#and I realised it was because usually I kind of dissociate while drawing

[lesausageperson]

most epicest battle ever (real)

colouring sheet + sketch

[anxiousheart7]

*spoilers* Astarion’s story - analysis and thoughts

I’ve been thinking quite a lot on Astarion the last couple of weeks, and the journey I’ve been on with him. I’ve seen a lot of content about him.

I’ll start by saying this - I didn’t ascend him. I couldn’t. I did, however, watch the ascension on YouTube but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I’m going to explain why.

Here’s the TL:DR version, with my deeper dive below.

As Astarion gets his revenge in Cazador, his flurry of knives felt oddly satisfying to me. It was a release as grim and cathartic. That cry of pain and ending felt necessary for him. I came out of that palace knowing that it was ok and he’d be ok.

The ascension felt gratuitous. Watching him carve exactly what Cazador put him through should have been cathartic too, but it wasn’t. I just felt a shiver of cold. And that was the moment I knew it was the ‘bad’ ending.

Experiencing Astarion’s Journey - delving deeper

I don’t think I’ve ever quite experienced a character story like his before. Here’s someone who is quite clearly designed to draw you in via the usual routes. He’s attractive, he’s got the funny lines. He’s the rogue - a lot of D&D players’ favourite class. He quickly becomes indispensable.

At the start, his flirting was fun. Act 1 I think is supposed to be a light hearted toe in the water, so to speak. Right up until your first major choice with the goblin vs tiefling conflict. Then it becomes real. But until then you can spend copious amounts of time wandering and chatting to your new friends in camp while some of them (namely Lae’zel, Gale, Karlach and Astarion) go straight to ‘i want you’ territory. And you’ll gravitate to those that are ready to get hot and heavy because…video game sex.

There was such a focus on romancing your camp and you lean into that so heavily in act 1. Approval is all-important. And his approval is harder to get, so you try harder with your choices. You want this guy. Like really want him. He’s like ambrosia. And, if you’re not one of the 100k rejections toted in Larion’s infographic, you get him.

As a recovering people pleaser, I’m not going to lie, that was a hard concept to grasp. To make your choices based on who you were trying to impress is exactly the kind of behaviour I’ve been trying to step away from in real life. But hey, this is a game so I’ll be ok.

And then it starts…

Looking back, there’s this line that stood out ‘it felt like you weren’t all there’. Despite his insistence later, Astarion was very likely going to that place of dissociation that he talks about later on. And that’s sad, because as Tav you want this milestone to be special. You want them to fall in love with you. The reward for all your hard-earned approval hiking.

But Astarion masks. He masks well, but you can tell on Insight that it’s all an act. Even when you look closely, the ham fisted complements he throws at you reflects the 10 charisma he’s carrying around. He works as a lothario not because he’s an adept silver-tongued Casanova. It’s because he’s simply beautiful. People see him and want him. His looks mask what’s going on underneath. But then you look into his eyes and it’s right there, plain as day.

There’s so much more underneath. I have watched the scene over and over with the hammy chat up lines as he’s trying to convince you to sleep with him again (I got propositioned first before the tiefling party) and the more I watch, the more I believe that ‘I love you’ wasn’t an act. They wouldn’t have given you three brush off comment choices if it was. He meant that, and I don’t think he even realised he meant it until he found the words coming out of his mouth - as though he was daring himself to say it.

With Astarion, it’s all in the eyes.

And, as someone who has seen those eyes in the mirror on a pretty regular basis, I knew there and then until he started revealing his backstory - the scars, the master and all the rest, I knew this was going to hit very hard and this man was a deep well. He was so lost that he barely had any idea of who he was any more.

By the time you’re well into Act 2, you’re starting to get the gist of him. You learn about his sadness and sense of loss around his identity before he was turned. You learn about the scars. And you learn about Cazador. I got the sense that all of this exposition was almost like a therapy dump from him. Thoughts and feelings he’s wanted to express for decades but hasn’t had a soul to tell - or he’s been compelled not to by his master. Now he can get them out. He can voice how unfair and unjust it feels. The sarcasm, the cynicism, all a way of expressing how much pain he is in. But one thing he’s never lost is the knowledge that he doesn’t deserve this. He hasn’t been beaten down so much to believe that he is unworthy of better treatment. And that sense of self is what I believe has kept him going all this time. He knows it wasn’t his fault. He knows Cazador was a cruel, sadistic monster.

And I hugged him. Of course I hugged him. I defended his autonomy from the moonrise drow and I hugged him after. At this point I’d fallen as hard for him as he had for me. I cared for him. I couldn’t make any of those obviously awful choices with him. When the details of the ritual came up I felt a knot in my stomach. And sure enough every time we talked after that point he talked about taking that power and I thought ‘this will be rough’.

It reminded me of a lot of really bad experiences I’d had in the past. Boyfriends and friends who were clearly bad for me and I was bad for them. And yet, I needed to help this guy. This person who had nobody for so long. Who didn’t know what it felt like to have someone actually care about him.

I looked this as someone who has experienced trauma in their life. How would I feel. How have I felt? To be scared of so many things. To wonder why on earth would I do something nice for someone else when I’ve sat in alleys, starving and in pain while people just walk on by. No gods to answer my pleas for help. I’d be cynical and disapproving too. I’d have a warped sense of humour. I’d want to never feel that again. Of course he saw the one thing that could protect him and feel compelled to grasp it with both hands.

Astarion has conjured up feelings in me I thought were long gone.

Astarion’s finale

The images I’ve included in this post have been doing the rounds on tumblr and this hits so hard it hurts. Astarion’s journey ends in such as way that it’s meant to be hard.

If you’re a gamer that commodifies your characters as a series of stats or objectifies them based on their design, then ascend him. It doesn’t matter to you. And I’ve seen plenty of people on message boards and Facebook saying exactly that - “but he gets these powers and is so badass”. They’ve never seen past the facade. He was a jerk at the start of the game, a creepy flirt and a vampire ready to be staked. And that was it.

Every excessive power in this game has a major consequence that you have to live with. This choice I think is one of the biggest before the climax of the game.

The ascension pretty much erases him. It takes who he was and the healing that he’s done and throws it away, as if it never really mattered.

And to him he’s worth exactly what he thought he was to begin with. His self-worth is warped into superiority and his hunger and fear replaced with a hunger for power and dominance. He’s not free in this form. He just becomes a new kind of imprisoned. He’s placed in stasis forevermore. And this won’t last forever because as absolute power corrupts absolutely, it also falls. Just like Ozymandius, he’ll rise and collapse under his own grandiose. And he’ll take you with him if you let him.

That steamy scene before he turns you is basically exactly what the Larion writer is saying - you’ve not empathised or grown here. Have your sex scene and then enjoy your eternal enslavement with New Cazador. It’s a bad ending for you and Astarion. You get to be exactly what he was, no matter what pretty words he tried to convince you with - he’s still that 10 charisma trying to convince himself as much as you. He’s Act 1 Astarion with some nifty new powers. He will control you like a doll and yours will be the same half life his was. He’ll start with promises of being his right hand, but somewhere down the line you’ll do or say something and he’ll do to you what was done to him. It’s the ultimate narcissistic relationship.

If Astarion walks away, he’s him. Truly him. With purpose and a new path to walk. You can build a new life together with nothing holding you back. The trauma behind him, he can now walk a path of healing for himself and learn who he is. It makes me feel hopeful and joyful that he gets a second chance.

And that’s where I’m at. My ideal ending is for them both to go off together searching for a cure for his vampirism. Whether it’s possible, who knows - on writing this I’m still to finish my first run of the game. But at least there’s that glimmer of hope in that ending.

I think Astarion is beautiful. There’s a reason half the internet is madly in love with him right now. But if you let yourself, he becomes more than a nice body and a pretty face. His complexity opens up like a puzzle box and you feel the satisfaction of a truly beautiful arc come to its climax. He’s a beautifully written and crafted character and I’m so glad to have experienced his story.

I could say so much more…but it’s long enough as it is. Thanks for reading x

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[lassieposting]

wow

I think you're the only person in the entire fandom shipping Mevolent / Vile.

do you have some NSFW headcanons ??? 👀

Do I have any smutty headcanons...oh nonnie my sweet summer child I have smutty headcanons for every single ship i have

Anyway I spent ages trying to figure out wtf counted as sufficiently smutty so have an askmeme

Top/Bottom. Do they have a preference?

Top Mevolent/Power Bottom Vile.

Vile is actually versatile, but Mevolent isn't really into bottoming.

Dom/Sub. Do they have a preference?

Mevolent doesn't have a submissive bone in his body. He's the Brat Tamer sort of dom - he prefers cheeky, stubborn, feisty partners who'll act out and give him a power struggle but ultimately melt for him.

With...pretty much anyone else, Vile would actually be the dom. He is what Mevolent affectionately refers to as "a handful", which is probably the understatement of the century, and at the start of their relationship it's an all-out battle for control - they have the kind of sex that's half a fight, they overturn furniture, they leave marks, they draw blood.

But at one point, Vile was Skulduggery, and Skug was versatile with very obvious subby tendencies, so there's a little residual part of Vile that's very into dom!Mevolent. Over time, as they build trust and get closer, he gets more comfortable ultimately letting that part win out. Not that he makes it easy most of the time - he's fiery, he likes making Mevolent overpower him because the power struggle is half the fun, and he's still terrible for trying to top from the bottom, but he does settle down from "genuinely determined to dom Mevolent" to more just...being a brat for shits and giggles.

How long can they go?

There is a definite difference lmfao. Mevolent likes younger men. Vile is like four or five centuries younger than he is, and his last sexual partner - Serpine - is also around Vile's age. So unless Mevolent tires Vile out before getting off himself, Vile will be raring to go again long before poor Mev is done recovering.

Sexual fantasies?

Mevolent is pretty into the idea of corrupting heroic resistance leader Skulduggery into changing sides to fight for him (via sex rather than torture). He doesn't look too closely at this one, doesn't look at it at all tbh beyond "corruption kink is hot", but there's a part of him that actually feels responsible for all of Vile's trauma - he sent Serpine after Skulduggery in the first place, he authorised the torture and the eventual execution...when Vile has night terrors and wakes up lashing out and panicking, he feels like he caused that. He lowkey loves the idea that they could've ended up together under different, happier circumstances. He knows Vile well enough to keep this particular fantasy to himself, though: Vile's past is a touchy subject.

In the same vein, "naive inexperienced temple-born Vile" hits all of Mevolent's religious/virginity kink buttons. With the added bonus that Vile will actually indulge him on this one occasionally.

Any sexual fantasies/kinks they’re ashamed of?

So, Mevolent is religious and deeply so, which means he is essentially a ball of guilt and religious hangups, but he's also not Eliza Scorn levels of devout, meaning he'll commit certain sins and then feel bad about them later. This entire relationship is a huge source of internal conflict for him. On the one hand, he loves Vile. Vile makes him happy, is cuddly in the mornings, and gives fantastic head. On the other, Vile is a heretic. Long-term committed relationship aside, even sleeping with a heretic is taboo - are you truly devoted to the gods if you're willing to sully your body, their vessel when they return to this world, by rutting with heathens? And while most of his inner circle - who also commit sins of varying degrees of severity - are willing to turn a blind eye to his choice of paramour, and while he ultimately considers the relationship worth the guilt and the anxiety, sometimes he thinks about what will happen to him - the punishment he'll receive - when the Faceless Ones return and feels sick inside.

Vile will get off on Mevolent manhandling/overpowering him, and then feel kind of weird and dirty and dissociated afterwards. He drops hard, and sometimes he wants to be left alone and other times he gets as close as he can and it's still not enough, he wants to crawl inside Mev's skin with him and maybe then he'll feel like he really exists. He doesn't have the emotional awareness to realise that he's using Mevolent - someone he trusts not to hurt him - to try and take his agency back by recreating how he felt when Serpine was torturing him, but with a different outcome (where feeling helpless/exposed/vulnerable etc leads to pleasure and praise and being taken care of by someone who loves him, instead of, you know, agony and death). All he really knows is that he gets off on it at the time and then feels guilty about it after. They both need therapy, but Mevolent knows him well enough to be pretty good at aftercare.

Are they loud/vocal, or do they stay quiet?

Vile makes being quiet into an artform, but Mevolent takes that as a challenge. He can get little gasps and moans out of Vile if he puts his mind to it, but he really has to work for them.

Mevolent is? Normal levels of loud, usually, but he keeps it down as much as possible while they're fucking around in secret.

Favourite position?

They actually agree on this one - riding/Vile-on-top. Mevolent gets to lay back and let his much younger lover do most of the work, he has a great view, he can touch as much as he likes, he gets to watch Vile fall apart. Vile gets to be in control and tease and drag it out as long as he likes, and when he's done in and keels over, he can chill out on Mev's chest until he gets his breath back.

Clothes off or on during sex?

Vile prefers either clothes on or lights off. He very much enjoys looking at Mevolent naked, but he doesn't like being looked at himself. He used to be very pretty and he knew it, but now when he looks at himself in the mirror all he can see is his scars, a canvas painted by Serpine. Underneath the fake body is even worse - unlike Skug, Vile's been using necromancy to pretend he isn't a bag of bones for the past couple centuries; he hasn't actually processed it at all.

Mevolent on the other hand is a clothes off, lights on person. Even during their mostly-clothed up-against-the-wall angry hookups, he'll be tugging Vile's collar out of the way to get at skin; neck or chest or collarbone. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the scars, he has plenty of his own.

They mostly compromise with candlelight or a fire in the grate. Soft, low light hides a multitude of sins, which makes Vile more comfortable, and turns his hair to burnished copper, which Mevolent loves.

Do they like to cuddle after sex?

They do! It takes a while for them to figure that out - at first they hook up and then Vile gets dressed and leaves and that's how they like it. Serpine was very much desperate for any scrap of affection from Mevolent, so it's a refreshing change to have someone who's after the same thing as Mevolent - a quick fuck with no emotions or strings attached.

But eventually they start spending longer together, lazing and talking or dozing in between going at it like rabbits, and they realise that? It's nice to hold and be held, to pet and be pet without the expectation of it going anywhere. Vile has freckles and Mevolent likes making patterns out of them (he's adamant he's found the Faceless circles/his own crest on Vile's ass cheek), and Mevolent will doze off to Vile idly stroking up and down his spine. Vile likes having his hair played with. Mevolent likes to prop his cheek on Vile's head to read. They become a pretty cuddly couple tbh.

Do they like having sex outside of the bedroom? If yes, where?

Mevolent's throne is a favourite, after the throne room has cleared out. Usually it's Vile getting in his lap after all his audiences are done and the throne room has cleared out. Occasionally, if he's feeling particularly sentimental, Mevolent will let Vile try the throne out and go down on him while he's sitting in it, his own version of all the sorcerers who bend the knee to him. It's his way of pointing out his feelings - pretty much everyone in the world kneels to Mevolent, but he only kneels to two things: his gods, and his lover. They're not great at expressing their feelings, so giving Vile that power trip is one of the ways he says I love you.

Once they're able to be together publicly, Mevolent's favourite is getting Vile alone on a balcony or in an empty hallway behind some columns somewhere for a fumble during a party - anywhere he can get the thrill of "we might get caught" with the certainty that they probably won't. He likes the thought that they might be seen, but he also knows he needs to mind his reputation, so he prefers knowing that the chances are very small.

Are they affectionate during sex?

When it's the sappy romo kind, they are; they're worldbreakers in the eyes of most, but to each other they're just Mevolent and Vile, they're like any other couple. They laugh and bicker and make out and leave possessive little marks on each other and playfight. No one looking at them would think of either of them being capable of that kind of softness. Vile also has a praise kink like woah so Mevolent lavishes him with it. But when they're really going at it it's all teeth and nails and they leave the cuddliness for later.

[monochrome-in-madness]

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My Top 10 Favourite Horrors

Within this top 10 list, some will include the prequels, sequels and any other follow ups as 1 ranking number. Some may be considered thriller, sci-fi, suspence etc, however, I do regard these as horrors myself.

I have take many aspects into account, such as videography, actor quality, SFX makeup quality, soundtrack, directors, CGI etc.

Note : this is my personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, though if you haven't seen these, I highly reccomend them.

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1. The Conjuring

(1 & 2)

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The Conjuring 1 :

The Perron family moves into a farmhouse where they experience paranormal phenomena. They consult demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to help them get rid of the evil entity haunting them.

The Conjuring Trailer :

The Conjuring 2 :

Peggy, a single mother of four children, seeks the help of occult investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren when she and her children witness strange, paranormal events in their house

The Conjuring 2 Trailer :

My Opinion :

The Conjuring was the start of an incredible series of horrors that beat any other horror to the ground. It is absolutely fantastic and I basically worship these films. James Wan is my favourite director and he never ceases to amaze me.

Paranormal horror is my favourite and as someone who actually believes in the paranormal and who has had paranormal experiences, I can confirm that The Conjuring is much more realistic than any other paranormal films, which just makes it extra spooky.

The actors, camera angles, music, sfx makeup and storyline is just - chefs kiss -. I've been waiting for the 3rd one for so long, but they keep extending the release date. (R. I. P)

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2. Annabelle

(all of them)

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Annabelle :

John and Mia Form are attacked by a Satan worshipping couple, who uses their doll as a conduit to make their life miserable. This unleashes a string of paranormal events in the Forms' residence.

Annabelle Trailer :

Annabelle Creation :

Samuel and Elle embed their daughter's spirit into a doll, only to realise it is a demon. Years later, they open their home to a nun and six orphan girls, one of whom finds the doll.

Annabelle Creation Trailer :

Annabelle Comes Home :

Judy and her babysitter are left alone in her house after her parents leave to investigate a case. However, an unexpected guest sets Annabelle free, unleashing demonic activity in the house.

Annabelle Comes Home Trailer :

My Opinion :

Another great film series that was birthed form The Conjuring. Definitely less realistic, with many more jumpscares and spooky characters, which is appreciated in the horror world. Many people find dolls far more creepy than ghosts, myself included, so that's another perfect aspect that adds to the suspense.

I prefer Annabelle 3 over the others, mainly because I found that one to be more scary overall, even though Daniela is an idiot and she makes me so frustrated 😂

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3. Saw

(all of them)

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For the totally unindoctrinated, the Saw movie franchise revolves around the Jigsaw Killer (a.k.a. John Kramer), who tortures victims he believes are complacent or guilty, in order to make them appreciate their time on Earth.

All Saw Trailers :

Obviously I'm not going to list every Saw movie, because there are 7 (Jigsaw aka number 8, does NOT count. It is a disgrace).

My Opinion :

A classic for horror and gore lovers of all kinds. Of course I need to list this as number 3. I simply adore these movies. I even have the DVD set, so I am definitely a long term fan haha.

The obstacles and creativity regarding Saw as a whole needed a lot of thought put into it, plus it has a happy little side note of "make sure you don't cause harm to others in life and don't take anything for granted" which some may have not even noticed while being overwhelmed by the amount of fake blood.

Yes, a lot of characters are annoying, but that just makes us enjoy seeing them tortured even more (shh it's not real). Some of the blood doesn't look very realistic, the sfx can lack attention, BUT... It's still great and I can overlook these few flaws to appreciate the movies to the max.

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4. Blair Witch

(2016)

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A young man and his friends venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to uncover the mystery surrounding his missing sister. Many believe her disappearance 17 years earlier is connected to the legend of the Blair Witch.

At first the group is hopeful, especially when two locals act as guides through the dark and winding woods. As the night wears on, a visit from a menacing presence soon makes them realize that the legend is all too real, and more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

Blair Witch Trailer :

My Opinion :

I love the camerawork. Not because it's perfect, because it's the opposite. It's a documentary style and this makes it feel more realistic, as if you are within the film yourself. I enjoy how they skip to the action at just the right time after a mild buildup.

The visuals are great as well and there were definitely some parts where I was disgusted and claustrophobic, which is good to experience while enjoying these types of films.

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5. Under The Skin

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Disguising itself as a human female, an extraterrestrial drives around Scotland attempting to lure unsuspecting men into her van. Once there, she seduces and sends them into another dimension where they are nothing more than meat.

Under The Skin Trailer :

My Opinion :

I would classify this as horror, but many won't. Either way, this is an amazingly artistic film with beautiful imagery and silent awe. It definitely makes you feel the suspense in a calming manner and it has some really dark moments. Without reading the description, one might be confused as to what is going on, but how art is supposed to be interpretated is by the imagination of individuals.

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6. Veronica

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During a solar eclipse, young Verónica and her friends want to summon the spirit of Verónica's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.

Veronica Trailer :

My Opinion :

A Spanish masterpiece, to put it simply. It's hard to find proper horrors like this in English. I really enjoyed this one and I watched it subbed not dubbed, because I feel like voiceovers tend to ruin the art of the original film. The buildup is perfect and unlike many horrors, it barely shows you the face of the "monster". That leaves it to the imagination, which in general makes it far more scary.

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7. Underwater

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Disaster strikes more than six miles below the ocean surface when water crashes through the walls of a drilling station. Led by their captain, the survivors realize that their only hope is to walk across the sea floor to reach the main part of the facility. But they soon find themselves in a fight for their lives when they come under attack from mysterious and deadly creatures that no one has ever seen.

Underwater Trailer :

My Opinion :

This movie was released quite recently and I didn't know what to expect. I was definitely blown away by how good it was. Being trapped underwater gives most people a sense of anxiety. Add being trapped underwater and being hunted by creepy sea monsters and you've got yourself a good horror. Kristen Stewarts general anxious personality definitely suits this film well.

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8. Split

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Kevin, who is suffering from dissociative identity disorder and has 23 alter egos, kidnaps three teenagers. They must figure out his friendly personas before he unleashes his 24th personality.

Split Trailer :

https://youtu.be/84TouqfIsiI

My Opinion :

An incredible film with phenomenal acting on the part of James McAvoy. You can get lost within his character and almost feel as if you are the character itself. Suspense is built up slowly and the climax of the film is released rapidly. People I know who do not enjoy horror, love this film themselves, which is saying something. It's definitely one of the best modern films that draws you in from the start. 

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9. A Quiet Place

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A family struggles for survival in a world where most humans have been killed by blind but noise-sensitive creatures. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay.

A Quiet Place Trailer :

https://youtu.be/WR7cc5t7tv8

My Opinion :

As you can tell by now, I love anything alien related. This film has some of the most amazing looking aliens I've seen, I was honestly in awe by how great they looked. Another silent film, but in a different sense to the previous one. Instead of being the hunter, this family is being hunted and this adds more to the fear factor.

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10. Unfriended - Dark Web

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When a teen finds a laptop with a cache of hidden files, he and his friend discover that the previous owner has access to the dark web and is watching over them.

Unfriended - Dark Web Trailer :

https://youtu.be/XenTM_C9fxM

My Opinion :

A modern take on horror. Involving the actual dangers of the dark web and the use of technology and turning it into a horror was a magnificent idea. It definitely had me at the edge of my seat.

Due to another film type that is not often explored (thus being that most of the movie is equal to what it would be like to look at your computer and video chat), it makes it different and therefore more compelling than the usual videography styles.

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Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far! Feel free to share your top 10 in the comment section, I am definitely interested in your opinions and finding new movies to watch myself. Any questions are also welcome.

Until next time, take care and stay spooky!

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[scarlettmasqueradefilms]

Hide and Seek - 9/10

STOP! Once again, if you haven’t seen this movie go go go and watch it, then come back and read this. This IS an order. Okayyy, assuming you watched it and now you’re back, let’s dive right in (idk).

There’s a certain amount of power that a movie holds. It shows you what it wants you see; usually through the eyes of the protoganist. We form a certain bond with this character, one we are usually unaware of until the movie is over and we are, once again, seeing the world through our own tired eyes. I guess this is part of the attraction. Not only are we escaping our life and delving into another; we are experiencing with a different mind.

In Hide and Seek, we see the world through the eyes of Pyschiatrist David Callaway (played by Robert DeNiro) as he copes with the trauma of his wife’s recent suicide while also trying to care for his 9 year old daughter, Emily Callaway (played by Dakota Fanning). Emily begins to act strangely and claims she has a friend called Charlie. David, and therefore the audience as well, is unsure about whether Charlie is merely a figment of Emily’s imagination or real; either in the form of a demonic spirit or a creepy next-door-neighbour. The film does a good job of portraying Emily as the typical unnerving ghost-girl. As we witness her lack of remorse for smashing her dolls and piercing bugs with a fishing hook we are likely to assume, along with her father, that she is either evil or has some kind of evil possessing her. 

So when we discover that David has Dissociative Identity Disorder (more commonly known as multiple personality disorder), and he is actually Charlie, we realise how the movie has been deceiving us the entire time. Not only does this make the audience rethink their assumptions about Emily but it also breaks our trust in David. We may even go as far to question our own sanity. I would like to emphasise how our protagonist is David, not Charlie. So whenever David is shown to be in his office, this is actually just a portrayal of what David remembers doing while he takes on the form of Charlie and plays with Emily. Could it be that we do the same? What if every time I am in my bedroom I am actually taking on an alternate personality and am not in my bedroom at all? Because, in Hide and Seek, we have been experiencing the world through David, this notion doesn’t seem all that improbable. 

This revelation also makes sense of previous occurrences in the movie. For example, when David asks Emily if he can meet Charlie, she says he can’t because Charlie is “hiding”. We are, at this point, unaware that Charlie is literally hiding within David’s subconscious. And when we are shown David’s full memory of the night before his wife’s “suicide” (or, in actuality, murder), we see that she is cheating on David with another man. As the couple are making out on the balcony, David catches them as he hears the man say “come out, come out, wherever you are”, relating to the fact that Charlie’s favourite game to play with Emily is hide and seek. The movie then rewards us with a final chase scene between hero and villain, but with the twist of the protagonist, who we knew to be the hero all along, taking on the role of the villain.

As usual, I could go into much greater depth and analyse each and every word that David says, but I’ll leave that up to you. This review/analysis is much shorter than my others because I just wanted to draw your attention towards the manipulation of the protagonist role that this movie offers; making you feel betrayed and somewhat insane all at the same time. Thanks for reading! I’ll be back very soon.

Kitty x 

[adriannabertie-blog]

28 Days In Zentai

I wished to exit, but I needed a brand new zentai extra. So not all that thrilling. Someplace around 4am as I completed pinning the primary body of the suit I looked at my overlocker. It was sat there on the desk, beneath its dust cover, laughing at me. Mocking my sheepish demeanor in relation to it's overcomplicated presentation. However I had sufficient. I purchased that factor with the intention of mastering it, and making my own good match outfits in my own fabric patterns. Not will it mock me! I spent in all probability 2 hours messing around with tensions, needle settings, differential feed settings, regular fabric sewing then eventually sewing on lycra. I eventually reached some extent the place I used to be joyful enough with how the fabric behaved and with out a flinch bought straight to work on sewing the body of my zentai. I completed the physique, one arm, shoulders and the facet zip by about 10am and high off the success of my own determination received able to go be a rope bunny for a workshop.

After having a shower (and lightly washing and drying my suit) I felt human. Barely drained but positively human. I acquired what I needed - not too much - and made my technique to the train station (through the tube). At the station, like before (Conquering Southbank, on my first publish) I was working round like a mad girl, on the lookout for a free kiosk to purchase a ticket. I had no purpose thoughts you, I had about 25 minutes to idle for. Tickets bought, train to get on recognized (but waiting for the platform quantity) I purchased some food for later and simply stood around. A whole lot of kids would cease of their tracks, pulling their parents back to ask, "what's that?". I would flip my head to the kid and mimic their tilted head expression. A platform was finally shown and that i bought a place on the practice. If you beloved this report and you would like to obtain a lot more info with regards to https://Www.zentai-spandex.com/lycra-spandex/multi-color-zentai-suit/ kindly pay a visit to the page. The odor of the baguette I purchased earlier was now emanating from my bag, setting off a, "Feed me, Seymore!" styled protest from my stomach.

One does not deny their stomach food when it protests as such! The workshop went properly. For the primary part I was allowed to maintain my zentai on and was used as a demo bunny for some ties. I didn't really suppose much of being tied up in zentai. It would not look as pretty because it does in opposition to pores and skin. Day over , it's again dwelling and on with the go well with before TG! Being drained and having been up for greater than 24 hours already implies that mistakes were going to occur. They usually did. Among the measurements for my hood have been out, and i serged the unsuitable arm to the wrong hole. I was already working late for TG so, decided to go in that, without the hood. Leaving the home, without "my face" felt horrible. I felt quite acutely aware about myself and exposed. Bar the fluffy blue legs and blue fingers as indicators of zentai being worn, the nape of my neck, head and face were exposed. Sensitivity to wind and the chilly didn't assist issues much both. Still, I obtained to the venue.

Stuffed my jacket and headphones and such into my bag to enter the cloakroom, and marveled at the highest notch effort TG always put into their designs and themed rooms. Because the venue stuffed up, extra acquainted faces showed up. Some I had seen recently, and loads I have not seen for a great long time. I realised I needed to sleep slightly before going for a walkabout with zentaispot. While at TG, my self-consciousness melted away and i felt like I was again behind my hood. At the same time although, having that reaffirmation of your own characteristics as an individual from different individuals was undoubtedly wanted. The dissociative nature of being in zentai is definitely fairly profound and never something I had thought about initially. But let's simply say looking at your own face in a mirror a minimum of once a day has helped keep that dissociative nature at bay. On the best way residence, I was approached by a lady and her mum who appeared pretty misplaced. Being really altruistic in nature I stopped and tried to figure out the place she needed to go. After walking to a couple bus stops I labored out a route for her to get dwelling. I proudly mentioned I made it, and she was adamant that I purchased it! I took off my jacket and confirmed her the place there were nonetheless pattern marks, darts and improper things on it.

You'll find many textures, too. Because of this, take time to match types and buy the fitting Black Spiderman zentai suit. Some models are shiny and they are extraordinarily tight. Breathability is a crucial facet. You need to move correctly, too. While visibility is decreased, you want to have some kind of vision. So far as fashions are involved, you'll find one and two items Spiderman suits. There are all types of designs, patterns and kinds; you will need to discover an appropriate possibility. Notice that you just will not be able to eat once you set your go well with on. Attempt to bring some snack and eat them previous to the respective event. As we speak, manufacturers are combining the final word fabrics to ensure a smoother feeling. If you'd like to make sure a versatile fit, keep on with reliable fits providers. You will discover many fits variations that will appear a majestic choice. Because of essentially the most excellent Spiderman suit, you can be extremely vibrant. Black Spiderman zentai suit models are sometimes developed with resistant materials. But, you will need to comply with cleansing routines. Make smart choices and guarantee a good fit. Make a clever use of this swimsuit, particularly if you need to draw folks consideration. Now you already know the way to select the best go well with. Stay patient and determined. This may allow you to avoid a nasty alternative. In the event you belong to the category of film buffers, you most certainly love Spiderman. As soon as you wear the highest Black Spiderman zentai swimsuit, you will really feel the actual hero. This will be similar to a second physique. This is a well-liked choice and you cannot ignore its benefits.

[spamzineglasgow]

SPAM Digest #5 (Feb 2019)

A quick of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling. 

‘Terminology’ by Callie Gardner, Granta

I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve recommended Callie Gardner’s astonishing piece, ‘Terminology’, to friends and family. Sometimes you read something and it’s as though the world decided to refashion its atoms around the text, wear it like a brand new garment. I had to cry a little, admittedly, to realise this. I guess I was reading the essay in darkest November and found myself astounded by its honesty and light. It’s not all sunshine, but it’s definitely a form of waking up, of gradual awareness and loosening. ‘Terminology’ begins with a sleeper train, a world where people wake up in carriages and put on what they want to, unbound by the violent constraints of our usual distinctions. These people keep their differences, but the differences are no longer scars of history, privilege.

The sleeper train is going somewhere. This future is open, potential; this future is based on care. This world, this place we drift towards on the train (I say we now, because I too want in on this world), is named Iris, ‘after the Roman goddess of the rainbow’. Iris, perhaps, is without terminus, the people that live there ‘speak a language with a hundred pronouns’. If this is a utopia, it is ‘an unscientific utopia’ that nevertheless glows with what already exists, what is within our reach: the charge of a ‘queerness in everything’. It is a mantra, a lullaby world and ‘a wish given flesh’. I wish every essay began with a world like this, a speculative projection towards where we could be when we open up, seek some generous expanse to sink into, flexing our selves afresh.

‘Terminology’ is about the body. It is about appearance and disguise, about survival, performance, expectation. It is about the precarity of the genderqueer person in public space, the social ties they might make out of safety, necessity. It draws attention to the everyday actions the genderqueer person might make for the sake of their own survival. The fact that we occupy space radically differently, depending on how society chooses to stratify our identities and consequent vulnerabilities. ‘Terminology’ moves from the hypothetical experience of the genderqueer person to the author’s own encounters with daily microaggressions, media representation and social relations in public, creative and professional space. Gardner describes, acutely, the violence of misgendering, intentional or otherwise: its physiological effect on the body, akin to a kind of dissociative paralysis, abjection. ‘Maybe this makes no sense to you’, Gardner writes, ‘It doesn’t make much more sense to me’. This is an essay of admission, working through, coming to terms, learning respect.

The reason I constantly recommend ‘Terminology’ is that it states the fundamentals with absolute clarity: ‘language is not ours to use without consequence’. It asks for an ethics in which we question what our words might do in a certain context, how we make and shape reality with discourse. Recently, the songwriter Kiran Leonard put it so eloquently in an interview, arguing that tenderness and cultural responsibility is ‘about thinking through when I’m speaking in the world, speaking against a thing, what world am I looking at, what world am I creating when I say these things, and what worlds are other people creating’. The world of Iris is a world we might make with a more commodious language, one which permits an expanded, plural sociality.

Gardner tentatively imagines what Iris would actually look like, the features of its ecology and landscape. I am reminded of the work of Queer Nature, ‘a queer-run nature education and ancestral skills program serving the local LGBTQ2+ community’: a collective who make it their mission to make links between the survival skills queer populations have developed for themselves, ancestral wilderness skills and other forms of marginalised knowledge. Wilderness, conventionally the domain of dominant hetero-male, becomes a queer space in which collectivity and silenced forms of self-reliance map onto the terrain as an active, responsive, symbiotic space of wonder, vulnerability and healing: an ‘Ecology of Belonging’, as Queer Nature put it. There is, in queer ecology, a blurring of active/passive as a binary. Survival might be about avoidance or withdrawal as much as presence and action.

Walking through Gardner’s imaginary Iris, we realise we won’t reach this space without confronting questions of identity around capitalism, sexuality, culture and ‘nature’. What is it to feel something as natural at all? Since society likes to police what is considered ‘natural’, how do we frame queer subjective experiences of embodied reality in collective contexts, without essentialising? There is the beautiful admission that queerness is not just about who or how you do or don’t fuck, but also about how you live, how you need to live. The doing of gender and intimacy. And looking for a language, a vernacular, a cultural narrative through which you might play out that life, which is not defined essentially but perhaps intuitively, iteratively, interdependently. Gardner calls for the necessity for nuance in a world where the conditions of survival often confuse the bounds of romance or friendship. If ‘gender is only history’, then we have to really reflect on where we are here and where we are going. Sadly, we aren’t going to wake up from the sleeper train in a lovely, wholly unbound country. But this isn’t to say utopian thought is useless. For Gardner, wanting a place like Iris is not a weakness but actually ‘a resource’ for recalibrating the self within dead-end, heteronormative histories.

The question of queer futurity versus Lee Edelman’s ‘No Future’ is of course a complex and rich one, which I haven’t space to go into here. What’s more interesting is the fact that this essay celebrates the possible while recognising difficulties and limits within the imagining of a place like Iris, as much as reminding us what happens in lived spaces like queer communities. Ultimately, ‘Gender is at once a material condition and a psychical state’. This essay, ‘Terminology’, is one of those rare places where the actual extent of what that means is acknowledged. Nothing covered in this essay bears easy solution or simple resistance, position. Identity, standpoint, community and experience are entangled in questions of occupation, flux and, frankly, difficulty. I learn a lot within its gauzy bounds, I find clarity of a sort; I look at the world around me anew, and I feel an openness in myself that, for once, I lack words for. I realise this is okay, I just need to read on; there is so much more to understand.  ‘Citation’, as Gardner reminds us, can be used ‘as transfeminist practice’. As such, I encourage your own turning to ‘Terminology’: to follow its list of transfeminist writers, to think about your own version of Iris; mostly, to read and to listen, to drape this warmth over your shoulders, share it with others, without condition.

M.S

‘24 Hours Watching DAU, the Most Ambitious Film Project of All Time’, by Hunter Dukes and McNeil Taylor, Hyperallergic

This SPAM Digest might break the rules a little bit—it's a review of a review, and it has absolutely nothing to do with poetry—but do bear with me; I promise you I’m getting somewhere.

Last month, Mac Taylor and Hunter Dukes (yes, those are two real-life people; have you ever seen a better pair of names) went to Paris for the premiere of DAU, a film project of Tom McCarthian inclinations, and insane if not obscene logistic, aesthetic, and conceptual ambitions. Directed by the young Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, DAU tells the story of Soviet physicist Lev Landau; Khrzhanovsky hired thousands of actors—or “participants”— as he refers to them, and deployed them to a custom-built set in Ukraine reproducing a research-facility. As Taylor and Dukes report:

From 2009 to 2011, the amateur actors stayed more or less in character. They lived like full-time historical reenactors, dressing in Stalin-era clothes, earning and spending Soviet rubles, doing their jobs: as scientists, officers, cleaners, and cooks. The film set became a world of its own. In all, 700 hours of footage were shot; this was eventually cut into a series of 13 distinct features, collectively titled DAU.

Apart from my obvious fascination with this Reamainder-like gargantuan re-enactment (did I mention I love Tom McCarthy), what really struck me was the format this project was shown in at the premiere:

To enter the [sprawling] exhibit, which runs through February 17th, you must apply for a “visa” through DAU’s online portal, choose a visit length (the authors of this article opted for 24 hours), and fill out a confidential questionnaire about your psychological, moral, and sexual history. Respondents answer yes or no to such statements as:

I HAVE BEEN IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH AN IMBALANCE OF POWER

IN THE RIGHT SITUATION, EVERYONE COULD HAVE THE CAPACITY TO KILL

Downloaded onto a smartphone, this psychometric profile becomes your guide to the exhibition. In theory, your device can unlock tailored screenings, concerts, and other experiences. In reality, none of this technology has been implemented in the theaters or museum. But it does not matter.

The premiere organisers chose to design and explicitly articulate the experience of a world around the experience of the world of the film; and to tailor this experience, in turn, around the premiere’s visitor themselves. Apart from sounding like a lot of fun, this exploitation and amplification (if not redoubling)  of film’s world-building capacity made me immediately wonder: what would this practice would look like when applied to poetry instead of film? (I know, I have a one-track mind.)

One of the traits that poetry and film seem to me to share is the potential to conjure up alternative worlds that seems obey to their own logic and set of rules. Like film, long poems or poetry ensembles (pamphlets, collections, sometimes entire oeuvres, or to a lesser extent magazines) often seem to respond to aesthetic parametres of their own making, and to establish a certain unique space for experience that can only be accessed through the artwork itself. We all know what the world of David Lynch is, and what it is like—we know what it looks like, what it feels like, what is allowed and what is not allowed within its limits. And we know the world of Gertrude Stein or John Ashbery or Sophie Collins the same way; there’s not only a tone to this space of experience, but a also a flexible and entirely nebulous set of rules that seems to dictate—to code, if we want to throw in a sprinkle of the gratuitous post-internet buzzwords we SPAM people are suckers for—how the world behaves and how it responds to our attention.

Dukes and Taylor rightfully call DAU ‘a beguiling collection of moving images that call into question our basic assumptions about film production and consumption’, and I wonder what a poetry project with the same goal would look like. Apart from the cool re-enactment part, I imagine what it would be like if poetry could be tailored to one's history or personality; spending a day moving from venue to venue to take in bits of an orchestrations of poetry readings running 24/7. It probably wouldn’t work; it definitely wouldn’t work. But it got me thinking about what an alternative modality to deliver poetry IRL would look like. There has definitely been lots of experimentation (although never enough, IMHO) with the visual presentation of poetry: I’m thinking of Crispin Best’s pleaseliveforever, a poem that refreshes itself every few seconds into new L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/lol combinations of words (what is the poem, then? The structure? The algorithm?); his poem that fades into lighter gray, only to darken into normal text as you keep scrolling down the page (what was it call? where did it go? Help @crispinbest). I’m thinking of video poems and surreal memes (yes you can @ me, those are poems). But readings are rarely stranger than a just a reading. We should get thinking about they could become weirder. Does anyone know how to make holograms?

D.B.

Image from Internet Machine by Timo Arnall (2014). image credit: Timo Arnall.

Always Inside, Always Enfolded into the Metainterface: A Roundtable Discussion Speakers: Christian Ulrik Andersen, Elisabeth Nesheim, Lisa Swanstrom,Scott Rettberg, Søren Pold

Having been fascinated by Søren Pold's writing on literature and translation in relation to the interface, I knew when I saw this new roundtable discussion that it would most likely be making SPAM's February Digest. This discussion, made available on the Electronic Literature Review website, brings together the above speakers to discuss many of the ideas explored in Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold's 2018 publication, The Metainterface: The Art of Platforms, Cities, and Clouds (The MIT Press).

Covering a diverse range of theorists, artists, designers and academics, the speakers take as their focus the idea of the metainterface, examining how interfaces have moved beyond the computer into cultural platforms, such as net art and electronic literature. Forming part of this analysis are considerations of how the computer interface, through becoming embedded in everyday objects such as the smartphone, has become both omnipresent and invisible. Through exploring the different relationships that form between art and interfaces, the authors note that whilst during many smart interactions the interface becomes invisible, it tends to gradually resurface, the displaced interface then creating a metainterface. Their argument is that art can help us to see this, with the interface becoming a site of aesthetic attention.

It is the question of aesthetic attention, in varying forms, that runs through this discussion, offering the reader a profusion of references of artists whose work examines the metainterface. One piece that stood out to me was Camouflaged Cell Concealment Sites by the Canadian-American artist, Betty Beaumont. This piece consists of a collection of photos taken of cell phone towers disguised as pine trees or Saguaro cactuses. As Lisa Swanstrom notes in the discussion, they're terribly disguised, but ones that you could still overlook if you weren't paying attention. Similarly, Nicole Starosielski's The Undersea Network, is a book that makes visible the materiality of the internet through mapping the global network of fibre optic cables that runs along seabeds. In bringing these works to our attention, Swanstrom notes how both examples are questioning the aesthetics of infrastructure, as both are trying to reveal something about the ways in which we experience it, not just know of it.

Responding to the question of what our role as critical users of the metainterface is, Pold draws our attention to the fact that we are always a part of the interface and have to work from the fact of being embedded, as there is essentially no outside. This invites the question of how the artists and writers can respond to the conditioning of self into the metainterface. As Andersen points out, whilst there is no safe haven 'outside' of the interface, there are certain tactics that can be developed as a user. The example given, a chapter entitled Watching The Med by Eric Snodgrass in his work Executions: Power and Expression in Networked and Computational Media (Malmö University, 2017), points to how real users operate in the Mediterranean Sea (now a highly-politicized landscape) by switching between different GPS technologies and Twitter to 'recombine media in a tactical way'. The key idea to take from this is that whilst a reconsideration of our approach to tactical media in the condition of the interface is necessary, it doesn't mean we cannot operate on platformed versions of tactical media such as Facebook or Twitter.

Another point of focus in this discussion I found especially captivating was the consideration of the posthuman machine in relation to the reformulation of labour, in particular Scott Rettberg's consideration of the interface as an intermediate layer between humans and machines. In questioning whether we are moving towards a system in which the interfaces themselves generate human labour for the benefit of corporate entities, Rettberg poses the question of whether we can be alienated from our labour if we are not conscious of being laborours? This leads into a contemplation on the condition of cultural tiredness, an awareness that a certain media platform, such as Facebook, is packed with problems regarding social interaction and data protection, but still we continue to use its service.

Cautious of covering more than needs to be said in this digest, I will close by returning to the fundamental question that Pold and Andersen put forward in their work: the role of art and literature in shedding light on the behaviour and ontology of the metainterface. I find it interesting to learn that Pold started out by studying literature, before moving into a study of digital aesthetics. Perhaps it was the combination of these two domains that allowed him to see the act of reading the everyday interfaces of life as a literary act. This seems to be echoed in Andersen's response to the question of art and literature's role in an age of environmental crisis and metaintertface, whereby he looks to Walter Benjamin's definition of an author as a producer. To see the artist or writer as 'someone who produces not only the narrative, but who is a realist in the sense that he or she reflects what it means to produce in the circumstances that you are embedded in. So, the role of the author in the 21st century is to 'not only to use the interface as a media for the production of new narratives, but also use the interface, and reflect the interface as a system of production'.

With questions such as 'how are we being written by machines?' and 'how have we become media?' still yet to be answered, I encourage anyone interested in posthumanism and digital aesthetics to make their way through the full discussion.

M.P.

[nuclearheart]

[Modern reincarnated Anakin with DID masterpost!

This is entirely optional. If you’re not comfortable with it or would just prefer to write with non-multiple Anakin, I’m perfectly happy to do that, no questions asked.

First off: why give Anakin DID? I first started thinking about it when I realised I missed Vader in this verse. I love me some Vader. Making him one of Anakin’s alternate personalities wasn’t a big leap from there. I mean, he canonically has a tendency to dissociate as a coping mechanism to deal with guilt, regret, and feelings of weakness or inadequacy. His whole “I’m not Anakin Skywalker anymore” thing is dissociation. He obviously doesn’t have the full-blown disorder, but since that mental process is there, I think he very easily could. Also, DID is p much universally caused by childhood trauma. In this verse, just being Anakin Skywalker reincarnated is pretty traumatic, and as a child he was abused by his mother’s boyfriend as well.

Some important terminology:

alter: alternate personality, as opposed to host.

co-conscious: when multiple alters are awake and aware of each other. Co-consciousness is generally a good thing, as it lets alters keep an eye on each other, facilitates system communication, and minimises memory gaps.

to front or to be out: to control the body.

host, sometimes called core: the original birth personality, as opposed to alter.

system: host and alters; the whole fam. For instance, if you ever need to clarify that you’re talking about aaaall of Anakin and not just Anakin the one personality, you could say, “Anakin’s system.” It’s often evident from context though.

Some important clarifications:

He's one person fragmented into several personalities. Don’t feel the need to use plural pronouns all the time or anything.

It takes him a looong time to understand the extent of his DID. He thinks he just has memory blackouts, and he doesn’t realise that the occasional voices in his head are abnormal.

Anakin himself basically never remembers what his alters have said or done while in control of the body. If you bring up something Vader said, Anakin will either only have secondhand knowledge of it because Vader told him about it, or, more likely, just have no idea what you’re talking about.

His case is actually very mild. He doesn’t have many alters and only one of them poses much of a problem. Please don’t take this as minimising the suffering of real people with DID. I watched a friend go through it and it can be absolutely hellish.

So yeah, here’s the current lineup in the order of who’s out most. Subject to change and updates, and I might add more alters later as Anakin and I discover them.

ANAKIN

Host. Doesn’t remember much of his trauma. Almost never co-conscious when one of his alters is fronting. He’s rather more chill than Canonakin because a lot of his negative memories and emotions are compartmentalised into alters—e.g., he doesn’t have a huge anger problem, because the Burning Man feels his anger for him.

Random fact: he smokes and Vader hates him for it.

VADER

Often co-conscious when Anakin is out. Twenty years older than Anakin. He has severe asthma and wheezes constantly. Anakin can usually tell when he’s been out, because he “wakes up” with a sore throat.

Vader’s kind of a weird cross between a protector alter and a persecutor. He’s ashamed of sharing a body with a bunch of pathetic weaklings, and he lets them know it. However, that also means he comes out to take care of business when the system feels threatened, upset, or vulnerable. He’s mostly just stoic and standoffish, but he will be violent in self-defence.

Forever denying that he's an alter. He thinks of himself as the host. Don’t call him Anakin or he will be royally ticked off.

THE MOTHER

Communicator, caretaker, system manager. Partially but not entirely a projection of Anakin’s own mother. She’s rather stricter and fussier than Shmi and doesn’t take anybody’s nonsense. Perpetually Tired™.

Anakin says “shouldn’t” a lot in canon, because he actually has a quite strong moral code, he just disregards it. I’ve said before that the difference between him and Luke is that Luke sees a line and stops before he crosses it, while Anakin also sees the line, says to himself “I really shouldn’t cross this line,” and then just blows right through that shiz. So in this verse, that “shouldn’t” voice, the part of himself that tries and fails to keep the rest in line, splits off into an alter and actually has rather more success. Anakin has a lot of respect for mothers—which, of course, is exactly why his subconscious made her one.

She's aware that she's an alter, and has been ever since she came into being. She takes her role of looking after Anakin very seriously and is almost always co-conscious with him, giving him solid advice in the back of his mind. You’d have to know them pretty well to be able to tell when she’s out as opposed to Anakin, because she’s quite content to respond to his name and carry on where he left off. She has a distinctive head-tilt, though, and if you ever hear something shockingly sensible come out of Anakin’s mouth, it’s probably her speaking.

THE BURNING MAN (or THE SOLDIER)

This is the Problem I mentioned earlier. He’s a fragment, not a full-blown alter, who came into being while Anakin was in the military and carries his combat trauma, as well as (past life) memories of Mustafar. All he feels is anger, but he’s more of a danger to himself than to anyone else. He has this constant itchy burning sensation all over his skin and he often draws blood trying to scratch it away. He’s non-verbal, even mentally, and therefore completely uncommunicative with the rest of the system. It’s only Padmé’s input that lets them know he even exists.

When he comes out, it’s almost always in the night or early morning, because his nightmares wake him up before the rest of the system. It’s not uncommon to hear him pacing around in the wee hours.

THE SLAVE

Seven years old, female. First alter. She carries Anakin’s childhood abuse trauma and (past life) slave memories. For a few years Anakin thought she was just a friend of his, before he realised she’s in his head.

She’s very retiring and reserved and doesn’t front much at all anymore. When she does, it’s never for very long before Vader comes charging in to shut her back up safe in their mind.

In the inner world she looks something like this.

Most of Anakin’s alters can sort of pass as him, albeit him in a very weird mood (and, in Vader’s case, with a cold). The Slave cannot. She speaks and carries herself like a seven-year-old girl, and in the body of a twenty-some-year-old man she’s quite clearly an alternate personality. Her fronting at an awkward time was what got Anakin medically discharged from the Air Force.

There you go! As I said, I will certainly tweak this post in the future as Anakin and I figure out what’s going on.]