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halothenthehorns · 3 months ago

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Chapter 24: BLACKJACK GETS JACKED

Jason finally had to be prodded into continuing rather than rereading all of the last one another six times by Nico actually insistently poking him and reminding, "man, do you ever want to move on with your own life?"

"Right, yeah," Jason nodded, but nobody was fooled it was a reluctant hand that finally turned the new page. He was going to go back. He was going to keep that passage safely tucked in his head where nobody could take it again. He didn't know what it meant to him yet, but he knew it was important.

"Let the guy nerd out, what's there even left to go over," Alex shrugged, slouching in her seat and fiddling with the ends of her hair.

Magnus deliberately signed the name Rachel to her, a pretty big chunk of Percy's life that may or may not be insane in her adulthood.

Alex winced and nodded in apology for temporarily forgetting about the lively art girl in the mix of all that. She hoped Percy went up to Hades and demanded with another oath he get his shit together and fix that curse before it ruined any more lives. He probably might have without incinerating Percy on the spot after all the nice things said about his son if they were lucky.

"Blackjack Gets Jacked?" Though that was a pretty big thing to catch Jason on the right track.

"By who!" Percy flared up immediately. "No one takes my pegasus!"

Annabeth soothed him back gently into his seat with the casual off comment that Blackjack was safe wherever he was, this wasn't a repeat of that cruise ship incident.

Nobody had any wisecracks for that, they liked the winged horse.

Annabeth and I were on our way out when I spotted Hermes in a side courtyard of the palace.

"This, does not have the potential to end well," Magnus said with an uneasey frown at Percy, then the book. Nice guy he was, his notorious past of pissing off the gods, and his last major interaction with this god was him flip-flopping between wanting to kill Annabeth and then needing a hug...now Percy had just been witness to his beloved son's death that he'd apparently known was coming. Couple all that in with Percy not being the most stellar guy for any emotional situation, and Magnus was already wondering again how this guy was alive when Kronos being gone should have finally eradicated that.

It hadn't even been one chapter!

He was staring at an Iris-message in the mist of a fountain.

I glanced at Annabeth. "I'll meet you at the elevator."

"You sure?" Then she studied my face. "Yeah, you're sure."

Jason really wanted to take those two and lock them in a room and study the outcome. It would probably be his death, but it might be worth it. They were just the most fascinating combination of each other's confidence and flaws.

Hermes didn't seem to notice me approach.

"Can you sneak up on a god?" Alex asked with way to much interest.

"Yes," Thalia sighed with the kind of confidence of one who knew a few to many stories about what happened to people who did. Alex's grin did not drop one bit, of course.

The Iris-message images were going so fast I could hardly understand them. Mortal newscasts from all over the country flashed by: scenes of Typhon's destruction, the wreckage our battle had left across Manhattan, the president doing a news conference, the mayor of New York, some army vehicles riding down the Avenue of the Americas.

"Amazing," Hermes murmured. He turned toward me. "Three thousand years, and I will never get over the power of the Mist . . . and mortal ignorance."

"There's a compliment somewhere in there about the resilience of our race," Jason grinned.

"Half our race," Alex muttered, though it was hard some days to define which half annoyed her more, the human part or the godly part.

"Thanks, I guess."

"Oh, not you. Although, I suppose I should wonder, turning down immortality."

"It was the right choice."

Hermes looked at me curiously, then returned his attention to the Iris-message.

"You know, it's not a great sign when a god, this god in particular, has better focus than you Percy," Thalia chuckled.

"Huh?" He asked without interest, still back wondering if Hermes had called him ignorant. Or mist. Either way, it was probably insulting, all for not wanting to be immortal.

"Look at them. They've already decided Typhon was a freak series of storms. Don't I wish. They haven't figured out how all the statues in Lower Manhattan got removed from their pedestals and hacked to pieces. They keep showing a shot of Susan B. Anthony strangling Frederick Douglass.

Magnus had apparently missed out on a few vital History classes to recognize those names in only a vague questionnaire way. He should probably swap out his next fantasy novel for something more historically accurate...assuming any of it was actually true and not also some mist delusion!

But I imagine they'll even come up with a logical explanation for that."

"How bad is the city?"

Hermes shrugged. "Surprisingly, not too bad. The mortals are shaken, of course. But this is New York. I've never seen such a resilient bunch of humans. I imagine they'll be back to normal in a few weeks; and of course I'll be helping."

"You?"

"I've officially lost count of the times you should be dead Percy," Annabeth sighed.

"I never got a proper count to begin with, to much stuff we didn't get to hear about," Jason huffed.

Percy was not amused at either of them trying to get a sensus going about his mortality...but it might make some of the kids at camp feel better to know he was an outlier so it's not like he'd stop them if they ever got the chance.

"I'm the messenger of the gods. It's my job to monitor what the mortals are saying, and if necessary, help them make sense of what's happened. I'll reassure them. Trust me, they'll put this down to a freak earthquake or a solar flare. Anything but the truth."

"Cool," Jason and Magnus said together. The duality of how their domain could branch off into details they'd never have thought to consider was clearly more fascinating to them than it would be to those who had to deal with him complaining about all his multiple jobs.

He sounded bitter. George and Martha curled around his caduceus, but they were silent, which made me think that Hermes was really really angry. I probably should've kept quiet, but I said, "I owe you an apology."

Percy expected at least three smart-ass remarks about, 'Percy can apologize?!' but instead he got Annabeth's most endearing smile and Magnus chuckling saying, "I can't imagine many people living long enough to get to this stage. Kudos."

He grinned in relief none of his friends seemed to think he was some jerk above admitting when he was wrong.

Hermes gave me a cautious look. "And why is that?"

Will already looked so delighted at the start of this it should have been a little sad, but Nico got it. One would assume a god would just agree he'd been wronged and move on. Both of them were behaving so, casually about this.

Considering the amount of 'casual' and 'normal' actual people he'd even been around, yeah, this was a nice change of pace to ghosts blaming all their troubles on the living.

"I thought you were a bad father," I admitted. "I thought you abandoned Luke because you knew his future and didn't do anything to stop it."

"I did know his future," Hermes said miserably.

The confirmation did feel like quite the slap to Percy and Magnus, but while Magnus sighed and looked pretty miserable and conceding to the fact that the gods were just, 'like that' with no care, Percy had a strange, sad smile on his face. Inevitable didn't have to be a bad thing.

"But you knew more than just the bad stuff—that he'd turn evil. You understood what he would do in the end. You knew he'd make the right choice. But you couldn't tell him, could you?"

Hermes stared at the fountain. "No one can tamper with fate, Percy, not even a god. If I had warned him what was to come, or tried to influence his choices, I would've made things even worse. Staying silent, staying away from him . . . that was the hardest thing I've ever done."

In three thousand years... the fact that he admitted to that instead of something more godly, like bragging about helping the last Perseaus with killing Medusa the first time felt so important. Hermes was agreeing with Percy that their kids and how they interacted with them should be acknowledged more, instead of brushing him off or probably taking the chance to smite him as many others would have wanted to.

"You had to let him find his own path," I said, "and play his part in saving Olympus."

Annabeth pursed her lips against snapping at Percy for that. Playing his part, as if it had all been a game and Luke just hadn't been using the same rule book as the rest of them. She knew he didn't really mean it that way, Percy never would have given him the knife if he'd doubted for a moment Luke would go through with it, believed in him like she always had, but he'd still spend a lot of years with lingering resentment in him. Now he was using Luke as a symbol for why it shouldn't be done again.

She still wasn't convinced that gray area he'd lived in for so long had just been completely erased.

Hermes sighed. "I should not have gotten mad at Annabeth.

Annabeth gave Percy an eye-roll. "You know, when you told me that Hermes actually apologized for yelling at me, I thought he just blurted it out and walked off. You seriously didn't feel the need to tell me before you had a whole conversation?"

"No," Percy shrugged. He'd remembered the important part apparently.

When Luke visited her in San Francisco . . . well, I knew she would have a part to play in his fate. I foresaw that much. I thought perhaps she could do what I could not and save him.

"I'm, confused," Magnus admitted. "Did Hermes know Luke was going to die, or did he hope he could be saved?"

"Oooh, definitely both," Annabeth sighed. "The gods never assume there's a linear path, though some like to pretend they'll never reach the end of one."

When she refused to go with him, I could barely contain my rage. I should have known better. I was really angry with myself."

Alex tugged on her thick hair along the back of her neck over her tattoo. Yeah, she couldn't even pretend to be mad at hearing a god say that. Anger had a tendency to make you lash out rather than in.

"Annabeth did save him," I said. "Luke died a hero. He sacrificed himself to kill Kronos."

"I appreciate your words, Percy. But Kronos isn't dead. You can't kill a Titan."

"Then—"

"I don't know," Hermes grumbled. "None of us do. Blown to dust. Scattered to the wind. With luck, he's spread so thin that he'll never be able to form a consciousness again, much less a body. But don't mistake him for dead, Percy."

"I guess, it's a good thing he didn't just get tossed back into Tartarus?" Magnus frowned, he really hadn't been able to process this in his own head long enough to realize that implication. "Since he had to use someone to crawl his way out of there, maybe this'll last even longer?"

"Yeah, hopefully," Annabeth sighed in agreement, but they could all tell by the tone that she agreed with Hermes on this.

My stomach did a queasy somersault. "What about the other Titans?"

"In hiding," Hermes said. "Prometheus sent Zeus a message with a bunch of excuses for supporting Kronos. 'I was just trying to minimize the damage,' blah, blah. He'll keep his head low for a few centuries if he's smart. Krios has fled, and Mount Othrys has crumbled into ruins.

Jason tipped his head to the side as those words passed his lips. It left a strange sensation behind. Not a brag, not a lie, just, something. He should know something more about that than just 'crumbled back to ruins.'

He'd gotten hints, flashes, vague as all get out feelings, but reading that gave him a hunger to finally know his truth. He didn't care if it would take five whole books to end there again like Percy's, he really was ready to get started on his own history.

Oceanus slipped back into the deep ocean when it was clear Kronos had lost.

"I bet he looted that game room on his way too," Percy rolled his eyes. He just knew his dad was going to throw that back at him at some point. He was surprised not to see a few relics in this strange place.

Meanwhile, my son Luke is dead. He died believing I didn't care about him. I will never forgive myself."

In a way that should have been a good thing, Nico felt a frown tugging at his mouth. In some ways he respected his dad holding onto this perfect ideal version of Bianca, maybe it would stop him making the same mistakes again. Between Percy binding them to a promise to stop outright ignoring them, and the gods having literally hundreds of examples on how to be bad parents...maybe some of them would turn out good. It was a wishful hope, but one he hoped for.

Hermes slashed his caduceus through the mist. The Iris-picture disappeared.

"A long time ago," I said, "you told me the hardest thing about being a god was not being able to help your children. You also told me that you couldn't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they made it."

"And now you know I'm a hypocrite?"

It was hard for Thalia to think of him as that exactly, not with how much he clearly hurt at Luke's passing. He'd wanted Percy to succeed in rescuing him from this fate. Maybe bitter was a better word. He didn't think he could change so he just kept letting this awful shit happen in a continuous spiral of waiting for it to happen.

"No, you were right, Luke loved you. At the end, he realized his fate. I think he realized why you couldn't help him. He remembered what was important."

"Too late for him and me."

Will winced hard, very grateful Travis and Connor and the entirety of the kids at Camp weren't here to hear that. Hermes just considering himself a lost cause right off the bat, after everything the rest of his children had gone through felt right in line with their usual attitudes. Hermes wouldn't be the only one thinking like this, how their kids did great work but it was just par for the course and they could go on with their lives so long as they remembered to claim them more often now.

He didn't know how much good this had done in the long run, the God of Messengers didn't exactly pop into camp every other weekend more than the others, but Will still hoped Percy had gone around and spoken to them all. He seemed the only one able and willing to try at any rate.

If he tried to do this, he'd just start bowing and babbling or something stupid most likely.

"You have other children. Honor Luke by recognizing them. All the gods can do that."

Hermes's shoulders sagged. "They'll try, Percy. Oh, we'll all try to keep our promise. And maybe for a while things will get better. But we gods have never been good at keeping oaths. You were born because of a broken promise, eh? Eventually we'll become forgetful. We always do."

"You can change."

Hermes laughed. "After three thousand years, you think the gods can change their nature?"

"Yeah," I said. "I do."

Percy couldn't blame them for the blank looks. Nothing in his own history had exactly paraded this as fact. It probably just sounded like childish wishful thinking.

He had a half hearted excuse if anyone asked, but all he got was Annabeth and Thalia exchanging mystifed looks and Jason smiling in hopeful agreement really. It had been his mom's faith his dad had still loved him, that had been the conviction behind that promise.

Hermes seemed surprised by that. "You think . . . Luke actually loved me? After all that happened?"

"I'm sure of it."

Hermes stared at the fountain. "I'll give you a list of my children. There's a boy in Wisconsin. Two girls in Los Angeles. A few others. Will you see that they get to camp?"

"I promise," I said. "And I won't forget."

"So we're going to get awesome sidequest missions with you and Grover in the future, right?" Alex asked eagerly.

"And here I was kind of hoping we'd go on just one mission that didn't involve crazy. Just casually picking up kids from school and showing them camp with no monsters!" But Percy's sigh was one of knowing she was probably right.

George and Martha twirled around the caduceus. I know snakes can't smile, but they seemed to be trying.

"Percy Jackson," Hermes said, "you might just teach us a thing or two."

"Do you get a star constellation for that?" Alex asked with interest.

"It's really not the height of being a demigod Heracles made it out to be," Annabeth promised with a faint smile. "We'd prefer to be known for how we changed than what we did."

Alex hummed as if she couldn't decide if she agreed or not.

Another god was waiting for me on the way out of Olympus.

The collective groan around the room made Percy grin. It was so validating to see all of them as sick of this as he was, even Thalia and Alex had stopped cheering on more carnage. He really would kind of like to get all this over with too. He was exhausted and he wanted to find out what was wrong with Blackjack!

Athena stood in the middle of the road with her arms crossed and a look on her face that made me think Uh-oh.

Thalia chuckled and elbowed Percy in agreement. "I need to print that one for personal entertainment when the other Hunters think a male doesn't have a sensible bone in his body."

"Sure Thals, if this is really the section you want," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Well I didn't really think I could get away with stealing all five books, so yeah," she agreed.

She'd changed out of her armor, into jeans and a white blouse, but she didn't look any less warlike. Her gray eyes blazed.

"I can't help but just kind of picture you there," Magnus told his cousin.

She blushed in thanks and muttered something about her mom being more intimidating, but there was a pleased smile on her face all the same.

"Well, Percy," she said. "You will stay mortal."

"Um, yes, ma'am."

Will couldn't help but smile at the manners. Maybe it was just the southern in him, but it felt nice not to be mocked hearing it, even if these were gods who expected it anyways.

"I would know your reasons."

"She would," Alex mocked at once, grating against the authoritative tone in her head Jason was doing no favors in his calm, casual voice that always held a tone of holding attention effortlessly.

"Can't blame a goddess of wisdom wanting to hear a reason for something unprecedented," Annabeth chuckled.

"I want to be a regular guy. I want to grow up. Have, you know, a regular high school experience."

"Oh that was a lost cause before it started," Nico snorted, he could have guessed that from Percy even having a better life than him anyways before he heard all this. Even perfect Percy's life hadn't gone without glorious monster attacks he could triumph over.

"Yeah, but I still keep trying," Percy sighed.

"And my daughter?"

"I couldn't leave her," I admitted, my throat dry. "Or Grover," I added quickly. "Or—"

"Spare me." Athena stepped close to me,

"I never realized Grover probably would have benefited from you being immortal for quite a while too though," Jason rubbed his jaw with a sad smile. "How long do they live? Certainly longer than our normal life span, so he'd appreciate you being around longer too even if he's not immortal from his, lord of the wild status."

"Yes, I'm so sure that's why Athena didn't buy that," Percy snorted at this guy always trying to derail their crazy into analytical.

and I could feel her aura of power making my skin itch. "I once warned you, Percy Jackson, that to save a friend you would destroy the world. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Annabeth smiled in surprise. Her mother hadn't really come across as capable before of admitting to such a thing. The pressure on her shoulders lifted, just a small tug, as she leaned into Percy's side with a sigh of regret for their earlier spat. Yeah, she could be mistaken too. She'd have to have a real talk with him soon.

You seem to have saved both your friends and the world. But think very carefully about how you proceed from here. I have given you the benefit of the doubt. Don't mess up."

Just to prove her point, she erupted in a column of flame, charring the front of my shirt.

"Lovely woman," Alex snorted, still unimpressed. Probably because she was jealous she couldn't do that too.

Magnus made a meep noise that could have meant anything from agreement to, 'I'm trying not to piss myself that I'm distantly related to that.'

Annabeth was waiting for me at the elevator. "Why do you smell like smoke?"

"Long story," I said.

"No, it wasn't," Annabeth huffed.

"I delegated all my good summary skills away, remember?" Percy's grin was sheepish, so clearly wanting to change the subject as he squeezed her hand.

She huffed and rolled her eyes at him as she squeezed back. She supposed she could respect she didn't need to know every detail of his life up to now to have the full picture.

Together we made our way down to the street level. Neither of us said a word.

The music was awful—Neil Diamond or something. I should've made that part of my gift from the gods: better elevator tunes.

That finally broke a long line of tension lingering in the room. The laughter echoed pleasantly, Will tried to escalate it by promising his dad might do it just to impress Percy specifically or something, but really they just needed that moment of levity after all this.

When we got into the lobby, I found my mother and Paul arguing with the bald security guy, who'd returned to his post.

Percy felt a warmth spread out of him he hoped the others felt as much as they did when it was his anger. The smiles that lit them all, the mild teasing about the poor lobby guy unable to finish his book coupled with everyone completely unsurprised that Sally and Paul hadn't just hopped in their car and gone home after all that.

Annabeth had been more surprised than anything not to see Paul causing a distraction so Sally could swipe the keycard personally.

"I'm telling you," my mom yelled, "we have to go up! My son—" Then she saw me and her eyes widened. "Percy!"

She hugged the breath right out of me.

"Guess you would do good to practice that somewhere since you don't have to underwater like us plebians," Nico nodded.

"Yeah Nico, I'm sure you'll be first in line to help with that," Percy said with a laugh he hoped wasn't as awkward as it sounded to his ears. He at least hoped he could tease him about that now.

Nico's dry laugh proved he could, so that made the others chuckle along.

"We saw the building lit up blue," she said. "But then you didn't come down. You went up hours ago!"

"She was getting a bit anxious," Paul said drily.

"I couldn't tell," Percy mock promised as he rubbed his ribs.

"Then tomorrow's life lesson will be over reading the room," Thalia smirked.

"Great, something you'd finally fail before me," Percy smirked right back.

Jason cleared his throat hard to stop them before they could spiral back out and they acquitted, for now.

"I'm all right," I promised as my mom hugged Annabeth. "Everything's okay now."

"Mr. Blofis," Annabeth said, "that was wicked sword work."

Paul shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do. But Percy, is this really . . . I mean, this story about the six hundredth floor?"

"Olympus," I said. "Yeah."

Paul looked at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. "I'd like to see that."

"Paul," my mom chided. "It's not for mortals.

Percy really had gotten all the best blend of traits from his parents, Magnus grinned. She didn't try to overstep and expect more from her brief time with the god of the sea. Posideon's power being bottled and expelled in just the right kind of way to keep the power balanced against the worst of the monsters.

Anyway, the important thing is we're safe. All of us."

I was about to relax.

"Oh gods," Magnus resisted the urge to facepalm in horror of what could happen next. Some last-minute twist evil kid at camp was going to burst in on Blackjack and try to kill everyone again?!

Everything felt perfect. Annabeth and I were okay. My mom and Paul had survived. Olympus was saved.

But the life of a demigod is never so easy.

"But you're supposed to be the best of us Percy!" Thalia said with all the exaggerated punctuation of someone fresh off learning her lines at a soap opera. Percy was a tad worried she'd hurt herself with that much sarcasm. "If you believe it, we can do better!"

"Even I couldn't make the gods promise us that," Percy scoffed.

Just then Nico ran in from the street, and his face told me something was wrong.

"You need a new face," Percy huffed. "I've seen that one to many times."

"I like his face," Will frowned, while Nico covered said face with his hand at these idiots.

"Shut it, you know what I meant," Percy scowled.

"I think it's more convenient to know what someone's thinking at a glance, even if you don't like it," Annabeth reminded better.

Percy huffed but didn't argue the point with her, for now.

"It's Rachel," he said. "I just ran into her down on 32nd Street."

"Literally?" Will asked in concern.

"No Will, I do not literally run into anyone if I can avoid it," Nico sighed.

"No, I meant, did she run into you and actually explain this, or did you ask what was going on and she ran you over?" He clarified. He imagined Rachel in a frantic enough mood for either.

"Oh, yeah," Nico nodded, "the second."

Annabeth frowned. "What's she done this time?"

"Annabeth," Percy groaned.

She shrugged. She wasn't apologizing. Rachel had nearly gotten a helicopter crashed last time she'd jumped into her life.

"It's where she's gone," Nico said. "I told her she would die if she tried, but she insisted. She just took Blackjack and—"

"She took my pegasus?" I demanded.

Nico nodded. "She's heading to Half-Blood Hill. She said she had to get to camp."

"Rachel took Blackjack!" Magnus looked like he hurt his neck on that double take.

"Actually that one makes sense. He'd trust someone he knew Percy cared about to hop on and go along," Jason said fairly.

"Can she even enter camp?" Alex asked with concern as Magnus uneasily got up to take the book. "Nobody's there to invite her in, but well, she did stay awake when every other mortal passed out, so she's obviously got some kind of exemption boost. Kudos to her for going big on testing this," she finished with a smirk.

Percy looked a new kind of exhausted, which none of them thought was possible moments ago.

He was going to go after her though, no questions asked. That was his friend off to do another dangerous stunt after he just had to watch Luke and Annabeth do their final dance. He had no idea what she even meant by it and was far too exhausted to guess why!

This poor guy really needed a break from everyone.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

Seeing editing decisions like this in a published book really do make me feel better about my own writing sometimes. Three conversations constitutes a whole chapter huh? Yeah, this couldn't have been tacked onto the end of the last one, and it's a dramatic end to segway into a new one, but it doesn't stop me from laughing that you could have just made this the opening to the next chapter and used cutaway. Nope. Had to make this its whole own thing. Thank you, I'll remember that.

#pjo #Percy Jackson #Annabeth Chase #percabeth #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #alex fierro #magnus chase #fierrochase

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omeya · 10 months ago

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A word or two about AI and our fandom

Over the last few months I've been noticing an increased presence of AIs in this fandom environment. Not that it's something new, they were already here for some time but, although maybe it's just my perception, I see them more and more often.

Being aware of the multitude of fields covered by this technology I would like to talk about what, as a lover of arts in general (not only graphics), makes me uneasy about this matter.

I will start by saying that I am not writing this from a place of rejection towards artificial intelligence, I understand the value and the multiple utilities and advantages it can bring. I will even say that I am attracted to its potential and the promises of improvement that it can provide to certain aspects of life.

But not here, in art. In the most human work there is, it will never have a deserved place.

I remember when, a few years ago, through social networks, we were beginning to see greater support towards artists. Many voices were talking about their visibility, about sharing their creations, commenting, criticizing, interacting with them. It seemed that everyone wanted to support their favorite artists, and who wouldn't? The art world is a hostile place, how could they not support them? It even seemed that the detractors, if there were any, were a bit more hesitant to steal art, leave hate comments etc.

Now, however, I am deeply saddened to visit these same profiles and find "fanarts", "fanfics",... made by an algorithm where the public is full of flattery towards a work generated with, most likely, stolen art. Where has all that gone?

The AI in this environment triumphs with its stunning images, full of colors, "details", "intricate shapes", lighting. Oh yes, they look very appealing and complex. Incredibly attractive (at least until you look at them in detail) and suspiciously similar to each other. As if they were taken from the same book. A part of the public no longer seems concerned about those artists who have their work stolen and amalgamated into an attempt at "art" by companies or individuals who are trying to break into this world with their dubious (to put it mildly) techniques. A painful part of them is content with simply seeing their favorite character in a new "work", no matter who or how they made it or its consequences. And I still hear from them that it is necessary to support the artists. But hear me out, it is not the public's fault, at least not entirely, they are not the ones who steal art nor the ones who are driven solely by the desire to have more interactions on social networks, whatever the price. It may be a false illusion but I prefer to think that there is a lack of information and not that we just don't care anymore.

These days, interacting on networks, sharing what I do or just checking in is difficult. Not only for me, as I personally don't claim any artistic career and it's just one hobby among others, but for my more dedicated peers. I find the daily experience of many artists, being overtaken in numbers, visibility and support by an AI made of stolen art, heartbreaking.

Although I think that the use of these images and texts created by computer is equally ignoble in all art spaces, in particular for "fandoms" where most of us participate in a disinterested way, by and for the same community and with special affection, I feel it especially vile. Leaving aside (for now) the fact of the intentionality and the emotion the artist puts in and its appreciated in their works, I would like to emphasize that these communities are formed by small creators mostly that will feel in a more devastating way, if possible, the impact of this tendency. I would not want to see myself in the position of a small artist trying to carve out a niche in the community by competing against individuals or companies whose only goal is numbers and profit. Interactions, not art or the appreciation of a work. Just the generation of similar good-looking images that are known to do well in networks and collect numbers. And the artists, even if they manage to make a niche for themselves and get recognition for their work, how should they feel when they realize that what they had taken hours, days, weeks or months to create (among many other things), an algorithm can emulate in seconds, as many times as the person wants in the day, with little effort, even earning more recognition than them and, on top of that, based on stolen art?

I won’t dare to call these crude attempts “art”. Not just because of its relation with effort, which is not entirely crucial, but for the absence of intentionality, conscious expression. To say that everything is art is to deny it, but in reverse, because if everything is art, it means that nothing really is it.

A distinction must be made. As part of the community I will say that for me there is no comparison for a work made by a person who feels and loves what they do. All of them have something that cannot be emulated by an algorithm. Coherence, intention,... That's what I look for in these spaces and what I expect from them. Real people enjoying what they do, creating for themselves and gifting something for everyone else in this community. I won’t be praising a covetous individual or a company that steals art and writes prompts with the sole objective of clout. It would be an insult to myself and my peers' intentions and work.

I’d like to remind all artists that they have something incomparable and valuable in their hands and that they’re very much appreciated. To the vile individuals and companies stealing art and farming numbers I won’t bother to say anything since they’ve proven to be selective in what they listen to and my words will just fall into deaf ears. And to the "public" to inform themselves, if they want to. I’ll leave some links with guides on how to distinguish art from computer images.

Excuse my English since it's not my mother tongue.

Note that a lot more information is available on the internet and art communities for those who might be interested

Cited here: @gailynovelry @mdzsartreblogs

#long post #naruto #nauto fandom #anti ai art #anti ai writing

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thecomicsnexus · 3 months ago

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THE SHREDDER (FAN MADE)

2024 By Andrew Modeen, Mark Pellegrini, Arseniy Dubakov , Jim Lawson, Dennis Kennedy, Yuri Kochin, Andres Ponce, Rick Arthur, Keith Aiken, Frank Fosco, Dan Berger, and Courtland Brugger.

The Shredder returns once again to give exposition, kill characters that were already dead, and whatever.

SCORE: 3

This was almost a 2, and the reason it isn't is because there is a style already in place with Jim Lawson, and while it became confusing at critical moments of the story, I cannot really say I was expecting anything different. It's definitely not his fault that I got confused when I did.

And it's weird, that a story that completely underestimates the reader of a very targeted fan project, got me confused in the end. Well, more than just the ending... it kind of undid things that I assumed were going to stay the same in this alternate universe.

You may already know how I find epigraphs pointless most of the time, this graphic novel wasn't the exception. But I already know Andrew has some sort of compulsion to add them, so I wasn't really annoyed by them so much, mostly because, like what happened with the art, it is already a part of Andrew's style.

But the dialogues, man, that's where it always hurts. The unnecessary "LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU" exposition that takes up almost 40% of the dialogues, and sequences in this story, are just too much. And there is something in the way his character talk that just feels artificial.

As I was saying, the reader of a book like this, already knows 75% of the story. It's not cheap to make these puppies, so I feel like that was wasted potential to tell a fresh story. Did we need to bring back Shredder one more time? Did we need a Super Shredder?

There is a segment of this book penciled by Andres Ponce that made me wish the whole thing was done by him (although it wouldn't have really made things clearer). I am not sure what caused this chapter to be done by Andres, but his style, while manga inspired, is just more realistic than Jim's style. This wouldn't be a bad thing, but it is in the middle of the book, and the change of style is just too jarring. Since there is yet another chapter of Raphael fighting with Lucindra in this book (talk about endless cycles!), I think this encounter between Shredder and Karai could have added as a back-up story. I understand why it had to be in the middle of the book, but then the choice of art styles was wrong.

The moment that made me laugh was when Amaya died again. Why does Andrew keep bringing her back only to kill her?

And what is going on with Pimiko? Hear me out...

Pimiko and Amaya were explained to be mother and daughter in that "Image run unofficial conclusion" that Andrew made. Their death scene was one of the things I remember the most about those issues (not for any good reason), but that was there, and it was done. I wasn't expecting that story not to take place in the same universe, because the ending of it implied it led to Volume 4.

So we got a new spin on that story here. Which already took me (literally) out of the story, as I had to go check those issues, just to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

Then the other bit that really confused me and I just gave up was the last page of the main story. I feel I should recognize the characters... but I just couldn't tell what it meant. In a story that spells out who's who all the time, and what their relationship is to everyone around them, this last bit was a mystery.

There are significant changes to the origin of the Shredder as well. Nagi's act of violence is no longer the initial trigger of the cycle of revenge. Instead, it is explained that the Foot Clan... killed Saki's family... and then... kind of pushed Nagi into getting himself killed by Yoshi (okay...), to fuel Saki's rage and make him into their greatest warrior. It also introduced a proto-Shredder figure.

The book also ties ends. It kills April and Casey, because I am not sure why, April had to be at the duel with the Shredder. It is also revealed why Raphael and Shadow stopped seeing each other after this.

Also, female characters in these stories are technically the enemy, no matter what they're doing. Even when they're helping, they manage to betray someone, get themselves killed, or change their motivations every two pages.

There are Turtles in this story as well, but as you can imagine by the title, they are all kind of non-important and indistinguishable (I know Mikey is there because a Turtle has nunchaku).

The story does follow "TMNT: Origin" and namedrops "TMNT: 2030" (a story I thought took place in 2030, therefore the future of this timeline, but I now realize I have to read it again). This means the story is also in the same timeline as Odyssey, but lucky us, that story is not linked to this one explicitly.

So what did I like about this book? Well, it's always nice to see Mirage artists come in and do Turtles and their cast. Even if I feel the whole premise was a story I wasn't interested in reading.

How does it compare to Odyssey, Origin, and the conclusion of volume 3? Probably better than those. It has stiff dialogues with unnecessary swearing, and it's filled with cliches, but I think I either got used to them, or there was an actual improvement, especially in the story itself (not the dialogues). It looks like something Image Comics could have printed in 1993.

I don't know what plans Andrew has for the future, but I think getting more efficient with dialogue and script would really make his stories more entertaining.

Then again, it's clear that I am kind of alone in this line of thinking, as I always get recommendations from fans to read his stories. So what do I know?

#comics #review #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #post modern age #2024 #jim lawson #the shredder

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kammartinez · 1 year ago

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I’ve always been curious about what it feels like for an author to see their work translated into another medium. The question seems particularly interesting with a film like Oppenheimer, the biopic directed by Christopher Nolan that opened in theaters this week. It tells the life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” and is based on a mammoth, Pulitzer Prize–winning 2005 biography that took 25 years to research and write. American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is more than 700 pages long; at first glance, it’s difficult to imagine how a book this granular about a subject this complex became a movie. Sadly, Sherwin passed away two years ago, but Bird was able to have the uncanny experience of “meeting” Oppenheimer while visiting the set of Nolan’s film. I talked with him about this encounter and about his book’s path to Hollywood.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:

Bird and I spoke over the phone a day before the film’s release. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Gal Beckerman: How are you feeling?

Kai Bird: Well, my head is spinning a little bit. It’s very weird. This book came out 18 years ago. Where was everyone then?

Beckerman: Well, you did win the Pulitzer Prize. So you can’t say that it was ignored.

Bird: That’s true. I can’t complain. But, you know, it got on the paperback-best-seller list last week. It never made it on the best-seller list back then.

Beckerman: It took a long time for it to be picked up and adapted.

Bird: Well, the book was optioned. But, you know, years went by, and nothing happened. So we were very lucky when I suddenly got a phone call in September of 2021, and I was told that Christopher Nolan wants to speak to me. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back at all his other work, he’s really the perfect director for this book. He’s always been interested in time and space and memory, science and science fiction. So it makes perfect sense that he could be attracted to a book about a guy who was a quantum physicist.

Beckerman: So the shift to film felt pretty seamless to you?

Bird: The way Marty [Sherwin] and I both thought about the book—and this would be true of any potential film as well—was that it might be an interesting story to follow the making of the atomic bomb, but that if that’s all there was, we wouldn’t be spending all these years—25 years—on it. What gives the story its arc is both the triumph of [Oppenheimer’s] achievement in Los Alamos but then the tragedy of what happens to him nine years later, when he’s brought down from being America’s most famous scientist to becoming a nonentity, humiliated on the front pages of The New York Times. His loyalty to the country is questioned. That’s what makes the story really interesting. And so, when I first had a meeting with Nolan, he was not sharing the script with me at that point. He said he works confidentially, although he’d done a whole draft already. He works very fast. I told him I thought it was important to focus on the trial. And I think he was relieved to hear me say that, because when he showed me the screenplay a few months later, it really is a lot about the trial.

Beckerman: Were there aspects of the book that you thought would be particularly difficult to communicate in film without the benefit of hundreds and hundreds of pages?

Bird: The quantum physics. This was also a struggle in the book, because it’s so complex. But actually, Nolan really attempts to explain quantum or give you a sense of the music of it. He develops a good analogy in the film. He has Oppenheimer walking through an art gallery in the 1920s, when he’s studying quantum, and he’s looking at Cubist pictures done by Picasso. And he’s staring at them, and he’s seeing the quantum in Picasso’s images. That’s not specifically in the book, but, you know, Oppenheimer’s mother was a painter and an art collector. She bought early van Goghs and several Picassos, so it’s entirely appropriate.

Beckerman: Did you learn anything about filmmaking through this process?

Bird: I saw the film for the fourth time last night. And each time I see it, I see layers that I didn’t see on the first occasion. I hear some of the dialogue that I missed on previous occasions, because it is very fast-paced. Nolan is really quite interesting as a filmmaker, I think, precisely because he’s not trying to bring you along. He’s not trying to make sure you understand everything. He’s leaving little clues throughout the visual experience that he doesn’t explain. So, for example, if you know who the physicist Richard Feynman is, he is portrayed in the film, but he’s never identified. But on several occasions, you see this young man banging furiously on a bongo, and that’s Feynman.

Beckerman: And if you know, you know!

Bird: Exactly. He wants people to leave the theater with questions: Oh, who was that? And questions about, you know, McCarthyism, living with the bomb, and why did that happen to Oppenheimer? Was it just or unjust? He’s not giving you the answers. And he does that with the whole very weighty issue of the decision to actually use the bomb, which is still controversial history.

Beckerman: I know that you went to visit the set while they were filming. I’m curious if you could tell me a little bit more about what that experience was like, just the uncanniness of it. And, you know, meeting Cillian Murphy, who played Oppenheimer.

Bird: It was very bizarre. When I met Cillian, he was being introduced to me after shooting a scene, and I shouted out, “Dr. Oppenheimer, Dr. Oppenheimer. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been waiting all these years.” And then we had a five-minute conversation. And I told him I thought it was interesting how well he had captured Oppie’s voice. Oppenheimer’s voice was always very soft-spoken. It’s the kind of voice that makes you want to lean forward to make sure you’ve caught every word. And each word is pronounced very meticulously. And he speaks in whole paragraphs. Cillian’s response was Oh, well, I’m glad you think so—but, you know, we try not to imitate the voice; we try to simply capture the spirit of it.

Beckerman: Well, that seems a pretty apt description of adaptation when it works well, as it sounds like it did in this case.

Bird: I just think I’m a lucky, lucky author.

#books #oppenheimer #movies #kai bird #american prometheus

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kamreadsandrecs · 1 year ago

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First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:

Bird and I spoke over the phone a day before the film’s release. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Gal Beckerman: How are you feeling?

Kai Bird: Well, my head is spinning a little bit. It’s very weird. This book came out 18 years ago. Where was everyone then?

Beckerman: Well, you did win the Pulitzer Prize. So you can’t say that it was ignored.

Bird: That’s true. I can’t complain. But, you know, it got on the paperback-best-seller list last week. It never made it on the best-seller list back then.

Beckerman: It took a long time for it to be picked up and adapted.

Beckerman: So the shift to film felt pretty seamless to you?

Beckerman: Were there aspects of the book that you thought would be particularly difficult to communicate in film without the benefit of hundreds and hundreds of pages?

Beckerman: Did you learn anything about filmmaking through this process?

Beckerman: And if you know, you know!

Beckerman: Well, that seems a pretty apt description of adaptation when it works well, as it sounds like it did in this case.

Bird: I just think I’m a lucky, lucky author.

#books #oppenheimer #movies #kai bird #american prometheus

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dashawfrostart · 5 months ago

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This... Month? In "Time & Again" #20: Die Herausforderungen des Schreibens 📚 - und mehr

Here, I thought I'm finally coming back with some truly awesome news quite shortly - but alas, it turns out it's been roughly a month. Sounds like the frequency of my overly giant posts is rigorously dropping... But I intend to let it simply flow, following its own pace, so I write whenever. I have probably already mentioned that writing doesn't always go buttery smooth for me (and I'm pretty sure I said that somewhere before; it's not just the title of this post signifies that). If the posts do not form in my head - then I simply don't write, and I don't force the process either. The spark is very, very important when creating.

But enough of digression, let's get straight to the business! First things first!!! And the news is truly fab!!!

Chapters 1, 2 and 3.1. of "Time & Again" now exist in the physical world!!! 🥳🥂

This is so cool, I cannot contain myself!!! 🤪 This is a very odd and somewhat awkward feeling, to hold your own book in your hands. Back in the day, I started working on it as an exclusively digital release - and yet, I designed it (just in case!) as a book almost right away, with the covers, inner artworks, and the proper page count that was suitable for physical printing, if need be, although without the bleed areas.

Well, turned out the "if need be" situation happened in the end. And after all, it's just very nice to have a physical copy of your own work on hand... Well, because I'm an old-school person and I love paper books. Once the entire story is done, I will definitely prepare and order a hardcover copy just for myself. And if the local (and beyond local) readers so desire, I'll print some for them, too. But that is just a potential plan for the future consideration 😁 Right now, the succulently depressing Chapter 6 is waiting for me.

Preparing it for the physical printing was a bit of a struggle - the topic I already mentioned in one of the previous posts. I have spent a month working on all of that, plus refining some little things and adding "Notes, Commentaries & Hints" section to each one of the chapters. Ordering prints, unfortunately, was also a struggle, in an odd way.

But I succeeded. And now I am very happy.

Please note that I also added a QR code that leads to the landing page with all my art links and socials for everybody to explore. That was also yet another one little thing I've worked hard on for a while last month. It even has a link to my Doomworld profile 😁 *a happy smiling and spinning cacodemon smiley should go here*

Now, I am ready for yet another one juicy announcement on today's agenda:

The script for Chapter 6 is finally done!!! Yaaaaaay!!!11!!1!1!!! 🥳🥂

Revisiting the fruits of my labour yesterday, I can say I did good. It made me happy. And that's saying something. Chapter 6 is going to be very, very wordy (thank you Lothar for thinking non-stop). 19 pages with approximately 12500 words sure will make a big impression on some readers, I'm certain... However, a large part of that whooping page number is actually commentary only. But there's still a little more reading than in any average previous chapter. Now, off it goes directly to my editor-in-chef for the proofread. Which means that incredibly soon I will finally be able to start working on the page templates for the actual release. Excited. Chapter 6 is going to be highly experimental and daring. ... and unbearably dark, too. Darker than Chapter 5.

Returning back to our aforementioned topic of the writings, as well as the ultimate torments and tortures of the process, I must share something that you might find interesting to clarify the situation - or at least entertaining to some extent. Yet again: writing does not always go smooth for me. In the previous post I have shared my fears and concerns in regard to Chapter 6 in general, particularly the writing. Well, here's the full story for a disclosure: back in the day, approximately around the time I created Lothar (and shortly Jeanny), sometime in 2015, I attempted to write a large novel about the catpeople named Freia and Fjolvarr. That story has never been finished, and the problem with it happened to be, as I ponder now, the lack of self-organization of the author. Meaning, I could write separate notes for the story in multiple notebooks, because a lot of different ideas and thoughts would swirl in my imagination, so, like fools, I would try to save them all. Which was a good tactic - and I still think it is!.. The real problem, however, emerges from the depths of creative process later on, when it's time to stitch everything together into a logical and consecutive narration. I ended up with a lot of parts that were very difficult to tie together. Usually, when I used to write my text-only stories, I went with the flow and let the logic of the characters' conversations circulate naturally - and in most cases, it yielded great result. But with the things written split in parts right from the start, finding the right chain link to link them all together into a naturally flowing conversation was... a nightmare to say the least. Perhaps I was not persistent enough, or maybe the amount of work was a little too much, for that story was supposed to be, well, at least 200 pages in total (I approximate), therefore there as a lot of unrefined material to work with. As for "Time & Again", I definitely didn't want it to die in a swamp of creation that went awry. "Time & Again" bears ENORMOUS importance to me. I could not simply let it disappear into nothingness, because that would've been easily the most disappointing thing in my life. By the time I sat down to get to finishing up and polishing the script in July, there were indeed parts of the dialogues and Lothar's delirious monologues that required connection links. I cannot really say that I dreaded working on it. But I had fear that it might end up being as unfinished as the aforementioned catpeople story. This time I was aware of the weaknesses and failings of my previous, almost 10-year-old outdated approach. So I was ready to embrace a potentially tremendous amount of works that was waiting for me.

And I did really good this time!

Have I ever told you that narratology interest me very much? Narratology classes were something I've never taken. The same with psycholinguistics and the its lesser known, more targeted subdivision called ethnopsycholinguistics. And now I feel like I have missed out on INCREDIBLY MUCH. For a language nerd such as myself, it's shameful. But nothing's impossible (am I, like, in the mood for Depeche Mode quotes today or what?..), and there are lots of books available on the above mentioned topics, so I am not sad one bit. I love sciences 🤓 And I am always up for self-education (basically almost everything I've learnt very willingly was thanks to self-education alone).

I thought I wanted to mention some other fun topic, but I no longer remember what it was. That's alright; chances are by the time I decide to return to make another post, it will shape itself a tad better anyway. So I'll save my currently improperly shaped thought for later.

See you soon! 👋 I really gotta pick up the slack and start posting more frequently 😅

#TimeAndAgainbyDWF #This Week In Time And Again #graphic novel

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moveslikeanape · 1 year ago

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ohh, that's too bad about your computer not being able to play dreamlight valley! i have heard that the game is supposed to have a mobile version, but i'm not sure if it's been released yet or not, so that could be something to look into. also, i can totally see that about tarzan wanting to dive right in and learn about everything around him. i'm sure that if jane were there with him she'd also be really excited to show him new things and help him with anything he didn't understand. oof, yeah, i didn't wanna be too harsh about wish in case you were still really looking forward to the movie, but i admit that my mixed feelings about it are more on the negative side. i like a couple of the songs, but they're riddled with strange and poorly written lyrics (for example, "i'm a star, watch out world here i are" or "i let you live here for free and i don't even charge rent") and some of them sound so generic that i just feel like i've already heard them before. after seeing the concept art and hearing about some of the ideas that didn't make it in, i ended up feeling like the movie had a lot of missed potential. it's a shame, especially since this was disney's 100th anniversary film. there is one other tarzan reference besides the shoutout in the credits, though, so definitely look out for that when you watch it! that's true about mark mancina, i see a lot of praise for tarzan's soundtrack that's specifically about phil collins, but mark created such a good score to go with his work. i'm really glad he got to work on moana as well. ooh i see, that does all sound pretty interesting! i love to read as well and pretty much always have a long list of things i'd like to read, and never enough time for all of them LOL. but i'll definitely have to add the tarzan novels to that list and try to check them out someday. are there any other tarzan movies you enjoy besides disney's version? -🌟

I looked, and is is available through Apple Arcade… but same problem, don't have a compatible device, lol. Not into computers/phones/etc enough to try and keep up with the latest. Would rather stretch my devices as long as I can and save the money for my collection. Oh well, maybe someday I'll play it. Would be so awesome to see more of Jane helping Tarzan learn new things though!

I agree with you on the lyrics, some of them are so bad!! I remember hearing those lines for the first time and feeling embarrassed for them. They sound like they're from a cheap bootleg ripoff, not from the most prestigious animation company in the world. They should be ashamed of themselves, they used to have incredible song lyrics.

That's awesome there's one other Tarzan reference though!! A very good reason to give it a watch!

Mark's score for Tarzan and Brother Bear are so beautiful. As soon as I saw he was doing Moana I knew I was going to love it!

Ah, the pain of never having enough time to read… and it always seems that when you do, you can't find anything to read! I'm currently halfway through the Asian Saga by James Clavell. I've read those books so many times I've lost count. I was about a third of the way through Shogun when I found out that there's a new FX series based on the book that's going to be on Disney+ at the end of February! Although I've finished reading Shogun since, I'm trying to finish reading the other 5 books before the series starts… I don't think I'm going to make it, lol.

I hope you enjoy the Tarzan novels if you get to read them!!

I haven't seen many other Tarzan movies, but I did really enjoy Greystoke with Christopher Lambert and Andie MacDowell. Of the ones I've seen it feels the closet to the books. And it has an unexpected connection to the Disney version… Andie MacDowell's voice was dubbed by Glenn Close, so it's like seeing Jane and hearing Kala!

Growing up I watched the Tarzan tv series starring Wolf Larson and Lydie Denier, which was my first introduction to Tarzan. It takes place in more modern times, and Jane was French in it. I watched it again a few years ago, and it was definitely not as good as I remember it being. But as a kid I found it thrilling, used to stay up until 3 am every Saturday to watch it!

#strangers like me

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tonispencerart · 1 year ago

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I was looking for more photos of people to draw, still looking at the theme of Human Form, and bored of searching Google Images for something, I turned to my Facebook people and asked them if they wouldn't mind sending me any images of themselves - the more expressive and interesting, the better! I'd already tried some drawing with my non-dominant hand and the results were fun. They were distorted for one thing, which was a big part of what I was doing at the time, so I explained that the likelihood of anyone recognising them wasn't huge... That's when an old school friend of mine told me about a whole album of photos she had from a showcase she took part in when she was taking Burlesque classes and that I could use whatever was in it if I wanted to. Burlesque is something that has always kind of fascinated me as an art form. If you know me in the real world, you'll already know about the annual Bucket List I make every New Year's Eve. Again, if you actually know me in the real world, you'll know exactly how I feel about NYE, but that's another story... It's not an actual Bucket List, it's essentially a list of random stuff that I'd quite like to do before the end of the year. I've made this list every year since 2012. On it is some really quite random stuff, usually. Learning how to hula hoop, reading a whole book series, finishing a sketchbook, figure out a fool-proof recipe for cookies that are both crunchy and chewy... and since 2013, I had Learn Burlesque on it for no other reason, really, than it looked like a fun thing to do. But I didn't know anyone involved in it - certainly not in Glasgow at the time, anyway - so it always ended up Never Done even though it's been on the list every year since then. That's the thing with the Annual Bucket List, though (I should probably come up with a new name for it, really). It doesn't matter if you only manage one thing on the list - or none of them. They're not Resolutions, just things I'd like to do at some point but there's no pressure and no target. Some things get put on the list every year and sometimes there are new things on it. Part of the fun is coming up with random stuff to do, actually. Anyway, when my friend said I could use this photo album, I had a look through it and was positively vibrating at the thought of being able to use the images for something. I could potentially do some pretty awesome stuff! So I started with her - my friend. The images shown here are actually of the same image, just at different stages. The one on the left is the drawing I made initially, using my left hand (non-dominant hand). What was interesting was that the proportions were more accurate without even trying very hard - which is something I struggle with normally with my right hand (dominant hand) - not that I was actually trying because I was aiming for distortion! it turned out better than I expected. The image on the right is the same drawing but finished with a blending stump/tortillon, and my trusty Tombow stick eraser. I love that thing. It looks like a 'clicky' pen and is great for fine detail erasing and mark making - or rather lifting out pencil marks. It also works on chalk pastel and charcoal (the powdered stuff) although a soft/putty eraser is best for that if you wanted to try it. This was also done with my non-dominant hand to add to the shaky, distorted quality I was going for in the first place. I actually really like this piece. So did my friend, actually...

#art #fine art #traditional art #graphite pencil drawing #burlesque #pencil #sketching #sketchbook

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am--f · 2 years ago

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Techno-aesthetic Milieux: Dewey to Simondon

John Dewey and Gilbert Simondon are thinkers of media and milieux as the all-too-excluded middle of genesis. Like the so-called process philosophers, they think in terms of phase, transfer, prefiguration, virtuality, impulsion, and continuous function. Both share a rejection of the hylomorphic schema, or the dualist partition of form and matter, as well as a focus on the potential forces carried along with every becoming, and an understanding of the recurrent causality of dynamic wholes, in which every individual “unity”—in accordance with the biological model of the living thing—has its pre-individual milieu, a field of composability. Form is not a reality beyond matter but emerges in the circular dynamic of the individual’s interchange with its milieu. The technical individual in Simondon and the work of art in Dewey are derived from this dynamic. They are organizations or selections of energy from within a situation (a medium, a milieu, or an environment). These organizations or selections do not bring anything to the situation that was not already there (a form, an idea, a design, a telos). Instead, there is a crystallization, a shifting of the phase of the situation or the solution. The tensions and incompatibilities that saturate it are brought up to and beyond a certain limit, and the individual being comes into being, resolving those tensions and incompatibilities while also preserving them within a new, higher unity.

Dewey, unlike Simondon, is not widely known as a philosopher of technics. But there may also be a convergence between the two thinkers on the issue of what Simondon calls “techno-aesthetics or aesthetico-technics,” an aesthetics of technics and a technics of aesthetics. To be sure, this convergence is largely projective. Something like techno-aesthetics is discussed occasionally throughout Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934), but not at any sustained length, although a positive consideration of the possibilities of communication and industrial technology forms a significant part of the book’s concluding chapter, “Art and Civilization.” Similarly, Simondon devotes only some of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958) to art and aesthetics, and only really arrives at techno-aesthetics in a letter written late in his career (“On Techno-Aesthetics”). Though the concept of techno-aesthetics remains strangely marginal in the history of aesthetic theory, I want to propose that these two thinkers offer a particularly concrete and compelling foundation for its theoretical elaboration.

Dewey’s pragmatism and Simondon’s philosophy of technics—unlike the classical aesthetics of Hume, Kant, and Schiller—recognize the intertwining of technical media and human life in aesthetics: there is an aesthetic feeling that we have in our absorption in technical tasks (the use of a tool or a machine), a technics that we must account for in the production of artworks (the artist’s ongoing engagement with manufactured materials, tools, and techniques), a creative or aesthetic side to technical development, and a technosphere that affects our ways of sensing. But Dewey’s naturalism and biologism can occasionally seem to overstate the importance of the human’s relationship to nature, bracketing the role of technics—and especially industrial technics, or machines, and their “non-human modes of energy” (Art as Experience, 351)—in constituting the human, its environment, and its experience in the first place. For Dewey, the industrial or “mechanical” (Dewey’s preferred term) is usually the negation of an authentic aesthetics of art, which is always natural, not in the sense that it is unchanging or otherwise opposed to culture but in the sense that it is derived from and consummates the ongoing development of the organism—rather than the machine—in its environment. Culture does not stand opposed to nature, but “the mechanical stands at the pole opposite to that of the esthetic” (355), because it is composed only of discrete parts which are instances of types or models, whereas the “dominantly esthetic” is a dynamic whole made of organs that are in continuous relation, and which has communication with and development in an environment. Machines, it is implied, do not have environments. Indeed, Dewey often suggests that machine operations are responsible for the very problem he wants to address: the separation of fine art from the praxis of everyday life, and not just any life, but the “significant life of an organized community” (5).* Simondon, on the other hand, more directly questions the dominant understanding of industrial technics, arguing that “culture has constituted itself as a defense system against technics,” and has therefore failed to understand them, even as it makes use of them as instruments of domination and extraction (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, 15). Simondon might help us to make manifest some of Dewey’s latent modernist sympathies, recovering a vision of machines and humans working alongside each other. His thinking allows us to expand Dewey’s own limited application of the organism/environment model.

The term “techno-aesthetics [techno-esthétique]” appears in an unsent letter by Simondon to Jacques Derrida regarding the foundation of the Collège International de Philosophie in 1982. “If our fundamental aim is to revitalize contemporary philosophy, we should first of all think of interfaces . . . Why not think about founding and perhaps even provisionally axiomatizing an aesthetico-technics or techno-aesthetics?” asks Simondon (1). With techno-aesthetics, Simondon is not primarily thinking of art that is “about” technology, although he does briefly mention Marinetti, Léger, and Xenakis. What techno-aesthetics offers is instead an “intercategorial axiology” that would examine the “contemplation and handling of tools,” the “perceptive-motoric and sensorial” intuition in the use of tools and the care of machines (2), “phanero-technics,” or the exposure of technical components or techniques (2), artworks that “call for a technical analysis” (4), and the “technicized landscape,” or the aesthetics of infrastructure (6). Simondon’s letter is relatively brief but wide-ranging, and it would be too much to enumerate all of the points of correspondence with Dewey’s project: the attempt to think aesthetics in production and not only in consumption (the aesthetic experience of “contact with matter that is being transformed through work,” of “soldering or driving in a long screw” [Simondon, 3]); the refusal, in principle, of the distinction between “useful or technological art” and “fine art” (Dewey, 27); the recognition of what Simondon calls a “margin of indeterminacy” or “margin of liberty” in all technical products that allows them to be “liberated from limitation to a specialized end,” to become “esthetic and not merely useful” (Dewey, 121), to be transferred between or to negotiate different milieux, and thereby to be newly concretized and individuated. What I want to focus on in particular is how Dewey and Simondon do or do not think the concepts of milieu and environment across the organic and machinic in relation to techno-aesthetics.

Dewey’s critique of aesthetics in Art as Experience wants to do justice to the ordinary “doing and undergoing” that is subjacent to fine art and philosophical reflection. It wants to re-situate art in and as collective experience. It wants to show that there is nothing inherent in art’s subject-matter that justifies the separation of art from experience, and that this separation can only be attributed to “specifiable extraneous conditions” that are “embedded in institutions and in habits of life,” operating “unconsciously” (9). In order to perform this critique, a basic and universal theory of experience must be initialized. Dewey’s theory is schematically biological; he does not begin, like the Enlightenment empiricists, with the constant succession of individual impressions in the mind, nor with the Cartesian division of subject and object, but with something like Jakob von Uexküll’s proto-cybernetic interchange between organism and environment (its Umwelt, in Uexküll’s vocabulary, or its milieu, in Simondon’s). Every living thing comes in and out of step with its environment by responding to it, by making adjustments, by having directionality or impulsions. This is all immanent in sense experience. Dewey narrates the process by which (aesthetic) form, which he defines as “consummation” or “integral fulfillment” (142), emerges:

The world is full of things that are indifferent and even hostile to life; the very processes by which life is maintained tend to throw it out of gear with its surroundings. Nevertheless, if life continues and if in continuing it expands, there is an overcoming of factors of opposition and conflict; there is a transformation of them into differentiated aspects of a higher powered and more significant life . . . Here in germ are balance and harmony attained through rhythm. Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension. There is in nature, even below the level of life, something more than mere flux and change. Form is arrived at whenever a stable, even though moving, equilibrium is reached. Changes interlock and sustain one another. Wherever there is this coherence there is endurance. Order is not imposed from without but is made out of the relations of harmonious interactions that energies bear to one another. (13)

We have here something very similar to the cybernetic theory of information later proposed by Dewey’s student Norbert Wiener: the negentropy of a responsive life that periodically establishes form and pattern as temporary or metastable equilibria amidst quasi-entropy. (Unlike Wiener, Dewey believes that this information cannot be generated “mechanically.”) We might also detect, in the language of “overcoming of factors of opposition” and differentiation into a “higher” form of life, the shadow of Hegel, but Dewey’s opposition is not between sense and intellect. There is a becoming-conscious that is proper to the human, but sense and intellect are not discernible in it. Dewey will associate the compartmentalization of sense and intellect with the division of intellectual and manual labor, with the Cartesian dualism of matter and spirit, with the Kantian schema of the faculties, with the theoretical and institutional scission of art from experience, and with the mechanical: the application of the “bare outline as a stencil” (54), or the imposition of “some old model fixed like a blueprint” in the mind (52).

Art and aesthetic experience, unlike the “mechanical,” are prefigured in the natural feedback processes of “living,” and it is with the conscious “regulation,” “selection,” and “redisposition” of the matter of sense “on the plane of meaning” (26) that we get works of art. In other words, in its production of “dynamic organizations” (57), art does not impose form or design on a raw, unformed matter of experience. “Design, plan, order, pattern, purpose” emerge from materials that are already saturated with potential organizations (26). Experience, or the milieu from which the work of art emerges, is no more flux or chaotic substratum than it is a succession of stable forms. Experience and the “pre-individual” milieu are infrastructural, saturated with virtually formed matters, which can be actualized and thereby socialized as metastable forms, or works of art, which can then always shift in and out of phase with their environments.

For Simondon, who is writing both with and against Wiener’s and Claude Shannon’s respective theories of information, individual things or beings are likewise never the products of predetermined forms stamped onto shapeless, unformed matter. This is the “hylomorphic schema” that Simondon associates with the major tradition of Western philosophy, and which he wants to dismantle first and foremost.** As explicated in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (1964), individual beings are the outcome of a process of transduction which tries to resolve incompatibilities between milieux, or to relate initially non-communicating regions of a milieu. The resulting state is always metastable, not stagnant, not absolutely but relatively complete. This is also true of the “integral fulfillment” that constitutes an individual artwork for Dewey: “consummation is relative; instead of occurring once and for all at a given point, it is recurrent” (143).

Dewey feels the need to oppose this “recurrence” of the “consummatory phase” with the mechanical. Recurrence “sets the insuperable barrier between mechanical production and use and esthetic creation and perception. In the former there are no ends until the final end is reached . . . But there is no final term in appreciation of a work of art” (145). Yet for Simondon, actual technical beings (tools, machines, apparatuses) individuate in a way that is explicitly analogous and not at all opposed to the way living things, and by extension works of art, individuate. The individuation of technical beings is “made possible by the recurrence of causality within a milieu that the technical object creates around itself and that conditions it, just as it is conditioned by it” (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, 59). The milieu is both natural and technical—Simondon calls it an “associated milieu.” This milieu changes in ways that escape predetermined human ends according to a “margin of indeterminacy” within the situation, which is the condition of technical development. “The unity of the technical object’s associated milieu is analogous to the unity of the living being” (60). Dewey seems less certain. Like the artwork, “every machine, every utensil, has, within limits, a similar reciprocal adaptation,” he says. “In each case, an end is fulfilled. That which is merely a utility satisfies, however, a particular and limited end.” On the contrary, “the work of esthetic art satisfies many ends, none of which is laid down in advance” (140). But elsewhere, Dewey admits, as we have already seen, that any utensil can be “liberated from limitation to a specialized end” (121). The instability of an inorganic and closed essence of useful objects as opposed to an organic and open essence of aesthetic objects, can only be finally resolved, it seems, by an appeal to social determination, by a tentative historical materialism: “Much of the current opposition of objects of beauty and use—to use the antithesis most frequently used—is due to dislocations that have their origin in the economic system” (271). Can the conditions under which technical objects would be as open as artworks be positively articulated?

In his brief letter, Simondon wants to show us that there is a beauty even in those dislocations, in those monstrosities of industrial capital and mass communication, those “places of production and emission,” that escapes the economic horizon, and that entails a different kind of techno-aesthetic autonomy than Dewey has in mind. I want to conclude with one of Simondon’s examples, which in a strange way might have also been one of Dewey’s. Many of the objects that Simondon discusses in “On Techno-Aesthetics” are opposed to an aesthetics that sees only instrumentality, unresponsiveness, and a lack of milieu in industrial technics. Simondon’s descriptions of the antennas of the Eiffel Tower, Corbusier’s chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut, the Garabit viaduct, and the antennas on the plateau of Villebon are like counter-images of Heidegger’s hydroelectric dam on the Rhine—which enframes nature by revealing it only as a “standing-reserve” [Bestand]—or parodies of his silver chalice and its fourfold causality. To Simondon, the “technicized landscape also takes on the meaning of a work of art” (6).

The plateau of Villebon is constituted and structured on its east side by a field of emission antennas. The highest one is that of France-Culture. Its height was reduced from eighty to forty meters because of the planes passing to land at Orly. But it has preserved a certain majesty. There is also the antenna of the Paris-IV-Villebon emitter, which helps diffuse Radio-Sorbonne. And there are several others. This field of antennas is evidently first of all made up by each antenna by itself, and for itself. They are pylons that are generally propped up several times, with the support structures being cut in several segments by insulators so as to reduce the resonance phenomena that would otherwise absorb part of the radiation. This structure is very remarkable, especially because it cannot be found in nature. It is completely artificial, unless perhaps one would recognize it in the sacred fig tree. This tree has several points of support and subsistence on the ground thanks to the roots that its branches let down, all the way to the ground, where they dig themselves in. This enables them to support their branches. [. . .] A group of emission antennas is a kind of set, like a forest of metal, and it can remind one of the rigging of a sailboat. This set has intense semantic power. These wires, these pylons radiate in space, and each leaf of the tree, each blade of grass, even if it’s hundreds of kilometers away, receives an infinitesimally small fraction of this radiation. The antenna is immobile, and yet it radiates. It is, as the English word has it, an “aerial,” something of the air. And indeed, the antenna plays with the sky into which it cuts. It is a structure that cuts into the clouds or into a light-colored background. It is part of a certain aerial space over which it sometimes fights with airplanes, as the example of France-Culture demonstrates. Even on a car, an antenna—especially if it’s an emission antenna—, testifies to the existence of an energetic, non-material world. (5)

Here, at an infrastructural site, there is an aesthetic beauty that emerges from the experience of a utility that is diffuse and invisible—the radio network—as well as an apparent integration between the network, the plateau, the atmosphere, and finally the end users. (Divinities, earth, sky, mortals.) This would make it perversely coincident with Heidegger’s artwork just as much as with Dewey’s: it is quite literally a selection, filtering, and organization of energies that also determine its form, and that would otherwise remain below the level of “an experience.” But it is not clear that the aesthetic feeling has to do completely with our participation in this environment or with our continuity with it, nor even with the possibility of communication that the antennas signify. It may be the silent distance or disjunction of our world from the milieu of the antennas that strikes us most immediately, not our overcoming of them or enduring of them. The radio network is, obviously, a practical part of the significant life of a community. And undoubtedly, if we are even discussing the antenna array, for instance, as a consummating experience, we are speaking of a human experience. But Simondon’s point is simply that it is important that the antenna array has performed, and continues to perform, a kind of consummation that does not immediately concern us, and that this has not been concealed.

*While there are clear affinities here with Martin Heidegger’s aesthetics, Dewey gives us slightly more specificity than Heidegger, who associates the separation of poiesis from substantial communal life with a mystifying “forgetting of Being” or “abandonment of Being.” Dewey attributes the division of art from life and techne from poiesis to historical conditions such as nationalism, imperialism, industrial production, and global capitalism, all of which have yielded a disarticulation of the social coherence of art that was imagined to exist in ancient Greece. The extent to which such a social totality has ever empirically existed is a question that does not particularly interest either Dewey or Heidegger.

**Here is Dewey’s version of the hylomorphic schema: “Form was treated as something intrinsic, as the very essence of a thing in virtue of the metaphysical structure of the universe . . . it was concluded that form is the rational, the intelligible, element in the objects and events of the world. Then it was set over against “matter,” the latter being the irrational, the inherently chaotic and fluctuating, stuff upon which form was impressed. It was as eternal as the latter was shifting. The metaphysical distinction of matter and form was embodied in the philosophy that ruled European thought for centuries” (120).

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Art As Experience. Penguin, 1934.

———. Democracy and Education. Macmillan, 1916.

Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” 1951. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Colophon, 1971.

———. “The Question Concerning Technology.” 1954. Translated by Taylor Carman, Harper Perennial, 2008, pp. 307–342.

Simondon, Gilbert. Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information. 1964. Translated by Taylor Adkins, University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

———. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. 1958. Translated by Cecile Malaspina and John Rogove, Univocal, 2016.

———. “On Techno-Aesthetics.” Translated by Arne De Boever, Parrhesia no. 14, 2012, pp. 1–8.

Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning. 1934. Translated by Joseph D. O’Neil, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.1948. The MIT Press, 1965.

#writing

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theshapeshifter100 · 2 years ago

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ALTR 04859 ‘Other’

Haven’t you done this already? I re-arranged some stuff and tidied it up, and have a name!

Don’t ask me for art, for the love of whatever you deem holy

---

Designation

ALTR 04859

Alias(es)

‘Other’

Age

Unknown

Pronouns

ALTR 04859 has not displayed any preferences, but she/her are most often used by IRIS staff

Physical Description

When interacting with IRIS researchers, ALTR 04859 has the standard form is a stocky humanoid female standing at 155cm with blonde hair. Whether this is her original form is unclear.

Abilities

The primary ability of this ALTR is the ability to change form.

There appears to be a preference for canid, lagomorph, feline and raptor forms. There is no known pattern to why she shifts to these forms. Upon being questioned, ALTR 04859 merely shrugged and stated ‘because I feel like it’.

It is unlikely that ALTR 04859 will display her full abilities willingly. Future tests of ALTR 04859′s abilities are still under board consideration.

Intelligence appears to be on the same level as an average human, and retains the same cognition and awareness no matter the form taken.

History

ALTR 04859 was first spotted in late 2017 in Nottingham’s city centre, and evaded capture for a full year before being brought into IRIS custody from a small town in Berkshire. No harm came to IRIS operatives during this time, although some were thoroughly embarrassed.

ALTR 04859 displayed recognition when some other ALTRs were described, but claims to have never interacted with them before recovery by IRIS. The WTCHR cameras told us that she was being truthful.

Containment

A steady supply of fiction books is to be maintained in order to distract ALTR 04859 and lower stress. ALTR 04859 has expressed great enjoyment of certain tropes found in fantasy and science fiction novels, although has also stated a great distaste of the romance genre, and romantic plot lines in general. Despite IRIS’s best efforts, there are a limited number of titles that fit those requirements, but there has yet to be any great discontent over the matter.

Despite clear curiosity, and potential pleading, ALTR 04859 is not allowed any non-fictional resources we have about magic.

There is to be constant monitoring of ALTR 04859′s cell and any new forms shown are to be reported immediately. A tight mesh is to be placed over all ventilation to the cell, and she is not allowed to be outside of the cell unsupervised.

She is to be allowed supervised exercise in an enclosed space once a week, and if well behaved, is allowed light training with the guards. ALTR 04859 appears to have some level of skill in unarmed combat, but is not allowed to do anything other than light training, in case physical restraint is required. Under no circumstances allow ALTR 04859 to know of the location of IRIS’s weapons stores, let alone allow her to use them, no matter of assurances that she ‘just wants to look’.

Recapture procedures

In the event of escape, food is one potential non-violent method of recovery, as ALTR 04859 appears to have trouble turning down food. Sweet food and chocolate are recommended, however given the clear preference for predator forms, having meat on hand is also recommended.

Should this fail, have sedation of varying doses on hand, both in syringe and dart form.

Other Notes

In human form, ALTR 04859 is fidgety, particularly with her hands. A foam stress ball has been provided and was gleefully received. In other forms she displays similar behaviour through other means, such as tail swishing and wing flapping, but the stress ball is still used. It has had to be replaced three separate times at time of writing.

When left alone, ALTR 04859 will sing, no matter what form she has taken. Observers greatly dislike when she does this in the form of a cat, or a fox. However, being prohibited from singing caused an increase in stress, so ALTR 04859 was merely advised not to sing in such forms, and has so far cooperated.

Whilst at the IRIS facility, ALTR 04859 has enjoyed the company of ALTR 0899 greatly. The two ALTRs are not to be left unsupervised with each other, and given their propensity to mimic each other when changing form, measures are to be taken to ensure the correct ALTR is returned to the correct cell.

#ALTR #ALTR04859

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maddieinwonder · 4 years ago

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A Lesson In Romance #3: The Cast

Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1.5k

Plot: Reader keeps getting caught in rom-com situations with Spencer Reid. This time, the team figures it out.

A/N: I'm guilty of writing too much Morgan and Garcia but I can't help it — they're so much fun! I think them plus Emily would have the most dramatic reactions to Spencer in a (potential) relationship, though I'm excited to write about the rest too.

(Also, the reference at the end is from Lord of the Rings, because I love Lord of the Rings.)

Masterlist | All chapters here!

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If you've learned anything from rom-coms, it's that every romantic lead needed a supporting cast. Whether they were siblings, parents, or childhood best friends, the main character needed somebody who would drop everything to talk to them — preferably showing up at their doorstep with face masks, nail polish, and a bottle of wine.

In your life right now, you suppose those people would be your teammates from the BAU.

Of course, this hypothetical scenario didn't require your potential love interest to be from work, but let's say for the purposes of the discussion that they were. Then you hoped, at least, that they would have an IQ of 150 or higher and a propensity for wearing mismatched socks.

But you were getting ahead of yourself. You were simply imagining the hypothetical scenario where your life was a rom-com. Hypothetically, you would need a love interest, and hypothetically, you kind of already had one.

“Hey,” Spencer waved you over from across the coffee shop. It wasn’t difficult to spot him when the place was nearly vacant. Everything was slow and quiet this early in the morning, and you weren’t going to make an exception.

“Morning,” you greeted softly as you sat down, relaxing into the smell of freshly roasted coffee and baked goods.

“I already ordered yours.” He smiled, tucking his book away in his messenger bag. “They had bagels this morning. Yours is cream cheese, but mine is strawberry jelly.” He looked overly pleased with himself, and you couldn’t help but crack a sleepy smile.

You eyed the spread in front of you, before lifting your gaze to meet his. “So your theory that you can predict my taste in desserts seems to be getting better.”

"Yes!" He shout-whispered, silently raising his fists in victory. “I knew I was right.”

You giggled at his overexcitement over something as small as getting your dessert order right. Although, he did once spend ten whole minutes explaining to you why dessert for breakfast was an underrated concept, so you couldn't say this was beyond your expectations for Dr. Spencer Reid.

You propped your head up with your arms, a smile plastered over your face. “Have I ever told you that you’re a weirdo, doctor?” You teased.

“Why, yes. Yes you have.” He replied with a smile, gesturing at you to try the bagel. His own was almost-gone, so they must be good.

And it was. Your eyes fluttered shut as the heavenly combination of carbs and cream woke up your taste buds. It was made even better with a sip of the perfect cup of coffee.

"Perfect," you sighed happily, digging into your breakfast further as Spencer quietly caught you up on the latest news in classical art.

Two weeks ago, you wouldn't have guessed that you would talk to Spencer alone, much less spend your mornings together with him. But as it turned out, a lot could change in a few days.

After the initial awkwardness between you had passed, you found that the two of you shared a lot more interests than interdimensional doctors and space opera. You both loved coffee, obviously, but you also had a mutual love for desserts, classical literature, and history.

It didn't take long for these interests to seep into the weekend, resulting in a suspiciously date-like afternoon with Spencer at his favourite museum. But you tried not to think too much into it. After all, the day had ended with a "see you at work", and not a "would you like to come in?"

Still, your dance between friendship and something more continued to grow wilder as days passed, until it reached a point where it inhabited your every waking thought. The only time it didn't, ironically, was when you were spending time with the person in question and every stray thought seemed to fall away.

Your mornings with him brought a necessary reprieve to the dark realities of this job, and some days you almost had to drag yourself out of your seat, knowing that you were straying from the calm of his company straight into the lion's mouth. But duty always called.

Your sudden hesitance to be apart from the resident genius hadn't gone unnoticed by the rest of your team either; ever since the two of you walked into office one morning with matching coffee cups and smiles on your faces.

At first you enjoyed Spencer's company too much to care, but you knew that it was going to bite you back one day. And today seemed to be that day.

You could tell, because the lift doors to the BAU opened to one very determined Penelope Garcia with her arms folded across her chest. "Spit it out, you two," she said sharply without any greeting.

You and Spencer looked at each other, confused, before looking back at Penelope. "Spit out what, Pen?" You asked, a frown starting to form between your eyes.

"You know what I mean!" She squeaked, dropping her stern facade for a brief moment. "Are the two of you dating? The entire team has been dying to know, and I mean, d-y-i-n-g because there's a huge pot of money with my name on it if you are."

"Ah— No— I mean, you think—" Spencer stammered, his face instantly turning beet red in embarrassment, while your face began to grow red for another reason entirely.

"I think what he means is 'no', and what I mean to say is— what do you mean the entire team?" You half-yelled the question, while Penelope raised her hands defensively.

"What I mean, sugar, is that the two of you went from avoiding each other completely, to coming into work together everyday — and I know you spent last weekend together too, because you couldn't stop talking about it the next day at work and everybody noticed." She stated, pushing up her glasses.

"Not to mention, Dr. Reid here started wearing brighter colours subconsciously." She continued with her observations. "I know this, because in the almost four years I've worked with this man, I've never seen him wear anything brighter than violet. Or white. Or beige. But those don't count." She shook her head, getting back to her point.

"You get what I mean— and you," she pointed her pen in your direction, causing you to jump slightly. "You finally stopped doubting yourself as a part of this team. I knew this when you started talking more often during briefings — which I have nothing against, B-T-W, I totally support any effort in self-care and personal growth — but you also stopped shifting in your seat which you used to do when you felt nervous."

Penelope took a deep breath, preparing for the climax. "So all I can assume, is either you've been attending one of the 52 self-help classes that happen every weekend in Virginia, or somebody has been helping you find some serious zen."

"And my money's on the latter because every time you think nobody's watching, you're making eyes at Reid. But you're wrong. Garcia is always watching." She concluded triumphantly, raising one finger to point at herself.

"You might make a good profiler yet, doll." Derek remarked, walking up to the group with a smirk firmly affixed to his face.

"Expert at all things romance, and Cupid of the Behavioural Analysis Unit, Penelope Garcia at your service." She smiled, graciously curtseying to your other teammate.

"I know you're smart like that, babygirl," he grinned, draping his arm around her shoulder, "but you also don't know pretty boy as well as I do, because they aren't in a relationship."

He turned to you questioningly. "Are you?"

"No." You replied, glancing hesitantly at Spencer for his response, but his face simply looked blank with shock.

"See? Now it's time to collect my payout." Derek grinned at the tech analyst, making the motion of raining dollar bills.

Penelope tailed behind him grumpily as he walked into the BAU office, surely to share the "good news" with everybody else.

You hesitated to follow, imagining what teasing and looks would follow regardless of the outcome. Then you felt a tap on your shoulder. Turning around, Spencer gestured back at the empty lift with his head and you smiled, realising what he meant.

"That is the best hypothesis you've had all morning," you said. The two of you shared a laugh as you got back into the lift.

Even behind glass doors, you could hear a muffled "What?!" that you guessed came from Emily. "There's absolutely no way those two aren't together already. Have you seen them?"

There was a brief pause, then a loud groan.

"I know, that's what I told him!" Penelope's high-pitched voice was clear. "You know I'm going to be right about them eventually—"

The lift doors finally closed, blocking out the rest of their conversation. You looked up at Spencer, your gaze meeting his clear hazel eyes. He looked at his watch briefly before saying the next words.

"We've got time. Are you up for second breakfast?" He asked, referencing a movie from a conversation two weeks ago. He remembered. Of course he remembered.

You cleared your throat before replying the next line. "What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper?"

He laughed, and you felt a familiar peace return to you.

Whatever your teammates were yelling about, the two of you could deal with it later. Together.

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Tag list:

@blue-space-porgs @nobutalsoyes @lady-loves-a-lot

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dailylogyn · 3 years ago

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Logyn Meta: Loki & Sigyn’s Family in Myth and Marvel (Comparison)

Photo Source: https://www.deviantart.com/youkai-no-shimo/art/Colouring-LOKI-s-FAMILY-260392721

The family that is ready to begin Ragnarok in order to defend your honor. It’s a tragic tale, but family is something worth fighting for!

Follow me as we explore this crazy, wonderful family that is probably the most famous of the Myth’s.

We may not know much about Sigyn’s side, but Loki’s side is one that legends are made of.

From the Norse Myths, to Marvel Comics and the MCU, we will see the similarities and differences for each member in the different universes as well as learn facts about each one and why they are important.

Laufey (or Nál) - Loki’s Mother

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

She is Loki’s Mother in Mythology.

Mostly mentioned by the matronymic, “Loki Laufeyjarson” meaning: Loki Laufey’s Son.

Her name (Laufey) is typically thought to mean leaves/foilage. Nal means Needle.

Not much is known about her. We don’t even know if she was a Goddess, human or giant so it is assumed Loki gets his godhood from her.

In the poem Sörla þáttr, Nál and Laufey are portrayed as the same person: "She was both slender and weak, and for that reason she was called Nál [Needle]."

Laufey is listed among Ásynjar (goddesses) in one of the þulur, an ancestry that perhaps led her son Loki to be "enumerated among the Æsir", as Snorri Sturluson puts it in Gylfaginning.

Related to nature like forests and leaves.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Laufey is Loki’s Father in this universe.

As Loki was born small, a motive of embarrassment for his parents, his existence was kept a secret.

A younger Loki sends Laufey into a fateful battle between Odin, leading the All-Father to claim Loki as a son. Laufey was left for dead, wounded, but alive, leaving a future Loki to kill him.

A group of Frost Giants try to revive Laufey by retrieving his skull. It ends with Malekith performing a spell to resurrect King Laufey.

Laufey hates Loki and thinks of him as a disgrace

It ends with Loki killing his father again after he tries to steal the Casket of Winters and kill Frigga.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Same as Marvel Comics Counterpart. Appears in the first Thor movie.

Fárbauti - Loki’s Father

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

He is Loki’s Father in Mythology.

Attested in the Prose Edda and in Kennings of Viking Age Skalds.

A Jotunn

The Old Norse name Fárbauti has been translated as 'dangerous striker','anger striker',or 'sudden-striker'.

Related to lightning

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Mother of Loki in this universe.

Gave birth to an unusually small child to the annoyance of her husband.

It is said the night Loki was born that she stabbed her own heart with an ice dagger, but Loki suspects Laufey is the one who killed her.

Appears as a figment taken on by a parasite. She’s mostly deceased in the comics.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Does not appear or have a reference in the MCU

Loki Laufeyjarson - Son of Laufey & Farbauti. Lover of Sigyn & Angrboda (and many others honestly)

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Everyone already knows the tales about Loki, so I won’t repeat it all again. It’s pretty lengthy. I’ll just point down the basics for him with it.

He’s famous for causing trouble among the gods as the Trickster and God of Mischief. Not a bad guy, but misinterpreted that way, although he can be a dick too. Despite how much he causes trouble for them, he also helps them out of situations too. He just wants to have fun, even if he takes it overboard at times.

Some sources put as Jotun and some say he is Half-Jotun, Half-Aesir (on his mother’s side.)

A well-known Shapeshifter who can be anything: Salmon, Male, Female, Horse. The list just goes on.

A really handsome being who loved to get it on. *finger guns*

Blood Brother’s with Odin. How? We don’t know. It’s interpreted as a friendship or foster-brothers. It’s unclear really.

Gonna start Ragnarok for valid reasons honestly after having his entire family taken away from him or killed by the Gods. #TeamLoki

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Far too many appearances to document here from 1942 to present. There has been some retcons as well with the fact the current Loki has been reborn in a new incarnation also known as Ikol.

In the comics Loki is the adopted son of Odin and Frigga and Adoptive brother to Thor & Balder.

He’s depicted as being the God of Evil in the classic comics serval times. In fact, it’s one of his titles.

Depending on the writer for the classic comics, Loki can have moments of humanity, but all around he causes trouble.

Just wants to rule Asgard and get rid of Thor who is his enemy.

He’s honestly a bad guy most of the time in the classic comics #VillianTrope

I personally have yet to read any current comics of Loki that aren’t the classics so this is where my knowledge and research stops.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

First off, Tom Hiddleston as Loki is just *chefs kiss* perfection.

Pretty much the same as comics except for the fact he isn’t really a villain. He plays tricks on people for fun and laughs and truly cares about his family.

However, things change when he discovers the truth that he is a Jotun and has been lied to about it his whole life despite being told countless stories of how Jotun’s are monsters to be slain (You fucked up a perfectly good kid, Odin. Look, he has anxiety and trauma.)

He develops major identity problems on top of others things, but despite it, Loki tries to still do best by his family as he wants to belong. Yes, he becomes a villain in The Avengers movie, but not for the hell of it. #Thanos

Honestly, he just deserves better. That’s where this leads. Thank you.

Angrboda - Loki’s Consort/Lover (Fenrir, Jormungandr & Hel’s Mother)

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

She is only mentioned once in the Poetic Edda as the mother of Fenrir by Loki. The Prose Edda describes her as "a giantess in Jotunheim" and as the mother of three monsters: the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard serpent Jörmungand, and the ruler of the dead Hel.

A Jotun known as Mother of Monsters and Giantess of Ironwood.

In Old Norse, Angrboda means: 'the one who brings grief', 'she-who-offers-sorrow', or 'harm-bidder'.

According to scholars, the name Angrboða is probably a late invention dating from no earlier than the 12th century, although the tradition of the three monsters born of Loki and a jötunn may be of a higher age.

Some scholars say she was a very powerful witch and that she had the ability to see into the future. She was confined to Hel and would not be released from the realm of the dead until Loki was unbound.

In some versions of the Myth’s she knows her children will bring about the end of the world (Ragnarok) as well as being a witch set on fire three times before Loki eats her heart.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

A giantess of Jotunheim and a Witch.

Born to Elderspawn Vârcolac and Echidna.

She mated with Loki and gave birth to Fenrir and Jormungadr. Legends say she also gave birth to Hela, but it seems to be nothing more but legends.

Angrboda died of unknown causes and was sent to the Underworld of Hel.

When Thor needed to know how to get to Hela's realm because she had been taking mortals to Niffleheim, he went to the Hlidskjalf and summoned Angerboda from the underworld, forcing her to tell him how to get there. Once she revealed to Thor the path he had to follow, she tried to take him with her to the underworld.

Only has one appearance in the comics -- Thor #360 (1985)

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Does not appear or have a reference in the MCU

Sleipnir - Loki’s Son

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Attested in the Poetic and Prose Edda. In both Sleipnir is Odin's eight-legged steed and child of Loki by Svaðilfari. He is described as the best of all horses.

The Prose Edda contains extra information saying he is grey.

Old Norse meaning: Slippy or the Slipper.

Sleipnir is also mentioned in a riddle found in the 13th century legendary saga Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in the 13th-century legendary saga Völsunga saga as the ancestor of the horse Grani, and book I of Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, contains an episode considered by many scholars to involve Sleipnir. Sleipnir is generally accepted as depicted on two 8th century Gotlandic image stones: the Tjängvide image stone and the Ardre VIII image stone.

Scholarly theories have been proposed regarding Sleipnir's potential connection to shamanic practices among the Norse pagans.

Sleipnir was born when Loki shape-shifted into a mare and became pregnant by the stallion of a giant, as is recounted in the tale of The Fortification of Asgard.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

There are two different origins for Sleipnir in the comics: 1. Thor fighting off an army of the undead on Midgard. He promised to help as long as his horses weren’t eaten, however, Thor was betrayed and took his horses remains back to Asgard, coupling it with Asgardian Magic to create Sleipneir. 2. Loki had hastily agreed to let a Frost Giant re-build the wall around Asgard, in exchange for the Moon, the Sun, and Freya, only he had to do it in six months. The Frost Giant had only asked to use his grey stallion, Svadilfari. Right as the last brick was about to be placed, Loki transformed into a beautiful white mare, and lured Svadilfari off. Loki later gave birth to Sleipnir. (Just like in the Myths.)

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Odin’s eight-legged steed.

Sleipnir’s origins are unknown. He appears in the first Thor Movie.

Fenrir Wolf - Loki & Angrboda’s Son

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Attested in the Prose and Poetic Edda as the first son of the Jotun couple. He is a wolf destined to kill Odin. So, they bind and seal him when he's still young, with Tyr losing his arm in the process. When Ragnarok comes, he indeed kills Odin, but is killed by Odin's son Vidar in return.

Fenrir is the father of the wolves Sköll and Hati Hróðvitnisson.

In the Prose Edda, additional information is given about Fenrir, including that, due to the gods' knowledge of prophecies foretelling great trouble from Fenrir and his rapid growth, the gods bound him, and as a result Fenrir bit off the right hand of the god Týr.

No chain can hold him, except for Gleipnir, a rope made by Dwarves containing the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, the sound of a cat's footfall, the sinews of a bear, the beard of a woman and the spittle of a bird, all of which were impossible items to obtain.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Pretty much the same as his Mythos with some additional storylines.

When Raganrok happened, Fenrir was reborn with the other gods on the New Asgard universe on Midgard. No details of his fate on Earth have been revealed.

Fenrir helped the mutant Wolfsbane as she was carrying the child of one of his descendants.

It is one of the few individuals believed to be more powerful, or equally as powerful, as Dormammu; the others being galactic entities like The Beyonder.

Fenrir is Genderfluid in the comics.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Fenris is a giant Asgardian Wolf who serves under Hela and is portrayed as Female. She resurrects her as they take over Asgard.

Instead of being her brother, Fenris is her loyal companion and mount.

Fenris ends up getting into a fight against Hulk as he pushes her off, sending her falling into the void below to her supposed death.

Appears in Thor: Ragnarok.

Hel - Loki & Angrboda’s Daughter

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Attested in the Prose and Poetic Edda. She is a giantess/goddess who resides over the Underworld that is also called Hel, a place where many of the dead reside. She is the daughter of Loki and Angrboda, sister to Fenrir and Jormungandr and usually depicted as the youngest of the three.

Goddess of Death and Graves and ruler of Hel who welcomes the souls of those who died of old age, disease or by accident.

Hel is described as having been appointed by the god Odin as ruler of a realm of the same name, located in Niflheim.

The Prose Edda details that Hel rules over vast mansions with many servants in her underworld realm and plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr.

Old Norse Name Meaning: Hidden

She’s mostly mentioned only in passing. Snorri describes her appearance as being half-black, half-white, and with a perpetually grim and fierce expression on her face.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Renamed Hela in the comics.

Allegedly the daughter of Loki and Angrboda, but it’s never made clear or stated. Hela's genealogy is the subject of controversies and retellings.

Her path pretty much follows her Mythos where she is destined to do terrible things and Odin makes her the ruler over the dead in the realms of Hel and Niflheim until maturity.

At some point, she was considered the daughter of Odin and of a long-lost goddess.

Honestly, she usually tries to expand her powers, wanting to rule over Vahalla and obtain Asgardian souls.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU):

Appears in Thor: Ragnarok as Odin’s firstborn and only daughter. Sister to Thor and Loki.

Kinda pissed her dad locked her away and wants to rule Asgard and take revenge.

The cause of Ragnarok and supposedly dies on Asgard after everything is said in done in the movie.

Jormungandr - Loki & Angrboda’s Son

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Usually depicted as the middle child of Loki and Angrboda, he is known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent who is a giant snake. When Odin takes Loki’s kids away from him, he tosses Jormungadr into the ocean that encircles Midgard. The serpent grew so large that is was able to surround the Earth and grasp it’s own tail. When it releases it’s tail, Ragnarok will begin and he will fight his arch-enemy, Thor.

The major sources for myths about Jörmungandr are the Prose Edda, the skaldic poem Húsdrápa, and the Eddic poems Hymiskviða and Völuspá. Other sources include the early skaldic poem Ragnarsdrápa and kennings in other skaldic poems; for example, in Þórsdrápa, faðir lögseims, "father of the sea-thread", is used as a kenning for Loki. There are also several image stones depicting the story of Thor fishing for Jörmungandr.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Both Loki and Angerboda were descended from the Frost Giants of Jotunheim and were of humanoid appearance; however, the sons Angerboda bore Loki, Jormungand and the Fenris Wolf, did not. It has been suggested that Jormungand and the Fenris Wolf were born as sentient animals because their parents each had the magical ability to change his or her own shape. Hence, Jormungand and the Fenris Wolf each bear the form of the animal that their parents had assumed at the moment they were conceived.

Jormungandr follows the same as his Mythos to a certain degree with his fate to fight Thor during Ragnarok as the God of Thunder would die from his venom.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Does not appear or have a reference in the MCU

Sigyn - Loki’s Wife

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Sadly, not many stories that have Sigyn in them have survived to this day. She is only attested in the followings works: Poetic Edda & Prose Edda.

The most famous of her story tells of how Loki has been bound by the gods with the guts of his son, Nari, and how his son, Vari, has been turned into a wolf. The Goddess Skadi fastens a venomous snake over Loki’s face, from which venom drips. Sigyn, stated as Loki’s wife, stays by his side and holds a basin under and catches the venom so it won’t drip onto her husband, but when the basin grows full, she pulls it away to empty it, during which time venom drops onto Loki, causing him to wither so violently that earthquakes occur that shake the entire earth.

In the poem, Gylfaginning, Sigyn is introduced in Chapter 31 as being married to Loki and that they have a son by the name of “Narfi or Nari”. She is then mentioned again in Chapter 50 where events are described differently than in Lokasenna; Vali, described as a son of Loki only, is changed into a wolf by the gods and rips apart his brother, “Narfi or Nari.” The guts of Nari are then used to tie Loki to three stones, after which the guts turn to iron, and Skadi places a snake above Loki. Sigyn of course catches the venom in a bowl. This process is repeated until he breaks free, setting Ragnarok into motion.

In the poem, Skáldskaparmál, Sigyn is introduced as a goddess, an Æsir, where the gods are holding a feast for their visitors and in kennings for Loki: “husband of Sigyn” and “cargo [Loki] of incantation-fetter’s [Sigyn’s] arms.”

Old Norse Name meaning: Victory Girlfriend.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Lonely and looking for female companionship, Loki ends up coming across Sigyn and plans to make her his. However, she is already engaged to a warrior of Odin’s Crimson Hawks -- Theoric. Hence, Loki sets up a trap to have Theoric killed during a mission so Loki can disguise himself as Theoric. Once they are wed, Loki reveals himself and despite Odin attempting to annul the marriage (which goes against Asgardian Law)), Sigyn tells the Allfather that she will follow the duties of a loyal wife since she is Loki’s now.

This is when Odin proclaims her to be the Goddess of Fidelity. This was a thing first started by the Marvel Comics.

Sigyn doesn’t have much of an agency in the comics except being a loyal wife to Loki, sometimes going along with his plans or getting on him for it.

I personally haven’t been able to find any evidence of Sigyn’s parents being Iwaldi and Freya in the comics, so I’m not sure if this fact is Fanon or not.

Sigyn has suddenly seemed to vanish from the comics with her last official appearance being in 1996. It has been allueded at that she died or was killed during Ragnarok.

Her relationship with Loki in the comics is...complicated and changes a lot depending on the writer.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Does not appear or have a reference in the MCU

Narvi/Narfi & Vali - Loki & Sigyn’s Sons

NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Not much is known about Narfi and Vali except for being Loki & Sigyn’s sons with Vali being transformed into a wolf by the gods and killing his brother whose inners are used as a chain to bind Loki in the cave.

Narfi and Vali are referred to in a number of sources. According to the Gylfaginning section of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, he was also called Nari and was killed by his brother Váli, who was transformed into a wolf; in a prose passage at the end of the Eddic poem "Lokasenna", Váli became a wolf and his brother Nari was killed.

Snorri also names "Nari or Narfi" as the son of Loki and his wife Sigyn earlier in Gylfaginning, and lists "father of Nari" as a heiti for Loki in the Skáldskaparmál section of his work.

Narfi’s name could mean “Corpse” in Old Norse, relating to how he was killed by his brother.

There's no mention of what became of Vali after he became a wolf.

MARVEL COMICS (Earth 616)

Narvi never makes an appearance in the comics and is only mentioned in: Free Comics Book Day Vol 2018 Avengers.

There is a Vali in the comics called Vali Halfling. He is the son of loki and a unnamed mortal woman. So, I don’t consider this to be the same Vali that is the son of Loki and Sigyn.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MCU)

Does not appear or have a reference in the MCU

_________________________________________________

Thanks for reading everyone. This required a bunch of research, but I hope this helps and has been educational. We only have what we can work with considering the surviving myths, but there is so many stories out there that we don’t know of that aren’t clear because of it.

I tried my best to cover everything I knew about them in Marvel too, but sometimes so many retcons is too much to keep up with. I know there may be some errors in places, but it’s the best I could get this with what we have to work with.

SOURCES:

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Laufey_(Earth-616)

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Laufey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laufey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fárbauti

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Farbauti_(Earth-616)

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Angerboda_(Earth-616)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angrboða

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Hela_(Earth-616)

https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/hel/

https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/jormungand/

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Jormungand_(Earth-616)

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Sleipnir_(Earth-616)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleipnir

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Sleipnir

https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/fenrir/

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Fenris_Wolf_(Earth-616)

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Fenris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigyn

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Sigyn_(Earth-616)

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Narvi_(Earth-616)

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Vali_Halfling_(Earth-616)

https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/loki/

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Loki_Laufeyson_(Earth-616)

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Loki

https://skjalden.com/narfi-and-vali/

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Hela

#logyn meta #logyn #sigyn #loki #Angrboda #laufey #farbauti #Sleipnir #hel #Jormungandr #Fenrir #narvi #vali #lokakindar #norse mythology #marvel #marvel comics #mcu

109 notes · View notes

maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

Note

May I please ask what your preferred dynamic between Holmes & Lupin would be? (From what I can tell, the term 'frenemies' might have been invented for these two - if any two characters in fiction WOULD spend all their time trying to one-up each other it's these two, if only their diverse other commitments, challenges & interests left them the free time to do so: I'm also morally certain a sadly-hypothetical Holmes/Lupin team is one of the few things that could bring down Fantomas for Good).

I think "frenemies" is what ultimately works best for these two specifically, because there's a certain untouchability to icons as big as these two that limits the potential stories you can tell with them (although yes, definitely on board with the two having what it takes to bring down Fantomas, although probably not as cleanly and easily as they might expect).

The original Leblanc stories involving this premise are very much centered around one-upmanship, even embracing a theme of national rivalry of England vs France. They acknowledge Holmes's talents but without the awe, with a somewhat aged Holmes with mundane imperfections easily exploited by the daring young thief, someone deserving of his legend but who doesn't quite live up to it. Obviously Lupin's gotta have the upperhand, not just because it's his author writing it, but because the whole point of Lupin's creation was to be the new hotness, the counterpart to both the stuffy old Great Detectives as well as the aristocratic master burglars, and really, what kind of rising superstar would he be if he couldn't put one over the other guy? If he's gonna live up to his claim of being the greatest criminal ever, he's gotta be able to humble the greatest detective at least a little.

The treatment of Watson (Wilson) is tasteless and it's frankly a bit saddening to see that even back then writers were still shitting on Watson far too much, but on the whole I think Leblanc was a lot fairer to Holmes than he could have been (certainly other writers from this time period who added Holmes to their stories were not as fair), he makes it very clear Holmes is not just another Ganimard out of his depth and is very much as close to an equal Lupin's ever had. I think the description used to cap off their final meeting is very much on point:

"You see, monsieur, whatever we may do, we will never be on the same side. You are on one side of the fence; I am on the other. We can exchange greetings, shake hands, converse a moment, but the fence is always there.

You will remain Herlock Sholmes, detective, and I, Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar. And Herlock Sholmes will ever obey, more or less spontaneously, with more or less propriety, his instinct as a detective, which is to pursue the burglar and run him down, if possible.

And Arsène Lupin, in obedience to his burglarious instinct, will always be occupied in avoiding the reach of the detective, and making sport of the detective, if he can do it. And, this time, he can do it" - Arsene Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes

The consistent outcome is that Holmes "wins" the material battle while Lupin gets away with the spiritual or karmic victory. The first story, Holmes has Lupin figured out from a glance, robbing him of his greatest asset, and Lupin even tells Holmes under a guise that he has no greater admirer than himself. Holmes choses not to arrest Lupin, and instead solves the mystery as quickly as Lupin would. But he is also, well, inferior. His "commonplace appearence" dissappoints the guests and detectives at the crime scene, he doesn't resemble their expectations, he is gruff, ungracious, arrogant and all-business, an Englishman all the way, and Lupin one-ups him by returning to him his stolen watch, and Holmes is not a good sport about it.

The whole "Herlock Sholmes" name change, although it was out of legal obligation, almost reads like a cheeky courtesy of Leblanc, like he's giving Holmes enough of a courtesy in sparing him the embarassment of being the loser. And the following adventures stay consistent: Sholmes is smart, as smart as Lupin, and he's a gentleman. But he isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and he isn't as much of a gentleman as Lupin. He resorts to unsporting tactics like intimidating Lupin's lover and involving the police in their conflict, and in the end, he's solved the crime, but "sown the seeds of discord" in a family Lupin was protecting, becoming the villain for a change, a role reversion Lupin openly laughs at. Holmes wins the "loot", he wins the material battle, but Lupin has the last laugh, and despite being a self-proclaimed villain, Lupin gets the moral victory.

It's a quite unflattering view of Holmes and one perhaps not suited for a crossover outside of the specific context of Holmes being the old and stuffy intruder in an Arsene Lupin story. Then again, every great hero needs a lesson in humility every now and then.

There's a particularly interesting variant of this dynamic to be found within China's own takes on Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin.

Sherlock Holmes was quite the breakout hit for Chinese audiences at the time of his release, revered as an alternative to Judge Bao and the court-case novels. It's estimated that from 1903 to 1909, detective fiction constituted over almost 50% percent of all Western translated fiction, and with Holmes followed others like Nick Carter and Charlie Chan, and then Arsene Lupin, and soon their own local versions. The most famous and popular of which was Huo Sang, created by Cheng Xiaoqing, who was one of the main translators for Conan Doyle's stories. Cheng Xiaoqing even wrote his own take on Sherlock Holmes vs Arsene Lupin called "The Diamond Necklace", intending on correcting Leblanc's take, although interestingly, he unintentionally recreates the exact outcome by giving Holmes an unsporting attitude, where he "wins" only because Lupin lets him, and Lupin gets away again with the moral high ground. He would fare off much better in correcting Holmes with his own character, Huo Sang.

Huo Sang has a lot of similarities to Holmes, even with his own Watson counterpart, but was also designed to represent a few more traditional Chinese values. He is a science teacher with no addictions who belittles the wealthy class and fights for the poor, and he is praised for humility, one story even making a point to criticize Holmes for arrogance. He is a very Westernized character, with suits and guns and cigarettes galore, but the books were very dictatic and the author marketed them as "disguised textbooks for science", playing up on a newfound social reverence to scientific methods and self-improvement and national rejuvenation.

The stories deal heavily with corruption of the police force and institutions. In the earlier stories he outright calls police detectives useless rice buckets only good for solving petty thefts and preying on those that can't defend themselves, and while they become less sinister in later stories, Huo Sang's relation with law enforcement is much more frayed than Holmes's own. He uses dirty police tactics of his own and sometimes takes the law into his own hands, thinking the law cannot possibly achieve justice on it's own. His biggest loyalty is to his country and he values his reputation above all else. He values justice more than the law, like Holmes. But like Holmes, he still prefers to work inside the law and within Chinese traditions.

"Bao Lang, you scholar, you're too idealistic. Don't you realize how weak the law is in modern society? Privilege and power, favors and money - the law has all these deadly enemies

"We investigate half to slake our thirst for knowledge, half out of duty to serve and uphold justice. In the realm of justice, we are never constrained by the wooden and unfeeling law. For in this society, which is gradually tending to surrender its core to material things, the spirit of the rule of law cannot be put into general practice, and the weak and ordinary people are aggrieved, more often than not unable to enjoy the protection of the law.

Lu Ping, as you'd expect from a counterpart to Lupin, was much different. In fact, right in his very first story, he was already pitted against Huo Sang and outsmarting him, in a story called "Wooden Puppet Play". The character is inspired by an already existing tradition within Chinese literature of the "chivalrous thief", shapeshifting masters of deception and martial arts, and considered admirable and benevolent opposite to the corrupt government officials they outwit.

His stories are more whimsical, energized, more varied, less dedicated to strict science. He whistles while committing crimes, is identifiable by a red tie and wooden puppets he uses to signal his goons on what outfit he's gonna be wearing, and even cracks asides to the reader. In many aspects Lu Ping is influenced by hard-boiled Western detective stories, and naturally, he has a much more contemptious view of the law than Huo Sang

Well then, was he willing, in his capacity as thief, to represent the sanctity of the law and catch the murderer? Yes, he would be quite happy to round up that murderer. But he wasn't at all willing to boost the reputation of the law. He'd always felt that the law was only something like an amulet that certain smart guys had fabricated to get them out of embarassing situations.

Such an amulet migh be good for scaring away idiots, but it oculdn't threaten the violent, crafty and arrogant evil ones. Not only could it not scare them away, a lot of them hid right behind it to work their evil tricks!

Conflicts between these two are not just rooted in one-upsmanship or the patriotic conflict between the two, but instead in two differing approaches to justice, their influence on fellow Chinese writers to step outside tradition, and the respective ways they address issues in society. Additionally, it's not just a conflict between Great Detective vs Gentleman Villain, but the Holmesian Detective and the Hardboiled Detective. And, naturally, when the two met, a pattern reocurred again.

Writing a Lu Ping tale in his usual manner, Sun Liaohong deprives the detective of the advantage he typically enjoys at the hand of Cheng Xiaoqing or any other follower of Conan Doyle - narration by the detective's coadjutor.

It is Huo Sang who slinks around like a thief, alarming hotel service personnel. He becomes rattled, and even so is vain and arrogant. He is a bit too positivist about searching for clues, and he spends a remarkable amount of time just relaxing and waiting for something to happen.

The figure of "wooden puppets" turns wicked when the author uses the term to refer to Huo Sang, Bao Lang, and the police. Satirizing the genre as a play in which the author woodenly manipulates his character. But Lu Ping as puppet is a genius, moving from one identity to another, whereas Huo Sang is a dumbbell - wooden indeed, bourgeois, ridiculed.

A gentleman's agreement occurs only at the end. Huo Sang has the formal victory. He frees Lu Ping in order to get the paining, but the exhibition is held a day late and it now bears Lu Ping's seal.

In wartime, peace talks, diplomacy and gentlemen's agreements are just smoke screens, the stuff of puppetry. Both Huo Sang and Lu Ping surround themselves with lies to reach their final accomodation. Perhaps they are both puppets - Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China, by Jeffrey C. Kinkley

Both characters were canned in 1949 when the CCP banned detective fiction, and it was replaced with anti-spy literature about how the party police would expose counterrevolutionary conspiracies. They never got to have a rematch, and to my understanding there were a couple of films made afterwards about them, Huo Sang had a very recent one in 2019, but never another meeting.

I guess the takeaway here time and time again is that, credit to Holmes and all, but:

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #sherlock holmes #herlock sholmes #arthur conan doyle #arsene lupin #maurice leblanc #lupinchads can't stop winning

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serendipityjxmn · 4 years ago

Text

Mr. President

Chapter 23

TW: Brief smut

Words Count: 2.5k

Link to Masterlist

Link to Chapter 24

“I can’t believe I’m engaged now. Can you believe it? A whole week before he kept annoying me and all of a sudden he brought me a ring.” Irene rolls her eyes. The two of you met for lunch nearby the company. You haven’t seen her in a while and it feels nice to catch up with everything. Irene is one of the few of the very little friends you have.

Her longtime boyfriend had finally proposed to her. You almost scream finally when Irene broke the news to you. You genuinely feel happy for her.

“So, guess that’s it for today’s catch up session.” She grins at you.

“Um.. actually do you mind if I come up for a moment?”

“Uh duh~ of course not! You miss him already?” She teases.

You try to stifle a smile. “A little bit.” You do miss him a little.

When you reach your old desk, Irene excuses herself to the restroom. Feeling excited, you head towards Jimin’s room. But that feeling dampens quickly when he’s nowhere to be seen. Pouting, you head back to your old station.

You’re about to text him about his whereabouts when you see him comes with a woman next to him. They stand not far from where you are but you don’t think they notice since you’re slightly hidden behind the wall.

They stand there for a moment as they talk and you wonder who the woman is. You don’t think you’ve encountered her before back when you’re still working here.

They laugh about something and she briefly touches your husband’s arm. If Jimin’s somehow uncomfortable with that, he’d done a perfect job hiding it. You feel your inside boiling, perhaps just a little.

While they’re still talking, you head into Jimin’s office. Storming into the room, you huff, feeling furious.

But then something catches your eye.

Taking a few step towards Jimin’s table, you notice the name plaque with his name written on it, the one you made. Drawn to it, you move closer and reaches for it, heart fluttering a little.

And then you notice the picture frame next to it. It looks strangely familiar so you move around the table and there’s no mistaking that it’s the portrait you made. The portrait looks so out of place in his sleek and modern office that you suddenly feel like laughing.

The picture next to it does a little something to your heart. It’s your wedding picture but it’s just you, smiling brightly.

How are you supposed to be mad at him when he does this?

You pout.

And then suddenly the door opens. Jimin enters and immediately sees you but he only frowns for a moment before gesturing the woman in.

Your eyes narrow slightly.

It would all be fine, really, because you’re a professional, only if she keeps her hands off your husband.

Jimin then gestures her to sit across him. She bows, her neck a tad bit too exposed. You notice Jimin looking away for a split second, working hard to hide his uncomfortable expression.

The way her skirt is too short and the way she crosses her legs, you can see through it all.

Well, Mrs. Park to the rescue.

Biting your lips, you walk over. She finally notices your presence when you come near. You hold a hand out to her.

“You are..?” She asks.

“I’m Mrs. Park.”

For a fleeting second, you see her face registers surprise as she shakes your hand. “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Park. I’m Jinah.”

Jimin’s arm snakes around your waist as you take your place beside him.

“And you’re here for..?” You ask.

“Oh, I’m here to discuss about a new publishing project that us as Glory Publishing is currently positively reviewing. You might be aware that Mr. Park is planning to acquire Glory Publishing.”

Oh, you knew about this one. Jimin told you this before. His company had been looking for potential publishing companies to branch out and Glory Publishing is one of them. But they didn't make the cut. Yet here they are trying to convince Jimin that they're looking at the next big project.

Your husband has made it clear that their company didn't make the cut but they're very persistent. You briefly wonder why he still accepts appointments with their party. Perhaps out of goodwill.

You clear your throat. "I thought our representatives had made it clear on this issue. Your company has issues with ethical problems and we’re doing our best to avoid future problems.” Perhaps your confidence is boosted a little with Jimin playing with your hair behind you.

Jinah seems flustered, perhaps not expecting you to address the issue. She tries to have a look at your husband but you immediately covered him.

And he just grins behind you, lips caressing your hair because he swears he loves you so much when you’re protecting him like this.

“If you don’t have anything else,” you look at your watch, “unfortunately the time is up. I have to ask you to leave because my husband is very booked and busy. If there’s any further issue, I hope you can contact our representatives instead.” You hold a hand out to her and she takes it, although her expression is furious. Without another word, she storms out.

As soon as she left, you let out a relieved sigh, suddenly not believing you just did that. Jimin tries to stifle a smile at your reaction. You got up and move towards Jimin’s desk and he follows you from behind.

“I have a very good secretary it seems.” He whispers to your ears, making you gasp. He then stands in front of you.

You gulp. Too close, too close.

He sits on the edge of his desk. “And how should I reward you for that?” He smiles.

Suddenly, he pulls you onto his lap and you let out a squeak.

His eyes fell to your lips and it looks so, so dangerous.

Oh no. “Jimin, it’s the office.”

“So?”

“You can’t do anything to me.” You try to run.

“It’s my company.” He catches your wrist effortlessly.

Your eyes widen. “It’s gross.”

He quirks one eyebrow. And you catch his off guard moment to run away. Pretty sure your husband’s laughing at you now.

A grin appears on your lips when you’re reminded of that evening’s event. Jimin really has a gift of making your heart rate spike up. You have no idea how to handle when your husband’s being flirty. You’re in the kitchen, having just finished washing the dishes. You set to make a cup of coffee for Jimin and then heads to his study. You softly knock before entering to see him talking through a phone call. He glances up upon your entrance and mouths a thank you as you put the cup down in front of him.

You look around his study for several moments, briefly remembering the first time you’re in here and your husband has just come up with the marriage contract with you. You smile fondly at the memory. It feels so long since then. And look at where the two of you are now.

You’re just about to dismiss yourself when something catches your attention.

Something’s weird.

You think as you stop and stare at the vast painting before you. It looks strangely familiar. You think hard for a while but is still unable to remember the source so you resolve to thinking that perhaps it’s been hung there from the start.

“You remember this painting?” Jimin suddenly asks as he comes to stand beside you.

And suddenly it all clicks in your head. It’s the painting you both saw at the art exhibition. The Isle of Sorrow.

You feel like you’re in a sort of treasure hunt today with everything that you found.

“I bought it the day we saw..” he says carefully.

Your heart starts to race. “I didn’t wanna scare you.. so I kept it hidden.. I didn’t know why I bought it back then.” He laughs at himself then smiles sheepishly. “Perhaps I was already in love..”

You don’t think you can control the pace of your heart anymore.

Especially not when his face is inching closer and closer to you, closing the proximity between the two of you.

And then he takes your lips by surprise although you’ve been anticipating it. It’s slow and languid but it’s enough to suck the air out of you. You think you’ll always marvel by how soft his lips are against yours. When he pulls back, you’re all sorts of breathless.

“Y/N.” He says firmly.

You look up at him expectantly.

He takes a deep breath and looks at you straight in the eye.

“I love you.”

It takes a moment for your brain to process and to make sure you didn’t mishear it. And your eyes water immediately.

“I think I’ve fallen for you since back then.. even before.. you said you love me. But I wasn’t sure what it was back then and I tried so hard to deny what I was feeling.. you were constantly on my mind.. I keep on worrying when you’re not in front of me, I feel so angry even at the thought of another guy touching you, I want to destroy anything or everything that hurts you the slightest.. including me.. because I know I’m the one that hurts you the most.. and it almost cost your life.. for me to realize that I burn for you.. my day and my nights.. that I’m actually in love with you.”

And the tears run down your cheeks. It’s all so overwhelming and something that you can’t describe because you’ve been waiting for so long for him to reciprocate your feelings and then he finally says the words but you both had been through so much and it just somehows feels like a very long journey.

A tear escapes Jimin’s eyes too but he’s quick to inhale a breath and recomposes himself. He then wipes your tears and gives you a moment to recompose.

“There’s something I want to do.” he says, eyes staring at you seriously. “I.. I know I’m a lot to put up with.. and I know I’ve done.. worse things. But I want to do this.. I want to be.. with you.”

And suddenly he takes out something from his right pocket and kneels down in front of you. You gasp as you watch him with widening eyes.

“I promise to love you, cherish you, honor you, and to hold your hands always in times of good and bad. I vow to stay faithful, loyal and honest till we both grow old. Will you... start this marriage anew.. with me?”

Your heart beats even faster, tears almost threatening again when you realize he’s reciting the wedding vow six months ago, except that this time it is full of sincerity.

And your heart continues to thunder against your chest when he opens the small velvet box, a ring with a simple crystal centrepiece encased in it.

And it suddenly dawns to you that he’s the only man that you’ll ever love in your life.

So you nod. With your eyes glistening in tears.

Jimin gives you a full smile. And then he takes the ring out and gently put it on your fourth finger. That’s when you realize he already puts his on, one that matches yours on his finger too.

When he raises to his feet, you don’t waste another second to pull him into a hug.

You love him.. with all your heart. Is all you could think.

When you both pull back, he looks at you fondly.

“I just thought that you deserve a proper proposal..” he grabs your hand and guides you to his study desk. You watch in confusion for a second as he bents down to pick up something from behind the desk and your eyes widen when you see a bouquet of red roses. “Hearts..” he says as his finger points to his heart, “and flowers.” He hands you the bouquet.

He smiles as you remain speechless.

“I.. honestly I’ve had this for a long time, ever since you’re still in the hospital.. and I tried to find the right time but I don’t know.. I gave up trying to find the right time because I think there’s no such thing as the right time.. but I want to do this..”

You raise your fingers to cup his chin tenderly. “It’s.. perfect.”

You watch as his eyes lit up from your words. And then his face inches closer. You know he’s about to kiss you again but this time, you’re ready.

Your eyes flutter close as his lips finally meet yours and it’s as if your lips are made for him when they moulded perfectly against his.

He tilts his head slightly and this time he pulls you even closer. His lips presses against yours more deeply, drawing a whimper from your throat, a sound that causes him to grunt.

The kiss escalates quickly, growing more and more intense, making your feet curl against the plush carpet.

His hands move downwards from your neck towards your shoulder. And when one of his hand brushes against your breast, you let out a squeak in surprise.

Jimin pulls away immediately, eyes finding yours. His expression concerned, perhaps wondering if he’s gone too far from your comfort zone.

“I’m sorry.” He says quickly, still a little out of breath.

You bite your bottom lip. You don’t want him to stop. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just.. I’m not used.. I’m.. I’ve never.. I’ve never done this before..”

He looks at you softly. “I know. And I promised you to take it slow. So I’m not gonna do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Okay?”

You nod. He smiles and releases you and suddenly you’re afraid he’ll go away so you grab his shirt quickly.

He raises his brow at you.

“We.. we can.. we can continue.. to kiss..” you say and you feel like you’re going to die from embarassment.

Jimin smiles wickedly, almost wanting to clutch his heart physically because he finds you too adorable. “Wow okay. Kiss me then.” He says playfully.

You look up at him, eyes round in determination and he finds it so adorable it takes everything in him not to initiate the kiss first.

Closing the proximity, you tiptoe slightly and press your lips firmly against his.

You feel him smiling against your lips and you can’t help but smile too. This time, you try to take control.

Your fingers card his hair as you pull him tight against you, deepening the kiss. A moan escapes his mouth and you’ve never heard something sound so sinful before.

It almost kind of sparks something carnal deep inside you.

And then your hands are on his chest, deftly unbuttoning his shirt. His hands are on each side of your waist, palms flat against your skin, not making any move to explore anymore and you want to change that.

You want him to know that you’re ready.

So you press yourself against him and practically grinds against him, making him groan.

“Baby-” he says but you cut him by taking his lips again. Tongue fervently exploring his mouth.

“Jimin-” you call him, breathless. “Take me to bed, please.”

A/N: *fanning myself* im actually blushing aaaaaa yall know what's coming in the next chapter ;)))

on the side note, I am having mixed feeling right now. I can’t wait for this story to end and show it to you guys but at the same time I’m sad that it’s coming to an end because there’s really not much chapter left 🥺

Buy me a cup of coffee here! 💜

Link to Chapter 24

Posted on 210607 9:00PM

#serendipityjxmn #serendipityjxmnmrpresident #mrpresident #mr president #bts fic #bts au #bts smut #jimin au #park jimin #parkjimin #kpop fic #jimin smut #jimin ceo #jimin mafia #bts mafia #jimin x reader

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entertainment · 4 years ago

Photo

Entertainment Spotlight: Bianca Bosch, The Kissing Booth 2

Bianca made her feature film debut in Netflix’s global hit franchise The Kissing Booth as the flirtatious and fun-loving Olivia, leader of The OMG’s, which she reprised in The Kissing Booth 2. She will next appear in the third installment of the franchise—The Kissing Booth 3, slated to debut in 2021. Born and raised on the eastern cape of South Africa, Bianca started ballet at just four years old and trained and competed in high-level contemporary dance until she was 19. A small role in a production of Evita solidified her passion for bringing characters to life, which she followed to The New York Film Academy and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Bianca is passionate about giving back to her local communities in St. Frances Bay and Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and hopes to inspire women of all ages and from all walks of life to go after their dreams and heal those who need it, with strength, wisdom, and empathy.

What do you find exciting about portraying Olivia?

When people first meet me, they always sum me up as the bubbly, dramatic, ditzy blonde, and don’t anticipate my intellectual aptitude. They also soon realise that I’m super laid back, easy-going, and value a great sense of humour. Many people always say my exterior doesn’t match the interior. With portraying Olivia, I got to push those qualities that people assume I am at face value, as well as those mannerisms that come naturally to me, but are actually far from who I really am. It was so much fun living in that heightened, exaggerated bubble.

Can you tell us anything about Olivia’s development between the first and third installments of The Kissing Booth?

Being the “it girl” of the school, Olivia knows all the gossip going down and will not let any information slip past her because she is the ring leader, and has to have a first peek at any potential. As the story evolves, you see a softer, more supportive side to her, for example, when she cheers on Ollie and Miles as they have their first kiss at the kissing booth.

Which character from The Kissing Booth do you personally identify with most, and why?

I identify mostly with Elle. Navigating relationships can be hard and confusing, especially when the person you love lives far away. Having faith in your relationship and in yourself is important, but not always easy. I have been through those doubts and dilemmas. At the end of the day, communication and respect are vital to making a long-distance relationship work.

Alongside acting, you train in Vinyasa Yoga and Reiki, while also running a lighting/interior design business called MOODMAKERS. How do you cope with wearing so many hats?

I’ve got to keep up with my lifestyle somehow! Obviously, with acting, you’re not always employed and shooting. You might constantly be auditioning, but it’s been said that you book 1 in 25 auditions—so in between, someone has to pay the bills! Why not incorporate jobs that are already a part of my daily routine and always will be?! Plus, I find that the busier I am, the more I actually get done. Educating and practicing Reiki and Vinyasa yoga are more hobbies than jobs for me; plus, they all coincide with wellbeing and creativity.

Do you have any advice for young women who would like to become entrepreneurs themselves?

You have to think about your individual strengths and potentially use those to fill a gap in the market by providing a good or service. In my case, it was a product, in the form of a portable light. The opportunity in South Africa was the inconvenience of load shedding, which refers to rolling blackouts that occur due to the lack of electricity in our country. My father is an interior designer, so being surrounded by design my whole life sparked the idea to provide a stylish solution with portable, rechargeable lamps.

How do your experiences as a dancer influence your acting work?

I feel very in tune with my body, and every character needs their own physicality. So it helps me to sink into and develop the character’s mannerisms. Not only is it great for keeping correct alignment while staying physical, but also it provides discipline through general practice.

You engage in charity work in your hometown, can you tell us a bit about that?

Well, recently, with COVID-19, volunteer work has changed with social distancing in place. I believe charity starts at home, and home for me is in Saint Francis Bay. So, we’ve shifted focus to the local townships’ impoverished areas. We coordinated and prepared meals once a week and delivered them to the local soup kitchen for as many residents as possible. After going there each week and seeing the living conditions, and how excited these families were for their meals, I felt guilty but also so appreciative to come home and live the life I do.

How do you practice being an ally, and what does your allyship mean to you?

It means being a part of something bigger than yourself. My mission statement is to inspire young girls to go after their dreams, not only through my own actions and successes but also by mentoring them in person where possible. Being an ally also means being committed to educating myself on struggles that differ from my own experience and standing up for others in unjust situations.

How can mental and physical wellbeing and self-care help to sustain creative work?

I think physicality, mental health, and self-care are as vital as working on your acting skills. This career path takes dedication and perseverance. Keeping grounded in the madness and focused on your goal is crucial. This industry is tough on your body, especially when you’re working long hours on set or doing back-to-back night shoots. It’s not the usual 9-5 job. Plus, you want to be looking and feeling your best for the camera. You need to promote wellbeing for concentration and maximum performance. Having irregular sleeping patterns due to shooting schedules throws off your circadian rhythm, which can have a huge effect on your adrenals, which ultimately affects your skin, moods, and weight. You want to feed your body with the best nutrients, so when the tough times come, your immune system holds up strong. I generally tend to stick to a gluten-free + dairy-free diet and pump my body with loads of greens! Lean proteins and healthy fats! It’s so hard to say no to sugars, so when desperate, I try to go towards the natural sugars (honey, xylitol, etc.), because if I don’t, it results in inflammation and feeling sluggish. Also, I recommend loads of water to promote glowing skin and avoid water retention! Although this might all be beneficial for aesthetic reasons, it’s also preserving your body long-term for your career! Mental health is highly important, as this industry is mentally taxing when it comes to confidence and self-love. I practice meditation every day to promote self-worth and to help me stay grounded.

Describe each of the following in one word: who you are, what you value the most, and what you’d be if you were a food item.

Who you are - Firecracker

What you value most - Family

What you’d be if you were a food item - Peach

Thanks for taking the time, Bianca! The Kissing Booth 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

#entertainment spotlight #bianca bosch #the kissing booth 2

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