personal History

I’m only drawing a distinction between this and personality (archetype, really) so that I can draw attention to ways to add simultaneously unique and shared layers to characters that are distinct but related to group dynamics.

Here’s sort of what I mean: the level of education of a mother (or primary caregiver) of an infant can determine that infant’s vocabulary size. While we can break down all the ‘why is that’ layers to this, the one I want to point is to the simple truth that the more education a person does, the more specialized language they end up learning over time. This doesn’t have to be formal education though -- the more you learn about something and the more you read and access new knowledges and perspective, the more and more words you learn, and then if you start using those words, they trickle down to those close to you.

So.

What’s your character’s educational background? Is it the same as their friends who you are also writing? Is the same as their family’s? How does this character’s family influence their speech? Are they formal, informal, warm, authoritative? 

If you’re writing siblings, they’ll have some shared things! But also some very different ones! Me and my sister talk nothing alike in terms of vocabulary, but a lot alike in terms of mannerisms whenever we spend a bit of time together!

If your characters grew up around each other, they’ll have a lot of the same references. People from the same cities or regions will have things specific to that region, either due to sub-culture effects or because of local references. 

The city of Calgary, Canada for instance has the Plus15 which are a connected pedway system between the buildings in downtown, so named because they are 15feet above the ground. Drive 3 hours north to the city of Edmonton, and you have an underground pedway just called the pedways, no special name. Go a few provinces east to Toronto and their underground pedway system downtown is called PATH. These are all known to locals and part of the vernacular, but are opaque to people outside those cities. And the whole idea of them is probably opaque to people who aren’t from super cold cities that don’t require building-connecting pedway systems for pedestrians to get around high-density areas like downtown (or university campuses) without going out into the cold. 

Friends, families, and groups are like that too. In-jokes, shared histories, speaking in references. What are your characters’ relationships to each other and how does that history influence the way they approach talking to each other?

-

Gender

I don’t want to spend too much time on this one because ugh, gender. What even is it?

But like it or not, it has an impact on our speech patterns. There are cultural and societal norms in how men and women are likely to speak, and breaking those norms will be noticed regardless of whether you’re trans, enby, queer, or not. There are norms that people who are queer may fall into as well, sometimes without even noticing at first. A lot of these aren’t about word choice per se but instead about mannerisms and tone and body language, but some overlap or are specific to language.

Speaking in broad generalizations here, women use more emotional language and tend to speak with more hesitancies/qualifications. So more “i think, i feel” and less “it is”. More conversations that front emotions and dig deeper into those, with longer sentences to explain in detail. The obvious caveat is that personality matters more (i.e., is this a person who likes to talk about their emotions in detail or not) but it is something to consider because there will be general but subtle differences that you can use to help further distinguish your characters’ voices. 

Sidenote: this can also be exacerbated by different cultural backgrounds and languages (a simple example is Japanese which has different words for “I” depending on your gender as well as your personality, familiarity with the other persons in the conversation, and situational appropriateness, so interesting ways that gender and social expectations intersect in language).

Anyway this isn’t typically a huge problem except that I’ve found that a lot of writers have a tendency to overgeneralize the speech patterns that fit with their ascribed gender due to early-life socialization, or conversely to overgeneralize patterns that fit with their gender identity (when not cis) either due to heavily identifying with their gender identity’s speech model (or sometimes possibly due to a knee-jerk sort of backlash). I say this as an enby who both struggles with it and notices it and tries to edit and correct for it. 

I could get into all sorts of examples of ways this can lead to voice issues, but in general i think the point here is to make sure you’re writing any given character in view of that character’s personality and history, with gender only as a modifier for how some of these might come out in subtle ways but which can be important to help tell us about your character (and if you’re writing queer characters, it’s all the more important to consider how their relationship with gender and socialization might impact which speech models and styles they identify more with).

-

Idiosyncrasies

So, you’ve got a character. You’ve got their personality and history down. You know how they manifest in their speech. And you’re still getting some ‘same voice’ issues.

People really are unique snowflakes. Let that be reflected in their speech.

This person uses contractions differently than that one. This one says “ain’t” and that one says “isn’t.”

This person makes Simpsons references and that one doesn’t like Simpsons, and makes Brooklyn Nine Nine references instead. That other one doesn’t use referential humour much at all. This one loves old movies and hasn’t seen any of the new stuff so they make references all the time but no one ever notices.

This one loves the word “excoriate” and that one doesn’t even know what it means because what the hell, who uses the word excoriate?

This one talks about food a lot, it overlaps with their interests. This one uses metaphors. This one grunts in response. This one exclaims. This one says “like” and that one hates it. That one refers to themselves in third person. This other one uses reflective language an usual amount (e.g., “love me some candy”). This other one keeps misusing the word inconceivable and that one speaks almost without contractions but still comes off as more charming and humorous while correcting him.

I have an aunt who says “girl” or “girlfriend” a fuck-ton and she has been my whole life and I don’t know why because none of her sisters do, but she does and it annoys me so much the way she says it. I swear a lot when I’m feeling casual despite never ever doing it in a professional or even slightly-less-than-relaxed space, so the idiosyncrasy of comfort levels has a massive impact on my vocabulary in ways which, I promise, almost no one who meets me first in a professional space expect.

Let your characters be individuals and try to make them as unique as possible without overdoing it, or over-relying on a single verbal tendency or habit. 

-

And ... that’s all I’ve got for now. Completely failed at being concise. I meant to give like 2-3 bullet points or examples for each, not paragraphs, but here we are. That’s one of my verbal tendencies: long flowing verbosity :)

Hope this helps! 

[artfoli]

Hello ! Who are the most underrated painters? Thank you !

Great question! Although I can’t answer the most underrated of all time, here is a very, very small list off the top of my head. These are ones I’d love to see more of on my dash!

My man Louis Anquetin - sure he gets some recognition, he’s one of my favourite painters of all time and I feel like I just never see his name enough (not as much as he deserves).

Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson - I rarely see her name anywhere even though she was so talented and successful.

Félix Vallotton - a versatile artist!

William Blake - he’s much more admired now by art historians, but he just isn’t as well known as he should be I think. This man just didn’t give a fig about what was deemed proper art in his time and wasn’t truly recognised when he was alive. His work is so focused on the spirit, it’s powerful.

Emma Sandys - like just imagine painting those gorgeous pre-raphaelite beauties and having them attributed to your brother.

Elizabeth Siddal - she posed (and suffered) for Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ and it’s like the only thing she’s most noted for, even though she was an accomplished poet and painter herself!

Catharina van Hemessen - we need to more widely acknowledge more female Renaissance artists! She is one of many on that list.

Edmonia Lewis - this woman suffered through so much societal shit. Her name needs to be way more known.

Sarah Bernhardt - yes, that Sarah Bernhardt. Her name is familiar as an actress, but it doesn’t seem many people know about her sculpture (well as many as there should be).

Every single artist we don’t know about - think of all those outsider artists that never entered the art scene, couldn’t, or were deemed not good enough yet produced art you would have connected with.

There would be an endless list with just female names, honestly.

Here is a very small list, although let it be noted that everyone’s experiences (especially academic learning experiences) differ and while I may not come across these names as much as I would like, you may have a different opinion! I find them underrated for various reasons, they might be in a lot of academic publications, but they aren’t more publicly loved or vice versa.

Also I’m also not super familiar with how well admired (or not) artists from many - many - other countries and cultures are, so if there’s some that come to mind that you would like to share, I’d love to hear about them! Oh, and of course the timing. Trends (and so, artists) fluctuate with the times. Like how Tadema’s work was once considered essentially worthless, he’s again admired. A lot of these names are from close time periods, as many as from my favourite time period in art history.

Who would be on your list?

[stillbandofbrothersthirsty]

As Far As Friends Go

Chapter 5 (Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 6; ... Chapter 18)

Summary: Emily Rooney has always wanted more than what her family wanted for her; to get married to a nice, wealthy young man and have lots of well-raised Catholic babies. So when her fiancee enlists with the marines she decides this is her chance to have an adventure before she has to get married. She finds herself outfitted with the 506th working alongside a flippant intelligence officer.

Emily - November 1943

Emily and Luz beat their final opponents by 50. She walked home that night with a new sense of pride bolstered by her new soldier friends’ praise.

Their first opponents had been Joe Liebgott and Moe Alley. Their speedy victory had been chalked up to beginners luck on Emily’s part. So, she graciously accepted a second invitation to play, this time against Donald Malarkey and Skip Muck. After another inevitable win the men grew rowdy with the idea that Emily Rooney was seemingly unbeatable.

After another three games in a row Nixon had come over to let Emily know that he and Welsh were headed back to base, if she wanted to walk back with them. Luz and the other soldiers around her whined for her to stay. After their time together, Emily felt she could trust the men. She at least felt she could trust Luz so she told Nixon to go on without her.

“How’d you get so good?” Luz asked as they walked back.

“Played a lot in college.”

“How was college?”

“College was,” Emily hesitated, “fine.”

“Just fine?” Luz’s figure was barely visible in the darkness. A few paces ahead of them walked Joe Toye and Frank Perconte.

“I really enjoyed learning!”

“Oh yeah? What’d you study?” George sounded genuinely interested.

“Geography and History.”

“Smart girl, eh?” Emily thought she could make out the flash of George’s smile.

“I love those subjects, it’s easy when you love it,” she said.

“That makes sense why you’re here then! Teaching us common soldiers all about maps and such,” George said, “so why just fine then? Since you got to study what you love?”

Emily focused on the gravel crunching beneath their steps as she tried to formulate the best way to explain herself. She didn’t know why she felt so comfortable being vulnerable with George right now, but she did. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was just because he was being so friendly. “I don’t think anyone wanted me there, not to learn at least.”

“Whaddya mean?” George’s warm shoulder brushed hers briefly as he moved closer to listen.

Emily exhaled, “I was so excited to learn and to get to go to college! But when I got there I quickly realized that it was just one giant pantomime.” She paused. George remained silent, waiting for her to continue. “We were encouraged to spend time with the Notre Dame boys, and it wasn’t subtle. I didn’t really feel challenged academically or that my scores or assignments mattered. All my classmates were consumed with the latest hair styles, their boyfriends, dances, and as far as academics went,” Emily scoffed, “they didn’t really care about learning or thinking critically,” she was ranting now, “as long as they appeared to be a ‘successful’ student, that’s as far as it mattered. A respectable young woman with a formal education. That moves you up in life. But no one actually cares if you learn anything or have any thoughts of your own!”

George was quiet and Emily felt a flush taking over her cheeks. She was grateful for the shield of darkness.

“Well, good thing you didn’t listen to them,” George finally said.

“What?” Emily turned to look at him, despite the low visibility.

“Well, you’re here aren’t ya. You’re actually doing something with your education. You’re doing everything they didn’t want you too and that’s gutsy.”

Emily allowed herself to smile slightly, “yeah, I guess so.”

“Not a lot of dames would leave everything behind to join the European front. I mean, how many women do you see around you right now?” Emily chuckled, “there’s plenty of other brave women here.”

“Yeah, and you’re one of them.” They were approaching base at this point and the few dim lamps that hung on the front of the buildings illuminated George’s face slightly.

“Thank you, George,” Emily smiled softly at him.

“Anytime.” He bumped her gently with his shoulder. “You want me to walk you back to HQ?”

“That’s okay, we’re fifty feet away,” she gestured, “though I appreciate the offer.”

“Sure, see you later.” George disappeared into the darkness with Joe and Frank.

The next morning Emily felt more exhausted than she had in a long time. She wasn’t hungover - or at least she thought. To be fair she hadn’t experienced that sensation before.

“Alright kid?” Nixon asked as he trudged into the intelligence room.

“Kid?” she asked dryly. He shot her a look that said, yeah and? 
“Yeah I’m good, thanks. You alright?”

“I’m up aren’t I.”

“Indeed,” Emily chuckled, “coffee?”

“Sure,” he accepted the drink, “is this..?”

“Regular,” Emily didn’t have the energy to elaborate until she had consumed her own cup of coffee. Luckily, her and Nixon’s shorthand had evolved into a clear language.

After a few quiet minutes of mutual existence Nixon finally said, “we’re getting you on the rifle range today.”

“Okay,” Emily said dully.

Nixon squinted at her, “okay?”

“Yeah, okay, just tell me what time so I can change into my pants.”

“Okay,” Nixon drawled suspiciously.

“What?”

“I was expecting a little more pushback or more questions.”

“What’s there to ask?”
 “I don’t know, you always seem to come up with something!”

“Well I just said let me know so I can change.”

“Right, well are you nervous?”

Emily raised her eyebrows at him, “I’ve shot a gun before, Captain.”

Nixon winced into his coffee.

“What?” Emily asked, “don’t like women shooting guns?” 
“No,” Nixon said defensively, “god, you make me sound like a misogynist. I don’t like that title.” 
“Captain?” Emily was confused.

Nixon waived his hand is disgust, “yeah that.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t care for it. I don’t care for the frou-frou and fanfare of it all.”

“This is coming from a man who has an exclusive drink preference?”

Nixon gave her a cool look which caved into a little chuckle. “I’m here to do a job, a job I don’t particularly want to do, and that’s it,” he said with finality.

His attitude came as a surprise to Emily. Her impression of Lewis Nixon thus far had been that of an out of touch but clever and capable officer. She never had any sense that he took his military career seriously, like Winters for example; Nixon’s flippant attitude made that clear. But before now she would’ve guessed that title and rank meant something to him. Their conversation revealed a surprising humility Emily hadn’t expected to find in him. He was here out of duty to his nation just as much as any other foot soldier who had enlisted, not for glory. Guilt tugged slightly in Emily’s stomach. What was she here for? Not glory, but if she was being honest, not in humble service of her country either. Between the two of them, she was the opportunistic one using the events of war to seek adventure.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Nixon interrupted her introspection.

“Sorry,” Emily shook her head to clear the fog of her mind, “I’m tired.”

“Wild night?”

“Not really,” she said innocently.

“Really? I’m disappointed in George Luz.” Nixon smiled devilishly.

Emily couldn’t help the red flush that crept up her cheeks. There was nothing to be embarrassed about but Emily was Irish, so her blushes were frequent and beyond her control.

Nixon clocked it immediately and wasn’t about to be gracious enough to let it go ignored, “what?” he demanded with a half-smile, “what are you keeping from me?”

“Nothing!” Emily insisted.

“Aw come on, you know I’ll find out.”

“There’s nothing to find out!”

“There isn’t? Why are you so red then?” Nixon was unrelenting.

“I don’t know! I can’t help it!” Emily pressed her hands against her cheeks, desperately trying to cool her face, “I’m not hiding anything!”
 Nixon raised his eyebrows in doubt. Quickly, Emily collected herself and straightened, determined to get her power back from him, “There’s nothing to hide. Besides, I am spoken for, Captain,” she said haughtily.

Nixon wrinkled his nose in distaste at her pointed use of the title he had just admitted he hated.  Emily smiled smugly back at him and the conversation was put to rest. The pair ditched their empty mugs and were about to start out for their morning duties when Private Allen Vest stopped them in the doorway.

“A letter for Miss Rooney,” he said holding out an envelope.

“Thank you,” Emily took it and Vest was gone as quickly as he arrived.

“Finally a letter from that boyfriend of yours?”

“Fiancee,” Emily corrected, opening the letter.

“Hey ask him if he’s had a chance to try the local cuisine yet. If he’s anywhere close to Turin, I know this lovely little hilltop place I’d love to recommend.”

Emily looked up from the letter to shoot Nixon a disgusted look. He raised his eyebrows in mock offense, “at least say hi for me!”, then he swaggered out leaving Emily shaking her head and smiling. She had barely comprehended the few words she had already read, having been distracted by Nixon. She began again,

Dearest Emily,

I’m glad to hear you’ve settled in England easily. I apologize for the time since my last letter. I can’t begin to describe to you how difficult things are over here and frankly, I’ve had more to worry about than our correspondence. I do appreciate each of your letters, and your enduring loyalty to me…

A slight pang of guilt hit Emily at those words. Why though? She asked herself, had she been unfaithful? Not in the slightest. She had done nothing wrong or untoward since she’d been separated from John. But, though not explicitly wrong, she had done things she knew he wouldn’t approve of. She had played darts and cards, she’d drank and socialized with men without a female companion. She had been alone in a room with who John would consider a strange man on more than one occasion. This was on top of the liberties he had already been a good sport about; her working, shooting, and potentially being sent to the continent. These were all things that were acceptable from women who were single and not from her class, especially when there was plenty of dignified work to do on the home-front. And so Emily had omitted the details of her relationships and aspirations in her letters to John. She most definitely would not be conveying a hello to him from Nixon.

Emily finished the letter, folded it up, and stuffed it in her breast pocket. From her desk on the far left of the room she collected a box of maps and hurried out of the room. She was running late. Emily walked as quickly along the pebbled road as she could while still maintaining her poise. The box hadn’t seemed to weigh much when she first picked it up but it grew heavier in her arms with every step. The edge of the cardboard dug into her stomach, pulling on her skirt. A sudden anxiety of how her skirt may be twisted around when she entered the classroom came over her. She bounced the box on her hip which provided some momentary respite and room to desperately pull at her skirt in an effort to straighten it. She was roughly twenty-five yards away when two hands reached out for the box, accompanied by a friendly voice

“Em, let me take that for you,” George Luz said.

Emily’s initial instinct was to protest the help. She was more than capable but George was already taking the box from her and she couldn’t deny her relief.

She straightened and smoothed her skirt before she looked up at her rescuer, “thank you, George. You sure it’s not too much? You’ve got a lot on you right now.”

“Another couple pounds won’t hurt, whoa!” George feigned dropping the box and laughed when Emily lunged to support him. “Seriously, no sweat. Where are we going?”

Emily pointed straight ahead to the building they were approaching. “Perfect, that’s where I’m supposed to be anyways,” George said.

Emily grinned at the trouble maker, “you running late too?”

George smiled crookedly back at her, “I left for the bathroom while we were getting settled in. I don’t think they got up to much without me if we were waiting on these.” George lifted the box in indication.

Emily flushed, “I know, I know, I got distracted and lost track of time.”

“By anything good?” George’s question was innocent but there was something about it that felt probative.

“Letter from John,” Emily patted her breast pocket, doing her best to keep her voice nonchalant. She noticed that George took the opportunity to glance at her chest and redness flared in her cheeks again. George quickly looked away and said, “nice, how’s he doing? Remind me, brother or boyfriend?”

“Fiancee, and he’s doing well.”

“Nice,” George stepped aside to let Emily enter first through the already open doorway. Inside, Welsh was already lecturing.

“Yesterday we talked about magnetic declination and the left add right subtract rule,” Welsh noticed her enter with George close behind, “today,” he continued, “we’re gonna put it into practice.”

“Thanks George,” Emily whispered her thanks and took the box from him. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, Emily walked around the soldiers, occasionally having to step over a canteen or helmet, until she reached the front of the classroom. As Welsh continued to speak, Emily took out gridded maps from her box and began to distribute them to the soldiers.

“Glad you could join us,” Welsh grinned a gapped tooth smile at her once the lesson was ended. His hands were stuffed deep into his pants pockets and he rocked back and forth on his heels as Emily re-organized the maps in her box.

“I’m so sorry I was late,” she grimaced, “I - I don’t have any excuse just lost track of time.”

Welsh gave a shrug that told her it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t say anything more but remained standing only feet from her, watching her work.

“That was a good lesson,” she said to break the silence, “they seemed to really get it.”

“Yeah, it always makes more sense when once can practice it on their own,” Welsh said.

“Agreed, best way to learn is by doing.”

“I’m relieved to think you went well though,” Welsh said settling himself on the edge of the table. He folded his arms across his chest and looked at her with those disarming blue eyes, “I only learned all of this a couple days ago. It really should’ve been you teaching them.”

Emily smiled at the ground in response to his slight compliment, “you did a fine job. Besides, you’re their leader. It’s important to establish that you’re the one they should go to for information and support.”

“Pfft,” Welsh scoffed, “I’m sure that’s true, but no one wants to look at my ugly mug at the front of a classroom. All of those guys would have paid better attention to a beautiful lady like you.”

Emily fully flushed at this blatant compliment.

Welsh bit at his bottom lip, “anyways, time to get on to the next thing,” he stood, “want to leave that there for this afternoon?”

Emily nodded, “that was the plan. Just tidying things up a bit so you can easily find everything you need later.”

“Thanks,” Welsh said. Emily watched his lean figure walk out the door, silhouetted by the mid-morning sun streaming in. A little shiver ran through her body. Thoughts were creeping up in her mind that she was afraid to touch. If she acknowledged them there would be no denying them. She refused to be distracted from her plan; make the most of her career now before she had to return home and settle down. She couldn’t give anyone an excuse to send her home, not her parents or John or Nixon or any of the soldiers she worked alongside. Any acknowledgement of her growing crush would only lead to trouble.

[lastsonlost]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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